The power of visual content marketing: Boosting engagement and conversions

The digital world not only incorporates millions of texts but also millions of visuals. Moreover, with the advent of social media, people become more attracted to the visuals. From simple screenshots to high-resolution videos, every visual becomes a core asset for the visual content marketers. Interestingly, the human brain responds more quickly and easily to visuals than to the written form of content. So, this fact is enough to understand why visual content marketing becomes so crucial for marketers. 

In this article, you will learn how to boost engagement and conversions through visual content marketing. Also, the article reveals how the large brands take steps to boost engagement through visual content marketing. 

Importance of visual content marketing

Here are the reasons why visual content marketing becomes so effective – 

• Already, we have mentioned in the beginning that visuals can attract users much faster than text alone. It occurs because the human brain processes the visual information much faster than the text. Do you know how much faster? It’s 60000 times faster than text. And 90% of the information that it transmits is the visuals. 

• People remember your visual content more than your text content. Thus, images and videos induce emotions and nurture memories more than text. 

• There are higher chances of sharing visual content on social media than text alone. It happens because the visual content is more appealing and conveys information more easily. 

• You can use visual content in different methods like sharing social media posts, implementing images and infographics in blogs, creating videos and webinars. These make visual content more consumable in different platforms. 

Strategies for visual content marketing

A clear and effective visual content marketing strategy will help you to stay on the right track.

1. Find clear value propositions.

In a business, you offer your customers something that others can’t. It’s called the unique value proposition. So, first, you should identify your target audience and how to deliver a valuable proposition. This way, you can determine the competitiveness of the business. 

So, when you offer visual content for your audience, you should focus on the uniqueness of that content. Also, take care about what particular problems they can solve. Are the solutions relevant enough for your audience? 

Every aspect would add value to your visual content marketing services. 

2. Set your objectives

Crafting a strategy without objectives is like playing tug of war without a rope. If you don’t know what you’re expecting from your new strategy, how can it be projected? 

Thus, before building your visual content marketing strategies, you should clearly define what type of success you want to achieve. For example, you may consider creating visuals for 

• Driving the viewers of your site

• Increasing community engagement

• Generate new leads

• Boosting sales

3. Carve a clear picture of your target audience and ideal buyer persona

The customer is the central part of your business, including the visual content marketing strategy. So, understand your customers first. Then define who will be your ideal customer. After that, consider the buyer persona of a potential customer who repeatedly purchases from your company. 

And remember that their preferences, choices, demographics, and behaviours are the significant elements you should consider before starting your visual content marketing. Thus, understanding these elements becomes crucial. For instance, you should consider which platform your audience uses most. What types of visual content do they consume more? 

4. Know your competitors

Another useful strategy is conducting in-depth competitor research. For this, you must perform the SWOT analysis of the competitors. It helps you to understand – 

• Which areas can’t be improved, but you can?

• What opportunities can you get if you implement their strategies?

• What should be the next best strategy?

5. Relevant content

Then, capture the concept of your content relatively. According to the content marketing expert Gregory Ciotti, to make a compelling visual, you must create an ‘Aha!’ moment for it. To do it, you must understand the right asset that conveys the visual right way. For example, you can’t use comical elements to depict your company’s growth. Instead, you should try tables, pie charts, etc. to represent it. 

So, ask some questions.

• Is this asset able to depict the message the right way?

• Is this the best possible asset for this content?

• How will my audience react to this asset? 

Some great brands you should follow for visual content marketing inspiration

Here are examples of some great brands that help you to make good strategies for visual content marketing. 

• National Geographic

When it comes to nature photography, you must prefer high-quality, eye-catching, and attention-grabbing photos. But which brand do you consider as the best? If you’re thinking about National Geographic, then you’re in the right place!

Their Instagram account shows that they have mastered the art of high-quality and pixel-perfect nature photography. All of their photographs incorporate excellent artistic cinematography, vivid colour compositions, creative angles, and exposures. These help them to create incredible photographs that further succeed them in making engaging and resonating wildlife documentaries. 

Moreover, they append their eye-catching visuals within their email marketing copies. They include powerful narratives about climate change and other environmental concerns in those copies. Here you can see a copy of their email marketing. 

These beautiful visuals not only drive people’s attention but also reflect the brand’s strategic vision, powerful mission, and rich culture. 

• Apple 

You should not ignore Apple when it comes to visual content marketing. They just don’t sell the products; they apply their creative and innovative approaches in their ad campaigns. Their captivating visuals engage and connect people emotionally.

Specifically, you should study the Apple video marketing strategy. Their video marketing strategy is the perfect combination of creative vision, human stories, and captivating visuals. They set a benchmark with these three criteria.

1. Their creative vision reveals their commitment to excellence, innovative ethos, and an eye for perfection.

2. Apple’s human stories focus on how technology impacts and leads people towards a smart lifestyle. Also, these connect them on a personal level.

3. Each of their videos incorporates eye-catching videos with fine storytelling that results in a significant increment in customer retention and loyalty. 

Simplicity is another weapon of their visual content marketing strategy. Their videos are bold, straightforward and always provide a solution for the customers’ problems. This clarity makes them unforgettable in the market!

Not only videos, but they also use engaging social media visuals to promote their products. Moreover, they allow user-generated content, such as photographs, from their users for their social media marketing. This way, they have been ensuring a place in their audience’s mind and dominating the visual content marketing world. 

• Airbnb

Airbnb’s social media platforms, such as Instagram, feature stunning photographs of travel destinations and accommodations. They also use high-quality videography with creative animations and motion graphics that help to build credibility and trust. 

They prioritise storytelling rather than simply creating transactional messages. Thus, they prefer user-generated content (UGC) or content from their guests or hosts. Specifically, they feature customers’ reviews, testimonials, videos, and photos. The UGC became integrated across all of their platforms, including mobile apps, social media channels, and websites. These set a standard for Airbnb’s transparent and credible services.

Moreover, they encourage travellers to share their own experiences with Airbnb. For example, the users can share a travel diary of their Airbnb adventure or the host’s home-cooked meal for the guests, and more. For example, the hashtag #AirbnbExperiences invites travellers to share their own experiences. It fosters a feeling of community. The users posted different experiences through this hashtag, such as hiking tours in the Andes, cooking classes in Tuscany, and more. This way, Airbnb also motivated the audience to jump to places full of authentic adventures!

• Top Lead

There are several tools that allow everyone to produce visual content without any expertise. Top Lead is a type of visual content generating tool through which users can generate high-quality visuals. They offer numerous DIY design resources which are available online. 

So, they have started a project for generating awareness about the Russia-Ukraine war environmental impact. Let’s discuss the project in detail. 

The devastating effects of the Russia-Ukraine war didn’t take the lives of millions of people but it also had a huge environmental impact. For instance, the war increased the emission of carbon dioxide and caused the threat of extinction of  300 species of animals and plants. But nobody becomes aware of it, including the media. Thus the brand took up an agenda to raise awareness among the non-Ukrainian journalists, politicians, and others for their support and fund collection efforts. They produce a comprehensive report named Russia-Ukraine War Environmental Impact that has been designed with infographics. 

This brand employed the design in such a way so that all audiences can understand the message in spite of their demographic diversity. For example, they have used simple, data-enriched maps with red dots to carefully highlight the places of Ukraine that caught fire between February 2022 and June 2023. 

The report clarifies the problem and showcases the critical areas to be taken care of. For this report the brand earned two mentions in the 2024 Content Marketing Awards. 

Conclusion

Visual content plays a vital role for your content marketing success. Whether you’ve a content writing services providing agency or a visual content marketing agency, crafting eye-catching visual content is key. Visual content not only makes your content engaging and shareable but also makes your written piece of content more memorable and interesting. So, build the strategies that make your visual content more impressive.