The importance of Visual Content in marketing

Photos, images and graphics enjoy enormous communicative reach. More generally, visual content marketing is a powerful and effective tool for catalyzing users’ attention.

Not surprisingly, the use of visual elements is essential in the creation of content that can communicate the desired message clearly and quickly. As we will elaborate further, visual content must follow a compelling logic to properly leverage visual storytelling and clear planning to achieve meaningful results.

Table of contents:
What is meant by visual content?
What is visual content?
Visual content, what benefits?
Visual content marketing and branding: what combination?
The tools for creating original visual content
Canva
Snappa
cBeFunky
The impact of quality hosting
What is meant by visual content?
A text content serves to inform and excite the user; a visual content serves to arouse emotions. All the more so when, nowadays, the attention threshold of users browsing the Web is getting thinner and thinner due to the overload of information that users themselves receive, and their consequent selective behavior.

In this context, visual communication gains increasing relevance especially in marketing strategies, as visual content is easy to “consume.” Shareable content is authentic, unique, engaging, and, in order to generate engagement, increasingly aesthetically curated. In fact, HubSpot research conducted in 2021 revealed that for 70 percent of companies investing in content marketing, visual content is a focal point of their strategies.

This is because visual marketing contributes significantly to increasing customer engagement and sales, as visual elements help make faster purchasing decisions.

What are visual content types?
We can distinguish different types of visual content, so let’s try to identify the most relevant ones from a marketing perspective.

Images. When an article is quite long, the inclusion of images can serve to lighten its reading.

Infographics. Statistics, reports and data represented through graphics can convey information more quickly and immediately.

Illustrations. Give your content a unique touch and stand out from the competition: illustrations can be creative, imaginative and original.

Video. It is one of the most powerful means of communication because of the high engagement rate it can generate.

Product images. Photos of catalog products can also make a difference in sales. To promote your products you need quality images to which you can match relevant descriptions.

GIFs. l Graphics Interchange Format (GIFs) were conceived in 1987, but only in recent years has the tam-tam of looping short videos begun on the web, especially on social media.

Visual content, what advantages?
What are the main benefits of using visual elements in content marketing?

• Visuals capture attention. Quality graphics can make even the most boring topic interesting and entertaining. Therefore, adding visual elements shapes dynamic content and increases user engagement.
• Images lighten textual content. Long, valuable articles are appreciated by Google. To make them more readable, however, we recommend that you include relevant images. In fact, the user more easily grasps the information conveyed through visual content.
• Visual content increases shares. Posts in which there are images and videos attract the audience’s attention; as a result, you are more likely to increase shares.
• Images can impact SEO. Visual elements with related Alt Text can show up on search engines and generate organic traffic.

Visual content marketing and branding: what combination?
Visual content is extremely important in building branding. Much depends on how it is used, but graphic elements can help create authority, increase traffic and generate more leads.

• Brand awareness: companies, over time, have increasingly emphasized visual content for the purpose of capturing attention and engaging users. According to LewisPR, content with images gets 94 percent more views than content without them. Even a simple image has the power to increase engagement: in fact, according to research, tweets accompanied by a photo get an average 35% increase in retweets and videos 28%.
• Lead generation: valuable, quality content is the best way to reach new customers. Proposing videos, e-books, infographics is a compelling way to establish a connection with leads.
• Employee bonding: visual content helps show your company’s personality and values in creative terms. This helps to weave a relationship of knowledge and loyalty with employees.

The tools for creating original visual content
There are a number of sites on the Web that offer free images, including Freepik and Pexels, which regularly add new images that you can share and, if necessary, edit. Alternatively, you may choose to rely on other tools that offer the ideal resources for designing your own visual content.

Canva
Canva is also an ideal design platform for those who are not very familiar with using graphic software. Social media posts, brochures, posters, business cards, presentations, infographics: already the free version provides the tools you need to create graphics with effects, filters, animations and more. In fact, Canva provides access to more than a million predefined photos, designs, fonts and templates that can be edited at will.

Snappa
Snappa is a cloud-based design app. It is an easy-to-use tool adopted even by non-professionals to create visual content for social media, email marketing and blog posts. It offers several preset templates that can be adjusted to the size needed. Unlike Canva, Snappa’s free plan allows the creation of only 3 graphic designs per month.

cBeFunky
BeFunky is an intuitive all-in-one editor that offers a large collection of tools and features for photo editing, collage creation, and custom graphics using the designer toolset. You can choose to start with a blank canvas or predefined templates, which can be modified as needed.

The Impact of Quality Hosting
Adopting a visual content strategy involves a number of choices and arrangements that are not marginal. The inclusion of graphic content can put a strain on your website’s performance. Nonetheless, slow loading of web pages negatively affects SEO, penalizing your project on search engines.

With this in mind, the choice of the space that will accommodate your content is important: opting for a service that includes the necessary features to ensure optimal performance in terms of speed and reliability for your website is crucial.