There are many different types of learning styles: auditory, visual, kinesthetic, etc. However, research shows that 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual, and that visuals are processed 60,000 times faster in the brain than text.
These statistics prove there’s an opportunity for digital marketers to incorporate visuals into their marketing strategies. Images help businesses increase the chances of visitor interaction with content and provide an additional opportunity for websites to be found in search results.
Here are a few ways image-specific digital marketing strategies can yield positive results for marketers and appeal to customers:
Blog Posts
There are many reasons marketers incorporate blogging into their marketing strategies, including cost effectiveness, brand awareness, business-customer engagement, search engine marketing, etc. Furthermore, incorporating images into blog posts is proven to return positive results; in fact, statistics show articles with images get 94% more total views than those without images.
Of course, marketers should bear in mind they need to have an appropriate mix of quality content to go with images; in other words, images must be used to support the post’s content, not define it. The real key is striking the right balance of images and content to engage consumers and drive traffic.
Infographics
Infographics offer a creative, visual way of presenting a large set of data or creating a story through the use of images. Since their emergence in 2009, infographics have quickly become a powerful weapon in the digital marketer’s content arsenal. In fact, businesses represent 12.7% of all infographics posted on the web, which speaks to their effectiveness for marketers.
Oftentimes, traditional business solutions or processes can be associated with a theme to create a fun way to consume information. In the example above, we used the game of Monopoly to illustrate the financial transactions that have occurred within the marketing technology sector. It’s a fun way to make a somewhat complicated topic interesting and easy to digest.
Infographics are also incredibly useful due to their share-friendliness. In fact, MediaBistro found that infographics shared on Twitter get 832% more re-tweets than images and articles, which brings us to our next section.
Social Media
Consumers love images, and, according to statistics, they also love social media. This provides a powerful combination that marketers can leverage on Facebook and Twitter, along with Pinterest and Instagram, which have experienced success strictly based on static image-sharing. “As of May 1, the collective audience of the 76 Interbrand companies on Pinterest was less than 500,000, while Instagram’s 67 companies reached more than 7 million followers,” according to SimplyMeasured findings.
(Image Courtesy of: http://www.digitalorganics.com.au/)
Facebook, which recently acquired Instagram, has seen spikes in photo sharing. “In total, more than 2 million likes, comments and shares of Instagram photos have occurred on Facebook since the network bought the photo sharing app,” claims SimplyMeasured.
Image-sharing across social media is strong, giving brands an opportunity to show their identity in a visual style. In fact, “A 2012 study by ROI Research found that when users engage with friends on social media sites, it’s the pictures they enjoy the most. Forty-four percent of respondents are more likely to engage with brands if they post pictures,” according to a FastCompany article. For this reason, companies that interact with brands through social channels will likely see increased engagement.
All of the above information illustrates that consumers respond well to images received from brands. This is no different when it comes to email, especially now that mobile devices are capable of receiving emails with images included. Recent stats show “Fifty-five percent of consumers turn on the images in the emails that they receive.”
For those recipients who don’t turn images on for email, marketers should be sure to add alt image text to describe important images within the email. For example, if a clothing sale is being advertised through an image within the email, marketers should include alt text that tells the recipient what they are looking at.
(Image Courtesy of Inboxmarketer.com )
Images are becoming a vital piece of marketing in today’s digital world. Social networks such as Instagram and Pinterest are solely devoted to images, and incorporating images/infographics into social channels, emails, and blog posts all prove to generate positive results. So what are you waiting for? Say “cheese” and get your brand involved in sharing images across channels.
