With as many as ten percent of all photographs ever taken being snapped just in the last couple of years, it’s clear that almost everyone is in love with selfies. Therefore, it stands to reason that people are responding to imagery more strongly than ever before. But what does this mean for marketing?
In this article, we cover four reasons why it’s essential to use photographs in your brand’s marketing materials.
1. The Brain Processes Images Faster
Our brain doesn’t process text very quickly. This is evidenced by the slow reading speed of all but the most avid readers. Indeed, there’s a whole speed-reading niche where people teach methods to skim text quicker while managing to still retain most of the information.
By contrast, our brains process still images thousands of times faster. This is because we’re dealing with non-stop visual information with our brains figuring out what’s been seen. As such, we’re far more attuned to processing visual information and identifying key nuggets from it quickly.
Using only text instead of incorporating visual imagery within marketing messages simply goes against the grain of how our brains function best!
2. Photos Grab Attention Better
With article marketing, a blog post will perform better when it has an attractive thumbnail image and one or more full-width images in the body of the post.
The most relevant images convey the meaning of the article clearly. These images when professionally taken not only provide topical relevance, but they also add a level of authenticity to the information presented too.
3. Convey Statistics Faster & More Memorably
Using images to convey statistics in long infographics is an excellent way to get key points across quickly. While stats are usually buried in a long article and go unnoticed, an infographic uses the visual medium through a still graphical image to display useful information in a bite-size form. This is often provided using an artful presentation that leads the eye down and across the infographic to consume factual snippets faster.
4. Better Image Quality Improves Consumer Response Rate
When product images used in advertising are poorly lit, out of focus or simply undesirable, this badly affects how people react to them. When the person looking at the advertisement needs to order online, call a hotline or go to a nearby store to complete the purchase, they’re less likely to make the decision to do so.
Companies that invest in better product photography see a commensurably improved ROI versus businesses looking to cut corners to reduce their marketing budget. Similarly, when looking for images to use in a blog post intended to attract new buyers, using a reverse image search to find the original creator of the image makes it possible to license it. This way, the most evocative or eye-catching imagery that marketers spot online can be legitimately used in marketing campaigns later on.
For marketing professionals and really anyone who wants to create a powerful brand, the imagery does much of the early work for you. By choosing images that capture attention, companies can gain the mindshare on likely consumers sooner and achieve a higher ROI in the process too.
