As children, everyone starts reading first by looking at the pictures and then by reading the words. As adults, people are still inherently drawn to images, which play a critical role in any successful marketing campaign. Can you imagine a magazine article or a billboard with just text and no images to support or enhance it? Of course not. While text-based content will always be at the core of marketing, it’s crucial to recognize the vital role that visual content plays in the digital era.
The importance of visual marketing is further highlighted when you consider the following 2 facts:
- 65% of people are visual learners
- 90% of information that comes to the brain is visual
Knowing this, it’s not hard to understand just how pivotal visual marketing is to any successful campaign.
Here are 6 ways to use visual content in your marketing campaign:
- Quality Images – Splitting up a body of text with a high quality, contextually relevant image makes people more inclined to finish reading what is written. With the over saturation of digital content, people’s attention spans are as short as ever. That is why articles with images get 94% more views. Images taken by you also add a personal touch, especially when you use a site like Canva that utilizes a drag and drop interface to help you create unique and captivating images. Other photo sharing sites like Pexels provide great quality photos for free that you can use on your site or in other aspects of your marketing campaign.
- Videos – A great video shows that you’re willing to go the extra mile for quality while presenting a common problem and then showing a solution that your product offers. There are many types of videos including: how-to videos, animated explaining videos and demonstrative or testimonial videos. A recent study by Moz showed that posts with videos receive nearly 300% more inbound links, while another study showed that putting a video on a landing page increased conversions by 86%. Just be sure your video is of the highest caliber, as it can become an important representation of your brand.
- Infographics – A great tool for presenting complex data in a compelling, easy to understand visual display. In order to reap the true benefits of infographics, the layout and design must give as much impact as possible, using a combination of colors, shapes and fonts to convey important data. The information presented in the infographic should be accurate and contextually relevant. The best part about infographics is that they can make the most mundane statistics seem intriguing when brought to life in an exciting visual element. A great infographic can also go viral when shared on social media, which means greater publicity for your brand.
- Memes – A relatively new concept that was first coined in 1976, a meme is a graphic, usually combined with text that is often humorous, which can replicate itself into different meanings from person to person. As their popularity grew, so did their place in content marketing, as a quirky form of visual content. Creating your own meme can lighten the mood in an otherwise dry body of text. Brands that resonate with a younger audience have a higher potential of gaining engagement with their product using memes. This also creates a closer bond between the brand and their consumers, building brand loyalty.
- Presentations – Remember back in the day when any presentation you saw was in a boardroom or classroom? Not anymore. Now, companies can share their presentations on their website and social media accounts using sites like SlideShare to reach an unlimited audience base. Presentations are a great resource for brands that want to inform and communicate high concept ideas with their audience. Serving a similar purpose to infographics, presentations should focus on maintaining consistency in both design and color, drawing the reader into the text. Presentations are often used for topics that might be too complicated or intricate for an info-graphic to properly explain. However, that does not mean that you should leave the graphics out. In fact, research has shown that presentations with compelling visual aids are up to 43% more effective in achieving the presenter’s desired outcome.
- Screenshots – Show your audience a glimpse of the inner workings of your brand, or a glance at what services and functions you provide by sharing a series of screenshots directly from your computer or smart phone. Screenshots build trust and can draw attention to particular aspects when annotated with arrows. They are also considered great tools when capturing customer reviews and testimonials, by adding in-depth meaning to stats and information that you present. Lastly, screenshots are a great way to show customers what you are working on, without giving away all of the information, acting as a preview into what’s coming up next in your product or service line.
Visual marketing is so important to brands because it encourages your audience to want to discover more about you. By generating high quality visual content, you not only engage with your customers, you also build a reputation and awareness of your brand that will help it skyrocket. Of course, bad or poorly designed visual content will actually do more harm than good, so be sure to hire an expert graphic design artist if you’re not sure how to best represent your brand visually.
Pet Business Solutions is ready to help take your brand to the next level with expertly designed visual content that enhances the substance of your brand’s identity. Contact us to get started today!
