The power of visual marketing

Visual marketing is powerful because vivid images carry the potential to impart emotional impact. Marketing that connects on an emotional level is exceptionally effective. In fact, these days, if you are not telling the story of your business in images on Pinterest and Instagram … you are doing something wrong.

These websites allow you the rare opportunity to take your customers behind the scenes. They give your brand an identity and make your company appear trustworthy. Many brands have seen remarkable returns from simply asking their customers to take pictures of themselves engaging in their product or service.

These images provide social proof that your service is valuable, and most customers are happy to engage in these contests just for the chance to win an inexpensive prize.

Visual marketing is so powerful that companies and universities are pouring large sums of money into programs that assess how people respond after viewing promotional material. In fact, corporations have created systems that track eye movements in retail environments in an effort to assess how effectively these images spur customers to take action.

Visual Marketing Tips

It is a good idea to place your logo on most of the images you create and share on social networks. You can do this quickly with commercial software like Photoshop, or free alternatives like GIMP. Branding your images builds trust with viewers - provided that you are consistently offering them high-quality content … and it increases brand awareness at the same time.

These days, every image on your site should contain a call to action. Pinterest allows you to add a button to your images. With this button, your visitors can share the image directly to the network, thus increasing your exposure. If one person finds your content share-worthy, there is a good chance that someone else will as well.

One practice that you should adopt if you haven’t yet is to embed social media content within your posts. Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ all allow you to do this. These additions can turn your posts into social hubs, and if you already have decent traffic, you will find your content shared more often than ever before.

You can also use SlideShare or a similar service to create slideshows. Well-designed slideshows can keep your visitors on your domain longer, and you can also use them to direct visitors to other articles on your site. Slideshows are also extremely sharable. Infographics and videos serve the same function.

Additionally, it pays to customize your Pinterest layouts. Pinterest traffic is often well targeted, so you want to give your prospect every reason to click. A good-looking template will get you more clicks, save you time and give your profile a more uniform appearance.