By nature, individuals are visual animals and we’re actually pulled in to pictures, brilliant hues and feelings are emphatically effected when we take a gander at a visual content marketing content. We would be naive to not catch that component of human mind by utilising striking symbolism, savvy/ sharp imaging, which can influence human mind towards items and brand projections.
As social media communication is developing at phenomenal rates and is brimming with captivating content. As indicated by Social Times, Pinterest and Tumblr were the fastest developing interpersonal organisations in 2014.
Exceptional growth of mobile devices with cameras empowered people to create more visuals, sharing it instantly on their social profiles or via text or emails. Some common visual content marketing mistakes can show you how to leverage this influential content management to achieve business goals.
What does visual content mean and why is it looking out as our future?
Visual content marketing is what is being used mostly in advertising and it gathers different forms of content based on visual marketing briefs.
Visual content marketing includes the use of:
Mainstream online social media channels like Snapchat, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, and Vine are great examples of distribution channels in visual content marketing strategies.
What makes visual content so imperative and demanded? Why is it a “thing” in 2015?
Statistically its demonstrated, in the case of reading, our brain signals decode visual information 60,000X faster than reading text. We remember & recollect colour, form or shape faster than words.
Visuals are perceived/registered faster and can evoke much more stronger emotional connections when the receiver sees the content and any written content with it also gets included in.
It’s alright to make mistakes, but same mistake repeating but expecting diverse results is moronic. Below are the most common mistakes brands, marketers, and designers/planners commit and potential fixes you can implement.
1. Too Busy
Let’s say designing a print poster for product announcement or infographics, we basically put everything that comes to our mind just because we think it will be important for the consumer. Which becomes creating an informative & visual piece, but we end up with too much clutter that doesn’t have a clear message, or directing the customer to the next step.
What to do: Provide a clear next step
Simply talking is not enough. If it is an invite: provide the call to action, a button or a link that user can navigate to fill in more data and sign up. If we don’t clarify what we expect them to do, we might get some likes and interest is generated, but customers don’t know how to respond to the invite. How to get further as long-term point of contact or you can simply lose the customers interest without capturing their data for future approaches.
Tip: have only one clear call to action, prominently seen as size, color/contrast.
2. Lack of strategy
Inexperience: When we think, “let’s get likes and shares and get our name out, it will be good”. There is a full cycle of : grabbing attention, increasing awareness, interacting, providing even more value, gaining trust and loyalty but don’t forget selling has to be the goal.
What to do: Know what you want to communicate.
Start out by having clear business objectives, What are you or your brand trying to say to customer. After that figure out the audience/customer profile you are serving, their needs and wants. Why are they going to buy from you? what unique which will attract to your product. Have a defined strategy for every single step: user research, competitor analysis and market trends.
3. Designing one format/look but using it across many platforms/mediums
Surprisingly social networks are not restricted by some general guidelines that apply to everything that goes on them. You need to study each social media platform to get familiar with different constraints when it comes to image formatting, so your branding is consistent.
What to do: Have templates ready and re-use
Once you are familiar with mediums/platform formats, then start creating simple templates,which can be easily re-used in the future re-thinking to adapt your content to fit these templates.
If you don’t plan and think designing once and distributing your visual content marketing across mediums/platforms it will lead into the next mistake which is waiting to happen – on this list – distorted, badly cropped and bad pixelated images.
4. Image is low quality, not appealing, pixelated.
Quality over quantity should be your motto, probably used everywhere you go and it is stands true. For every campaign remember to make quality – Top Priority. The details you put into your work will lead to better engagement, more shares, and easier branding building process.
What to do: Follow latest brand and social network guidelines
Establish quality standards, work with brand guidelines defining what
look to project. Fonts to use, color blocks or combinations, language/tone/slang, what type of image etc. Consistency and high quality will turn into more followers who will recognise you from a distance.
5. Don’t forget to add context.
Always think how your content will be viewed including device, place, and even demographics. Try and understand, Instagram is only used on mobiles with over 300 million users. To show photos on desktop devices is becoming less imperative than creating and consuming content on mobile devices. Don’t forget that when planning your next visual advertisement or marketing campaign.
What to do: Analyse demographics of people who are your target audience
If targeting teenagers make sure you don’t try to reach them in wrong platform, like Facebook: where teenagers are quickly abandoning the platform. Think about where the cool kids hang out, Snapchat, Instagram and act upon these facts and challenges. For example: Launch of their Instagram account, Burger King France created the world’s biggest virtual burger by posting over 90 pictures of burger parts which create the illusion of a giant Whopper. That got the youngster’s attention and social networks crackling with brand recall.
7. “Create” does not mean designing for yourself
You like it? doesn’t mean it should be there. Most common mistake we all tend to make is to judge everything by our personal choices & liking. That means target audience, whatever demographic you are aiming your advertisement at, isn’t being taken into consideration, to get a genuine response. What we like at 40yrs of age might not be even considered as Ok at 20’s. This is when problems arise and people start fighting over their personal taste and preferences.
What to do: Ask the right audience demographic.
Get into the shoes of the target audience to better understand why, how, and what they see and like. Ask them questions to figure out what they find cool or not, what they will go for, share content with friends and find as many points of views, to try to pick their brains if you get a chance to chat with them closely. Analyse data, figure out what has worked in the past, what content is most shared by similar brands and your competitors, by the demographic you are targeting and act within those figures.
8. Lack of consistency and short-term goals
Brand loyalty and recognition will never be an instant development. Not in a day or a week, it takes time for people to get to know your brand better, to better understand values and vision you stand for. Avoid thinking immediate seasonal marketing plans/campaigns, not just Christmas, Easter, New Year promotions & sales. They don’t promote customer to come back through the year. You can get views and shares at that time but then after that seasonal promotion your target audience freezes up and loose interest from your brand.
What to do: Consistency and Long-term Planning
Only consistent delivery of high-quality visual content will take you to the next level of customer loyalty. Avoid different looks change to stay relevant and recognised by your target customer. We can not emphasise enough to get clear business goals and values, mission and vision statements so you are getting closer to your ultimate goal rather than getting low hanging fruits.
Conclusion
Whether you are contemplating to simply looking for ways to improve or have concrete plans in visual content marketing, this article will help to level up your game. There are many ways to engage with the ever changing social media & hopefully tips and tricks here will help you understand and design better content, reach more people, to grow your business or brand.
Contact us at One Stop Media Group, if you want to talk in more details of your digital, Goals & Presence.
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