Content teams are focusing more of their efforts on visual marketing and it’s no wonder with networks like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Vine, seeing such dramatic traction and year-over-year growth. Visual consumer content is proven to have a significantly higher impact than text: 60 percent of people are visual learners, so using photos, and videos in your marketing efforts help capture customers’ attention and educate them about your brand.

Here are the top five questions to consider as you develop visual social media campaigns:

1. What is effective Visual Marketing?

Effective Visual Marketing campaigns are leveraging the use of photos, videos, slides, and infographics in lieu of text to tell a story. Some of the effective campaigns we’ve noticed lately include Honest Tea & The National Parks #ParkYourThirst campaign, Victoria Secret & GoPro’s use of Instagram video, and KFC’s Chicken Corsage Campaign.

2. How do I justify to my executive team that I want to spend budget on a Visual Marketing Campaign?

Memory and retention research shows that people only remember about 10 percent of what they hear just one week after hearing it. However, according to a 2006 study, retention jumps to 65 percent when a picture was associated with the key messages being delivered. As marketers, we spend so much time thinking about, searching, evaluating and approving the perfect prose to describe our products. Meanwhile, a photo can be more persuasive and tell a visual story.

‍Visuals generate MORE engagement than text.

• High-quality infographics are read 30x more than text-only blog posts • Photos are liked 2x more than text updates.
• Publishers who use infographics see much higher engagement than those who don’t.
• 44% of users are more likely to engage with a brand that posts photos vs. other forms of media Source: ROI Research

3. Are visual networks mainstream enough to justify a corporate presence?Photos have become a primary method of communication and the numbers prove it out.

• Consumers now upload some 2.5 billion images a week.
• Instagram: 150 million accounts
• Tumblr: 300 million accounts
• Facebook: 1Billion+ Users
• WhatsApp 500M active Users 400M messages per day on Snapchat and 300M photos are uploaded to Facebook every day.
• Research from The Social Habit shows that social media users plan to increase their use of Instagram at a rate higher than that of any other network.

4. How should I identify the right platform and channel?Identify your KPIs:

• A Visual Marketing campaign is like all other marketing campaigns – you must know exactly what you want to achieve strategically before you start planning the tactics. It’s not enough to shoot 100 pictures of corporate headquarters or ask your customers of candid shots of them using your product. First, you need to decide what you want the campaign to accomplish. Choose metrics to track during the campaign, and define success before you start the conception and creating phases.

Go Where Your Customers Are:

• At the end of the day, you want to be where your customers already engage. If your audience is Moms, that might be Facebook; if it’s Millennial perhaps it’s Instagram; and those affluent execs may be best reached through Linkedin. If you target your consumers where they are already spend their time you can focus efforts on optimizing the engagement with your brand, rather than the platform as a while.

5. What’s next?Write the story:

• You can tell a vibrant narrative in a Visual marketing effort. Or you can post a bunch of random photos that look like an image version of a foreigner spitting out words in a language he does not know. Whether the campaign is going to be over an hour, a month or a year, you should decide what story you want told. Then craft the images to map to that theme.

Maximize the Channel:

• Our visual marketing campaign can involve as many creative formats and channels as we can imagine, including Infographics, photos, animation, videos and more. You can focus on professionally produced visuals, or work on curating ones uploaded by fans. The key is understanding which type of content is best for the channel you have chosen.

Determine your CTAs:Just like your direct marketing and social media efforts, it’s important to pick a spot in the marketing awareness cycle in which your visual marketing campaign will be most successful. Is this a campaign to increase brand awareness? Will you be strengthening your brand through strong images? Or will you be working on driving sales?Measure, Adjust and iterate:Just like your direct marketing and social media efforts, it’s important to pick a spot in the marketing awareness cycle in which your visual marketing campaign will be most successful. Is this a basic awareness campaign? Will you be strengthening your brand through strong images? Or will you be working on driving sales?There’s no doubt that visual content is an effective and impactful method for educating and engaging customers. By using these guidelines you can make take advantage of these trends to take your marketing to the next level.

Sources:[1] https://virtualassistanttrainer.com/how-to-start-a-visual-content-marketing-campaign/[2] https://blog.intuit.com/marketing/how-to-add-visual-content-into-your-marketing-campaigns/[3] http://www.business2community.com/content-marketing/3-tips-for-more-effective-content-marketing-visuals-0471640#L2oMbxKUX74wQToT.99[4] https://www.slideshare.net/BrightSparkMedia/what-is-visual-marketing-infographic-slide-version[6] https://blog.intuit.com/marketing/how-to-add-visual-content-into-your-marketing-campaigns/[7] https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/social-media-predictions-2013/