There are some suggestions that primitive ‘art’ was happening almost one million years ago. If true, this would place the earliest visual communication as happening before most scientists believe man developed language skills (beyond the odd grunt). But putting those theories aside, we do know that man has been using visual representations of events to communicate or record things for tens of thousands of years.
In the modern era, you will still find visual communication being an integral part of how we tell stories or present things to others. Since the advent of television and cinema, visual aspects of storytelling have risen in importance and use. Nowadays, it’s an essential part of marketing and advertising but how can you use visual communication to generate more leads?
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Within the fields of marketing and advertising, visual communication can refer to the use of any visuals, such as videos, images, or other graphics, to convey a message to consumers and potential clients. Companies can use visuals to grab people’s attention or even to deliver a message that goes beyond mere words.
Why do we value visuals so much? It’s worth considering that our brains process visuals better than spoken or written words. In fact, if you hear some information, you may only remember 10% of it three days later. When that information comes with images, you remember 65% of the information.
While the first newspaper ad is believed to have appeared in 1704, the true advent of visual communication in marketing started with first cinema, then television. Of course, cinema came first and ads appearing before trailers was the first form of ‘moving’ visual communication. Incorporating visuals in their advertising offered businesses opportunities they didn’t have with purely textual marketing.
Businesses use visual communication to both convey and evoke emotions in potential customers. Even a simple ad demonstrating the benefits of call scheduling software could show viewers that their business would be better with this product. A delighted salesperson who has managed to schedule a call with a lead and then close a deal makes for convincing marketing material.
The visuals you use can go beyond the usefulness of a product or service; they can also provide a strong and recognizable brand identity for your business so that viewers will almost instantly know what company is behind the ad. You can use your brand logo or particular colors or you can even use consistent imagery that identifies you.
Visual communication is an almost constant companion today. Look at the popularity of emojis in messages to convey how the sender is feeling. While simple, it is an easy way of communicating emotions. When it comes to marketing and advertising, things can be both simple and complicated.
Your teams need to think about the message they are trying to get over to the consumers but they also need to consider what people will listen to. They also need to use their data intelligence to understand what type of visual communication people most connect with. It can help to tie in any efforts with other marketing approaches such as trigger email marketing.
Static images are the most common form of visual communication you will encounter. They can be used in adverts, on your website, or in social media posts. They are a good, and inexpensive, way of capturing people’s attention quickly. You can use them to show off your products or services or to advertise your brand as a whole. Where they perhaps fall short is that you can’t disseminate complex info with them.
Infographics are a great way to combine an image with information that you want to communicate. If you have a good designer on your team, you can have eye-catching graphics with information superimposed on any image. Infographics can be very engaging and you can use them for anything from greenhouse sales in Utah to highlighting the benefits of AI appointment booking.
Videos are another type of visual communication that people can connect with easily. And, given the growth of platforms such as TikTok, the potential reach can be impressive too. They can be used for anything from a simple unboxing video, to ‘how to’ guides for technical or software products. Another advantage of videos comes with UGC (user-generated content), something people identify with and which costs you nothing.
While you may think of animations as being something for children, they can be used effectively in marketing campaigns too. Although demanding on resources, they can capture people’s attention and impart information that could generate quality leads for your salespeople to close. It is worth noting that there are many budget animation software solutions though it can still be demanding in terms of time.
Of course, a good marketing campaign is not going to focus on one type of visual communication. When your marketing team reviews its customer (and potential customer) data, they may find the demographics scattered across different platforms and appreciate different approaches. That’s where killer combos come into play.
For example, say you are running a campaign to promote your secure remote support solutions. You might use an infographic to show the benefits, video to show the product being used, and so on.
The whole idea is to look at the data you have and identify how you can maximize leads that will, hopefully, lead to sales.
You are probably already using some form of visual communication in your marketing efforts. But to take things to the next level, you should consider some (or all) of these best practices.
Your starting point should always be the context of what you want to showcase and what you want to achieve. Having a clear understanding of that can help you decide on the format of the visuals you will use. For example, if you were running a campaign to promote domain name registration, you would probably decide that video would be ineffectual while an infographic could help generate new leads.
Of course, there are other factors that can come into play once you understand the context. How big is your campaign? A large campaign will likely benefit from the aforementioned ‘killer combos’. You also need to think about the budget you’ve been allocated as sometimes it’s not about what you want but what you can afford.
Remember that 65% statistic from earlier. That shows that when you can, videos should be included in any campaign. People engage better with videos and it allows you a more dynamic form of storytelling. How many times have you cast aside the written instructions for self-assembly furniture and looked for a solution on YouTube instead?
While you may be focusing on lead generation, video offers you a wide range of opportunities to market your brand and what you do. You could have ‘behind the scenes’ videos or even a Q&A session with one of your managers. Both of these could increase awareness and might lead to people wanting to know more about your products.
No matter what form of visual communication you utilize, you need to consider the probable attention span of consumers. People are unlikely to watch a 45-minute video on roi email marketing. However, if you condense the information into a short-form video, or even make a series of short videos, then you are more likely to see better engagement and lead generation.
You should also think about a punchy opening. Consumers may decide in the first few seconds whether it’s worth reading or viewing your material. Use and visualize existing data to see what people like and, where possible, give it to them. Start big and finish big, ideally with a call to action (CTA) that will turn ponderers into qualified leads.
How many times have you switched off a TV series or movie because of the lack of originality? The same holds true with using visual communication in marketing. Be as original as you can, especially when you consider that any material you use represents your brand. Of course, there is little you can do to make something like a ‘how to’ video stand out but there are some factors you can think about.
As with other marketing tactics, your visual communications are going to be governed by the data you have collected and what it tells you. By mapping out customer preferences, you may see that one type of visual is more effective in a region than others. But you also need to think about what you want to say and how best to say it.
Similarly, you want to track effectiveness of the formats you chose. You may find that what you thought would work failed miserably so you need to rethink your approach. Keep collecting data and analyzing it so you can see what works best for you in terms of lead generation. Used properly, visual communications can be a great way of boosting sales.
Brad Crisp is the CEO at Maptive.com, based in Denver, CO and born in San Francisco, CA. He has extensive experience in Business Mapping, GIS, Data Visualization, Mapping Data Analytics and all forms of software development. His career includes Software Development and Venture Capital dating back to 1998 at businesses like Maptive, GlobalMojo (now Giving Assistant), KPG Ventures, Loopnet, NextCard, and Banking.
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