Brands need to show themselves in their best light to give potential customers confidence that they are of sufficient quality and represent similar values to their own. But that is quite a lot of information and responsibility placed on marketing visuals and it’s important that brands do this to stand apart from the competition.
With the human eye helping our brains comprehend information in a matter of milliseconds when presented with a single image, companies must use strong visuals to their advantage. Let’s look at the ways visual marketing helps your business stand out from the crowd.
How to create effective visuals
The main reason behind marketing is to ensure your brand can reach its target market but that is impossible if you aren’t distinguishable from others. While visual marketing is a core element of any marketing team’s budget, we must all compete in a crowded market thanks to the swaths of social media and online. That can make it hard to enjoy a return on investment unless you know how to create effective visuals.
There are a few fundamental rules for any brand seeking to create its own visuals.
- High-quality images, videos and infographics are a must. They should show the best possible version of your brand while also using consistent fonts and colours associated with your aesthetics.
- Market research is essential. Putting in the time to research your target audience can pay dividends as your images are reaching the right people, at the right times.
- Simplicity is important, visuals with too much going on can confuse the message and people may not even realise they are looking at a product or service.
- Aim to educate, entertain or inspire your target audience.
What are the best marketing visuals?
The main visuals used in marketing are photos, videos and infographics, although GIFs and memes are beginning to be more essential as social media marketing continues to dominate.
Photos
Visual marketing campaigns have relied on photography for decades, from glossy magazines to billboard ads and modern social media campaigns. As has been the case for a long time, the best way for a brand to use photos as part of its visual marketing is to show its products in their best light.
Social media is a powerful tool that is essentially a free way to put your brand in front of as many eyes as possible. The challenge with this form of media is stopping the scroll and having potential customers find something about your brand or products intriguing.
This is where you should tell people who you are, what your mission is and what makes you different through the lens of your photos. The more interesting, unique and authentic you can make your story, the more it is likely to resonate with people against the backdrop of relentless marketing efforts.
Videos
Video marketing isn’t a new concept and since the days of product placement in films, we have seen brands representing their goods and services in a more engaging format. This extended to TV commercials and today’s video marketing may be a social media ad campaign, product demonstration or even in the form of a podcast.
In just a short space of time, a video can capture a feeling, adequately describe to a potential customer what the product or service is and help promote a brand’s identity or values.
Once again social media is having a large impact on the prominence of video marketing, and brands must grab people’s attention quickly to prevent them from moving on to the next piece of content. That is the challenge visual marketers must overcome, and those who are successful at it can make their brands stand out from the thousands of others vying for people’s attention.
What makes a good marketing video:
- Creating content around the story not the sale
- Be yourself – use humour and authenticity to make an impression
- Inform and educate – 86% of US YouTube viewers say they are there to learn new things
- Relevancy – do your market research and understand the people you are trying to reach
Infographics
The strength of an infographic is its ability to show what may be a complicated piece of information that can be understood in seconds. Rather than presenting a large volume of data, an infographic can pick out the most interesting pieces while also being visually stimulating or interesting.
Likewise, an infographic can quickly display your brand journey from your origins to now, or how your approach is helping to reduce the impact your brand has on the environment. Visuals get 94% more views than text-based information yet sometimes a picture isn’t worth 1,000 words, but an infographic is!
Which visual content creators to turn to
It is important that when creating visuals for their marketing efforts brands are authentic and the content they share with the world is representative of their voice and values. But being able to create strong brand images might not be your forte and you might have to call upon the skills of someone else.
After all, a few poorly lit pictures from your iPhone isn’t going to cut it when trying to impress potential customers to pick your brand over another. Professional photographers and videographers are a great starting point but you may also wish to consider a marketing company that will have many tools at its disposal.
Graphic designers can help you create a logo, match the branding to your company colours and piece together effective infographics to sell your values to customers at a glance. Much of creating strong brand images goes beyond the content, and it must tie into a theme that matches your brand voice, while companies must also know where and when to showcase those visuals.
Strong visuals are just the beginning
Mastering the art of effective visuals is great for making your brand stand out from the crowd but the whole experience of interacting with your company must be consistent for customers.Â
From graphic designers to SEO experts and web developers to help your website run smoothly when people arrive there from your visual marketing campaign, a holistic marketing approach is essential. Those that provide a seamless experience from first drawing a customer in, to them completing a transaction enjoy better customer satisfaction, loyalty, brand sharing and awareness.
