By Ronita Mohan and Anchana Latha
Marketing for visual content has become a point of contact for marketers in recent years. Everything from infographics, charts, graphics, presentations, GIFs and videos deserve brand views, followers and earnings.
But marketers are still wary of investing in visuals. They can sometimes be expensive when outsourced to agencies, and it's not always possible to rely on internal experts. Many marketers have turned to stock images, but these have seen decreasing success.
The question remains how and why brands should use visuals to create high quality content. And which visuals give brands the best for their money?
We spoke to 10 experts – CEOs, founders, content marketers and content authors – and asked how the use of visuals benefited their content marketing practices. Here is your best advice:
“Visual images have helped make marketing more personal. It enables us to tell stories that use emotions and empathy more effectively. We have had great success with offer graphics. Everyone loves a bit of wisdom in an attractive, shareable package! “
– Jordan Stella, Manager, SEO and Social Media, UpCity
“Visuals have become an indispensable part of modern marketing. They have the ability to attract people's attention, convey complex messages and overcome language barriers faster and more memorably than words. The powerful storytelling functions of Visuals have made them indispensable for content marketing. Simply put, if you want people to read your content, you have to combine it with compelling graphics. “
– Megan DeGruttola, Head of Global Content & Communications, Stackla
“In all industries, authentic visual content is far more successful than stock photography or branded visuals. Today's consumers are hungry for content, but they're also very skeptical and difficult to impress. They long for pictures that are more assignable and reliable than staged or in stock. According to a Stackla report, a whopping 90% of consumers say authenticity is important when deciding which brands they like and support, compared to 86% in 2017.
This means that the use of authentic visual elements such as user-generated content (UGC) is increasing. Brands create a community-centric experience by leveraging the content that their customers already create about them. In addition, deploying UGC across marketing channels is much less time consuming and costs less than creating professional photo shoots or designing high-quality visuals. Authenticity is a win-win situation. After all, your customers are your best content creators!
– Lindsay MacDonald, former content marketing copywriter, Stackla
“1) Visuals stand out. A splash of color in a sea of black and white texts catches the eye; 2) Correctly designed, they can quickly communicate important information, e.g. B. Illustrate trends. 3) They convey emotions. Is a blog post serious or snappy? The selected image should immediately make this clear.
“[The kind of visuals you use] really depends on the purpose of communication. For the communication of information (e.g. research results), diagrams and graphics are most effective to visualize certain results. Infographics to bring together a number of related conclusions and statistics. “
– Tom Pick, founder, Webbiquity
Infographic Source: Venngage
“Images, whether diagrams, infographics, photos, graphics, etc., help promote engagement across different channels and increase the likelihood that written content will be read. They can also be shared to a high degree, which means that your content can be shared better, which can ultimately contribute to social media engagement and increase your brand awareness.
