As change is the only constant thing in the world, the way information is gathered and communicated is also evolving every day. But one thing is clear: no matter the platform or medium, visual elements in marketing are the most effective way of creating powerful communication. And every successful business understands the importance of a visual strategy.
A part of the difference between a successful business and a mediocre business lies in understanding how visual language and elements link with psychological concepts such as happiness, pleasure, love, scarcity or fear. And how these elements are the powerful driver behind a consumer’s desires and consequential actions.
This explains the exponential growth of visual strategy in marketing across the globe, whether the visuals are custom or from styled stock photos, the baseline is that they do communicate a message. And they help guide the customer to the right place or action and can turn a boring content into a spectacular piece of work.
What’s a Visual Strategy?
This is a careful and skillful use of key visual communication principles to offer communication solutions. It involves both the creative and analytic aspects that guide any visual expression of a business. When you think about visual content, it involves images, GIFS, infographics, memes, slideshows, videos and most interactive media.
Or in simplest terms, it is content made of images instead of text.
To effectively connect and engage today’s audience, your marketing strategy must be guided by tenets of visual communication and therefore you must have a visual strategy. This means using visuals that convey your brand’s purpose, values and promise (or what solutions you promise to offer).
Why Is a Visual Strategy Important?
As you have probably noticed, there has been a growing popularity in visual ads everywhere including places that never used images before. And there has also been a growing variety of visuals used, from professional styled stock images to user generated images, in-stream and out-stream video content, mobile video ads and so on.
Marketers have quickly learnt that consumers live very fast-paced lives and so they will not always take the time to read texts. They however prefer images and videos that communicate easily and quickly. After all, if a picture speaks a thousand words, a video probably speaks tens of thousands.
Thus, here are the reasons why a visual strategy is important for your brand:
It Will Enhance Your Brand Identity
The visuals you use in your marketing campaign may enable you to deliver a consistent experience to your consumers. Consistency develops familiarity which in time births loyalty. When you consistently use your brand logo and brand colors, fonts and icons that define your brand alongside your visuals, you become easy to tell apart.
When you have consistency portraying your brand identity, you create a much-needed affinity with your target audience. And since studies have shown that today’s consumers make purchase decisions based on emotions rather than logic, an effective visual strategy will help you build that kind of relationship with your customers that generates a great competitive edge.
It’ll Make Your Brand Memorable
People only remember 10% of what they read according to studies, but they will recall more images because it shows that they are stored in the long-term memory and can have up to 50% recollection of what they see. Texts on the other hand will only linger in the short term memory for a short while, so for this reason, social posts with visuals will stick longer in the minds of your audience.
Source: Simplilearn
Then it goes without saying: a visual strategy will enable your messages be more memorable in your consumers’ minds.
So, when picking the visuals to use, ensure they portray a clear and accurate message with a positive tone to ensure you keep clear of negative or controversial tones. You want to be remembered positively.
It Improves Engagement
Visuals have been found to encourage engagement and sustain growth. According to research 56% of brands gain their best ROI (return on investments) from images and graphics.
The most successful combo that will earn you great engagement is always an image accompanied by text, then a video and text and finally an infographic. To be able to know what works best in your marketing strategy, you can use analytical tools to see what’s getting more interaction and engagement.
Add a human element (which is always welcome) by responding to their comments and answering their questions to show your consumers you appreciate them and you’re there for them.
Build Trust by Going Live
There is probably not a single social media platform that hasn’t added this live feature on their platform. Why? Because visual content is trendier now more than ever and it gives brands the opportunity to show their audience what happens behind the curtains. And this is one of the sure ways to build trust with your audience, it shows transparency and authenticity that they crave.
You can take advantage of new product launches or similar events to go live. And a quick tip, ensure you have enough staff to respond to their comments during this live event.
It Activates Higher Conversions
The reasons mentioned above most often lead to more clicks and better conversions. A visual strategy is a guaranteed way to convincing your audience to take the final step. It offers a chance to create a more attractive and effective call to action.
This happens because visuals increase interaction and engagement. They give more information and stir up greater emotions compared to text. Through visuals, you can showcase authenticity and relatability that the consumers need.
If you follow the strategy tips given below, you will have a higher chance of generating more revenue through your visual graphics and brand strategy.
Expert Tips On How To Use Styled Stock Images
If you thought that stock photos cannot be used for an effective brand wide visual strategy, think again. You will be surprised to learn that there are tons of great professionally styled stock photos taken by some of the world’s leading photographers. Even your in-house creative could learn a trick or two.
They are painstakingly designed and produced with the business users in mind. Most graphic designers, visual strategists, online entrepreneurs, and bloggers make use of them because they come embedded in a plethora of themes, schemes, and props to represent the huge market out there.
With this said, when picking from these top-notch stock images, there are guidelines to follow. Here they are:
Blend the Brand Image
Simply because they’re stock images doesn’t mean you can’t customize them. You need to pick photos that share a common visual language and aesthetic with your brand. Then give them your brand’s own touch by adding your personal elements such as incorporating your brand visual identity / logo, and adding elements of your brand colors. Or any specific graphic elements that you consider appropriate.
Leave Room for the Necessary Text to Have a Coherent Visual Language
When using styled stock photos for your visual strategy, ensure you have space for copy in the images that you pick to avoid making them look overcrowded. After all, you still need to convey that message right?
Pick Images with Abstract Background
This is particularly important for images that will be used as background and will be covered by text. Pick abstract images with a simple texture to ensure the text over it is legible. You can also edit it to reduce contrast or add a dark overlay to allow your text to pop.
Leave the Tinsel
When using stock photos for your visual strategy, keep away from the holiday themes and instead pick a minimalist look that will be toned low enough to draw the viewers’ attention to see more. It’s reversed psychology. However, this is not to say you use dull images, rather it’s more about using a contrast that’s less shiny but properly saturated to give you a perfect thousand words.
Use Illustrations too!
Illustrations are great in visual strategy, they have a way of conveying messages and concepts that even an image cannot. And when you combine images and illustrations, you just created some killer visual strategies!
How to Create Your Own Successful Visual Strategy
Let Your Consumers Tell the Brand Story
If you ever want to keep a conversation interesting, make it about the other person rather than you. And this also applies in your business, make your customers the center of your brand journey. Formulate your story with their voice; let the visuals you share be those of your real customers.
When you use this approach, you will be certain of building a credible image where it’s the customers themselves that will advocate for your brand through their own experiences and stories.
So, include this content in your m-commerce, ecommerce pages and your website. This is the most trustworthy form of visual content and visual marketing.
The Right Visual Strategy Doesn’t Stand Alone
An effective visual strategy is simply a piece in a bigger puzzle and the picture cannot be complete without it or with it alone. Your visual strategy should work alongside your content strategy, your SEO strategy, your brand strategy, as well as the overall marketing strategy.
The visuals you use including the stock images should all contribute to a single brand voice of the message you want to convey to your consumers.
The optimized text that you use must be reflected in the visuals you pick. The platform you use must support the visual you use for a good reach out. They all must work together to create harmony that sends out the right brand image.
Offer a User Friendly Experience
The right visual strategy is customer-centric. This means going beyond using visuals to ensure that the way you create your website encourages user interaction and engagement.
It’s not enough to land them on the website. Give your customers a breezy experience while navigating through it. This contributes to conversions and even customer loyalty. Think about going into an inviting store and getting great customer service, you’ll definitely want to go back again.
It’s Authentic or Nothing
As marketing trends are driven by authenticity, you might be quick to imagine that stock photos would seem cheesy. Oh well, as said earlier, stock photography isn’t equal, you can find world class images that may even be pricier than your in-house made but with excellent edit capabilities. Meaning you can add to the authenticity by making them seem your very own.
With this said, no matter the visuals you use, ensure they turn heads.
One way to have authentic images in your visual strategy is to use user generated content of customers enjoying your products or services. These actual images will earn you more trust and gain you more customers who are known to only trust a product after seeing another regular person using it.
Another aspect of authenticity is the emotional connection mentioned earlier. Sometimes a simple meme to bring laughter to your customers is all the emotion you need to stir them to the next action. With authenticity, there’s no specific formula, do what works best for your brand.
Make Mobile Your Priority
About 50.88% of all internet traffic comes through mobile devices. And this sharp rise will continue to be seen as M-commerce takes over e-commerce because people are still opting for the easiest and quickest ways to live their lives. Therefore being mobile responsive in your visual strategy will be a must do if you want to beat the competition.
According to these statistics, about 53% of mobile owners have purchased items through their mobile phones. And this figure will also keep going up.
What this means for you is that your visual strategy must be optimized enough to suit mobile use. Reduce the number of steps the user takes while making a purchase to only a couple of clicks and make their experience seamless.
To add to this, it means you also have to tap into the social networks e.g. Instagram and Pinterest. Create stellar visuals that will not only be mobile optimized but that can also win your customers hearts instantly.
Create an Attractive and Simple Consumer Journey
This point probably enhances the previous one. In other words, be your customer’s friendly guide around their purchasing process. How do you achieve this? When a customer lands on your website, it’s like they’ve entered your store. Use easy to follow visuals (that are also attractive) to guide them through the whole process.
Use authentic visuals of customer reviews or testimonials to win their trust. Use the highest quality visuals to showcase your products and how they’re used. This will help them make better decisions and they will thank you for it. You can also showcase related products to show them a variety or complimentary products to complete their experience.
Build a Community Around Your Brand
Involve your customers in brand activities that will result in a community of loyalists. The stronger the engagement the greater it will become. You can use this visual strategy by encouraging them to participate in your brand events or activities. Next you can invite them to submit some of their visual content to show how they interact with your products.
Such an approach will build a strong community of consumers that you can count on to be advocates of your authenticity and will act as your social proof.
Visuals Are Social
It’s impossible to separate visuals from social. It’s the social platforms that have actually set the visual trend rolling and it’s only gaining momentum and not about to stop. And it’s important to see why the previous point emphasized on mobile customization. Even when picking stock photos, ensure you customize them for mobile and social media use.
Creating a successful visual strategy should have social media as its backbone. Plan the best way to execute your visuals on social platforms. Ensure your marketing channels include visual marketing platforms without these you’ll miss out on a huge percentage of your potential customers.
Types of Visual Content
Eye-catching Images
Styled stock photos can offer you a myriad of great high quality photos to work with. Great images must relay the very type of message you want to convey and must inspire the customer to take an action.
They should also give a hint about your brand, product or service. So, whether you pick from the professional stellar stock photos or you do a photo shoot, ensure to show your audience what you want them to see.
Wisdom Cards
Little nuggets of wisdom can lead your customers to spring to action. Quote cards are very easy to create. You can pick a classic quote that echoes your brand message and use your brand design, colors and font to send out the message. Make it easily sharable and of course, very legible.
Powerful CTAs
Visual call to action can take your message to a new high especially when words are carefully chosen to influence the customer without being too obvious. The good thing about a visual CTA is that it’s visual, so it’ll be catchy and will easily attract the eye.
Simple Data Visualizations
Data can be boring and complex and no one has the time to sit down and try to figure out. But when presented in attractive visuals, they will be useful and even interesting to look at. They will also be able to help your audience understand and probably even share. That’s why most of the infographics you see being shared around have interesting visuals that can be understood simply by looking at the images used.
Videos
Studies have shown that 54% of people want to see more video. And billions of people are spending at least 6 hours each day watching videos. Therefore video is an important component in your visual strategy.
Conclusion
To get ahead in the marketing world, you need to understand the importance of visual strategy. Evidence continues to show that visual communication plays a key role in the success of the overall marketing strategy.
Styled stock images become more and more important. The world has changed and there are sites that offer world class stock images that you can use when you don’t have the time or resources to shoot your own. Incorporate the various types of visuals in your visual strategy for a more appealing and memorable branding that will engage your audience and interact with your her.
