How to Use Visual Content in Your Marketing Strategy

Because we, humans, are highly visual creatures

Have you felt like you were not making sense to another person next to you when you have a discussion and you started to whip out a pen and a paper to illustrate it with sketchy images, and boom!

They said, “Oh, I get it now!.”

As the world becomes more and more saturated with businesses using content marketing, we leave no stone unturned to make our content stand out and rise against the clutter.

Visual content marketing is a powerful way to help you achieve that.

Not only does visual content help you to convey your message better, but it also makes your content much easier on the eyes — helping the audiences to seamlessly retain the information you deliver.

What Exactly Is Visual Content Marketing and Why Does It Matter?

As the name suggests, visual content marketing relies on multimedia elements or visual formats to convey valuable information.

The main purposes? To grab more attention and help them digest the information easier.

Visual content can be broken down into several types:

• Photos
• Infographics
• Videos
• Memes
• Comics
• GIFs

At this point, you might be asking, ‘why do they matter at all?’

The reason is quite simple: because we like it.

‘A picture is worth a thousand words.’

Yes. I know. It might be one of the most overused old adages ever and you’ve heard it millions of times.

But, no matter how much you hate it, it is still relevant today.

Visual content engages audiences faster and performs better than plain-text content because most of us are visual learners.

According to the report, 65% of the population is visual learners. They find it easy to absorb information when you visualize it.

Moreover, the human brain processes visual data better than any other type of data. It processes images 60,000 times faster than plain text, and 90% of the information sent to the brain is visual.

With the staggering numbers above, it should come as no surprise that visual content gets viewed 94% times compared to any other type of content.

How to Use Visual Content in Marketing Campaigns

It’s hard to gauge just how effective visual content marketing can be for a brand.

Fortunately, there are some ways and examples from brands that nailed their visual content marketing so we can fully understand the process and its value better.

Features your brand’s logo

You can use visuals to show off or display your brand logo, creating top-in-mind awareness.

It helps your target audiences feel familiar and more accustomed to your brand.

Another good thing about visual content that it’s easy and quick to create. You can easily use tools like Canva to help you create stunning visuals that feature your brand logo in minutes.

You can create a banner for social media profiles, just like Target did for their Twitter cover:

Show off your brand’s unique personality

Visual content marketing is also a great way to showcase your brand’s personality. It helps you to find your voice that differentiates your brand from your competitors out there.

Showing your brand personality humanizes your brand and allows you to better connect with their audience.

Take a look at how Wendy’s interact with their customers using memes with their usual sarcastic tone and sharp claws.

Showcase your products

The most common use of visual content is to show the appearance of your product in real life. Not only does product photography help your customers to set their expectations, but it also shows that you’re serious about your business.

When you provide the real appearance of your product, your target customers get a better virtual “feel” about your product.

Thus, it generates more trust and convinces them to purchase it. It ensures them that your product looks just like what you said.

Here’s how Helbak relies on images to show their products or items’ appearance. They keep it as simple as possible to show the artistic side of the items.

Celebrate special events

Not only do special events give a chance to attract attention and to increase their sales, but it also provides you perfect excuses to show off your creative chops.

Whether it’s your brand’s anniversary, holidays, or any other important dates, you can celebrate it with stunning visuals.

Here’s an example from Walmart that celebrated International Women’s Day with a story-driven, inspiring video:

Not to mention that visual content like images and videos are much easier to share.

It helps your target customers to help you share your visual content on social media or any other digital platforms.

Convey message better

In this digital world, everyone is only getting busier each day. They don’t have a whole day to read bulky paragraphs just to get tiny bits of information they need.

In this case, you can use visual content like infographics or explainer videos to allow target customers to easily digest information through the use of visual data, charts, and statistics.

With the proper layout, color, and proportion, they can retain all the information they need in a short amount of time without having to scroll through a whole batch of data and statistics.

Create social proof

There are many different ways to generate social proof for your brand, but the most fantastic way will always be visuals.

Social proof itself is a crucial authenticity that makes your brand more trustworthy so your potential customers can feel more confident in purchasing your product.

You can use visuals to create these kinds of social proof that can help convert prospects into customers below:

• Trust seals
• Customer reviews
• Statistics and figures

Your potential customers respond much more favorably to visual cues, making them trust visuals better rather than plain text.

Here’s an example of visual social proof from Intercom that includes their partner’s brand logos as the social proof:

That has been a quick guide on how to use visual content marketing to grow your business and skyrocket your conversions.

So, have you ever incorporated visuals in your overall marketing strategy?

Do you find it easier to retain information through images or videos rather than reading it from the user manual?

We can’t wait to hear your thoughts in the comment section below!