The mind is powerful. You can remember what you were doing 15 years ago, know which route to take to get from home to work, while simultaneously singing the song that is playing on the radio. Our brains interact with the world, learn, grow, and understand through sight.
So, if you’re not taking advantage of that constant desire of your customer's minds for visual information, you are missing one of the best ways to influence people.
Visual marketing strategy and our brains
1. Our brain and visual processes
The brain is largely responsible for making sense of the world and almost 50% of the brain is busy when processing visual information. The visual cortex at the back is doing all the processes of visual information, but then it sends that information to almost every other area of the brain, where it combines with sensory information. So, we naturally evolved to process and understand visual information much better than text or any other kind of information.
2. Colors draw attention
Color is one of the best tools of visual marketing. In fact, adding color to documents such as warnings and security notices, increases recall of such information by 82% (Xerox).
Even adding color to information reduces errors, search time, and increases understanding. But why does this happen? The answer is evolution. The world is a variety of colorful things and we evolved to appreciate colors, interpret them and have preferences.
There's a good reason why Facebook, Twitter, and various companies use blue as their brand color: our brains inherently like it. In the same way, the color brown and yellow are colors that brands rarely use.
3. The brain responds to faces
One of the first things we focus on is the faces of our family, not only because they are always around in our first weeks of life, but because the brain has a specific circuit for recognizing faces, called the fusiform gyrus – and promoting your face or the face of the representative of your business will increase your brands’ recognition.
4. Our brains love stimulation
Our brains love stimulation and we have many external stimuli to understand, which is overwhelming for our brains. We love constant stimulation and adding visual elements help us keep the brain interested.
5. Our brains love simplicity
Similarly, even if our brains need stimulation, simplicity is king, and this is where visuals are most useful. They are a great way to reduce information to simple ideas and visual representation much simpler.
6. You can add emotions
An important part of all human interactions is emotion. The best way for a person to relate to brands is through personal connections and personal stories. If there is something that our brains love more than an image, it is an emotion.
Focusing on marketing, we are always looking for a signal or something that indicates emotions in images, especially if they include people, which is why these are a great way to express positive emotions.
7. We can understand visual information instantly
If you want to understand an idea quickly, it is best to use an image since we process it much faster than text. Studies showed that it takes us only 150ms (Neoman) to process an image. Understanding words, on the other hand, takes us much longer, even if you read fast.
8. We remember visually
If you try to remember something right now, the first thing that will come to mind is an image. Even if it is a fragment of your favorite book or poem, the mind cannot help turning it into an image.
Our evolution isn’t in favor of words, but of images. So, it makes sense that our ancestors were pretty good at recognizing objects and their environments, something that passed down to us from generation to generation as an ability to understand the visual elements of the world.
In fact, we can remember up to 2,000 photos with just a little learning and recognize them days later. Which is far better than our ability to remember words.
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Visual marketing plan
One of the main reasons that make us leave a web page is the absence of attractive visual stimuli. Paradoxically, thanks to technology our attention span are low and every day it is more difficult to get users to stay interacting on any website.
1. Optimize your website
Optimize your website with visual content to chart a conversion path. When a visitor enters your website, they make the decision to stay on it or leave in seconds. The conversion journey begins when an anonymous visitor lands on your home page and finds interesting content. How do we keep users engaged? The starting point is offering a value proposition, that identifies us and makes our business unique.
The visual content that we show has to clearly express what the competitive advantage of our online store is. It is the ingredient that not only delivers a product or service but also solves a problem, a need, a desire.
A good value proposition usually includes a text (with title, subtitle and a paragraph of text), as well as visual elements that support it (photo, video, graphic…). It clearly expresses why someone would want to buy on our website instead of a competitor's.
When making your visual marketing strategies, keep these recommendations in mind:
- It has to be concise and easy to understand.
- It must define what you do.
- You have to explain how your product or service solves a problem for potential customers.
- It should answer the user's question: "If I am your ideal customer, why should I buy from you what you offer instead of buying from any of your competitors?"
2. Use infographics
The media rely heavily on the ability of infographics and data visualization to tell their stories because using infographics can increase web traffic by up to 12%. By the way, you can even use interactive infographics, which are better than average infographics and this kind of content has a conversion rate of 70% according to Demand Metric. This is because interactive content (infographics, landing pages, widgets…) specialize in customizing it for specific users.
Since today's consumers love content specially designed for them, they are more than likely to stay on our site and come back, again and again, to enjoy what we offer to them.
3. Don't miss the opportunity of adding storytelling
Storytelling is a personal approach to marketing, as each individual narrates differently and uses different emotions to trigger a positive, strong, and direct response. The art of storytelling requires creativity, skill, and practice because it is a process of trial and error that distinguishes brilliant businesses from mediocre ones and builds customer loyalty.
When developing a good storytelling strategy for your business you must ask yourself these questions, What defines your brand? Why can or should it interest the audience? Can you create a story that reflects the "heart" of your brand?
Transmitting stories that users can easily remember and feel identified is the goal of storytelling. By connecting with the emotional part of your potential audience, you create a link between customers and your brand.
So, you will visually communicate and transmit messages and information through stories. It’s more entertaining than traditional marketing messages and you’ll convey emotions through the esthetics of images, animations and videos that are shareable.
In fact, videos are the most shared content on social networks and your own users will share your content – and 92% of customers trust the opinions posted by other users more than traditional advertising. With this idea on the table, the visual narration of your product or service generates trust.
4. Video marketing has become the visual king
Think about it... the video is engaging. The human mind has a tendency to visualize things and we like to hear stories. Therefore, using videos is a useful and profitable practice to increase your conversion rates.
According to EyeWideDigital, hosting a video on your landing page can increase conversion by up to 80% and producing videos is within reach of companies of almost any size and budget, since options are endless.
Indeed, you can use videos for everything, for example, you can use video in chats to convert your potential clients. Your users will have visual information about you that increases your chances of engaging your leads.
Also, publish your visual content in the most appropriate social video media. The trend on the internet is reading less and less. Video-based social media grows every year and you can also boost your conversion rate through social media. So, we encourage you to take these tips into account within your business strategy:
- Launch video promotions to convert more. Videos have the dual function of showing your products or services in action and capturing the attention of your potential customers on social networks. It's no secret that video-centric social ads work well.
- Take care of the visual perception of your service or product. This is subtle advice, but it's worth mentioning so you don't miss out on conversions. As users become familiar with your brand, you must maintain the consistency of our visual content. Creative elements such as images, color combinations or tone make your clients recognize your brand and feel identified. We don't want to lose them by disorienting them.
- User-created content has great value. When it comes to conversions, customer photos or videos on social media are the best content to drive sales. people want to receive information in the fastest and most fun way possible, and the visual content allows us to transmit it in this way. That makes us more likely to interact and carry out a feedback process that brings with it a greater number of conversions.
“Video allows us to tell the great stories of our customers rather that our own” – Bo Dietrick
Keep in mind that people tend to retain only 10% of what they hear. But, if you use more graphic elements, you will increase engagement and create more interesting stories for your users. Their brains can't help it. They naturally love visual content.
We are specialists in visual marketing. So, if you need to improve your visual marketing strategy. Don't worry! We got your back. Give us a shout and we'll get back to you.
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