Let’s dive into the fun and exciting world of comic strips for marketing! I bet you’ve never thought of using comic strips to bring in new traffic, engage with your audience and subtly promote your products.
You’re not just here for fun, though. In the vast sea of online marketing strategies, creating a comic strip is an innovative way to boost traffic and subtly promote your brand or products.
Let’s dive into the fun and exciting world of comic strips!
You’re not just here for fun, though. In the vast sea of online marketing strategies, creating a comic strip is an innovative way to boost traffic and subtly promote your brand or products.
But, wait, I can’t draw! Don’t despair, I discuss three ways of creating your comic book below, and only one of them involves you drawing. I’ve got you covered. This is part 1, read this first. Then, part 2 talks about using AI to efficiently create your images.
Great! But how?
Let’s explore!
Please note, this is just one of the 60 traffic unorthodox traffic generating ideas in the Traffic Trove Virtual Card Deck. Get them all for a tiny price and make your marketing efforts just a bit more fun.
Table of Contents
- Conceptualization and Storyboarding – Building an Engaging and Effective Marketing Tool
- Part 2: Creating Comic Strips for Marketing – Three Options
- Using AI
- Go Forth and Create Comic Strips for Marketing Your Business
Conceptualization and Storyboarding – Building an Engaging and Effective Marketing Tool
Before you start to actually create your comic strip, you need to think about why and what your comic strip is all about.
Conceptualization
Every great comic starts with a compelling concept.
This is where you need to channel your creative juices and think about what type of comic would resonate with your audience. Remember, your comic should reflect the essence of your brand and bring your ideal audience in closer.
Think about where you eventually want to lead your reader and then work backwards to where you can meet them at the beginning of their journey to getting to know you.
Start with your brand.
Treat your brand as a character in its own right: What personality traits does it have? Is it quirky, serious, or adventurous? Use this personality to build relatable characters around it.
Think About Your Audience
What does your audience enjoy? Consider their interests, lifestyles, and sense of humor. Make sure the content takes into account their tastes while aligning with the tone and values of your brand.
Keep It Simple
Remember that less is more in this medium. Don’t overwhelm readers with too much information in one panel. Instead, aim for clarity and make each panel contribute to the overall story.
Make It Engaging
Create tension or conflict that needs resolution – this keeps readers coming back for more! Don’t forget to infuse humor – it’s a powerful ingredient for engagement!
Decide on Frequency
Is your comic strip going to be a regular feature or an occasional addition to your traffic trove?
Storyboarding
Storyboarding is like drawing a roadmap for your story. It’s an essential step where you plan out how the story unfolds panel by panel.
After you have thought about the considerations I cover above, start sketching out your idea in a few frames. This does not have to be artistic or beautiful, stick figures work just fine. Its only purpose is to map out what the contents will be and to see if it will work.
Once you have this in hand, it’s time to move on to actually creating the comic strip.
Part 2: Creating Comic Strips for Marketing – Three Options
Now onto bringing our ideas to life! Here are three paths you can choose from:
Option 1: Illustrate the Comics Yourself
If you have the talent and ability, create the whole comic (words and illustrations) yourself.
You can do this by hand and scan your comic strip or you can do it digitally. I am guessing that you already have the skills and tools you need if you plan to illustrate the comic yourself.
If your illustration skills are not where are comfortable doing that, then you have two other options.
Option 2: Collaborating With An Illustrator
Working with an illustrator can be rewarding if you’ve got a specific vision for your comic strip series in mind but you are not comfortable with your drawing skills. It can lead to long term collaborations and mutual benefits.
Benefits
Collaborating with an illustrator holds several significant benefits:
- Illustrators bring their expertise in visual storytelling techniques which can enhance overall reader engagement and make characters more memorable.
- An experienced illustrator will bring unique artistic flair to your project that can help differentiate your brand from competitors in users’ minds.
- Collaboration takes some burden off you allowing you more time for other aspects of entrepreneurship such as marketing strategies or product development.
Creating a successful comic strip through collaboration is certainly achievable – it requires open communication, shared vision, patience and respect towards each other’s expertise. Done right – it’s like weaving magic onto digital canvas strip by strip until before you know it; you’ve created another universe filled with engaging tales subtly promoting your brand!
Finding The Right Illustrator
Look at various illustration styles out there – Cartoonish? Realistic? Search for illustrators whose style and brand values you resonate with. You can offer a collaboration where both of you work on the comic and create comics that will resonate with both audiences and use the series as a cross-promotion opportunity. Or get recommendations from other entrepreneurs, illustrator directories (artist communities like Behance or Dribbble)or on platforms like Fiverr or Upwork.
Communicate Clearly
Share detailed descriptions of characters, settings, color preferences etc., but also respect their creative inputs; after all, they’re visual storytelling experts!
Make sure you agree beforehand on expectations, deadlines, pricing, number of edits, copyright issues, who has the final say when it comes to creative decisions and so on.
The Process
Work together to create an engaging storyboard – this will be your roadmap moving forward into the actual drawing phase.
Review regularly. Regular feedback ensures that the project stays aligned with your vision without straying off course, with your deadline and your budget.
Cautions and Other Considerations
There are several considerations when collaborating with anyone, especially on such a sometimes emotionally charged creative project.
- Hiring an illustrator can mean a fairly high investment. Make sure you are willing to invest before deciding on working with an illustrator unless you can come to another mutually beneficial agreement.
- Ownership of the comic strip must be considered and spelled out in the contract with the illustrator.
- Continuity of your comic strip may be interrupted if your illustrator is no longer available to work with you.
- Misunderstandings can derail projects quickly. To avoid this pitfall practice open communication – ensure all discussions are detailed and documented for reference later on.
- Sometimes creative visions may clash causing tension within the partnership – always approach such situations professionally and respectfully.
Option 3: Using Software To Create A Comic Strip Series
If you’re tackling this project solo or want cost-effective ways to create comics hassle-free, consider using some of the amazing software that is available to help you create comics. You have three choices here:
- Comic maker tools (like Pixton or Comicgen) that allow you to mix and match existing elements to create your comics.
- General purpose design tools like Canva (this link takes you to their comic strips page. Here is a video on how to use Canva to create comic strips How to Create Comic Strips..
- AI-based tools like Neural Canvas, Comics Maker.ai, or one of the other AI comic generators.
- Create your own comic using AI image generators like MidJourney.
Benefits
The tools can be incredibly cost-efficient compared to hiring an illustrator. They come with a myriad of free templates and graphics that are readily available for use.
You retain full control over every aspect of your comic. You can change elements instantly without having to rely on someone else’s schedule or input or on your illustration skills.
Most tools allow easy editing and tweaking. Didn’t like how that last strip turned out? No problem – just go back in and change it!
Select the Tool
There are many tools that can help you create your own comic strip. Many can or do incorporate AI, others are more based on combining existing elements. .
Learning The Tools
These platforms are often user-friendly even without graphic design experience. They offer customizable templates where you can drag-drop characters, props etc., making comic creation incredibly easy!
However, as with all tools, they still require some degree of learning and a bit of a learning curve. Be prepared to take the time and effort to learn to use the tool or tools of your choice effectively.
Learn the basics and then play with the tool to develop a further understanding of how to create the best comics with it.
Start with simple comic strips and build on them as your skills improve.
Tweak the comics, the stories and the messages based on what you want to share, feedback from your audience and your own skills and aesthetics.
Creating your own comics will likely take more time than working with an illustrator (but likely less time than creating the illustrations from scratch) as you will need to take care of everything from conceptualization to design yourself.
Using AI
Of course, you can also use AI to help you create your comic strip, but as of this writing, getting any kind of consistency takes a bit of work. I delve into that in How To Use AI To Create Comic Strips In Marketing
Go Forth and Create Comic Strips for Marketing Your Business
Whichever path you choose — illustrating or collaboration or software — remember to create your comics to engage, entertain and subtly promote your brand and your products.
So go ahead . . . unleash your inner comic book creator and bring some joy and laughter to your readers while subtly promoting your brand with engaging comic strips.
Trackbacks/Pingbacks