By Maria Peagler, Published November 6, 2014
The human attention span has dwindled to eight seconds — less than that of a goldfish — according to a 2002 BBC article. With so many competing websites, social networks and entertainment on the internet, how can brands make their message stand out, be remembered and generate results?
Visual content: our brains process images 60,000 times faster than text. Done well, your story told in a visual way, sticks with readers far better than just words on a page or screen.
What Is Visual Storytelling And How Does It Benefit My Business?
Visual storytelling encompasses far more than just using visuals in your marketing: it’s about telling your brand’s story — what your purpose is and what you stand for — in a visual way. I like to think of it as Start With Why meets The Back of the Napkin meets Made to Stick.
Marketing your brand visually makes your message sticky: your audience remembers it, engages with it, and is far more likely to actually consume it. Here are visual content statistics:
- Web posts with visuals are 180% more likely to get engagement
- Visitors spend 100% more time on web pages with video
- Press releases incorporating video get 45% more traffic
- Web posts including infographics get 12% more traffic
If you’d like more traffic from highly engaged visitors who are more likely to buy from you, visual content is a highly effective approach.
What Visual Content Is Best For Your Brand?
The type of visual content you should use depends on several factors, including what’s easiest for your team (or you) to create, as well as your audience demographics and where they hang out online. While Vine is a great place to find 18-20 year-olds, it won’t be effective for reaching baby boomers. Facebook, YouTube, and Pinterest are better suited for that audience.
Identify your audience, discover where they are online (and offline), and target them according to your business goals.
Tell Your Story Using Simple Images
A brand who does this well is is Northern Valley Auto Body in Englewood, NJ, as shown here on their Facebook page. They take before and after photos of the cars they repair, as well as in-process pics. Not only is it fascinating to see how they work, the story their images tell is one of trust and transparency: the usually off-limits to clients body shop has completely opened their doors and invited you to watch their process:
Notice the simplicity of this visual story: photos taken in the garage with a smartphone and uploaded to a Facebook album. No filters, no captions, nothing but photos of their work. This didn’t take a graphic design team, but one person who stopped long enough to document the brand’s work.
Educate & Entertain Using Video Tutorials
Missouri Star Quilt Company opened their doors during the height of the U.S. recession, and their odds were so slim of making it they were covered by Wall Street Journal reporter Meg Cox (a quilter herself). How founder, Jenny Doan, not only survived the recession but became the largest employer in her small town is all due to her free quilting tutorials on YouTube.
Jenny’s videos are simple, brief, but show her personality and simple ways to make a quilt from pre-cuts: fabric pieces already cut into shapes ready for quilters to sew together. Not only do her videos market the shop’s inventory of pre-cut fabrics, they also help reduce her labor costs, as pre-cuts don’t require an employee to cut a piece of fabric for every customer, as do bolts of fabric.
Jenny’s early videos were rough, with poor lighting and showing her sitting at a sewing machine. But, viewers weren’t concerned with the production quality: they loved Missouri Quilt Company’s videos, and some of their most popular videos are their oldest, garnering over a million views.
Reach Business Clients Using Presentations
Marketing Experiments is a well-known brand in the marketing industry that uses presentations and videos to reach their target audience. They offer hour-long “clinics” where they share the results of their case studies, research, and do live optimizations of brands who need their advice. They offer the clinics live, but also upload the replay to YouTube, and the shorter slide deck to Slideshare:
Marketing Experiments uploads their presentations to Slideshare for those who don’t want to watch the entire video
Speak Your Audience’s Language With Infographics, GIFs, Memes
At Socialmediaonlineclasses.com we use infographics to offer quick guides to social networks:
Dr. Pepper uses GIFs, Hubspot has an entire Pinterest board dedicated to marketing memes, the White House creates Vine videos, and brands aplenty are on Instagram. So no matter who your audience is, you can reach them using some form of visual content.
Create Your Visual Roadmap
To get the most from your visual content marketing, establish your roadmap: your brand’s strategy and execution plan, by answering these questions:
- what does your brand stand for (and how does it differ from your competition)?
- what is your brand’s purpose?
- what are your business goals for your marketing?
- what are your customer’s pain points?
- what marketing efforts are working now?
Your answers shape your business’ unique visual roadmap, making your brand unforgettable to your audience, and resonating with them in a way no plain text ever will.
What type of visual storytelling is your business doing and what have been your results? Share your story in the comments below.
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