Digital marketing has become the mainstream communication channel in the business industry today. Experts have described content as the “king” of any organization’s marketing strategies. Writing articles online attracts more customers to your business since you’re offering them knowledge and getting their business in return. 

Content will always remain relevant to digital marketing, but it needs some additional elements to complement its influence. You can increase your website traffic by using more visuals in any article, thereby grabbing even random visitors’ attention. An adage states that one picture is worth a thousand words; the accuracy of this proverb is apparent from the importance of visuals in marketing.

Why are visuals important in marketing?

What makes visuals more attractive than the content itself? Statistics indicate that readers retain 10% of the written content, but they remember almost 65% of the visual information. Experts suggest that visual content is fifty times more likely to end up on SERPs than its text-based counterpart. We have just described to you the summary of why striking visuals are better than written content. GIFs, memes, videos, pictures, screenshots, and infographics, among many other variations – are just some examples of how visuals dominate digital marketing today. A modern-day marketer can’t even dare publish a blog that doesn’t have a picture (look at this one we’re writing). So, why are visuals so important today?

First, let’s discuss how visuals are created. What’s the process of making animations? Marketers realize that engaging animations easily capture the audience’s attention. It all starts with a script. The script will serve as your animation’s foundation, after which you can move to the storyboard. People often inquire about how to write animation script documents properly. It involves using the right tone and speaking in laypeople’s terms. Determine your key messages while ensuring the script is concise and to the point. 

As a result, your ads will stay longer in people’s memories. We will return to our discussion about the significance of visuals in digital marketing now. Below, we’ve explained their importance in a few simple points:

1. We’re visual beings

Biologists have concluded that humans are visual beings since our brain can process pictures 60,000 times faster than written content. In other words, you process images in milliseconds while needing one minute to read 300 words. That’s why audiences find visuals more appealing than a block of just text facing them. 

Scientists believe that 90% of the information received by our brain comes in visual shapes. No wonder video-based social media platforms such as YouTube and TikTok have become instrumental tools in today’s marketing arena. On Facebook, visuals are 65% more engaging than words. On Twitter, tweets with pictures can get 150% more retweets than text-only updates. So, utilize more pictures.

2. Grab people’s attention

Grabbing customers’ attention isn’t possible today without adding some visual elements. Let’s have it straight; every company exists for the same reason, i.e., to attract more customers. Marketers must discover more effective methods of getting everyone attentive to overcome the competition. That’s where visuals come in for your assistance. 

Images make you unique from your rivals and allow your customers to remember you. Don’t forget that visuals instill long-lasting messages in audiences’ minds.

3. Make messages memorable

Visuals survive in people’s long-term memory and enhance the efficiency of your messages. Hence, customers can easily recall your campaigns and connect with your products/services more deeply. 

Psychologists have explained that words are handled by a person’s short-term memory. But visuals are processed by our long-term memory, so they stick longer in our minds. Now, how to ensure that customers remember your advertisements? Use more visuals and make ads as graphical as possible.

4. Consider the ROI

Marketers can’t neglect the cruciality of ROI while discussing the benefits of incorporating visuals into their advertising strategies. So, a QuickSprout survey shows that image-based content increases your website’s organic traffic by 175% since pictures improve the site’s click-through rate. 

That’s why marketers are producing articles with relevant pictures to generate more traffic. You can merely consider the ROI to realize how visuals have become a must-have in digital marketing.

5. Visuals trigger emotions

Companies cannot advertise their products/services effectively without connecting emotionally with their customers. While watching your advertisement, your customers must have emotional reactions, so they’re sensitively motivated to purchase your products/services. Since visuals are processed by a person quicker than writing, videos/photos trigger an accelerated emotional response. 

You can also observe how GIFs, memes, and screenshots are massively shared on the internet and become “viral” easily since they’re better at triggering viewers emotionally. 

6. More social engagement

We discussed the word “viral,” which translates to better social engagement for business companies. You can engage more audiences by integrating visual elements into your content. Your content will gather a larger response when it’s relatable, and pictures add some relatability to your content. 

Likewise, insert more images into your social media uploads, making them more shareworthy. Marketers leverage online platforms such as Canva to make their posts more picture-friendly these days.

7. Communicate information effectively

Visuals make your messages more understandable, thereby communicating information effectively. The targeted audiences can respond better to your advertisement when they’ve understood it better. Marketers focus on creating informative, entertaining, interactive, and – most importantly – self-explanatory messages. 

Also, short videos are more effective than an immensely-lengthy presentation. So, keep the message brief and let the images do their magic.

Conclusion

We’ve established how visual content is more effective than written content. So, today you can’t fathom marketing strategies without incorporating audio/visual elements. Statistics indicate that human beings process visuals 60,000 times faster than writings. Buffer reports that visual content is also 40 times more likely to be shared on social media. No wonder two-thirds of social media updates are visual. So, a marketer must acknowledge that visuals have become extremely valuable to their digital marketing strategies.

Let’s recap the merits of the visuals we read before. Human beings respond better to visual content and can easily memorize the information offered graphically. Moreover, visuals trigger emotions, thus letting marketers convince readers to make purchase decisions. So, you can grab people’s attention by using more visuals and boosting views on your articles. That’s why digital marketing can’t survive anymore in this century without integrating visuals.