An increasing number of businesses are investing their marketing dollars in creating and promoting high-quality content.
And with that level of investment, results are important.
But to truly supercharge the results of content marketing, the use of visual content is indispensable.
By the end of this article, you will know exactly why visuals are important and how you can use different types of visual content to make the most of your content marketing efforts.
The Importance of Visual Content Marketing
Apart from the fact that the human brain can process visual information up to 60,000 times faster than text, there are several other potential advantages of using visuals. For instance:
- Blog Posts That Contain Video Perform Better: Blog posts incorporating videos attract three times as many backlinks than posts that don’t have a video.
- Video Improves Email Open Rates and Clickthrough Rates: By simply using the word “video” in the email subject line, open rates improved by 19%. Clickthrough rates, by 65%.
- Visuals Improve Search Engine Performance: Landing pages that feature a video have a 53% better chance at showing up on page 1 of the SERP.
- Visuals Aid Conversions: Websites featuring a video have an average conversion rate of 4.8%. Conversion rates for websites without video average around 2.9%.
It is clear that our audiences love visuals. The challenge is creating content that attracts, engages, and converts our target audience.
The struggle is real. In a survey by CMI and Marketing Profs, participants listed their top priorities in content marketing. As you can see in the chart below, creating more engaging content remains the top priority for marketers. Understanding what content is effective follows close behind.
With that in mind, let’s look at how you can use the right visuals to amplify the results of your content marketing efforts.
Explainer Videos and Infographics for Landing Pages and Paid Ads
Sometimes, to capture the interest of a consumer, you only need a thorough explanation of how your product/service can solve their problem. Explainer videos serve this purpose beautifully.
This video is a great example.
As is this one, by TripCase.
Short explainer videos can be engaging and informative.
Similarly, original infographics can explain seemingly boring ideas and topics in an interesting and easy-to-grasp manner.
Like this data visualization by Federica Fragapane.
Data visualization shares dull topics in an interesting way.
Both these formats have excellent sharing and engagement potential on social media. Videos produce 1200% more engagement on social media, as compared to text and images combined. Infographics are one of the most shared forms of content on social media.
But these content formats don’t just perform on social media. Even search engines understand the power of visuals, giving good ones the preference they deserve.
How can you use them drive results?
At the beginning of the customer’s journey, instead of bombarding people with how great your product is, treat them to an engaging explainer video.
Instead of spending hours creating a 3,000-word article (that they will probably just skim through), create an infographic that has a much better sharing AND ranking potential.
Supercharge Emails with Videos
As already mentioned, studies have found that by simply including the word “video” in the subject line, email open rates and clickthrough rates improved.
However, if your subject line mentions a video, and your email does not present the user with a video, the results may well be the opposite. And that is where the problem lies. Most email clients (including Gmail and Outlook) don’t support video within the emails.
So while Google works on this shortcoming, here are a few ways you can work around this situation:
Use Animated GIFs: Sure, they’re not videos, but they are entertaining and engaging. Moreover, ever since direct message apps such as Whatsapp have started supporting GIFs, the visual content format has been enjoying popularity like never before. The best part is, making and finding relevant GIFs is extremely easy with websites like GIPHY. Even when you don’t have a product GIF to include in your email, you can simply use random GIFs to make your email newsletter more visually appealing and engaging.
Screenshot with Play Button: While some may call it bad user experience, including a screenshot of a video frame, along with a play button that is linked to a YouTube or Vimeo video is the easiest and the most effective way (for now) to include videos in your emails. If you want the video to autoplay as soon as the user lands on the video hosting platform, that can be done by simply adding “?play” at the end of the URL.
Embedding Video: This one works only for those who 1) have great technical know-how of HTML 5 and 2) have an audience base that mostly uses Apple Mail or Outlook. However, if any of these are not true for you, it is best to stick to GIFs and video links to YouTube.
Videos in emails don’t just make your emails more engaging, but with the right kind of videos, newer businesses can establish credibility and trust for their product/service, which brings us to our next point.
Build Social Proof and Trust Through Video Testimonials
The first stage of the buyer’s journey is all about creating an interest in your product/service. In the previous sections, we saw how visuals can be used to help your audience understand you’ve got a viable solution to their problem.
However, the best visuals on the web will not help if the prospect does not trust your brand—and creating trust without a visually appealing website is next to impossible.
But you already knew that, and so does most of your competition.
In order to outperform your competition, you need to start building trust and communicating credibility with customer testimonial videos. These have several advantages:
Credibility. At a time when testimonials and customer reviews can easily be faked, video testimonials are solid proof that a real person (or business) used your product/service and found it helpful.
Social Proof. Video testimonials require little investment of time and effort, and they work much better at creating social proof than social sharing buttons on product pages.
They are easy to make! You don’t even have to be physically present to get a video testimonial. Simply ask your best customers to record a video of them describing their experience with your business and, voila, you have great visual content that will convert visitors, improve search engine rankings, and build credibility for your brand.
Sure, not all your existing customers will agree to record a video for you, but it’s still worth your effort to ask. Even with only two or three video testimonials, you will see the difference in your conversion numbers.
Product Videos for Customer Success
In the digital world, the customer journey does not end with the sale. To get more customers to fall in love with your brand—and be willing to make video testimonials—you have to pay attention to customer success and the post-sale experience.
At this stage of the customer journey, the most critical success factor is world-class customer service. And while you do need to be accessible to your customers, there is a way by which you can use visuals to minimize the need for customers to contact your customer service department.
Enter product videos.
Product videos explain how to take full advantage of your product/service, and they work wonders for fortifying customer relationships.
These videos aren’t hard to make. You simply need to create demo videos that explain how to use the product, where features are, and how to achieve specific outcomes.
Conclusion
Employing visual content marketing in your content marketing strategy isn’t really an option. In today’s digital marketplace, it’s an absolute necessity.
By treating your audience to delightful and actionable videos, graphics, and infographics at every stage of the customer journey, you’ll not only raise the quality of your marketing, you’ll convert more and keep your customers longer.
About the Author: Deepasha Kakkar is the founder of Crackitt, a boutique visual marketing studio that produces business videos, GIFs and infographics to help brands attract, educate, and convert an audience.
