Visual marketing is an effective tool to use and when you bring your content and products to life in this way, it has the ability to transform your business.
Beautiful flowers and plants that tempt online customers to click the buy now button are a great example of a perfect candidate for visual marketing, which is why florist websites is popular with business owners looking to grab a share of the market.
Here is a look at some ways that could help you to make your visual content as effective as possible.
Worried About Your Design Skills?
Not all of us are born with a natural creative flair and you would definitely not be alone if you were worried about your design skills, but rest assured, everyone can be creative to a certain degree.
If you are a bit indecisive or unsure when it comes to typefaces and color palettes that harmonize and complement each other, the good news is that there are a number of user-friendly online tools that can help you create content that is aesthetically pleasing on the eye.
Canva is a good example of what is around. It normally scores well with users because it offers you the chance to have a go at creating your own visuals, but it also offers the guidance of a design school which is packed with tips and tricks.
One of the features that appeals to those who are worried about their lack of creative flair, is the ability to use a pre-made design layout and a set of pre-sized templates which are specifically design to be compatible with sites like Facebook, Pinterest and others.
Make it Personal
Stock photos are great to use as they are professional images and normally look great on your site, but the problem to consider is the fact that the same image can probably be found on a number of different websites, which definitely reduces the impact.
If you want to make the most of your visuals, it is often a better strategy to take your own photos. This helps to add a personal touch to your website and a homemade image can be quite compelling, so don’t be afraid to take this route and make it personal for maximum impact.
Use Image-Rich Tweets
If you are using Twitter to interact with customers and drive more people to your website, you want to try and make an impact and produce tweets which encourage people to share the content with others.
You can actually achieve more than twice the retweets when you use Twitter cards.
Twitter offers about nine different kinds of cards that allow you to produce image-rich tweets which are certainly not dull when they have an interesting or captivating image to support the text.
Animated GIFs Bring Your Website to Life
You should find that GIFs are quite easy to make and they are a visual tool that you should definitely make use of, as they work really well on your web pages and some social media sites.
You could use animated GIFs to bring a set of how-to tutorials to life on your website or as a way of enhancing a set of product images. Some people are a bit unsure about using GIFs in this way mainly because the file size for animated GIFs can be much larger than static images.
This does not have to be an issue, as you can make use of image compression to address that problem. If you want some help in creating an animated GIF, you could use a site like GIFMaker.me to give you the tools and guidance that you need.
Optimizing Your Images
Another area where some of us struggle from a technical perspective, is when it comes to optimizing and editing your images so that they look their best when loaded.
You can use a site like JPEGmini and others like it, to shrink an image without distorting the quality. Being able to reduce an image by as much as 80% without losing any visual integrity is something a graphic designer can do with ease, as so can you if you use a program to help you.
You can also find sites such as Social Media Resizer, which helps you with editing on social media platforms and should reduce the time spent getting it just right.
Using some of these tools will sprinkle some visual marketing magic over your work and could help to transform the results you get for your efforts to connect with customers.
Author
Ryan Freeman is a 5th generation small business owner, and has been helping small business clients with their online marketing.
