Content is king in the digital marketing world. Whether it’s marketing riddled with words or a masterfully designed infographic, content reigns supreme. It does so even more with the latter. Visual content marketing has become so mainstream, it’s more difficult to ignore its value.
It’s no brainer why Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, Facebook, and Twitter are popular marketing platforms nowadays. Visual elements like photos and videos dominate these social media channels.
The human brain is incredible at remembering pictures. Hear a bit of information, and you’ll remember 10% of it three days later. Add pictures, and the chances of you remembering it increase to 65%. In addition, articles containing images get 94% more views than text-only articles.
Visual marketers are aware of this fact. Visual content easily becomes the core of most digital marketers’ strategies.
So you have your visual content marketing strategy in place. You have a clear vision of what you want your infographic or promotional image or video to look like. But how do you know you’re doing it right? Here’s a checklist to see:
In content marketing, writers place an emphasis on the importance of telling stories. Whether it’s a 400-long post or a 1000-word long blog, storytelling hasn’t lost its merit. The same principle applies to visual marketing.
Why are commercials produced by Coca-Cola, Nike, and Mercedes Benz so successful? Well, besides the enormous budget they have at their disposal, it’s because they implement excellent storytelling.
Stories — especially ones that are anchored so strongly to reality — share experiences. Storytelling:
But above all, storytelling makes your visual content marketing memorable. When it meets the desired results listed above, telling stories is a powerful way of putting your brand’s name forward.
We live in an era where everything is bound to become political. It’s unavoidable. Everybody stands for something and believes steadfastly in a particular idea. In the past, the smartest choice a brand with loyal followers can make is to stay neutral and continue marketing to everybody.
But you can’t do that anymore. Nine in ten consumers expect companies to care about issues other than making a profit. They appreciate companies who have a strong sense of corporate social responsibility. Businesses that operate responsibly to address social and environmental issues attract more consumers.
This corporate social responsibility must be evident in your visual content marketing materials. With CSR present, you’ll:
An estimation of 33% of consumers chooses to buy from brands that do social or environmental good. Purpose-driven marketing strengthens the connection you have with your consumers, provided that the message is clear, sincere, and relatable.
It’s more than just jumping into the bandwagon. It’s time to incorporate your companies’ CSR stand into your visual content marketing.
Branding is one of the main focuses of any marketing campaign. It’s certainly the focus of any visual content marketing strategy.
The American Marketing Association defines a brand as “a name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller’s good or service as distinct from those of other sellers.” A company’s brand ties are like the reputation of a person.
Your visual content’s branding elements are visual landmarks. They help your audience understand who you are — what kind of company they’re dealing with.
These branding elements that need to be present in your visual content marketing are:
In any visual presentation you plan to put out, never leave out your brand name and logo. It’s practically laughable. Leaving out the most basic requirement for any visual content. Nevertheless, some of us can do with reminders.
Your brand name and your personal logo is your ID card. It’s the visual reference point your consumers identify you with. It represents your brand’s image and what it stands for.
Brand names and logos aren’t just formulated and decided on from bouts of explosive intuition. It takes planning and in-depth decision-making.
All throughout the process of creating visual content marketing, the importance of careful planning and decision-making is reiterated time and time again. Choose images and graphics that represent your ideas well. They have to convey exactly what you want your consumers to understand.
Everything we see is in color. And science has proven that colors can affect our emotions and as such, influence the choices we make. Colors trigger emotions, feelings, and even associate themselves with a particular memory.
Choose colors wisely. It sets the mood and the tone of your brand. In addition, colors grab people’s attention. Selecting the appropriate ones to direct the approach of your visual content is key.
Loud colors emphasize astounding facts and statements well. In contrast, muted colors highlight moments that you want to want your viewers to pay close attention to.
You can’t go wrong with the color theory.
Typography refers to how texts are arranged within a space. Creativity and innovation are highly encouraged, but you have to consider readability.
How do you feel about reading words that are too small, or words that are written in unnecessarily fancy script? What about the ones that contain letters that are barely distinguishable?
If you don’t fancy the idea of having to struggle to understand letters present in a short sentence, then neither do your viewers. If you want people to pay attention to what’s written — in addition to the imagery you’ve provided, then it’s necessary to make texts as visible as possible.
Your consumers aren’t naive people. They research and they do it well. To provide credible information, present facts gathered from trusted sources. These cold hard facts are the basic requirement of any infographic.
This is especially important if you’re looking to consistently build trust with your target audience. Information presented incomplete is a job unfinished. Your consumers are after neatly-packaged pieces of information. And if you want them to love you, then it’s your job to spoon feed it to them.
Credible facts are the marks of a well-researched visual content marketing strategy.
Plagiarism is the unspeakable act of taking someone else’s work and writing it off as your own. Not only is it frowned upon, but it’s also illegal. To avoid the legal consequences of this atrocious act, always cite your sources. It doesn’t matter if you’re doing an infographic or a video production.
Always give credit where credit is due. It’s ethical and you won’t lose respect that way.
In every text marketing strategy, it’s essential to include calls to action. It’s no different in visual content marketing. If you want your audience to do something, tell them to do it. It’s not coming across as demanding, it’s simply asking your audience to act. It generates leads and conversions, which isn’t a bad thing at all.
It’s important. Your visuals may come in a range of topics and designs, but you have to understand that incorporating as much consistency as you can is essential.
One easy way to do this is to constantly have your brand name and logo at a specific corner of the visual. Another way is using colors that are officially associated with your brand. If your business alley is on digital marketing, stick to that avenue. Don’t turn up with visual content discussing the importance of something that is out of your niche.
Stick to what your target audience expects from you. Cultivate and develop it to its fullest potential.
The importance of visual content marketing is undeniable. It gets your message across faster. If done right, it grabs your audience’s attention and holds it for longer. And the content in it is far easier to remember. What’s not to like?
So to see if your visual content has all the necessary elements, look back and check. Does it:
Of course, a solid yes to all seven points means your visual content is on the clear.
Compelling visuals and written words do awesome work on their own. But when you combine them together and formulate groundbreaking visual content marketing strategies, you can extend your reach, and generate more leads in the process.
