How to use visual content marketing for your small business

Visual content marketing is all the rage these days. According to a Buffer report, marketers rate images and videos as the important aspect while creating and publishing content.

Why so?

Because the  majority of our audience is visual learners. Humans are hardwired to process visual stimuli quicker than textual information and retain it longer too.

If you are sceptical, think about those more than a billion users glued to their Facebook or Instagram feed every single day.

That’s why visual content is vital to your content marketing strategy. It can be harnessed to achieve a variety of goals – from lead generation to brand awareness and much more.

If you want to grow your small business, you may want to consider incorporating visual content marketing in your plan. The first step would be to understand how to use visual content strategically and that’s what this post is all about.

Read on.

Why use visual content marketing for your small business?

Visual content marketing is a powerful tool that marketers leverage to attain great results. Whether you’re just starting a website or building upon it, always focus on images, videos, GIFs, and infographics since they captivate user attention and improve website dwell time.

There are other ways by which visual content marketing benefits small businesses. Check them out below.

1. Use Images to Show Your Brand in the Best Light

Well, images have become an integral part of every blog or social media post. While these images immediately make your content more attractive, they have many other benefits apart from aesthetic value.

Like what?

Images can be used to make your brand and content more relatable to the target audience.

Say you own a travel blog. In your posts, when you include photos of the actual destinations you covered in your travel, your content comes to life.

Businesses are using something as simple as memes on Instagram to market their brands in a unique way. Compelling images have the power to transport readers. Once you are able to emotionally connect with users, you can drive them to desired actions.

Need an example?

Check out this one:

Pet Project Organics chose to market its dog shampoo by including a real dog in the image. It makes the idea of pampering your pet all the more real.

You get the idea?

Good.

There are other ways to leverage images for your small business visual content marketing. You can share behind-the-scenes images of your team prepping up for an event, a glimpse of a product just before the launch, and so on. This kind of content boosts curiosity in people, nudging them to follow you more closely.

Here is another example to understand the value of visual content:

Micro and mini influencers use engaging visuals while posting on various social media platforms to increase engagement. It reduces the cost of influencer marketing and small businesses can also use this type of marketing to increase their business revenue.

2. Leverage videos to boost customer engagement

Videos have emerged as the most preferred form of media used by marketers, according to a survey conducted by HubSpot.

Image Source – HubSpot

Well, that’s no surprise considering the kind of engagement videos can generate.

Videos as a part of visual content marketing strategy can be effectively used to state a problem and lead your audience to a solution step by step. There are cool video editor apps that make the marketers’ job a lot more fun.

Videos of all kinds are a great tool to boost customer engagement and enhance conversion rate too. The kind of videos you can create are plentiful. Just make sure your video thumbnails grab your audience’s attention and encourage them to click and watch your video.

Based on what you want to achieve, you can invest in animated explainer videos, tutorials, webinars, product demos, and much more. Product reviews and customer tutorials add immense value to your brand authenticity.

You can explore some of the top social media platforms to share videos and experience first hand how you can improve on engagement and lead generation.

Adding an explainer video on your homepage is a great idea to boost the user experience considerably. On the other hand, when posted on your social media channels, videos can generate more organic traffic.

3. Utilize statistics and numbers to demonstrate topic authority

One of the easiest ways to make your blog posts look more appealing is to include images depicting statistics and numbers. By sharing well-researched and interesting statistics with your audience, you are gripping their attention.

When you back your claims with actual stats, you can successfully create subject authority. You can be creative in the way you represent stats by using colourful graphs and charts to make them even more appealing. Visual content marketing enhances the credibility of what you are conveying through an article or blog.

People are more likely to share an informative visual with their friends. So be sure to brand the stat-based graphics you create for your blog post.

4. Utilize infographics to boost your share of voice

Infographics are a unique visual content marketing tool with a combination of text and graphics. For those who want to skip reading an entire blog post and still want to know all the useful information, infographics work really well.

Take a look at this simple yet impressive infographic by App Annie. It puts out some ‘need to know’ numbers about the mobile platform in a bold and uncluttered manner. Readers will well-receive this information in a quick time without having to read through pages of a report.

Image Source – App Annie

In order to make an infographic impressive, you can explore some high-quality templates for infographics. The colours, shapes and overall visual appeal of the infographic are as important as the information it represents. When a narrative runs through the entire design of an infographic, you make boring numbers more exciting.

5. Achieve better UI with visually interactive content

How wonderful it would be if your readers can interact with visual content? That’s right, your options for visual content marketing are not limited to static images, infographics and videos.

The readers can click on an interactive image or hover over a graphic to either respond or fetch the information they are seeking. Visually interactive content instantly makes your blog or post more impressive than a static image.

Interactive quiz, charts or maps are cool ways to increase visitors’ engagement. You can add some fun quotient to your interactive visuals by including popups and animations too. Apart from this, you can also add form as a popup to increase conversation. You can create visual and interactive forms using the best online form builder.

6. Build brand awareness with user-generated visual content

Social media marketing is one of the important digital marketing strategies and the user-generated visual content on these platforms adds a whole new dimension to your marketing efforts.

Every day we come across tens of thousands of images or videos posted by common people talking about their favourite brands. This is invaluable original and fresh content that small businesses can utilize to build their brand.

You can prompt your followers on social media platforms and newsletter platforms to post pictures with your products, create tutorials, product demos, unboxing videos, memes or share genuine reviews. What’s more, such interaction builds up brand loyalty and while user-generated visual content adds to your brand credibility.

Concluding thoughts

Visual content marketing has evolved as an integral part of content marketing strategy. It is much more than just about adding infographics or images to your blog. Visual content marketing adds a new dimension and direction to your digital marketing efforts.

We have discussed how a variety of visual content can be used to achieve specific marketing goals.

Which of these visual content formats resonate the best with your audience? How would you like to incorporate visual content marketing into your marketing plan? Go ahead and share your thoughts.

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