Reasons why visual content is essential for successful marketing campaigns

The love of images is as old as humanity itself, just consider every artistic movement. We tell stories with images, its why paintings are so impactful. They convey a meaningful message that is easily decoded by our visual hungry brain. Have you incorporated visual content into your digital marketing campaigns? Need a reason, we have a few for you.

The human brain loves it

This is not opinion, it is fact. According to neuroscientist Andrew Tate, approximately 20% of your brain is for visual content. Since the majority of our sensory receptors are in the eyes it makes sense that visual content is way more effective in grabbing the attention of your audience. Here are a few facts for you from 

• Articles with images get 93% more views.
• Visuals can increase the number of people viewing the content by 78%.
• Tweets with images are retweeted 150% more than those without.
• Social media posts with images are 3 times more engaging.

If that doesn’t convince you to include visual content in your marketing campaigns, consider that 1 billion hours of YouTube videos are watched daily and more than 500 hours of content is uploaded every minute. Pages with images or video draw, on average, 94% more views than their text-only counterparts. Creating a user experience through visual content will help you keep your current followers and attract more. Stories have far more impact than a list of facts. 

It makes up a lot of our communication

Human beings are highly reliant on visual context. It is what we use to determine how people feel about us. The expression on someone’s face can tell you what emotion they are experiencing. There is a plethora of information that can be derived from a person’s body language, and that data helps us make many decisions. Visual content makes up 93% of all human communications and 90% of the information that enters the brain is non-verbal. In fact, the brain processes an image 60,000 times faster than it processes a text. 

That doesn’t mean that you should only rely on visual content, it means that your designs should be accompanied by convincing, well-written text. 

It is easier to understand

Visual elements in combination with text increase the comprehension of the viewer but also increases the speed at which the information can be processed. It has been reported that human beings are capable of getting a sense of their surroundings in less than one-tenth of a second. One-tenth of a second is all that the brain requires to understand an image. That is a lot faster than trying to read through reams of text! The ability to make faster decisions has tremendous value in our daily lives where we are constantly bombarded by stimuli. When it comes to absorbing something, visual data takes precedence over text. Visual content is not only faster to grasp but easier to understand. Studies have shown that only 70% of people understand labels with only text compared to a comprehension rate of 95% when labels also had an image.

It can influence our decisions

Do you know anything about color psychology? The psychology of specific colors is important for all aspects of design, from designing logos to creating a brand identity. Colors not only affect emotions but also influences how a viewer reacts. Color accounts for 85% of the motivation to purchase a specific product and full-colored ads are recognized 26% more than black and white ads. High-quality visual content can have a major impact on your conversion funnel because it dramatically increases engagement by creating emotional connections. Are you trying to convince your followers to take a specific action? Consider which colors to use in your posts.

What all of this means is that visuals should be a core component of your digital marketing strategy. Successful campaigns include a variety of media so whether you use video, infographics, or images, you need to incorporate one or more of them. Each platform is best suited for different media, images for Instagram, infographics for LinkedIn, and video for Facebook. All of this needs to be considered when you are creating your campaigns.