Visual Marketing

Visual Marketing – Mastering The Top Strategies in 2023

By: Frank DePino | March 15, 2024

The digital market is highly saturated with media, so it’s essential to be intentional with your brand’s content, especially when it comes to improving your “visual marketing”. It’s easy to become overwhelmed and wonder what the best strategy for your brand is.

What is visual marketing?

Visual marketing refers to the use of images, graphics, videos, and other visual elements to promote a product, service, or brand. The goal is to grab the attention of the audience, convey a message, and create a lasting impression. It can be used in various mediums, such as social media, websites, print materials, and advertisements. A good visual marketing strategy relies on the flexibility of using multiple forms of media to engage your audience. People resonate with good storytelling, and visual media can help you achieve that. Using social media platforms to engage your audience visually can be extremely rewarding for your brand.

To learn more about curating the perfect visual content for your marketing campaigns, this guide will help you get there.

What is visual marketing?

People are visual learners. So, it makes sense that digital visual marketing strategies use multiple media formats to reach and entice your audience. 

Many brands and creators have grown their following substantially just by providing consistent and high-quality content. Knowing how to leverage different mediums to your benefit can be game-changing for your brand.

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How effective is visual marketing?

Visual marketing is one of the most effective marketing approaches you can do! So many people are immersed in social media for hours daily. It’s an opportunity like never before to get your brand in front of as many eyeballs as possible. 

Many variables are at play when it comes to perfecting your brand’s content marketing strategy. Of course, there is no one perfect formula that will work for every business. However, once you understand the basics of visual marketing, it’ll become easier to achieve successful marketing campaigns.

Professional marketers are comparing visual marketing to content marketing

Visual Marketing vs Content Marketing

Essentially, visual marketing focuses on media, while content marketing can encompass that and more. For example, content marketing includes text-based forms such as blogs.

10 Types of Media Used in Visual Marketing

Digital visual marketing comes in many formats. Which gives you plenty of room to explore which forms of media work best for you. In this section, we will go over all the different kinds of mediums that can be used in your visual marketing strategy.

1. Images

Images are the first form of visual media used on social media and are still extremely influential today. There are so many possibilities you can create with images in your campaigns. 

Images are diverse and can be included in the other media formats listed in this section. 

2. GIFs and Memes 

Much like images, GIFs, and memes can quickly grab users’ attention. Many brands use GIFs and memes in a playful way, usually accompanying a lighthearted joke.

Another way to help raise brand awareness is to self-insert your brand in popular memes like this. Making content funny is a great way to boost shares and engagement, and memes excel at this.

3. Videos

Incorporating videos into your visual marketing strategy is essential in today’s world. Generally, videos are either considered to be long-form or short-form. Long-form videos can be up to several hours long and can usually be found on YouTube.

Short-form videos are all the content you see on social platforms like Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and so on.

Since videos encompass a wide range of strategic approaches, we’ll revisit how to use videos in your visual marketing strategy in later sections.

4. Infographics

Infographic images aren’t something you should overlook in your digital visual marketing strategy. Infographics are an effective way to reach your audience, as they receive 3x more likes than other forms of media.

Additionally, infographics are considered highly sharable content. Infographics provide valuable information in an easy-to-read format, and the visual aspect of the image helps readers retain the information. 

5. Presentations

Creating a visual presentation can be as simple as making a slideshow. Carousels are a post type that allows you to have up to 10 photos and even videos within a post.

People have gotten extremely creative with social media posts, even creating “choose your own adventure” series with slideshows. Thus, creating an extremely immersive experience for their audience.

6. Screenshots

Screenshots are a quick and easy way to make a post. Many brands will post screenshots of a funny or relevant post from another site to prompt engagement.

Another way screenshots are used as content is as a “preview” of the full post, or even as a sneak peek at a new feature.

Marketing managers are creating an interactive timeline of their brand story.

7. Interactive Timelines

Every brand has an “About” page, and an interactive timeline can be an engaging way to walk your audience through your brand’s story. This is a great way to highlight brand roots and values. In general, timelines can be an effective way to visualize longer stories in a snapshot.

8. Visual Quotes

Chances are, you’ve had a friend send you a post of a quote they found extremely relevant. Visual quotes are relatively straightforward and have been shared through social media posts for years.

9. Calls to action

Calls to action (or CTAs) are typically found on landing pages and within visual content prompting the reader to take relative action. A well-placed and intentional call to action can seal the deal for the user moving into the next step of the buyer’s journey. 

It’s also worth noting that CTAs perform better when placed at the end of a post once the reader is fully informed of the benefits of taking the suggested action.

10. Before and After Interactive Images

For certain services, before and after images can be one of the best endorsements you can get. Before and after interactive images allow users to effectively see the service in action and the benefits of investing in it.

A marketing expert explaining 10 strategies to use in visual marketing.

How to use visual marketing: 10 effective strategies

Now that we’ve gone over the mediums of visual marketing, we can look more into the strategies that utilize visual content. Here are our top ten effective content marketing strategies.

1. Outline your brand goals

Establishing your brand goals is the first step in creating a visual marketing strategy.

Understanding your brand’s goals will help you narrow down your target audience and better serve their needs. This is where buyer personas come in handy, so you can focus on where your target audience can be found.

In this stage, it’s also essential to establish your brand tone, so your content can maintain a consistent purpose and tone.

2. Be consistent with your brand’s visual identity

Maintaining a consistent look and style can be a bit challenging if you don’t have a style guide! A style guide contains brand guidelines regarding color choices, fonts, and general templates.

However, a visual identity includes a lot of factors. People love an aesthetic brand and honing in on your visuals, and aesthetics can really elevate your brand.

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3. Tell a story

Being able to tell a story through your content marketing is an important skill. Guiding your audience through a story with visuals is more important than ever. 

As brand awareness increases amongst consumers, they like to know that they align with the brands they give their business to. Show your target audience you share the same values!

4. Choose the best media format for your message

The medium chosen for a marketing campaign can make or break it. So, evaluating your intent with each campaign is essential to determine which format will work best for the results you seek.

5. Creating high-quality visuals for your social media posts regularly

Although every brand should strive to post consistently, it’s just as important for your visual elements to be of high quality.

Your videos should be clear and provide value to your audience. You get the most out of posting images if you make sure they provide helpful information. This way, your audience is more likely to share and bookmark them.

Building up a brand that is known to produce quality content helps your brand become a trusted name and source. Additionally, the algorithm will also favor you and give you a boost!

6. Use different formats

It’s also important not to limit your brand to one visual marketing style. The best visual marketing strategies include all formats of media.

7. Choose the right visual marketing tools

There are so many options when it comes to finding tools for curating the perfect graphic designs and visuals. Here are some of our favorites to make the process as seamless as possible.

There are also more options to help you flesh out any idea you have for content creation right at your fingertips!

The CEO is explaining to managers how to make their work and brand unique.

8. Be original and unique 

All of your content needs to be unique and original. Earlier this year, Google implemented a new search engine update called the helpful content update. This update prioritizes original content “written by people, for people.”

Not only will this help your content rank better, but it will also provide better value to your audience.

9. Be mobile-friendly

With mobile users accounting for over half of web traffic worldwide, chances are most of your traffic also consists of mobile users. A solution many businesses opt for is to push people to their app, which is optimized solely for mobile experiences.

However, not everyone wants to have an app for every single brand they’re interested in. So, it’s still important to make sure the user experience on your website is as enjoyable on mobile as it is on desktop.

Some tips from Google to ensure your website is mobile-friendly include: 

  • Conducting speed tests to ensure your site does not lag.
  • Have a user-friendly design.
  • Ensure the content is the same on mobile as it is on the website.

10. Promote your visual content

Another great benefit to focusing on visuals is that there are usually a few ways to repurpose content. 

For example, many brands will promote a new blog post on social media platforms. Many blogs will also convert an entire blog post into an infographic, making it a more condensed but sharable version.

It’s also common for brands to use their newsletter to help redirect their audience to other valuable visual content they have produced.

11. Run A/B tests

A/B tests are very useful in determining what kind of content your audience wants to engage with. A/B tests help your brand hone into details, such as what colors, formats, and image styles grab the attention of your audience the best. Ultimately, successful A/B tests can result in higher conversion rates.

4 Successful Visual Marketing Examples

1. E-mail Newsletter

HubSpot shows how to create a successful newsletter with optimized visual content.
E-mail Newsletter

View the example here (from HubSpot)

E-mail newsletters are very versatile themselves, with hundreds of templates to choose from. Newsletters provide a unique value as they can serve as more of a curated feed delivered straight to your audience’s inbox.

In this example of the New York Times Cooking, they send their audience a “Popular Recipes of the Week” update.

2. Carousel

If you want to know how to do something, chances are there are video tutorials online for it. Especially since the pandemic, recipe tutorials have seen a significant increase in interest. Now, many people are turning to Instagram and TikTok to watch easy how-to videos for quick meals and treats. 

3. Video

@chipotle 🎶🧀 don’t ask, just vibe 🧀🎶 #chipotle #queso #chipotlehack ♬ Queso on Mondays – Chipotle

When it comes to video marketing, brands have taken much more creative freedom lately. This viral video posted by Chipotle has over 4 million views and is essentially an ad. However, it’s so catchy and playful that their audience loved it.

4. Infographic

As mentioned before, infographics receive higher engagement than most other posts. The unique thing about carousels is that they can feature a mixture of images and video. 

This particular example is an infographic, but also incorporated a small moving arrow, thus making it a video too. This can also be considered a “hack” for repurposing still images into videos to help get more reach.

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Conclusion

Overall, there are many different approaches you can take when it comes to creating the perfect visual marketing strategy for you. We hope after these visual marketing examples, you’ll be all set to launch your own revamped social media campaign!

Or, you can fill out a request to speak with a professional and schedule a consultation with us!

By: Frank DePino

Frank DePino is Principal and Founder of Mediaboom. Since 2002, Frank has led Mediaboom’s award-winning staff of creative and technical professionals, building the most effective marketing and advertising solutions for its clients.

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