Essential Techniques to Boost Your Visual Marketing ROI
With a shift in technology, there is a change in the way audiences consume information and there is a continuous fierce competition to grab viewers’ attention. Contextually, it is truly challenging to get a piece of the engagement pie especially when it comes to digital content. This is why it is important to recognize the visual marketing techniques that can make your content more unique, captivating, and authentic.
Scientists reckon that humans now have an attention span shorter than that of a goldfish! According to Wyzowl, the average attention span of a human has diminished to 8 seconds.
According to Hubspot, when people hear or read information, they’re likely to remember only 10% of that information three days later. However, when a relevant image was paired with that same information, people retained 65% of the information three days later.
Visual Marketing and Its Types
Visual Marketing means using images, videos, and other visual elements in your content to attract, engage, and retain your audience.
Some types of visuals can be:
- Compelling graphics
- Product, service, testimonial, or story-telling videos
- Infographics
- GIFs
- Impactful CTAs
- Data visualization
- Image-based memes
- User-Generated Content and more
Why is Visual Marketing Important?
People respond much better to visuals than they do to plain text. Visual storytelling is one of the most effective ways of passing a message to your audience and helping them retain the information for a long time.
Visual marketing yields a number of benefits like:
- Creating a long-lasting impact usually in seconds
- Memorable impressions
- Noticeable, shareable content
- Better user experience
- Brand awareness and unique identity
- Boost in traffic, conversions, and ROI
Effective Visual Marketing Tips you Need to Know:
Generate Original Pieces of Artwork
Visuals create a brand story and evoke emotions in viewers. It is of utmost importance that all these visuals reflect your brand voice and theme. While it is extremely easy to just pick some stock photos and use them on your websites or blogs, it is equally damaging for your brand and causes more harm than good. Your brand’s visual content should be aesthetically appealing and as informative as possible. You do not want to show your audience something ordinary that is already present elsewhere.
Compelling copy and supporting relevant visuals will impress your audience and this will boost the traffic on your website or landing page.
For example, Airbnb has a really attractive website that focuses on telling a good story with the help of interactive text and visuals. It displays beautiful photographs of Airbnb locations and creates a travel dream that can come true.
Another example is that of Hubspot where it combined all the right ingredients and created an inspiring meme that aligned with its sales strategy and also connected with its audience by showcasing their desires. The meme generated 453 likes, 57 comments and 256 shares on Facebook.
Some tools that are useful for creating visuals include Canva, Bannersnack, and Visual Website Optimizer. You can do this with the help of an in-house creative & strategy team or by outsourcing to freelancers and other service providers.
Use Infographics and User-Generated Content
Infographics are super useful for lead generation. Professionally produced, high-quality infographics give you an opportunity to establish yourself as an expert. Infographics are easy to digest as they summarize complex and dense information in a simple, compact format. They are linkable, shareable, and drive more brand awareness over a short time.
For example, well researched infographics played a major role in increasing the traffic, backlinks, and social media shares for Quicksprout.
Including user-generated content on your web pages is also a great way to combine visual with quality content, to entice your audience. Your prospects would love to hear from your real customers on how they are enjoying your brand and its products/services. UGC generally includes customer reviews, testimonials, video content, case studies, social media content, and more.
Many ecommerce and beauty brands have started creating and posting user-generated content on their websites, apps and social media pages to provide an in-store shopping experience.
For instance, websites like Amazon are posting real videos of their customers wearing their purchased product from the clothing range. Beauty brands like Sephora are posting engaging product videos on Instagram that show how their products are being used.
There are also many trial-like features incorporated on their websites with the help of interactive personalization quizzes. Many eye-wear manufacturers have also started offering digital try-on features that make it simple to purchase the best suited product by showing how it looks on the user’s picture.
Using infographics and UGC as visual marketing tools is a powerful strategy.
Optimize Your Images & Metadata
Don’t forget that your visual marketing assets can fetch you a great deal of SEO benefits. Simple fixes like adding keyword rich filenames, ALT texts, video captions, optimizing the asset sizes, and other details, can make this possible.
Keep it Consistent
Being consistent with the mood and tone of your visual content, images, fonts, theme, and color palette is crucial. Your visuals should resonate with your brand values and be easily recognizable as belonging to your brand. This will boost your brand visibility and create a loyal customer base.
Visual marketing facilitates visualization of a product and influences a customer’s purchase decision in every stage of the buyer journey. Realizing the power of the visual, marketers are now capitalizing on this strategy to connect with their target audience and accelerate sales.
