How to Make Images Your Most Powerful Marketing Tool

Modern marketing is essential to any business’ operations, making it even more critical that all marketing efforts are as effective as possible. Images can play a significant role in accomplishing this goal.

Let’s talk about how you can (and should) use images and other visual elements to make your content more engaging.

First: Why are Images Such an Effective Element for a Marketing Strategy to Include?

Using images makes a huge, measurable difference to your marketing’s impression-generating capabilities. It doesn’t matter how these images are shared; you just need to be sure that the image you use is relevant to the message.

By giving your audience images to associate with the information you are trying to convey, you can help incite a reaction in them… and this can be for multiple reasons:

• Images help grab your audience’s attention, as the brain processes them faster than written text. Have you ever noticed that reading a long, unbroken wall of text is more challenging than reading the same content, only with images to split it up?
  
  You might not have, as you may never have made it far enough down such a wall to take in its message. In this way, you can almost think of marketing images as your campaign’s gas station… they allow your audience to stop and refuel every so often, reinvigorating them to focus better on your messaging and to do so faster.
  
  
• Similarly, images are easier for the brain to comprehend, and since we inherently prefer the easier route, we’re just more likely to stop and engage with what we can process more easily. Images beat out words in terms of their simplicity, and so are the suggested strategy for many.
  
  
• It is also far easier to elicit an emotional response from your audience, which again helps retention and engagement but does so in a way that is easy to broadcast and encourages people to share. Again, the brain can absorb far more via an image, so use them to clarify and reinforce your messaging.  

How to Select the Right Image to Use

Of course, you need to ensure that your images accurately reflect your business, its brand, and the message you’re using them to convey. Additionally, those that can help stir up emotions have been shown to be more effective.

You just need to know what emotion you want to instill.

If you want to make your audience feel positive about the experience they could enjoy by working with you, use images that convey these positive emotions. Alternatively, if you want to remind them of the stress they often feel without you in their corner, sharing marketing materials with images that display this stress may be more effective.

Whatever approach you take, your images need to have certain elements. First and foremost, they should be high quality, as they will contribute to your brand’s reputation in your audience’s minds. Second, you must ensure you have the right to use the images you choose. That could involve taking these pictures yourself or obtaining the license to use them from reputable stock photo sources.

Best Practices for Using Your Images to Their Fullest Effect

Let’s review some best practices for your images to ensure the most return on your efforts.

Use Them Consistently

Not only do you need to use images in your marketing regularly, but you also need to use them in a way that helps your audience identify your brand. Perhaps you utilize a particular design or style frequently enough that it has become a part of your brand’s identity. Sticking to that style will strengthen your brand recognition, associating your business more closely with the lessons your marketing shares.

Optimize Them for Mobile

Most people use their mobile devices to do the vast majority of their browsing, so if you want your marketing to have an impact, it will need to work on any device on which it is viewed. This means your images need to be responsive, adjusting to match the size and resolution of the screen without compromising their quality.

Use Them to Guide Your Audience

One of the most significant benefits of an image is that it draws the eye, which means it can be used to pull attention to the points you want to highlight. Of course, there are multiple ways to do so, from using images to break up content and add context to it or providing an engaging background to make a page more interesting to look at and absorb. 

Images are an Asset to Your Marketing, So Use Them as Such

We can help. We can provide managed service providers with a comprehensive assortment of marketing services. Reach out to learn more about what we have to offer and what we can do for you by calling 888-546-4384.