Most marketers know the difference a little eye candy can make when it comes to winning over their audience, and this difference is clear in higher performance metrics for their campaigns.
According to John Medina, author of "Brain Rules," visual content can support information recall by up to 65 percent three days after the information was delivered. Compare that to text-only information, which offers a recall rate of only 10%. That's Cray!
If you haven't given too much thought to the types of images you use in your marketing, it's time to consider how new forms of content might provide a much-needed boost to your campaign ROI. Here's a look at how to leverage images for the greatest impact and improved brand awareness.
Adding Images To Written Content
Huge blocks of text eyes fatigued and people will leave the page. Images are an easy way to break up information in blog posts, emails and other written content, encouraging customers to keep reading and saving them from text fatigue.
Marketers must consider whether the image is relevant on the web page as well as how it looks on social media. Platforms like Facebook automatically pull images from the page to use in the social post, which makes the choice of images even more important.
Ultimately, the images you choose have huge implications for your brand's organic reach, the traffic generated by your written content and your campaign's ROI. No Pressure!
Mix Up Your Media
Today's visual content is far broader than photographs. Video is more widespread and easily played on both desktop and mobile devices. Infographics can be very engaging to readers, especially when presenting statistics in a fun, interesting way.
Marketers should also be considering the value of memes and GIFs. While these content images can have a reputation for being unprofessional, brands are steadily ramping up their use for one very important reason: online engagement. Digiday noted that memes should be used carefully, and overuse can have a negative impact on engagement; but timely, relevant memes have repeatedly proven to be an effective strategy. However, we ask: Can there be too many dog memes?
Brands like Barkbox and Wendy's use memes regularly to have fun with customers and inspire interaction with their social content. Even luxury brands are getting in on the game. Econsultancy reported that Gucci has regularly used memes in their social media and has received great engagement from its audience in return.
As marketing strategist Jeff Bullas indicated, images can drive a 37 percent average jump in engagement on Facebook. Experiment with different types of images to see which content is most effective at encouraging interaction while still staying true the brand's voice.
If you're not sure how to best incorporate images into your messaging, reach out to your highly qualified creative department to help you develop your own unique strategy. Today could be the day you post your first meme.
