Marketing

Using Visuals to Boost Marketing Engagement 180%

April 7, 2014

Face it — your customers are busy and they WILL ignore your content if it doesn’t immediately catch their attention. To stand out, bestselling author Ekaterina Walter recommends thinking beyond the realm of traditional content formats and opening your eyes to the power of visual marketing.

As content marketers, many of us operate in a black and white world. We invest an enormous amount of time (and resources) into producing case studies, blogs, white papers, and eBooks, but often pay little attention to the visuals that accompany — or complement — that content.
According to renowned marketer Ekaterina Walter, that’s a big mistake. Just consider these numbers from Walter’s newest book, The Power of Visual Storytelling: How to Use Visuals, Videos, and Social Media to Market Your Brand:

  • The human brain processes visuals 60,000 times faster than text.
  • Web posts with visuals drive up to 180 percent greater engagement than those without.
  • Web visitors spend 100 percent more time on pages with videos, than those without.

The words you write are important — but it’s the visuals that amplify your content’s value and help you rise above the sludge of mostly garden variety B2B content.
“The reality is that it’s not enough to just create well-written, compelling content anymore,” says Walter, who left her post as a social media strategist for Intel in 2013 to co-found industry leading marketing platform BRANDERATI. “Customers have become incredibly adept at filtering content. If you don’t catch their attention in three seconds or less, your chances of driving engagement falls significantly.”

Amplify Content with Powerful Visual Storytelling

That’s where visuals come in.

Do you need help creating eye-grabbing content?

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The Beginner’s Guide to Stunning Visual Content


Offering useful, utilitarian content is incredibly important today, Walter says marketers must also consider the visual stories that would make that content more compelling. By using catchy photos, videos, infographics, or other rich visual media, businesses stand a far greater chance of prompting web visitors to take a load off and stay a while.
For instance, if you’ve got a white paper that’s full of great insight and advice, but engagement with that content is poor and conversion is low, Walter suggests pulling the most compelling information from that white paper to produce an infographic that gives your customers a very engaging, “snackable” sample of the bigger message.
“The idea is really to communicate context, relevancy, and personality,” Walter says. “Your company, brand, and product are deeper than a bunch of words on a page. So the question is, how can you use visuals to better tell your story?”

Why Going Visual is All About Being Complementary

While Walter fully believes in the power of visual stories, she cautions marketers against treating it like the next big fad. Visual storytelling isn’t a self-sufficient content marketing strategy, she says — it’s a complementary tactic.
“The last thing I’d recommend is for companies to only produce visual content,” Walter explains. “I think visual storytelling is incredibly powerful, but it’s most effective when it works in harmony with a comprehensive content strategy.”
So, rather than throwing all of your resources behind winning a B2B Oscar, Walter recommends diversifying your content creation efforts and sprinkling in visuals where they make sense.
“It’s not about focusing on one content format or one distribution channel,” Walter says. “It’s about thinking comprehensively, and making sure the content you produce is distributed in context. You can’t just produce one asset and plaster it everywhere. To really connect with people, you have to know your audience and respect the channel.”

See Ekaterina Present Live!

The Power of Visual Storytelling: How to Use Visuals, Videos, and Social Media to Market Your Business

Join us for our next free webinar, this Wednesday, April 9th at 12pm ET.
Digital marketing innovator and bestselling author Ekaterina Walter will be delivering a free presentation packed full with actionable insights and tips:

  • Learn how to use visuals to spark engagement and inspire brand advocacy
  • Discover practical tips and thought-provoking examples from a variety of companies and industries

The result: You’ll be empowered to grow your business and strengthen your brand by leveraging photos, videos, infographics, presentations, and more!

Wednesday, April 9th, 12:00 – 1:00 pm ET

Register now by clicking here!

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar. Note: By registering for this webinar you are agreeing to receive periodic emails from OpenView.
First 25 People to Register Get a Free Copy of Ekaterina’s New Book!
Register now to win a complimentary copy of The Power of Visual Storytelling, published by McGraw-Hill.
Don’t miss out on your chance to freshen up your marketing and grab your audience’s attention with the power of stunning visuals. Please share this invitation with anyone you think might be interested.
Image by SamsungTomorrow

Global Evangelist

After spending over 10 years as an integrated marketer and social media leader at Intel and Accenture, she was a co-founder and CMO of BRANDERATI (acquired by Sprinklr in 2014). She is also the author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller "Think Like Zuck" and "The Power of Visual Storytelling." While not enjoying fashion and a good book, she also maintains a very popular blog called <a href="http://www.ekaterinawalter.com/">Building Social Bridges</a> and is a member of Intel’s prestigious Social Media Center of Excellence. Currently she is the Global Evangelist at <a href="https://www.sprinklr.com/">Sprinklr</a>.