The Power of Visuals in Digital Marketing

The Power of Visuals in Digital Marketing

Digital marketing means that you are promoting your company’s brand and products via one or more forms of electronic media. It’s different from traditional marketing because it involves the use of methods and channels that enable your organization to analyze marketing campaigns and get a full understanding of what is working and what isn’t – typically in real time.

When you’re planning to reach out to your customers and make an impact on your target audience, remember that people only retain 10% of what they hear and 20% of what they read, and retain 80% of what they see. You should also take note that content with visuals receive a whopping 94% more total views and is up to 40 times more likely to be shared on social media – that can translate into a considerable boost in sales for your business.

If you want to look at it simply, humans are visual beings, and visual information is better received and retained than any other type of content. We are constantly surrounded by things that stimulate our visual senses on an ongoing basis; perhaps even more so than we realise. This is why your marketing campaign has to go all out when it comes to captivating your audience’s attention. With a rapid growth in the use of smartphones and social media networks, there are endless opportunities to make just the right appeal to your target audience. So let’s examine some reasons from Spiel Creative on why you should focus on using online visuals as part of your digital marketing strategy.

Your audience demands visual stimulation

Images have a way of making a great impression on viewers, even without a single word being said. If we take Instagram for example, you’ll be impressed to learn that the platform has over 16 billion photos on it, and it has only been established in 2010! With 130 million users, Instagram generates a massive figure of 1 billion “likes” each day. It says a lot about how people prefer to communicate online. But let’s dig deeper and find out why this is important for your business.

It helps to persuade your audience

Persuasion is to marketing as water is to gardening. Without an effective way of persuading your audience, you’re at risk of wasting a lot time and money. Visuals can help to persuade your audience, and Paul Messaris, a Professor of Communication, suggests that images do so in three basic ways; through iconicity, indexicality, and syntactic indeterminacy. Iconicity is where images persuade viewers by functioning as icons, meaning that they are symbolic of the things they represent. An image can be used tosummarise a conceptor symbolize an idea, which can be very useful when explaining a complex service or highly detailed concept. Indexicality is when images such as photos and videos are used to persuade by documenting an event or scenario that has occurred. This can be very useful in marketing since it can intrigue viewers and provide them with information on a particular situation in which they can have use for your product or service. And finally, Syntactic Indeterminacy is having visual imagery that cannot be explicit about connections such as analogy, causality, or other relationships other than those of space or time. This can be persuasive in itself, but when you need to make relationships clear, you can use text or animation to elaborate further.

An easy way to process information

When presenting information, you must keep in mind that there are 4 different types of learners that you will encounter: visual, auditory, read-write, and kinaesthetic. While some customers can simply listen to instructions without any further demonstration, others cannot and would prefer to get a full visual of your product or service. They need to see how exactly how you can help them to solve their problems and make their lives easier.

Keep your audience engaged

There are a number of ways to keep your audience engaged, such as inspiring stories and high-quality images. However, you can take it a step further by hoping on the animated video bandwagon. With the help of social media, you can use pictures and videos to their full advantage to send you loads of traffic by attracting as many “likes” and comments as possible. For example, on Twitter, featuring a video or a link can give your tweet more originality and attract more attention.

Smartphones aren’t going anywhere any time soon

According to eMarketer statistics, there are 24 million smartphone users in the United States who watch online videos on their mobile phones at least once a month. It has also been found that some users stream several hours of video on a monthly basis, in addition to sharing videos and photos on social media, which indicates a significant preference for visual content. Mobile devices are increasingly becoming the go-to tool when people are trying to figure out if they want to buy something or not.

Because of the small screen sizes on these devices, it can be more effective to create simplified media for your audience. If your content is too detailed, it can be overwhelming to your visitors and become too difficult to follow. For this purpose, aim to create visuals that are easy on the eye and consider using an animated video to help attract and inform viewers even more.

Search Engine Optimization

SEO is very important, since it makes your business credible in the eyes of your prospective customers. When someone searches for a particular product or service, they make mental notes of the rankings for the words they enter into Google and other search engines. In the minds of consumers, your ranking is a vote of confidence – so the higher the rank, the better. One of the simplest ways to achieve a high rank in search engines is to present high-quality visual content and videos, which will, in turn, generate significantly increased traffic to your website. Remember, the more engagement and interactions viewers have with your content, the more recognized your brand will become.

When people look at an interesting video with creative visuals, they’ll definitely be curious about who produced it and will be interested in seeing what you’ll offer next. Thus, it can be a wise investment in your business and brand identity by taking the time to convey a positive image through your visual content.

source http://www.business-opportunities.biz/2017/01/08/power-visuals-digital-marketing/