Show Me, Don’t Tell Me: Visuals in Marketing

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I’ve been talking with my team a lot lately about the need to “show me, don’t tell me”. Perhaps this is part of my Missouri roots (for those of you who didn’t catch the tie-in, Missouri is the “Show Me State”). But perhaps it’s just because I’ve recognized a sharp shift in the millennial/digital age’s preference of ways they learn about things. They like to see things visually, and have them reinforced with real words, rather than read some black-and-white text in a non-digital outlet.

Along these lines, I received a stock email the other day from Add This, which went over some great basic tips on ways to improve and use visual components in marketing. For the sake of my argument, I’ll let “marketing” mean anything from implementation to branding to traditional project management. I think it’s a great list and I definitely pull elements from each of these and try to reinforce and innovate my team to drive better visuals.

Here are the tips, courtesy of AddThis:

1. Use Online Tools to Help You Create Images: If you don’t have your own staff designer to help you create visuals, and you’re on a budget, you should check out online tools like Piktochart, Canva, and PowToon. They’re easy to use and are very effective at creating professional images and animations.

2. Create Charts and Infographics: One of the best ways to provide shorter form content is by creating charts, infographics, video or other visual content to accompany your text. The content becomes more easily digestible with the aid of visual treats. In addition to the resources listed above, Infogr.am is another great tool for creating infographics and charts.

3. Include Quotes/Facts in Images: Visually previewing what you’re promoting is a strategy we’ve found effective in our social media marketing. Tweets that include specific statistics or quotes tend to perform better than those without. Recite is an online tool that makes this easy. They offer a variety of templates to which you can add quotes. Buffer’s Pablo app is another easy way to do this with lots of customization options for your image and copy.

4. Use Higher Quality Photography: Marketers are trading in traditional stock photography for more authentic looking images. Here are some great high resolution free photography resources you can use for your everyday marketing needs.

5. Don’t Underestimate Video: Including video in landing pages is another great way to drive engagement. Facebook reports the amount of video posted by users (both individuals and brands) increased by 3.6X from January 2013 to November 2014. Sandwich Video is a great example of a company that does very creative videos for businesses. In addition to the free photo resources listed above, we also have video resources you can check out.

Til Next Time,

Michael