In today’s digital age, the online landscape is flooded with content. Creating content and hoping for success is no longer a viable strategy for brands seeking to drive brand awareness, audience growth, and sales through visual marketing. To achieve this, a strategic visual marketing approach is essential, ensuring that branded content resonates with audiences and reaches new heights online.
Learn how to combine visual marketing with Plastic Business Cards.
Authentic, unique, eye-catching, and visually appealing content is key to generating sustainable engagement in this era. HubSpot’s 2021 research revealed that a staggering 70% of companies are investing in content marketing, which encompasses visual marketing strategies.
Visual marketing plays a significant role in boosting sales, customer engagement, and internal employee engagement for both B2B and B2C businesses that sell software, products, or any other offerings.
When integrated into marketing, sales, customer service, and HR teams’ workflows, a cohesive visual brand strategy can set companies apart from their competitors and propel growth to unprecedented heights.
To fully comprehend the benefits of various visual marketing approaches, teams responsible for creating and sharing brand content must grasp the intricacies of content marketing strategy. Let’s embark on this journey together.
What is visual marketing?
Visual marketing is a straightforward concept: it’s a content marketing strategy that leverages graphics, images, videos, and other visual materials to promote a product or service. Visual marketing falls under the broader umbrella of content marketing, which is a crucial component of any marketing organization.
Visual marketers can encompass a diverse range of roles, including content creators, brand strategists, internal communication teams, graphic designers, content strategists, and more. Each individual plays a vital role in using, creating, or distributing visual marketing materials in their respective capacities.
Visual marketing is crucial for brand success because humans are visual creatures. Our brains process images incredibly fast; a study by MIT revealed that humans can accurately identify entire images after viewing them for less than 13 milliseconds.
Beyond quick image interpretation, visuals aid in faster purchasing decisions. Shoppers make product choices in 90 seconds, and 90% of these decisions are based solely on visuals, particularly color.
Now, let’s clarify the distinction between visual marketing and visual content marketing.
Visual marketing involves using visuals to market products or services, including video, images, GIFs, presentations, PDFs, one-pagers, and any other visual used in marketing and advertising. It encompasses sales enablement content, advertising, and marketing efforts.
On the other hand, visual content marketing involves employing content marketing strategies to attract ideal customers using visual mediums like social media, email, blogs, and long-form content like reports or infographics.
Remember, our brains are wired to process information visually. Our eyes, often mistaken for windows to the soul, are actually the primary conduit for visual information to the brain.
As Kane and Pear noted in their research on visual communication, “Sight is our strongest sense: 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual, and 40% of nerve fibers to the brain are connected to the retina.”
Furthermore, studies have shown that images have a more powerful emotional impact than words, as famously expressed in the phrase, “A picture tells a thousand words.”
The impact of visual marketing becomes evident when examining data. For instance, image posts garner 650% higher engagement compared to text-only posts, while a product is 85% more likely to be purchased if a customer watches a product video.
In today’s increasingly digital world, no brand can afford to be without visual content. Therefore, a comprehensive visual marketing strategy is essential for success.
Just as you would with a general digital marketing strategy, your visual marketing strategy should leverage your existing strengths, identify areas for improvement, and heavily rely on your audience—with visuals at its core.
Here are some key steps to creating your visual marketing strategy:
1. Define clear value propositions.
As a business, you offer unique value to your customers and clients. Identify your target audience and value proposition to assess the viability and competitiveness of your business. Ensure that everything you create adds value.
2. Set clear marketing strategy objectives.
Creating a strategy without objectives is like shooting in the dark. Without a clear understanding of what you hope to achieve, how can you determine its success? How can you make changes when things aren’t working if you’re unsure of what constitutes success?
Define the specific details of success for your visual marketing strategy. Are you concerned with content shareability, community engagement, or website traffic? Create a list of 3-5 key objectives using SMART goals and set a timeframe for achieving them.
3. Create a well-rounded picture of your target audience and ideal buyer personas.
Your audience, or in your company’s case, your customers, are the core of everything you do, including your visual marketing strategy. First, let’s define who they are. Who represents your ideal customer? A buyer persona is a fictional character that embodies a potential customer who is likely to purchase from your company.
Understanding their online behaviors, demographics, and preferences is crucial for tailoring your marketing efforts effectively. Knowing where they spend their time online, which social media platforms they engage with, and the types of visual content they consume and share will help you create relevant and engaging content.
Next, let’s take a look at your competitors. Analyzing their brand through a competitor analysis or SWOT analysis can provide valuable insights into what you can learn from them and what you should avoid. This knowledge can help you identify opportunities and steer clear of pitfalls in your own marketing strategy.
Now, let’s move on to deciding on what constitutes “relevant” content.According to content marketing expert Gregory Ciotti, the most important aspect of content marketing is to “creatively capture the concept in a visual.” He advises thinking of it as the “See Fig. A” moment when reading about a complex topic. The visual often provides the “Aha!” moment that helps fully understand the information being conveyed.
To achieve this “Aha!” moment, it’s essential to consider the unique capabilities of each type of asset and choose the most appropriate visual marketing content to represent your information. For instance, using a comic to represent your company’s growth might not be the best choice. Instead, a chart or graph would be a more suitable visual representation of data and would effectively convey that message.
Break down what constitutes an effective piece of visual marketing, not just generally, but specifically for your brand and your audience. Consider your content: does it enhance your message? Is it clear and easily understandable? Is it the best possible type of asset for this context? How will your audience react to it?
6. Define your brand identity and visual brand guidelines.
Creating a visual brand style guide is one of the last steps since it relies on the insights you’ve gained about your audience.
For example, you could include a photography style guide or guidelines for choosing photosthat align with your brand. You could also define your brand voice and tone.
When you compile your brand identity assets into a brand kit, it makes it easier for marketing teams to create and share visual marketing content at scale. As your content marketing team grows, you can implement brand approval workflows that streamline the content creation process and get your content out to your audience faster.
Need a brand style guide template? How about one that’s complete with trendy gradients that can be customized to your visual brand identity?
Identify the most impactful content pieces from the past few months or years that align with your marketing objectives. Determine which content campaigns generated new business, garnered the most views, and which social posts were most shared. Subsequently, brainstorm creative ways to repurpose this content into diverse visual formats. For instance, could a podcast be transformed into a series of social images or videos? Alternatively, could your successful leadership interview series be adapted into an ebook?
In the next phase, select visual marketing tools and conduct team training sessions to enhance your visual marketing capabilities. A significant challenge for content marketers is the design and creation of effective brand visuals. Collaborative efforts among marketing teams are often required to achieve this.
When choosing visual marketing tools, consider the following:
More detailed information on visual marketing tools will be provided in the future. A crucial aspect of this phase in the content strategy process is ensuring that your team is familiar with the chosen platforms and embraces them as an integral part of their daily routine.
1. Images and Photographs:
A well-crafted photograph can significantly enhance your brand’s image. High-quality photographs convey a sense of credibility, intimacy, and inspiration. In a matter of seconds, they can captivate your audience and provide a glimpse into your company, product, or service.
Depending on the subject matter, images can offer opportunities to showcase your products in action, conduct quick photoshoots to highlight their best features, or capture snapshots of customers using your services. By presenting your brand’s capabilities, you can effectively communicate its value to your audience.
2. Videos:
In today’s digital landscape, where a picture is worth a thousand words, a video must be worth millions. Over four billion videos are consumed daily, yet surprisingly, only 9% of small businesses utilize platforms like YouTube for content creation.
So, what does this mean for you and your content? Essentially, the video market is a vast and untapped opportunity for you to create captivating multimedia visuals for social media. By mixing up your content and condensing your message into a short space, you can make a significant impact.
Videos are an excellent way to give your brand a tangible voice and sound. Just like any other visual medium, you can brand videos using your business’s colors, typography, and imagery.
Next, let’s talk about calls to action. A few carefully chosen words can incite a tremendous amount of action and engagement with your product among your audience. Visual calls to action take your influential message to a whole new level, capturing even more attention. You can use textual hierarchy and a striking palette to highlight the most important elements of your communication, all while maintaining a consistent design that aligns with your brand. Nike exemplifies this perfectly by using the ultimate contrast of black and white to stand out amidst millions of competing visuals.
If you have a significant sale, an exciting event, an exclusive promotion, or, like Nike, want to showcase your brand’s connection to global events, create a visual call to action.
Now, let’s discuss data visualizations. Data can sometimes be dull and uninteresting, even when presented with fascinating figures and facts. However, data can also be too complex to be effectively visualized in spreadsheets.
Branded infographics help your audience understand your message in a richer and more engaging way. Nikon’s captivating Universcale serves as an excellent example. It cleverly illustrates the incredible scale of the universe, aligning seamlessly with Nikon’s products that offer the ability to zoom in to minute detail. This clever approach not only engages customers with data but also showcases the tangible capabilities of their brand.
As you reflect on your content strategy, consider how you can better present relevant data to your audience.
Infographics, with their captivating visuals and engaging content, are a powerful tool for visual marketing. They capture our attention, captivate our minds, and compel us to share them with others. In fact, infographics are shared three times more frequently than any other visual content.
Can infographics be a valuable asset for your brand? Consider the information they could summarize or present in a dynamic and innovative manner. While they may appear complex, the right tools can make the process much easier.
Presentations, on the other hand, can be both visually stunning and informative, capable of convincing prospects to collaborate with your company or sharing your visual marketing strategy with your team. They combine text, visuals, animation, data visualizations, inspiration, and company branding, providing a collaborative platform for sharing strategy ideas and working on team initiatives as a group.
Live presentations, such as webinars and panels, rely heavily on visual aids like presentations. Starting a slide deck can feel overwhelming, especially when you also need to plan the content. That’s where presentation templates come in. They serve as a jumping-off point to ignite your creativity and save you time.
GIFs and memes are an integral part of social media marketing strategies. Humorous content is highly engaging and tends to go viral quickly. If you’re looking to increase engagement on your social media page, consider incorporating GIFs or memes into your content.
Finally, social media posts can be an effective way to convey authority and knowledge about your brand or product. Whether it’s a recipe, tutorial, or “life hack,” sharing informative content with your consumers helps build a connection between you and them, as if you’re sharing a secret tip.
Another great way to create engaging content is with visual quotes. A good quote can inspire your audience and take action, whether it’s within your brand or otherwise. Visual quote cards are incredibly easy to create when you’re short on inspiration. Just find a relevant quote, double-check the source, and combine it with an on-brand design. You’ll have a highly shareable and engaging piece of content.
When creating your quote images, keep the design simple and let the type be the focus. Choose readable typefaces, a color palette with enough contrast, and a clear composition of elements.
Here are some additional tips for creating visual content marketing designs:
- Always include a call to action.
- Establish and maintain brand guidelines.
- Get a second pair of eyes if possible.
- Include your brand logo or social media handle on all visual content.
Design your visual marketing strategy for the platform you’re sharing on.
Are you starting from scratch with your visual marketing strategy? Don’t worry, there are many online tools available, many of which are free. Here are our top picks.
Behance is a great platform to find incredible talent for your campaign. Unlike other design repositories that are heavily focused on photos, Behance showcases a wide range of illustrations and graphic design.
Designspiration is a straightforward and user-friendly repository of great design. It’s a comprehensive, well-organized, and beautifully managed site that allows you to save, search, and share your favorite online marketing design pieces.
Email Inspiration is a beautifully compiled database of gorgeous email inspiration. Whether you’re designing for email directly or another medium, this site is a fantastic resource for inspiration.
Stay ahead of the curve with the latest visual marketing trends. Visual content marketing is constantly evolving, just like social media. Here are the top trends to help your brand stay relevant and ahead of the competition.
Creating campaigns that resonate with your current and hopeful audience is an art and a science. It requires a combination of analytical skills, significant effort in content creation and testing, and a touch of design expertise. Combining these elements with user-friendly and collaborative brand design tools can lead to a successful visual marketing strategy.
