Marketing the right content can create a huge impression on the users. One needs to know what can trigger website growth and engagement. But text alone doesn’t attract customers and stimulate engagement.
We live in an age where people want to see and experience the product or service visually. Using a text-only approach can lead to misinterpretations of the message. “Visual Content Marketing” eliminates that risk. It can communicate complicated ideas in a short span of time.
A study from changing minds states that visual and verbal interactions increase the ability of recollection as compared to textual interactions. So let’s start with what visual content marketing means.
What Is Visual Content Marketing?
Visual content marketing refers to the use of visuals to deliver valuable and important information to attract and engage customers on online platforms. It includes images with and without text overlays, videos, infographics, stock images of the brand, content generated by users, etc.
Visual content marketing can save heaps of time – one can screenshot whatever one wants to share, rather than writing a long post about it. It cuts the communication short to a few seconds which on text would take minutes to complete. Visual content also helps convey what one cannot by using text.
Examples of Visual Content Marketing
-
Expedia’s blog to earn more bookings
Expedia is an online service that sells travel tickets, accommodations, and holiday packages. It needed a new way to keep the audience engaged. To do this, Expedia started a travel experience blog which goes by the name “Out There Starts Here”. They have been using it to sell the experience to solve a problem. The latter being difficulty in deciding where to travel.
The blogs posts focus on travel tips, inspiration, and ideas that the audience might need to plan their next trip. This helps in tempting them to book it through Expedia.
-
Engaging customers with fun Grammarly cards
All of us someway or the other have used the correction tool called Grammarly. Whilst helping us with grammatical errors and improving our English, it has been providing hilarious content for its followers on Pinterest.
The content is funny, pleasing and engaging making the brand a hit. They call the posts “Grammarly cards” and are made easy to share on online platforms and more. The posts are not that well designed but the content in them is attractive and of high-quality.
-
Emojis do the trick
Domino’s started a distinct campaign on twitter changing the manner in which people order pizzas. To attract a sizeable population of their twitter followers, Domino’s asked people to order pizza via tweets. All a person needed to do was tweet the pizza emoji to get a delivery.
This campaign gained quite a lot of attention and determined that communication through visuals can be enough, attractive and engaging.
-
Starbucks’ Instagram strategy
Starbucks not only makes great coffee, but it also has a unique way to represent itself. Their Instagram profile tells it all. Instagram has become one of the most popular platforms of all. We all love to surf this particular social media platform quite a lot.
Recognizing Instagram’s potential for marketing, Starbucks started showing off its products with fun and relatable content on the same. One of their Instagram posts is a picture with text overlayed saying “Don’t worry, there’s coffee”, with the caption `We’ve got you`. This type of visual content helps people empathize with the product.
-
Memes are powerful
Memes have become an integral part of social media and of course our lives. One good meme and we are left laughing for hours. Brands have picked on it. They now use custom memes to promote themselves and well make people laugh.
Brands like Brakbox and Gucci use memes as a part of their visual marketing strategy. The former creates memes for animal-lovers which are amusing as well as relatable. This makes the posts shareable, even though it is not promoting the product.
Gucci started using memes as a part of their ad campaign for its new watch collection. The brand paid artists to tweak famous memes to feature their collection. It not only promoted the product but also showed people the brand’s humorous side.
-
Visual storytelling by Whole Foods
Storytelling works as a facilitator in developing deep connections with the users. It has always been a great tool to engage the audience. Whole Foods has understood this concept and how to use it in a creative and visual way.
The brand’s Facebook page features fewer posts about its products but chiefly consists of graphics that provide friendly advice to the users that can be used with the products purchased from them. Whole Foods is using visual content at its best.
To sum up
Visual content is an essential part of a content marketing strategy in this era. It catches the eye of the user and motivates them to find out more about the brand. Visual content makes the brand’s message more powerful rendering it more effective.
Through visual content marketing, one can tell a story quickly and make it memorable. It makes the user feel emotionally connected to the brand, which can be hard to do with a text-only approach.
So, to attract and engage the audience towards your brand, you can use visual content either created by you or your users, making it more authentic and realistic.
