Visual marketing is one of the most important components of content marketing and digital marketing generally. Several studies have shown that people respond much better to images, videos and other visual content than they do to just text. Including those elements in marketing campaigns has increased the engagement and conversion rates exponentially for several brands.

It’s not just about slapping a stock image on a blog, which is the approach many marketers take. Certain approaches work better than others when it comes to getting the most out of your visual marketing efforts, and some could even harm your campaigns. Here are five tips to ensure your visual marketing is getting you the most ROI possible.

Related: Goodbye Picture Perfect Ads, Hello Moldy Burgers: What We Can Learn From Burger King’s Digital Marketing Strategy

1. Be unique

It’s easy to just get stock photos and put them up on your blog or use them with little modification, but it will quickly become obvious that you’re doing just that. It will deter visitors from your site if everything they see they’ve seen elsewhere.

If you’re using stock photos, ensure that you modify them so they look unique to your site. Also, explore having some unique design elements to your brand to help keep your messaging top-of-mind for your readers/viewers long after they have engaged with your content. Even if you have to spend some more time or money, it’ll definitely be worth it.

2. Use infographics

According to this report by Content Marketing Institute, infographics have had the biggest increase in usage among B2B marketers in the last four years — now at 67%. There are many good reasons for that. Infographics are unique in the way they allow you to summarize lengthy articles and bulky information into a very compact format. Your audience will appreciate them and come to anticipate them over time, especially if they are professionally produced to very high-quality standards.

Infographics also have the chance to go viral, in which case you’ll get a lot of backlinks from where they are posted. If you’re able to fix your brand logo in a prominent position, you’ll be getting more brand awareness and recognition over time.

3. High quality

What’s worse than an article that only contains text and no visual elements? An article that contains pictures or other visual elements that are laughably basic or poorly produced. Apart from detracting from the article itself, it’s damaging to your overall brand because readers (and potential customers) will get the impression that your company is comfortable with doing the bare minimum. Whether you’re selling products or services, that is certainly an impression you do not want to leave.

Take the time to develop media that will wow your audience and you’ll see increases in time spent on your site along with your lead generation and conversion rates — if you combine them with compelling copy. Thankfully, there is a slew of freelance platforms, including design-specific ones like DesignBro, allowing even companies with a small budget to find experienced and creative infographic designers.

Related: 5 Make-or-Break Shifts in Digital Marketing to Be Aware of This Year

4. Fix your metadata

Your priority has to be the audience that will be viewing and interacting with your content, but visual content is also a great opportunity to get SEO benefits. You can do this by ensuring that your filename, alt text and other details are optimized for SEO.

One way to decide on a naming pattern for your images is to name them in the same order that most of your audience search for your keywords. Use Google Analytics to track the search patterns to see if there’s a change at any time.

5. Be consistent

From the mood of your pictures to the color palette and fonts, you should try to make your posts as consistent as you can. That way, it’ll be easy for your followers to recognize your posts as coming from your brand.

Apart from the aesthetic parts, ensure you have a central theme around which you’ll design your content. If you’re going to be tailoring your posts around humor or motivation, for instance, it’ll help to build a loyal and consistent audience and create anticipation among your customers, which will boost engagement (especially sharing) and boost your overall brand visibility.

Conclusion

Visual marketing is one of the most effective ways of passing a message across to customers and prospective customers and helping them retain the information. The strategies above will help businesses optimize their marketing systems and ensure they get the maximum return on investment from their marketing efforts.

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