People love visuals. This accounts for the popularity of Instagram. According to Hubspot, as of 2021, there are a billion Instagram users monthly worldwide, with 90 percent of them following a business and 83 percent having discovered at least one new service or product on it. Data from Oberlo shows that among U.S. businesses, 71 percent use Instagram for marketing. This proves the effectiveness of images in digital marketing.
Impact of Visuals
Digital marketing results further bolster the power of images. Content marketing that is image-based results in a 175 percent increase in organic traffic. Within this, a 12 percent increase comes from the use of infographics. Content that contains suitable images gets twice as many views, and adding many visuals on an online article results in twice as many shares on social media. Websites that have images get 42 percent more click-through rates (CTRs).
Science Explains This
There is a scientific basis for this. According to Expert Media Design, the brain processes visuals some 60,0000 times faster than it can process text. The brain needs a minute to read 300 words while it only needs milliseconds to see an image. Visuals also have an edge in memory. People retain 42 percent of a visual and only 20 percent of text. It is, therefore, not surprising that about two-thirds of people in the U.S. learn better visually.
Types of Visuals Have Different Impacts
A study by Venngage among 200 marketers in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia shows that they believe that the marketing strategy of 63.2 percent of companies heavily relies on visual content. For their company’s marketing strategy, 52 percent stated that visual content is significant.
During the pandemic, they used original images 32.5 percent of the time, stock photos 29.5 percent of the time, charts and data visualizations 15.1 percent of the time, videos and slide presentations 12.7 percent of the time, and visually augmented documents and ebooks 5.4 percent of the time.
They stated that original visuals were most helpful in enabling them to reach their goals, while stock photos did not help. Other marketers must take note and invest in original material instead. For instance, hire professional sports photography services and capture photos of real athletes if your campaign wants to project energy and success.
Visuals in Digital Marketing Collaterals
Foleon states that different types of media or marketing collaterals can be used to promote a brand. The type of marketing collateral to use, however, depends on the phase of the campaign.
Collaterals for Awareness
When you are promoting awareness of a need, you must not use hard selling. Your goal must be to make your target market know that they have that need and to help them understand it more. In this stage, informational collaterals are useful to your market. You can use attractively designed and image-laden e-books, digital magazines, blog posts, infographics on social media, pillar pages online that present comprehensive information on a certain topic, and branded content on popular publications.
Collaterals to Highlight Brand Success
Once your target market has clearly identified their needs and is thinking of solutions, you know that they are looking at various options. Your brand has to stand out against your competitors. You can do this by using marketing collaterals to show how successful you are and how your current clients love your products or services.
You must create your brand story and have this on your website and appropriate social media sites like Facebook. This can be in the form of text with many visuals or a video.
You must showcase your best work, and you can do this through visually appealing case studies in brochures and catalogs. Include testimonials from your best clients. It is best if you can make them agree to add their photo to the testimonial. This further enhances credibility.
Collaterals to Clinch the Purchase
The next stage that your target market must go through is making the final purchase decision. You must then focus on the specific advantages you have over your competitors. New formats of digital presentations that show the details of products and services are interactive. There is a menu with tabs and buttons on every page so that the user can easily go to any page from any page, depending on the feature they want to access.
It is also useful to engage your target market through emails. This becomes more engaging if it includes images of the product or related to the service you are promoting.
Collaterals to Earn and Retain Loyalty
The final stage is to gain your customer’s loyalty. You can send out digital magazines exclusively for your customers. These must be visually impressive, making them premium items. You can give them a first look at new items and even include loyalty discounts.
Make sure that while you are making your visuals punchy, your branding design remains consistent throughout all your marketing collaterals and online presence. This will further ensure brand recognition.