Whether you are trying to promote a product or a service, both involve marketing to a broad audience. This can be done in a variety of ways, but when marketing content, it’s a slightly different approach from normal marketing.

Content marketing is a way to showcase goods, products, or services through exciting and informative media. Examples of this include but are not limited to articles, images, videos, blogs, and podcasts.

Content marketing is becoming a more popular field of marketing because a good content marketer can increase the net revenue of a company through more efficiently using money allocated for advertising. By being smarter with advertising money, they’ll be able to increase the revenue generated.

Reaching the Public

According to a report published by the Social Media Examiner, they found out how content marketers are using a variety of media to reach the public.

• 74% of all marketers use visuals 
• 68% of all marketers use blogs 
• 60% of all marketers use videos 
• 15% of all marketers use live videos
• 10% of all marketers use podcasts

Out of these five categories, visuals are the most popular because they’re still shots, can be used to showcase a product, and in some cases, have text added to them as a sort of description for people looking at the image. Because of their utility, this article has been dedicated to exploring different kinds of visuals and videos that can be used in marketing efforts.

Importance of Content Creation

When it comes to marketing, good content is just as important as the pitch or the objective of the campaign. People like to look at visuals, and various images also have the additional benefit of naturally and logically breaking up blocks of text.

What some marketing teams have begun doing is building the text around various images, so there is a better flow between the text and various photos and infographics. This goes without saying, but a picture is worth a thousand words, and that is why visual-based content, when done correctly, can be worth its weight in gold.

When creating something, it’s important to consider how pictures, charts and graphs, animation, interactive images, and other forms of media, can add to whatever is being designed.

Types of Visuals That Are Used in Content Marketing

Product Images

If you are developing a plan for marketing a good or service, you should combine products with a short blurb of information about the product. When deciding between images, you should choose images that are not only high-resolution but also clearly show the item. The image can also be improved by having a great looking background and lighting.

Videos

Videos are great because they combine images and audio; this forces people to use multiple senses, and this increases people’s ability to learn and remember something. It is estimated that up to 75% of all internet traffic is people streaming videos. 

Coincidentally, 75% of all content marketers have used videos in at least one of their campaigns. People are also four times more likely to watch a video about a product than to read an article covering the same information.

Screenshots

Using this kind of visual is a step up from basic images. Screenshots are commonly used if you are attempting to make a tutorial or how-to article when it comes to using a product. 

A study published by Indiana University found that people who follow text and photos understand three times more information than people who read info alone. By incorporating screenshots into a presentation, you’ll help people learn about your product in a way where they have a better chance of remembering it.

Graphs and Charts 

Graphs and charts are a great way to present data to the public. Rather than show raw data, you can use things such as bar graphs, pie charts, and line graphs to show the same information. This is also giving a visual representation of the data, and most people will gravitate toward a graph if the other option is a table full of numbers.

Infographics

This type of image combines images, text, and statistics into one visual aid. Both marketing teams and average Joes gravitate towards this because it sums up a page’s worth of text in an aesthetically pleasing graphic.

An Example of Visual-Based Content Marketing 

You speak to a website trying to get their attention to publish something related to your company. However, after several unanswered emails, you decide to change your tact. After meeting with your marketing team, you decide that rather than promote your product, you should publish something related to the content of the target hosting website.

Rather than write another email, you decide to create an infographic related to something on the host’s website and be sure to include a nice palette, smaller images, facts, and figures. 

By giving them something for nothing, if they liked what was made, you may have your foot in the door. This will allow you to ask about the possibility of sharing the content or about featuring a piece related to your company or a certain item that you produce.

Market Analysis and Automation

Both of these are important to content marketing. Still, the analysis is the most important of these two because by creating content based on the analysis, when you automate everything, you’re creating more effective content. 

Market Analysis

Market analytics are used to measure, manage, and analyze the market performance of various products and content to maximize its overall effectiveness. This practice can also give you valuable insight into customer opinion and can also be used to predict upcoming market trends.

By using market analytics to help predict upcoming trends, you’ll be able to develop a great content marketing strategy. This strategy based on predictions will be useful because you can be ahead of trends, and maximize the effectiveness of your marketing campaign.

When it comes to analytics, there are two types of data that content marketing teams focus their research on. Quantitative and qualitative data are great ways to include data in a variety of visual or written materials developed.

Asking people what their favorite flavor of ice cream, the color of their eyes, or what kind of car they drive are all examples of qualitative data. This type of data is used to learn about the attributes and properties of different things.

Any data that can be measured or expressed in numbers is quantitative. Examples of quantitative data include how days per week do you eat ice cream, how much do you weigh or how many cars does your household own.

However, it’s essential to underline that it’s best to invest time and possibly money in this type of content. Market analytics or any other profoundly technical type of writing demands precision and expertise. If you’re not confident that you have the right person for that task, there are websites where you can find the best writing companies on the web, so that you can hire a niche writer to do that for you. 

Market Automation

This step refers to a company’s ability to launch a management program that is designed to send emails, social media alerts, and texts to a large group of people. Visuals can be incorporated here by sending a picture of a product with a couple of features.

When sending out these messages, you can also send some live shots of this product in action or include video testimonials of people using your product. 

With this program, you can also use it to send reminders about any sales or upcoming events. However, you should try to limit emails to twice a week maximum, because most people will feel as though you are sending spam.

Incorporating Social Media into Your Marketing Strategy

Before explaining how to do this let’s look at some statistics

• Facebook has 2.7 billion monthly users
• Instagram has 500 million monthly users
• Twitter has 330 million users
• Snapchat has 203 million users
• Images on Facebook have 53% more likes than posts that are purely text

“Engagement through images leads to increased sales and shares. The trick to any content marketing campaign that involves social media is, at the end of the day, just to create content that is interesting and engages the audience.“ — Emma Burr, Marketing Specialist at Rated By Students. 

A great example of using social media in this way is the Wendy’s Twitter feed. It’s one of the funniest corporate feeds on Twitter and is known for taking jabs at a variety of other fast-food restaurants while promoting their company.

You can also get creative and take advantage of hashtags to help get your message out there or create a catchy slogan. Two other examples are the Dos Equis Most Interesting Man in the World and the Coca-Cola Share a Coke campaign. Both use interesting visuals that are great examples of content-based marketing.

Final Thoughts

By adding a variety of visuals to your marketing strategy, you increase the reach and effectiveness of the advertising campaign. Don’t be afraid to use data to create a variety of graphics, and mixing media is a smart move in this case.

Speaking of media, social media is a great place to advertise, whether you choose to ask influencers also to share things or not is up to you. However, with millions of people using social media, you can increase the effectiveness of your promotion through memes and other content that will engage the masses.