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In a world where the human attention span has dropped to just 8 seconds, communication has become much shorter. Visual communication is the futuristic step in marketing, the world is turning more visual than it has ever seen in history. No matter how great your idea, product or business as a whole is! Visual is the one which captures the attention of your audience and builds recognition for your brand. We live in a digital era where visual communication is omnipresent. From social media feeds, YouTube ads to smart billboards, visuals are everywhere. It is the visuals which captivate, informs and leaves viewers wanting for more. Professional and high-quality visual communication can help your business stay on the top and set you apart from all of your competitors.
Visual communication is a powerful tool. If used the right way, it can help you cut through the clutter and make your brand recognizable so that people pay attention. You can leverage your sales pitch, marketing outreach programs and in-house meetings, all with visual communication. Effective communication doesn’t just mean a catchy photograph with a fancy headline.
The right visual communication demonstrates your service or product, illustrates the features, benefits and transforms the buying process into storytelling for the end customers. You can create efficient marketing strategies by inculcating visual communication in the form of charting techniques, decision mapping diagrams, road-maps, documentation and much more. You can easily communicate responsibilities and boost the potential for collaboration with visual communication.
Basics of Visual Communication:
It is a beautiful design which delivers your message and it delivers fast. Visual communication is an amalgamation of data visualization and graphic design. Data visualization, as the name suggests, is simply a high-level visualization of ordinary numbers. The subset of data visualization is extended to individual charts, graphs and Infographics. Graphic design is a type of medium which is solely driven by visual elements. Graphic design helps set a particular tone or mood.
Visual communication makes use of both data visualization & graphic design in order to create engaging content. The goal is to craft content which can deliver information and data in a clear, compelling manner. A narrative is developed through an array of visual elements and multiple formats are deployed just to reach the target audience.
Why is Visual Communication Important for your Business?
Effective visual communication can fetch you attention, make your business look good and increase your presence on social media, respectively. If your marketing strategy is balanced with attractive visuals, chances are high that people will stop by and look at your content. In a world where 9 out of 10 people just skim the content they see, it’s difficult to get hold of your audience’s attention. It is 2020 and over 80% of consumer internet traffic consume online videos. Whilst people worry about Google search engine rankings, they forget that YouTube is the second largest search engine on the internet. You can capitalize on your marketing strategies through video content. With effective visual communication, it gets easier to convey the brand image you desire.
Design is often considered as the prime criteria for discerning the credibility of any product, service or company as a whole. People are attracted to content which is more visually appealing and seems to have superior quality. Moreover, visual communication makes it easy for your customers to digest information.
Since more information to consume is available today than ever before, your audience expects bits and chunks of relevant information only. Visuals make it easy for your audience to process information and data at light speed. Social media outreach is another plus point of visual communication. Social media platforms are thriving with a vast audience. Publishing out of the box content is your pick to success. People are always scrolling through for engaging content.
Let’s move ahead and understand how Visual Communication elevates your business and brings more revenue:
Drives more Traffic:
Your article can get over 94% more views when it’s published with engaging visual content. Visual communication is considered a primary organic traffic driver. The best thing is, it’s not limited to big sites only. Entrepreneurs and small business owners can devise marketing strategies revolving around visual communication, thus getting increased traffic. One should know that Infographics are the most shared content type on social media.
Boosts Audience Engagement:
Whenever we hear or read a piece of content, we can only retain up to 10-15% after a couple of days. However, when information is presented to us in the form of visuals, the retention rate goes as high as 60%. A picture paints a thousand words and the human brain has been programmed to pay more attention to visuals, thus engagement increases manifolds. People spend more time taking a gander at the images rather than going through actual content.
Grabs Attention:
When it comes to drawing consideration of target customers, visual content marketing is a clear winner. It doesn’t matter if your readers or customers are from different parts of the world since visuals are easy to comprehend, anyone can understand these without losing their attention span. Visual content boosts marketing campaigns by supplementing blog posts, business pages, discussion posts, how-to articles, landing page content and much more. Visual communication also adds a great deal to your search engine optimization ranking.
Are Exceptionally Social Media-Flexible:
Visual communication is super flexible. You can easily share visual content on almost every social media handle and generate a great response from end-users. Platforms such as Instagram, Pinterest and Facebook are used by millions of users around the world. If used well, visual communication can help you achieve a social media competitive edge over your competitors. Once your marketing strategy is ready, with the right set of visual communication & scheduling tools, you can simultaneously target multiple social media platforms.
Establishes Brand Credibility:
Visual communication is a clear brand seller. When we talk about ensuring noteworthy retention in the minds of customers while standing out from the crowd, visual communication is very important for your marketing strategy. For instance, while creating a presentation for your next meeting, you should use visual-rich professional PowerPoint templates. It is a crisp, concise and powerful way to convey ideas. However, brands should take note that their marketing message has to be on point at all times. Since visual communication is highly effective, a loosely coupled marketing strategy might break your brand.
Saves Time:
It is the images which can describe an immense amount of information in the shortest time possible. Visual communication saves a lot of time, for both creators and interpreters. Today, the society is looking for info which is easy to digest and ready to be absorbed. As mentioned earlier, your brain is likely to process images 60,000 times faster than random text. Impressions made through data visualization, typography, textures, colors last longer.
Supports your Message:
Visual communication is a highly expressive tool when we talk about sharing ideas, messages and thoughts. You can literally transform your thoughts into reality and let the world see it through the right visuals. It’s all about bringing your ideas as well as viewers into a world of bliss. When the visual is attractive and engaging, your audience is more likely to support your message and cause. Visuals help you maintain a consistent brand identity throughout your professional journey.
Visual Communication & Marketing Ecosystem:
As amazing as visual communication sounds, brands have to be careful while devising their marketing strategies. Visual communication is more like a double-edged sword. If not executed the right way, poor quality visuals might not be able to deliver the message, damage communication and mislead the audience too. Before creating a marketing strategy backed by visuals, it’s important to identify your audience. Since one size doesn’t fit all, same goes for your marketing strategies.Moreover, authentic visuals have proven to be more successful than stock visuals. Your audience can only resonate with you when visuals are tailored specifically for them. In order words, user-generated content (UGC) is becoming a new normal.
Visuals, whether they are charts, graphs, diagrams, Infographics or photos drive engagement across various communication verticals. Marketing strategies backed by the right set of visuals and quality content can raise brand awareness and ensure social media engagement. Visuals need to add value to the marketing strategy. A brand should consider creating their very-own repository of visuals and find non-stock options. The advent of latest technologies has opened the floodgates of visual content accessibility. Gone are the days when the whole focus was on content. Visuals are transforming marketing at every level, it’s that ‘stimuli’ which is well-received by the customer in their journey with your brand.
Now that we understand how crucial visuals are for any brand, let’s delve deep and understand the things to consider for creating a robust visual identity for your brand.
Crafting a Logo, that matters:
One should note that your logo will be stamped on almost everything. Be it company letterhead, email communication, billboards, banners and what not! Creating a logo which is easy to understand, engaging & successfully communicates your brand, might not be an easy job, but it’s worth it. The personality of your brand should shine directly through the logo and it should be distinct at all times.
Having a Consistent Color Palette:
If you look around at marketing strategies of famous brands worldwide, you’d notice that they all deploy consistent colour palettes for their marketing needs. The colors should stay consistent with the brand’s images, texts, designs since it makes the brand more recognizable. Again, the colour should directly reflect the personality of your brand. The colour and font can speak a great deal about the type of business you are.
Create a Connection that Evoke Emotions:
If you’re able to establish an emotional connection with your audience, you’re halfway there in your business success journey. If your audience trusts you, they will eventually subscribe to your services and buy from you. The reason marketing and emotions are linked together because people feel. Visual communication can help you make great first impressions and connect emotionally with your audience. First impressions are formed in fractions of seconds, visuals can help you achieve just that.
Wrapping Up:
In today’s competitive business marketplace, it’s imperative for organizations to continuously adapt to visual technologies to stay relevant. The more variety you bring in your visual communication, the more user-engagement you’ll be able to generate. Visual attention is the key to your audience’s attention. Solid visual content knitted into your marketing strategy can take your business to a whole new level.
As far as brand marketing ecosystem is concerned, one should possess a deep understanding of the marketing funnel in order to choose the right visual communication formats. It is only then the visuals will resonate with your customer’s awareness, consideration and decision-making journey. The key to success is knowing how visual formats can be integrated and used with SEO, PR, campaign tactics and social media.
