Published on April 8th, 2017 | by Guest

The Crucial Importance of Visual Content for Businesses – Why You Need To Devote a Budget

Besides cutting down on your budget, the best possible resolution that business owners can and should make in 2017 is to invest in content marekting. Although it’s true that maintaining a blog regularly can definitely be time-taking as you constantly need to keep thinking of fresh ideas, which is difficult. As per a study from Content Marketing Institute in 2014, majority of the B2B small business firms are struggling hard to produce good quality content. Lack of time, lack of budget, inability to measure the effectiveness of content, inability to collect required data from SMRs, lack of integration across marketing channels and lack of cooperation across HR are few of the challenges faced by majority of the businesses.

If content marketing is done in a perfect manner, the rewards will certainly outweigh your efforts. Visual content marketing has recently gained momentum and its importance can’t be denied. Let’s take a look at the vital reasons behind why you should invest in visual content and make it a part of your marketing strategy.

Reason #1: Gives an instant identity to your brand

Visual content attracts people, allowing viewers to better comprehend the identity of your brand. For instance, the way in which new Facebook timeline has been designed; companies get a chance to share their history visually just as Coca Cola does. Other brands like Starbucks don’t just tell what their staffs do regularly but they show you behind the scenes. Such visual content immediately creates a human connection which in turn promotes loyalty of your brand which might not have been achieved only through words.

Reason #2: Drives more engagement among users

If you’ve ever gone through a book along with a child, you would know that they’re more attracted towards pictures than words. Are adults different from kids? Certainly not, as you can even find yourself moving towards places where there are pictures. You need to know that images usually drive more than only attention as they also drive user engagement. Simply Measured has reports that soon after a month of the introduction of timeline for brands, user engagement has risen by 48% and all kinds of visual content have seen a 70% increase in engagement.

Reason #3: Breaks up and explains lots of information

These days there is too much information on the internet and you’ve just got 3 seconds to catch someone’s attention so as to make them consume your information. Graphs, charts and infographics are visual representations of data and they take all information (which could be written in a plain format) and make it palatable to the readers by emphasizing on the main points through visual representations. Irrespective of whether you spend 20 seconds or 20 minutes looking towards the visual content, it is enough to consume meaningful information.

Reason #4: Creates varied opportunities for user-generated content

It can be taken for granted that your customers are on in most of your visually-friendly social networking sites like Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. Why wouldn’t you help them involve in shaping a good story of your brand in a more visual way? This can alleviate the content creation pressure from your shoulders but at the same time you also need to remember that there are numerous industries and the prospects will first consult user-generated content before making a purchase. Hence, think of new ways to create easy pathways for your customers to participate. Invite them to share their experience with your product or ask them to upload photos while using your product.

Reason #5: Drives more purchases and referrals

There is more referral traffic from different social media websites to brand websites and you’ll be amazed to know that as per a study by Shareaholic, Pinterest generates more referral traffic as compared to YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn. Facebook and StumbleUpon however generate more traffic than Pinterest. The social networking sites form a direct link to the way the customers reach your actual website and whenever companies communicate through visual mediums, customers take the next step to visits your site directly.

So, we see that visual content always lets you say more than what you could have said in words. If you feel intrigued by this post, take an immediate plunge to the visual content bandwagon to reap the best results.

About the author:

Sam is a professional writer and content developer. He believes that an effective content management system can help to increase the efficiency of any business process. If one can choose one of the best CMS platforms then it can support the business needs perfectly. As a content developer Sam feels that business owners should understand the important of using CMS to grow their business these days.

Tags: budget, businesses, content, crucial, devote, importance, need, visual