Visual content is essential for driving higher audience engagement and leveling up your marketing game.
For instance, when you scroll through Facebook or Instagram, the only thing that attracts your attention is the visuals and not the text blocks. As a result, when it comes to visuals, the decision to include them is an essential component of marketing strategies and social media campaigns. For many businesses, visuals are considered the most important aspect of any campaign.
People never remember the text or the fonts, but they retain the visuals, including the colors and the designs. This means that designers can help make any campaign better and increase the probability of engagement with the target audience.
Every marketer instinctively checks out the visuals in the campaign brainstorming meeting so that their brand or product stands out in the crowd and quickly draws the audience’s attention. The visuals help increase the impact of the text and, in many cases, enough to deliver the message on its own without any need for text.
So, if you focus only on the content and consider visuals as an afterthought, you are missing out on a huge opportunity. As a marketer, you need to move with the emerging trends, think out of the box, and opt for new techniques.
When you have the proper tools and strategies in your toolset, the procedure becomes easier and better organized. To help you out, we have compiled some fantastic visual content strategies so that you can add exciting colors to your content.
Consider These Statistics
Visual content is everywhere. Whether you click on the websites or social media platforms, you see images and videos.
Here are some facts to put all the above conversation in perspective:
- Compared with text, visuals increase audience engagement by 80%.
- Blog posts with the visuals experience 650% higher engagement than the post stuffed with text only.
- 90% of the information transmitted to the brain is visuals.
- People retain 65% of the information when an image is paired with the relevant content.
- Colors play a vital role in the visuals, with 80% of users claiming that they are better attracted to bright images.
- According to a Venngage study, 28% of marketers spend less than 2 hours creating visual content every week, and 11% spend 20 hours creating visuals for their campaigns.
- 31% of the marketers spend 0-10% of their budget creating and buying visual content.
- There has been a significant increase of about 9,900% in visual information since 2007.
- 40% of marketers use stock photos, and 34% use original graphics.
Types of Visual Content
The good (and the bad) thing about visuals is the vast variety of formats and types that marketers can choose from for their campaigns. However, the good thing is that there has been significant research on what formats perform the best when it comes to marketing campaigns. Here are the popular formats that have remained popular for digital marketing campaigns:
- Infographics
- Videos
- Branded Images
- Call to Action
- Data Visualization
- Memes
- GIFs
- Quotes
Should You Ignore Text in Your Planning?
There are two extremes to this question – either they go all content or all images and videos.
Almost all marketers lie somewhere in the middle. This is a safe approach that ensures that the marketing collateral appears balanced and can produce the results that they are looking for.
For a long time, marketers preferred blogs and pages that were text-heavy with just a single banner at the top and supporting images as and when needed. However, as social media caught the fancy of the users and people increased their consumption of GIFs and videos, the trend started to go the other way.
Now, the marketing campaigns start focusing on the visuals, with text being pushed to the sidelines. In many cases, marketers opted for little to no text. As a result, the opportunities for SEO and implementing optimization tactics decreased. There was little that could be done when the marketing collateral comprises just images and videos.
These days, many marketers have opted for a parallel campaign set up that includes both images and text in several combinations. The composition of the mix depends upon the industry norms, the brand’s voice, and the target audience.
Whatever mix you opt for, you need to make sure that visuals form a part of your marketing strategy.
Hacks to Create Captivating Visuals
Before you hit the share button, you need to know some hacks digital marketing experts have been using for decades.
Pro tip: Once you have created your perfect social media posts, consider using a social media management tool to automate the process. Do a Google search for Coschedule Alternatives, and you will get several ideas to start.
Use Bright Colors
If you look over your Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter newsfeed, you may notice that they are full of bright colors. There is a specific reason: Bright colors appear to pop up and grab users’ attention.
If you are not sure which colors to pick for an image, it’s better to choose your brand colors.
According to research, 62% of people are attracted to colors, whether it’s a visual for your social media post or website.
Use Contrasts
Color contrasts play a vital role in the visuals. Contrasting colors usually give dark shades that have more chances of attracting users. According to the research, the higher the contrast, the higher would be the chances of the click.
Showcase Your Products In Action
What’s more appealing? A visual with an action or a still one?
Showcasing your product in action will let the audience see it more clearly and better relate to it. Add a clear GIF or video of your product so that it is the centerpiece of the visual. Video has become popular because of this precise reason – people prefer to check the products in action before buying anything.
Focus On Your Message
The message you wish to deliver should remain the core of the efforts. Many marketers often overlook the core message because they are focusing on the colors and layout. Place your message on the top right of the image or your product picture. If you can afford it, highlight your message with bright colors.
Sense Of Urgency
Here’s another hack to increase the engagement of your image. The sense of urgency will lead the audience to your landing pages. It is the best way to trigger the audience and make them take the desired action. You can experiment with using words like:
- Only!
- Limited Time!
- What are you waiting for!
- Hurry!
- Rush!
In addition, you can include counters and countdowns on the landing pages. These visuals provide direct feedback to the visitors and make them see that the stock is going out fast.
Addition Of Social Proof
Social proof has always been a popular marketing tactic because it always seems to work!
People like to buy from people because they instinctively trust their peers. Marketers take advantage of this trust and make sure that their messaging includes customer testimonials and word-of-mouth marketing tactics.
However, you should be careful when using social proof because it is easy to overdo it. When coming up with custom graphics, it is always a good practice to include social proof in your content because it attracts more attention and encourages the viewers to take appropriate action.
Avoid Rotating Images
When you have chosen the image for your blog or website, avoid rotating your photo. The users or the audience taking a look over your visuals might end up ignoring it. So try not to turn your visuals and display them in the perfect and well-mannered way as well. Set up your social media marketing funnel to get high engagement on your visuals.
Easy To Understand Text
Well, let’s take a look at all the visuals on websites or any social media platforms. Some visuals are easy to understand, but if you look around, you may find some visuals that are hard to understand. In the end, the audience will ignore it because of the problematic text.
Make an effort to use accessible text that everyone can understand, and your vision can reach a thousand clicks.
Final Thoughts
Wrapping up the article, you can’t deny the power of visuals in your marketing strategies. With the right tools and correct technique, you can get eye-catching visuals. Statistics show how visuals have a significant impact on your engagement.
Using bright and fascinating colors can easily sparkle user attention. Showcasing your product in action is more appealing than still images. If you are conveying a message through the visual, you need to be very clear, and your focus must be on your message. Urgency is something that can increase the click rate on your visuals. Rotating images will let the users ignore your visuals, and lastly, your picture must contain easy-to-understand text.
However, the web is overwhelmed with tons of hacks and strategies, but here we have sequenced some of the fantastic techniques worth using.
