pros-cons-visual-content-for-marketing-campaigns

Visual Content Marketing Campaigns: PROs & CONs

We’re living in a fast-paced world with high paced technology advancements. Along with technology, we obviously change the way we do things.

In the online environment, we can notice a clear pattern that’s been happening for a few years now. I’m talking about visual content, a very frequent type of content that’s being advertised here and there.

If you want to have a successful business with big opportunities of scaling, you must never neglect your online marketing strategies. Throughout time, many marketers have tried various methods of promotion. For example, content marketing strategies seem to have gained a lot of popularity among nowadays’ marketers.

All content marketing campaigns have a huge potential, if you’d only knew how to do approach them properly. You need to have knowledge in the niche you’re activating in, and you got to develop essential skills.

Now back to where we started – visual content. You see, according to a study performed in May 2016, 74% of social media marketers are using visual content in their marketing campaigns. That should give you a clue about what’s really going on, and what’s really working right now.

During today’s post, we’re going to explore the way visual content influences your marketing campaigns.

Moreover, you’ll get to see a list of PROs and CONs while adding visual content into your marketing campaigns. And as a thank for your attention, you’ll learn new strategies and tricks that might just considerably boost your marketing results.

visual-content-for-marketing

Visual Content Influences Your Marketing Campaign – Here’s How

Here’s an interesting fact that you surely might have missed: 90% of our mental representations are visual. That means that whenever you’re thinking of something, preparing for something, you’re using your visual memory and sight to come up with a fast answer or solution.

Knowing that, it’s pretty obvious now that everything that’s visual has more influence on us, human beings. Let’s see which are the most powerful and popular types of visual content nowadays:

• Pictures and Images (whenever you include these in a post, you’re most likely to get 94% more page views)

• Videos and Gifs (the best way to grab the attention of the viewer, to send more advanced messages and insights, and to get better marketing results)

• Infographics (very popular as they show a lot of information in a very easy-to-digest way)

• Presentations (easy to create, and the best way to explain a lot of information)

• Meme Content (humorous, attention grabbing, and easy to create)

As you can notice, you have plenty of alternatives for the marketing campaigns that you’ll conduct in the nearest future. Depending on your audience and on your type of business, I’d suggest picking a few visual content forms and sticking to them. Advance your skills and distribution channels, and scale the visual content that appeals most to you.


PROs

1. Social Spreading Potential (Viral Content)

Visual content is a great way to stimulate people to share what they’ve seen. Whenever they see a video with a higher emotional impact, they’ll quickly want to share it with their friends. What better way to do it other than sharing it on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and so on?

You see, viral content nowadays is always either a funny picture, a well-made infographic, or an amazing video. If you want to boost your brand awareness, you adding visual content in your social media campaigns is definitely a must.

2. Most Efficient Way of Conveying The “Message Behind”

When you explain something using words, it’s harder to describe the actual feeling or the actual sight of what you’re explaining. Pictures and videos are always easier to understand because you can actually see what’s being explained.

Pictures convey what a thousand words can’t, but they shouldn’t be a priority throughout a blog post for example.

3. Visual Content Attracts a Lot of Attention

Whenever you see a shocking picture or a very interesting thumbnail of a video (which is also a picture), you’re more likely to click the link. This happens because you’re instantly grabbed by something that might make you curious, might help you, or might even satisfy you.

Marketing’s all about attracting attention, so you’re obviously focusing on the right spot. With some practice and eventually experience, you’ll be able to create “instant notifications” through your advertisements and marketing campaigns.

visual-content

CONs

1. Limited Flexibility

Compared to a text-based content, a video, a graphic, or even an infographic is less flexible. Once you’re done crafting it, the next step is to publish it. Once you have it there, editing it is always hard. First of all, taking it off and re-uploading it will often affect your search engine rankings.

Secondly, conveying your messages is such a short time that the viewer doesn’t get bored (in case of videos, infographics, presentation) is also a bit different from text content. You get less time to do it, but you have to do it properly. A very long video is often annoying to the ones who watch it.

2. Visual Content Takes More Time to Produce

Creating visual content often takes more time. Crafting a spectacular infographic or editing a certain picture is time demanding. When some things go wrong, you have to start over, because you always need to come up with new visuals. It’s just like with written content: the more you practice, the better you’ll become and the faster you’ll produce.

3. Skills and Budget are Often Required

You need editing skills, video creation skills, designing skills, and the list could go on. Depending on what type of content you create, you’ll often need to invest some time and money into your skills. Once you have developed them, you have a free path.

In case you’re not willing to do this or you have no talent and skills at all, you need a budget in order to support freelancers or professional services. This truly represents a disadvantage for many marketers.


Bonus: 12 Visual Marketing Ideas To Get Stunning Results In 2019

Perhaps you are falling short on some creative ideas that can put your content on the map. With a bulk of attention-grabbing visual marketing content out there over the internet, it is obvious to get puzzled.

Here are 12 powerful visual marketing ideas that can give you striking result in 2018.

1. Make Your Visual Content Snackable

Visually conveying a story is one of the most creative visual marketing ideas to get success. It helps you to strike an emotional chord with your audience. If people feel something towards your brands through the story, they will be strongly connected to your brand.

What can be a better example of One day without shoe campaigns by TOMS Shoes? The strategy was to compel people to share a photo of their bare feet with the hashtag #withoutshoes, and for each pic, TOMS donated a pair of shoes.

As a result, the campaign received 65% audience engagement rate and 27,000 children in 10 countries got shoes. The captivating yet evocative imagery made the user take notice while drawing attention to a worthy cause.

2. Go With Memes

The meme has the potential to grab the attention when done in the right way.

Oreo quickly grabbed a lot of attention by posting this meme.

3. Use Animated GIFs To Explain The Steps

People typically use screenshots when there is a need to explain step-by-step instructions. But this is where you can go more creative by replacing it with an animated gif. Speaking of its benefit, you will be able to share the gif on multiple platforms like Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook and GooglePlus.

4. Target Your Audience With Your Picture

If your product is focused on millennials, showing the middle-aged people in your pictures won’t work. So, it is crucial to picture your target audience. Benefit Cosmetics uses a unique approach to feature the people using their product on the Instagram page.

benefit-instagram-post

5. Try Ephemeral Content

Ephemeral simply means something that lasts for a short period. Top social networking sites like Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook have used the ephemeral messaging, a message that automatically disappears from the screen of the viewers once viewed. The reason it got popular is its exclusivity and the fear of missing out something important.

6. Make the Most of Visual Quotes

Visual quotes are still very simple yet powerful way to share thoughts and beliefs. When approached responsibly, it can give you great results.

visual-quotes

7. Mix Up Your Visual Content

Who says all of your visual contents have to be images? You can creatively merge different types of media like infographics, animated gifs and videos to appeal to your site visitors just like Buzzfeed. Mixing up a little can benefit you to a great extent.

Think about how you can make your content more engaging by using the different visual content. Pictures are now worth million words just make sure to put it effectively before your audience to have a big impact.

8. Think Of Hashtags

Hashtags can bring you more traffic through search engines. You can tag your product in a number of ways as the subject, the brand, and the message. When anyone searches any of these phrases, your image will show up.

nike-instagram-hashtag

While talking about hashtags, Nike’s approach to using hashtags to motivate and celebrate its consumers is something praiseworthy. They share a consistent message that fans come first and their posted images are usually coupled with motivational and inspirational hashtags to engage consumers.

9. Evoke Curiosity

Curiosity is something that can make a viewer sticks to your content. Try to be creative and create suspense. For instance, an image with a man in a dessert or a girl making creepy faces can trigger the curiosity of the viewer to know the story behind the picture.

evoke-curiosity

For instance, the image evokes an irony and empathy that trigger curiosity in the mind of the viewer. The audience will want to find out why a man is standing in the middle of a desert with a glass of beer. When they read the text, they will make the connection.

10. Go Live

With the popularity of live video growing at a higher pace, going live with your video on social media is a great tactic to boost engagement. Most of the people would rather like to watch the live video instead of reading a blog.

Dunkin’ Donuts shared a valuable content with its audience on how to create easy Valentine’s Day treats by going live. This was an excellent way to connect with fans and expand the audience.

11. Think Different

Exclusivity is something that catches the eye. So, let your creativity fly high and come up with some unique ideas just like the brand Denny’s that was applauded for its zoom in on the syrup” pancake meme.

dennys-dinner-twitter-post-pancake

It is one of the most-shared brand tweets ever with 122,152 re-tweets and 172,548 likes. The reason it garnered such engagement is that the zoom in trend was quite fresh and unique at the time.

12. Share Something Valuable

If there is something impactful that your brand needs to say, dig deep and spread your message to the world. In 2004 Dove launched the Campaign for Real Beauty to celebrate female beauty in every body type.

Their approach evoked a worldwide discussion regarding the real beauty which helped the brand to increase their sales from $2.5 billion to $4 billion in just 10 years.


Per total, it’s very obvious that visual content holds a huge potential.

If you’re smart enough, you’ll take into consideration the present marketplace conditions which clearly show how visual content makes marketing easier.

Start creating it, practice as much as you can, and begin to notice the powerful results that come from your efforts. Good luck!




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