Content marketing is well-known for being the most effective marketing strategy today, which is why content itself is oftentimes referred to as king. But what makes content entitled to such a title? Simply put, content is the most valuable form of marketing, at least from the consumer perspective.
It can educate, entertain and inform consumers. Moreover, you can place a non-invasive advertisement in your content and it will be well-received. That being said, visual content seems to be more powerful than the rest of the formats, especially nowadays when consumers aren’t really fond of reading articles.
That’s why the use of infographics in your content marketing is extremely valuable and beneficial. Visuals in content, such as images and videos, have better engagement rates, thus providing you with more views, more shares, likes, click-through rates and so on. With that in mind, here are a few benefits of using infographics in your content strategy.
Visual information is processed faster
As you may already know, human beings are visual creatures. We process visual information in a much more effective way than we would process simple text. For example, 93% of all human communication is practically non-verbal.
70% of our sensory receptors are located within our eyes and our brain will proceed to process 50% of the information received by those receptors. That’s why humans process visual information around 60,000 times faster than they can decode textual information.
Aside from that, humans are able to retain around 10% to 20% of the information they’ve read. However, once that information is combined with visuals, humans are able to retain 65% of the information. Therefore, infographics are a great combination of both visual and textual information.
Their main benefits would be helping your customers understand something efficiently and faster. This is especially true if the information is educational, such as instructions for a product or service, statistical information about a topic and so on.
They drive engagement
As mentioned before, visuals combined with text can help consumers out a lot. As a matter of fact, consumers are able to follow instructions 323% more efficiently if visuals are involved. Therefore, infographics can be a real advantage to them. However, that’s not the only thing infographics can be beneficial for.
Infographics are visual content and such content is quite adapted at driving consumer engagement, which is very beneficial from a business point of view. That being said, compelling visuals can get the attention of 67% of your target audience.
Furthermore, messages optimized with visuals can generate up to 37% more engagement from targeted customers. This is especially true if the colors you pick for your content match that of your brand. By adding such visuals to your brand messages, consumers can clearly understand what you’re trying to say. They will, therefore, not just understand your content but also appreciate your messaging.
The power of visual design
As powerful as visual content can be, you can’t simply use any visual design and go with the flow. The design itself must be of top-quality, just like your content is. Otherwise, it will not have the same effect or the same impact.
Visual content marketing tools, such as infographics, memes and posters, can easily go viral and generate awesome exposure but only if they’re well-made. If you can’t make them as such on your own, you can always consult with companies such as Infostarters that can help you design your infographics the right way.
For example, aside from stunning visuals, your content must be syndicated in a clickable way so that it can help you create quality inbound links. Such backlinks can help you rank well and improve both your credibility and your online presence so make sure that your content is tagged with the appropriate meta and text descriptions.
Finally, your content that goes viral will boost your brand exposure and awareness, thus giving 60% more chances to be contacted for business purposes by your target audience. Last but not least, make sure your logo and business information are contained within the content so that consumers know where the content has originated from.
Thriving in the social environment
So far, we determined that infographics are beneficial for helping consumers understand various things and also for helping businesses drive various goals. However, the place where such content truly shines is social media platforms. Social media is used by every business out there and for a good reason. A strong presence on social media is extremely beneficial for any business today.
After all, nothing can help you get closer to your target audience than social media networks. Consequently, social media users prefer to consume visual content more than any other format. For example, using visual content marketing on Facebook can boost social engagement by 65% in just a month’s practice.
Infographics, in particular, can help you position yourself as an industry expert, as well as help you drive more social signals towards your business, in general. Another example is using information empowered by images, which infographics are a perfect paradigm of. Such attention-grabbing content on Twitter can generate 18% more click-through, 89% more likes and 150% more retweets.
Content marketing can greatly help your business out, especially infographics as one of the main tools of visual content. To reach business success, you must have your customers’ best interest in mind and one of the best ways to do so is with the help of amazing visual content.
