In the past two years, the growth and importance of visual communication has become significantly important in marketing.
According to Forbes, humans worldwide spend a billion hours on YouTube everyday. With new social media trends emerging so often, such as Instagram stories, the people are demanding visual communication. Visual communication is a fast, creative way, to have members become engaged into an association- and you want to keep your members engaged for the long haul. So, what sort of visual communication tactics can your association incorporate into its already existing strategy?
Let’s take a look at a few factors that can help your association dive in head first to visual communication. With these tips, you’ll find communicating with audiences through visual content to be much easier than expected.
According to Ninja Outreach, It is easier for the human eye to process a picture than a sentence. Essentially, a photo or visual has no competition with words. So, what does this mean? Essentially, humans have to work to process words when presented in a text-only format. But with a visual, the information is instantly understood. The amount of time saved using a visual rather than words is something that your association should use to better engage and connect with members.
To be more accurate, Business 2 Community reports the brain processes images 60,000 times faster than it does text. Even though your association’s content information might not be new and shocking, some associations don't use this factual information to their advantage. Using facts like this as a driving force to making visual content can make your content more easily digested by audiences.
Overall, the use of a well thought out visual advertisement will help audiences relate to and engage with content quickly and more effectively than ever before.
Using visual content helps the association build an identity with its members and potential members. The goal of the visual marketing advertisement is to make a permanent impression in the viewers mind- so your association’s identity should always be in the forefront of everything you create.
One of the most common examples of this is McDonald’s. The golden arches of McDonald’s are embedded in consumers minds- it seems like almost everyone can recognize a McDonald’s no matter the country. And as an association, you want that same impact from your visual content. Visuals are used in consumers everyday life. This is another reason why they can be crucial for a business or organization to be successful. So, if you want your association's visual content to go the distance and create long-term engagement, you need to make sure your visual content turns heads and represents your association’s brands.
When creating visual content, make it a constant effort to promote and use your association’s brand throughout the content. Whether that’s including your organization’s logo in your content, or creating content around your association’s mission, or any other brand-friendly idea you may have. If you push your identity within your communication efforts, your audiences will start to notice.
Marketers continue to work hard to grab humans attention more and more everyday. With that in mind, keeping originality within your communication content is a must. This is due to the amount of advertisements one will see in just a day.
According to The Business Journal, we see about 4,000 advertisements per day. These ads are seen on TV, the internet, and social media as well as other platforms. All these advertisements are a form of visual communication, and without that authenticity and originality, your advertisement efforts will not make the impact that they could. Due to this content overload, marketers have to spend more time than ever working on visual content. Another reason why markets have to work harder than ever is because an old image won't do the job.
Your association can only rely on older content for so long before its shelf life causes it to lose engagement. It’s essential to really consider the image your marketing team is going to use to communicate to your audience. When creating attention-grabbing visual, the most important aspect is minimal words or text. If your association’s audience wants to read long-form text, they’ll engage with your blog posts and ebooks.
Visual content communication is all about visual aesthetics and information, so leave lengthy text for other forms of content. Effective and smart visual gets straight to the point. There is no text that is just filler to the ad or distractions to the viewer. If you want to create a visual content piece that is a home run for members, you need to make it simple, yet powerful.
With so many advertisements seen everyday, how many of them make an impact on you? Chances are, you as well as many other audience members tune out a lot of the marketing messages coming your way. As said before, many ads do not connect or stick with a viewer. A way marketers attempt to have advertisements stick is to use emotion in their visual content. Good visual content has a lot to do with psychology. Applying to human emotions will influence people to react to your ad a certain way.
Compassion is one of the most common emotion used in visual advertisements. This is because we are social creatures. Humans care for their family, friends, and even random strangers. Being compassionate towards another human makes us feel good. Seeing someone be compassionate makes us feel good as well. If an advertisement makes us feel good, it will be remembered by the viewer. Attaching your association to feelings of care, love, and charity can give your visual content a strong emotional pull. Emotions are easy to understand, we feel them everyday.
With a little research on your target market and creating a buyer persona, connecting with the audience you are trying to reach can happen with ease. Visual communication is essential to marketers today, but the content has to look effortless and capitulate your viewers’ attention. The visual content you produce is important, it's your associations way of giving the viewer a message about you. Keep your members intrigued by creating engaging visual content.
