“A picture is worth a thousand words.” is a saying you have heard a lot. It is cliche at this point.
Being common doesn’t make it less true though.
Thousands of people troop to the Louvre every year to see the Mona Lisa. Instagram has 500 million daily active users. Heck, even when we are texting, we add emojis to help make the conversion livelier. Because, why not?
The human brain is wired to process visual content 60,000 times faster than text. Not surprising, 65% of people in the world are visual learners.
Now this probably explains why we are attracted to images, especially beautiful or unusual ones.
Okay. You get the point. We’ve convinced you visuals are important. But how do you convince your teammates or colleagues?
We’ve put together 4 reasons you could preach with on why it’s good to include visuals in your content strategy.
1. People tend to remember your content easily when you attach visuals.
If a relevant image or video is paired with the information you are trying to pass, 65% of people will still remember that information three days later as opposed to 10% if you don’t attach any image at all.
Do you remember Trinity’s dark glasses, overflowing black coat, and badass marksmanship from The Matrix, over 20 years ago? Great! But do you remember the movie title of the second part? It was something with ‘Reloaded or Revolution’. I always google it.
Most people, like me, find visuals easier to understand and remember, and are instinctively drawn to materials that contain them.
If people remember your message, they are more likely to listen to you again, which is ultimately what you want.
READ: 5 things your brand image says about you
2. Visual content attracts and engages the audience.
Being a brand on the internet means that you’re probably contesting for space and visibility on various platforms with a business that does the same thing you do, two streets away.
If your content doesn’t have something that sets you apart, chances are you’re going to get lost in the crowd.
A good way to stand out is to include good visuals in every piece of content you put out to keep the attention of your existing and incoming audience.
Content with visuals gets 94% more views and is usually favoured by social media algorithms over text-heavy content.
To put it simply, publishing content with visuals has a bigger chance of being read, liked, commented on, and shared.
Why wouldn’t you want to tap into it as a business or brand owner?
3. Visuals can increase your conversion rate.
Depending on the kind of business you operate, conversion can mean different things but ultimately you’re trying to bring a customer on board or make sales.
Aiming for a 50 % percent conversion rate is all well and good but why not aim higher?
Using visuals in your content strategy, especially videos to explain how your product works can help instill trust in your customers and increase your conversion rate by 80%.
Relevant visual content on your blog posts, landing pages, social media profiles, and email newsletters can pull your audience in.
The best part is that you might not need to create assets for each platform. If you create a good enough visual, there’s a good chance it can work anywhere.
So if you’re trying to increase conversion, think images, think memes, think gifs, and absolutely think videos and animation.
4. Visual content will make your targeted audience stay longer.
Have you ever had to read a 3000- 5000 word article?
How did that go?
The fact is that most people spend 74% of their reading time on the text on the first two parts of the screen and only 14% of viewing time on the text on the third screen and more.
This lets you know that for most people reading long lines of texts and paragraphs can be very tiring.
They usually end up abandoning the content without digesting and understanding what your brand is trying to say.
With good and compelling visual content, you can get your audience to stay longer on long-form posts like articles and not just stay longer but consume more and properly understand the message your content is trying to deliver.
Visuals have grown into a powerful online marketing tool that needs to be front and centre in every content you put out.
It is important that when you include visuals in your content strategy, they resonate with your audience and are absolutely in line with your theme so it doesn’t come off as looking forced and misplaced.
We have worked with over 24 startups to drive conversions through increased community presence and relevant blog posts that we help distribute. To understand our process, book a 15 - 30 minutes meeting with us.
