A person spends 60,000 times more time recognizing a text than an image. Just think about it – not 60 times, but 60 thousand times! How to quickly show the product, service, and benefits to the client in all details and colors?
Visual communications & verbal
Modern marketing has more than five thousand different tools. At the same time, you have only 8 seconds to interest a potential client with your offer, to please and remember him.
Communication should be fast, clear, and imaginative. That’s why visualization comes first today. Visual marketing helps to perceive information faster, evoke emotions, appeal to the sensory experience of the client, and even create values.
It appeared in ancient Greece, around the 5th century BC. e. when one private shoe manufacturer put a brand with its symbols on the sole of the sandal.
If traditional marketing is a sales assistant, then visual marketing is needed so that we can quickly negotiate with the client.
We suffer from information overload. Each inhabitant of the metropolis receives 5,000 messages a day, and 3,000 of them are advertising. Brands often opt for aggressive marketing and continually bombard their customer with flashy text content.
But people perceive such messages as informational noise and, at best, ignore them. At worst, they block “spammers” forever. How to bypass competitors and get through to your client, be it b2b, b2c, or b2g? Use visual communications.
Almost all of us are visual: in 83% of cases, our learning visually takes place. The picture instantly affects a person at the cognitive and emotional levels. The formula VQ (visual quotient) -> IQ (intelligence quotient) -> EQ (emotional quotient) perfectly captures the metaphor: eyes, brain, emotions (heart).
Another problem with verbal communication is that for each participant, the word evokes personal images. Visual-graphic communication helps to interpret images unambiguously. The only problem here is to find an image that will be equally read by everyone. A simple example: ask several people to draw a dog. Everyone will portray her in their way.
Therefore, when creating visual images and choosing types of visual communications, try to focus on your target audience: the sociocultural level of users, their interests, age, and education.
Components of visual marketing
It would seem that the components of visual marketing are simple:
– logo (occupies no more than 10% of the entire media)
— graphic elements and photo style
— uniform design of websites and social networks of the brand.
But all this is just the tip of the iceberg. Before you develop a visual brand concept, you need to build it into your business strategy.
That is, you will have to start with a deep marketing audit.
At the same time, you need to analyze everything – from the USP and distribution channels to the plan for participating in events and the SMM strategy. Web designers say all aspects of visual marketing must be subordinated to the concept of your global marketing.
Still, marketing without sales is creativity for creativity’s sake. If the design could not attract attention and interest, then it is unlikely that it will force a person to perform a targeted action.
To make visual marketing a working tool, use the 5-step technology.
Step 1
Outline the main points of contact both with the external target audience and within the team, and determine their quality.
It is at the point of contact that your client decides whether to continue the relationship with the company or leave forever. If there are problems in communications, this is a serious signal for business.
First, analyze the points of contact within the team and then study the external ones.
Step #2
Collect the strongest arguments in favor of your product and company. Break them down into 4 blocks:
Company/brand: identify the advantages of the company.
Technology: Describe the uniqueness of the technology your business uses.
Professionals: the honor roll, the best employee of the month – all this is not just echoes of the past. This is how you tell the audience about your professional team.
Even giants like Mcdonald’s use these “mechanics”.
Service: Tell customers about the benefits of your service. Remember the main thing: service is everything that is connected with convenience.
Step #3
“Packaging” of argumentation, or translation from the language of specialists into the language of the target audience.
Here you will have to “go out into the field” and study in detail the process of creating a product at all its levels. It is important to get information from each employee, collect it in blocks, cut off the unnecessary and translate the rest into the language of your business partners and consumers.
Step #4
After all the arguments are sorted out, they need to be broken down into steps to purchase and create a marketing funnel.
To get what you want from marketing, you need to understand where to start. We all want the customer to know about our product and immediately buy it.
But between what I saw and bought there are a few more important subtleties. For your marketing to be successful, remember the main stages of the marketing funnel:
– found out
– learned more
– kept attention
– took action
– bought
– bought more.
Step #5
Finally, all the arguments are collected, the images are drawn, and the concept of visual marketing is chosen. You just have to “pack your fighters”. That is, to formulate simple and understandable ideas, to designate the concept of a product or service to your employees.
All this must be conveyed to them, providing them with all the necessary materials – catalogs, booklets, price lists.
Treat your staff as an internal client: if the employees of the company are imbued with your idea, they will become dedicated brand advocates.
Don’t forget about personalization. Almost every major brand is ready to provide its client with a personal manager, provide a personal loyalty program, etc.
This can and should be applied in any business, especially when it comes to selling services. Visual marketing will help you find the shortest path to the mind of the client – through arguments – and to his heart – through emotions.
