Why Visual Content Marketing Matters
Visual content has become a must for content marketers and brands. Here are some compelling statistics that highlight its effectiveness:
- 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual (Insivia)
- Articles with images get 94% more views than articles without images (Search Engine Journal)
- Videos generate 1200% more shares than text and images combined (Single Grain)
Visuals allow you to communicate complex ideas, emotions, and stories in a format that's easier for viewers to quickly consume and retain. Visual content also helps your brand stand out from text-heavy competitors and keeps audiences engaged.
When used strategically as part of your content marketing, visual assets like infographics, videos, and photos can help boost traffic, improve conversions, and increase brand awareness.
Steps to Develop a Visual Content Marketing Strategy
To maximize the impact of your visual content efforts, follow these steps:
- Research your target audience and buyer personas. Analyze their demographics, pain points, and preferred content formats.
- Define your goals and KPIs. Do you want to increase social engagement? Generate more leads? Drive sales? Identify success metrics.
- Determine the types of visual content to create. Consider videos, infographics, photos, illustrations, presentations and more.
- Develop a visual content calendar to map out what you'll produce and when. Identify key marketing campaigns and initiatives to align with.
- Establish a distribution plan across channels like social media, email, website, ads and more.
- Find ways to repurpose visual content. Turn an infographic into a video or blog posts to maximize value.
Creating Engaging Visual Content
When designing visual content, follow these best practices:
- Focused messaging - Communicate one clear idea or story. Don't overload the viewer.
- Eye-catching visuals - Use high-quality, custom images and video that align with your brand style. Stock content should be avoided.
- Scannable layouts - Use white space, strategic text placement, and visual hierarchy to direct the viewer's eye.
- Consistent branding - Visuals should reinforce brand recognition through color schemes, fonts, logos and more.
- Platform optimization - Tailor visual content to the unique requirements of each social platform.
- Calls-to-action - Every visual should motivate viewers to take action, whether to share, subscribe, buy or more.
Tools like Canva, Venngage, Adobe Creative Cloud, and Biteable can help create stunning infographics, social posts, graphics and videos.
Measuring and Improving Your Visual Content Marketing
It's crucial to track performance and continually refine your visual content strategy. Here are some key metrics and methods:
- Engagement - Track reactions, clicks, time spent, reach and more. Compare engagement rates on visual vs. text posts.
- Conversions - Monitor leads generated, sales influenced, and conversions from visual content.
- SEO value - Analyze keyword rankings and traffic from visual content.
- Sentiment - Gauge social conversations and reactions to your visual content.
- A/B testing - Try different visual formats, calls-to-action, and more to see what resonates best.
By continually monitoring your visual content performance and experimenting with new approaches, you'll be able to maximize the impact of your visual marketing.
