A picture is worth a thousand words.

Cliché? Maybe. But clichés become clichés because they have a cyclical truth to them. And in the world of marketing, saying less with an image can impact your consumers more.

Visual marketing focuses on using unique and relevant images. This, paired with specific design elements to pull consumers in. Visual marketing campaigns are more likely to be shared and get clicks than text ads would.

As a business, investing in visual marketing is invaluable to your overall strategy. Whether you hire a graphic designer or obtain a degree online yourself, investing in visual marketing is important to increase your brand awareness effectively.

Here are the ins and outs of effective visual marketing:

Why Visual Marketing?

The statistics are clear. Humans process visuals 60,000 times faster than text.

While consumers only retain 20 percent of what they read, they can retain 80 percent of the visuals they see.

Integrating visual marketing into an overall campaign is invaluable.

Customers — also known as humans — are visual beings. And information presented as a visual is much more likely to stick than another type of marketing content.

Scientists have found that the average attention span of a goldfish is nine seconds. And a human’s ability to concentrate is typically lost at eight eight seconds.

This means most humans have less ability to concentrate than some humans.

When information is presented with a relevant image, they will most likely retain at least 65 percent of that information three days later.

Say you’ve created a web banner or a vinyl banner.

The colors that are used, the logo placement, and the way the components are balanced together play vital roles in a consumer’s instinctual desire to engage and retain the information.

Visual marketing allows for the message of the content to be expressed across multiple platforms, making it incredibly versatile.

Types of Visual Marketing

1. Infographics:

Infographics take all of the complex data and statistics you want to convey. And gives them to your consumers in a compelling and easily digestible image.

To get the most out of an infographic, it’s important that the design and layout are as effective as possible at conveying a message. The colors have to be right. And the information must be accurate and cited.

This visual technique is helpful for getting your consumers to engage with mundane statistics.

Programs like Canva (which is free) and Adobe Photoshop (which is not) provide the tools to create your own effective in house images. With either you can provide effective marketing content for your customers.

Providing a highly valuable, visually appealing, and easily shareable infographic is a great way to reach your brand far beyond your current customer base.

2. Videos

Videos are great tools for engaging with a common pain point or problem your customer base may be dealing with, offering solutions with the products you sell.

A great video demonstrates to your consumers that quality is valuable to you.

There are several different types of videos that can help enhance your marketing and business strategy.

They could be anything from a how-to or demonstration videos to customer reviews and even live video.

The important part when choosing which type of video to include is to make sure that it aligns with the overall style of the brand.

According to Forbes the belief is that “video will revitalize email marketing.”

And although email marketing is still far from dying off, it has been given less attention from users since the invention of social media advertising. Videos in emails encourage recipients to interact with the company on many different platforms, exploring a full range of what it has to offer.

3. Branded Images

Splitting up a body of text with images helps to ensure the information is read until the end. However, this is only effective if the images are of high quality and add relevancy to the post or page.

While there are plenty of free source images on the internet, it is best to create your own branded images. This can be done again in programs like PicMagickor Pixlr, either creating the branded image from scratch or building upon original works.

Another great way to add variety and visuals to your business strategy is to take advantage of user generated content. Reposting tagged content on your own social media channels shows appreciation for the consumers that have reached out and helps keep a constant stream of steady content on your platforms.

Visual marketing is about standing out amongst a crowd of other companies while avoiding putting out marketing material with boring blocks of text. Giving consumers something to engage in beyond a paragraph helps not only your brand awareness but also your bottom line. Visual marketing is an important part of any business strategy.

Feature Image Source: Jatniel Tunon