You’ve heard the old saying, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” Now, more than ever images are more important in your marketing plan.
We live in a visual world. We make decisions based on what we see. Images appeal to our emotions.
Content may be king, but images are QUEEN. With networks like Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, images are shared instantly from your smartphone.
Visual content including photos, videos and graphs, have been proven to grab the attention of your readers and are more likely to be shared than text alone. As a marketer, images can help you build effective and shareable selling campaigns.
Of course, you don’t want to just throw random images into your marketing mix. You need relevant and professional looking images that engage and help communicate what you are trying to say.
The 3 basics of creating effective visual content should be:
- The style and type of image needs to be consistent throughout your all your products. That doesn’t mean all your images have to be photographs or clip art. What I mean is you should be keeping a consistent color and font style.
- Know your target market. Knowing who your target market is and their preferences will help you determine where and what types of images to use.
- Think outside the norm. Be creative in your use of images. Go ahead and change images, add text to photos or combine images.
Where can you use images?
Full length articles need images to break up big chunks of text. Images can be used in your branding and logo. Use images on your social media channels to make it more interesting.
Use images online in your website and offline in any advertising or conferences you participate in.
Images are clearly a major part of buying behavior because they grab attention and evoke emotions in your buyers.