20 Visual Marketing Strategies That’ll Get Your Noticed Online

 

Visuals are all the rage these days and for damn good reason.

Our eyes are inundated with text!

We’ve become a society that’s too busy to invest in devouring words as a means of communication.

It’s why we shorten everything to acronyms.

It’s why we rely on scanning headlines and sub-headlines as a means of determining if deeper exploration is warranted.

Being swallowed in a sea of bright lights has become part of life for us.

Rather than fight that ‘Squirrel’ syndrome, we’ve adapted without even realizing it.

More than ever, visuals are the superior form of ‘pattern interrupt’ to the textual overwhelm of this technological era. Without realizing it we’ve come to rely on visuals to communicate with one another.

And why the hell not? I mean, if a picture can say in a brief moment what it takes 1,000 words to convey, why wouldn’t we?

Visuals have the power to evoke emotions in a visceral way. They can tell us whole stories in a fraction of the time reading would take, which makes them the perfect ‘pattern interrupt’ to use to get noticed online.

 

THE VISUAL MOVEMENT

The present day visual movement is proven time and time again with each new visual-based social platform that pops up. Pinterest may have gotten the ball rolling but Vine, Instagram, Snapchat, and SlideShare are all capitalizing on the same premise.

Visuals garner more attention!

The fact is, conscious or not, they’ve become our preferred mode of communication. Which isn’t surprising seeing as 90% of the information transmitted to our brain’s is visual.

The difference is, today you have the means to create kickass visuals all by your damn self, whether you’re a designer or not, so you’d be a fool not to use them.

Who better to learn the best visual marketing strategies from than the brands already out there dominating the visual scene?

 

LEARNING FROM THE PROS

I reached out to 20 visually savvy brands and asked them:

What’s your favorite visual marketing strategy and why?

I also had them list off the exact tools they use AND asked them to provide all the resources they have on the topic so YOU can bring their strategy to life for your brand.

Boy did they deliver. This is a visual marketing resource that leaves no stone left unturned!

Without further adieu, here they are…

 

Dustin W. Stout

Visual Marketing Strategy:

Custom Pinterest Images

Tools Used:

Adobe Photoshop, Social Warfare

Why:

As an early Pinterest skeptic I’ve greatly changed my tune over the last year as I realized just how powerful Pinterest can be for driving traffic. By creating a custom Pinterest image and uploading it through my WordPress plugin, Social Warfare, I am able to custom tailor how my blog post is shared on Pinterest to better capture users’ attention on the platform. By creating and uploading a Pinterest-specific image for every blog post I’ve written over the last year I’ve increased the amount of traffic coming from Pinterest by 1,937%. That traffic is also responsible for 13% of the email subscribers I’ve gained in the last year.

 

Dan Crask

Visual Marketing Strategy:

Tying together the product packaging and mobile web experiences for the consumer

Tools Used:

The brand’s packaging and website

Why:

Next time you’re out shopping, pause and look around. What percentage of people either have a smartphone in-hand, or are actively looking at their phone mid-isle? Shoppers are informing themselves right up to the moment of purchase and even after the sale, so it’s important that the brand have a mobile-ready experience – and a useful one – ready for them. Do you sell a product that needs to be replenished? Put a product-specific URL or (dare I say it?!) QR code on the package so that when it’s time to get more, the shopper can order more. Is your product best seen in action? Better put a prominent callout for your brand’s YouTube channel on the packaging too. Invite the customer to engage in your content right there in the store isle, and then again at home when they see your brand’s package on their in-home shelf. Tie together the product packaging and mobile web experiences for the consumer.

Here is an example of how I helped use this very strategy for a pet nutrition client of ours, Dinovite.

 

Sue Ann Dunlevie

Visual Marketing Strategy:

Templates for all my visuals

Tools used:

Canva and PicMonkey

Why:

I recently was talking to Dre – I invested in her 1-1 brand mentorship -and one of her recommendations was that I create 5 templates in Canva or PicMonkey to use for all my social media and blog images. I love this strategy because:

• It saves me a lot of time
• I don’t have to be creative every time I make a new visual
• I know my visuals will always look great
• My brand is represented consistently everywhere I have an image

If you look at my “Best of Successful Blogging” Pinterest board, you can see what I mean. Now you can spot my colors and brand when you are on any social media site.

Thanks for your help with templates, Dre!

 

Pauline Cabrera

Visual Marketing Strategy:

Custom Easy-To-Read Infographics

Tools used:

Photoshop

Why:

It’s my way of getting noticed. I don’t think I can publish a post without an infographic! Infographics help me generate lots of social media shares, attract more people and drive more traffic to my website. Most of my content go viral because of infographics.

But I don’t create those with too much elements or those really long ones. I like to keep my infographics short and simple because, for me, simple ones are more effective. They’re easier to look at and easier to read, which keep my readers engaged and motivates them to take action. Take my post about 100+ Blog Post Title Templates That Grab Attention – the infographic on this article got featured in The Art of Social Media written by Guy Kawasaki and Peg Fitzpatrick.

 

Paul Biedermann

Visual Marketing Strategy:

Brand strategy first, visual strategy second

Tools used:

Brain/Eyes/Heart/Hands > Pencil/Photoshop/InDesign/Illustrator

Why:

Because you can’t have a coherent visual strategy without first having a solid brand strategy. Your brand strategy provides the framework for what you are doing and the roadmap for what will come.

Visual content is one of a variety of tactics for executing on that plan — everything from your website to your business cards should follow suit as well. Any other approach is pure folly — you may get likes and shares, but they will be largely meaningless so the numbers ultimately don’t add up for your business. And that’s bad marketing.

This is also why the tools used are way down the list of importance in my book. Much more critical is the big picture view of what you are trying to accomplish and how your visual strategy fits within those overarching goals, and then utilizing good branding and design principles to achieve that vision.

 

Juile Harris

Visual Marketing Strategy:

Branded Social Calls-To-Action; Pin it buttons, click to tweets, and subscription boxes.

Tools used:

Adobe Photoshop, Click to Tweet, Pin-It Button Pro Plug-in for WordPress

Why:

When readers, clients, or followers come in contact with your site, branded social engagement adds to the over unique experience when they interact with your content. They are still using the traditional social sharing elements, but with a special “you” twist.

It helps create a fun visual consistency across my brand and content while motivating social calls to action to help promote my content and engage my readers. Instead of the traditional “Pin it” button, try creating a special branded “Pin It” button, or instead of the normal “click to Tweet” plug in, try creating a fun branded image with a quote that flows with the branding of your site that when clicked, sends out a Tweet, Pin’s to their boards, or sends them someplace new. Mess around with your sidebar social links too. It’s fun to think out of the box when it comes to letting people know where else to engage with us.

Examples: Erika Madden + byRegina’s Click To Tweet custom images
Examples: Design Your Own {Lovely} Blog’s Pin It Button
Personal Example

 

Kristie Hill

Visual Marketing Strategy:

Multiple “pins” per post

Tools Used:

Pinterest, Adobe Illustrator/Photoshop

Why:

I started creating multiple pins (graphics used on Pinterest) for the same post as an experiment. I was trying to see what type of pins performed better than others + discover my style. What I found in the process is that having 2 or 3 different pins for the same post is very beneficial. I am able to target different audiences by creating different pins. For example, for my post on how bloggers make money I created these two graphics:

The one asking “How do Bloggers Make Money?” was directed at non-bloggers and beginning bloggers. Whereas the one that says “The Top 5 Ways Bloggers Make Money” tends to draw in all bloggers.

Having 2 different pins also helps in my Pinterest strategy the week I publish the post. It allows me to post the pin on a variety of boards without boring my followers with the same pin. For a recent Google Analytics post I created these two pins to market the post:

 

The background picture is the same, I just changed the color of the overlay and the text.

Sometimes I create a new pin for a post a while after I published it. This is a great way to revive an old post or re-market a post that didn’t do so well the first time you pushed it on Pinterest. If you have a stellar post that isn’t getting the Pinterest traffic it once was, create a new pin for it. If you have a post that didn’t get much traffic the first go around, try creating a new pin for it. Pinterest can be the traffic source that keeps giving if you work it right. Creating a few pins is my new favorite way to market on Pinterest.

 

Anna Bennett

Visual Marketing Strategy:

Add branded logo on every blog image

Tools Used:

Canva

Why:

I really like this strategy for three reasons:

1. For brand recognition on all social platforms for visual consistency
2. It helps me to stand out on a Pinterest user’s home feed, I’m instantly recognizable
3. A powerful, obvious signature look helps prevent my work from being stolen

 

Louise Meyers

Visual Marketing Strategy:

Bulk scheduling image tweets. Images rock on Twitter, but their shelf-life is short, and it’s time-consuming to retweet them. Instead of coming up with new images, or re-uploading previous ones, just copy your tweet with the image embedded already!

To do this, you need to go to your Twitter profile and click on the “View Tweet Activity” icon under the desired tweet. Copy the text at the top of the popup box, including the pic.twitter link. Then paste into your HootSuite scheduler, or even into an Excel file with others, where you can schedule and reschedule a week’s worth of tweets in minutes!

Tools Used:

HootSuite

Why:

Tweets with images get double the engagement, and bulk scheduling saves tons of time!

 

Marianne Manthey

Visual Marketing Strategy:

My favorite visual marketing strategy is using beautiful, pinnable images with my blog post titles

Tools Used:

I use a mixture of Photoshop, Canva and PicMonkey as well as gorgeous fonts and graphic kits

Why:

It’s my favorite strategy because my images usually catch people’s attention on Pinterest which in turn brings me plenty of website traffic. In fact, Pinterest is by far my biggest source of incoming social traffic.

 

Thomas E. Hanna

Visual Marketing Strategy:

Pre-Promotion Graphics To Build A Notification Circle On Google+

Tools:

Canva or Photoshop

Why and How:

On Google Plus, there has been a long-standing debate about whether it is better to share articles with an attached graphic and the link in the intro, or to share articles using the automatically generated clickable image cards. In general, the graphics are capable of greater screen real estate and thus drive more engagement, whereas the image cards drive less engagement but higher click-through rates (these cards show up just by sharing the link without uploading an image.)

My strategy aims to maximize both. The day before I publish an article, I share a teaser intro on Google Plus with the graphic. In that intro, I include a call to action that tells people to plus the post or leave a comment to be notified when the article goes live. Those that engage with the pre-promotion graphic are then added to a notification circle. When I publish the article and share it the next day on Google+, I include the link (which generates the clickable image card) and set it to notify that circle by email. This dramatically increases my article engagement and boosts my clickthrough rate, effectively driving more traffic to the article.

 

Carrie-Anne Foster

Visual Marketing Strategy:

Use social media cover photos to encourage email sign ups

Tools:

Any social platform that allows you to add a comment to your cover photo

Why:

Given the amount of time most people spend on social media it just makes sense to use your social media cover photos to attract email subscribers. Include text on your cover photos describing your opt-in gift, and then include the link in the photo description. I use this method to win email subscribers on Facebook and Google Plus. It’s that extra bit of advertising that you don’t have to pay for, and makes maximum use of the space in your cover photos/text area.

 

Julie C. Stoian

Visual Marketing Strategy:

Custom email blasts every time I post a new blog post. Whereas the RSS driven campaigns are efficient, I like to be able to customize the look and feel of each email so as to optimize the content I’m sharing that week.

Tools Used:

Mailchimp

Why:

I tried doing the monthly/weekly newsletter, and found that listing more than one post in a newsletter got less engagement. So then I tried doing the RSS driven campaign, but unless you really want to get your hands messy with code, you have limitations on the design. By creating a template, it only takes me a few minutes after each post goes out to make a nice custom email that I can send or schedule whenever I want. Then I can decide where exactly I want my jumpbreak, what images to include, and how to get it so people open it, read it, and click!

Here’s an epic Mailchimp tutorial I created about using html to quickly make your Mailchimp emails look nice.

 

Tor Refsland

Visual Marketing Strategy:

Custom blog post pictures

Tools used:

Canva

Why:

In the start when I was a total newbie I spent way too much money on buying pictures on the big picture deposit sites. Why did I do that? Because all the other big bloggers did that.

Why did I change over to custom blog post pictures? Because when you look like everyone else, there is no way people will notice you, and you will have no brand identity.

If you try to copy the design and brand from other well-know blogs, do you know what that makes you? A poor copycat. You want to attract the right clients? You want to carve your place in the overcrowded blogosphere?

The answer to both questions above is the same.

You have to stick out. How can you do that? By being yourself. That is why I choose to customize my blog posts, so there is a familiar theme to it and a common brand identity.

Why do I use Canva?

Reason 1: Easy and fast to use
Since I am a time management expert, everything I do either saves me a lot of time or gives me a huge ROI (return on investment).

Canva makes me create a blog post picture in 5 minutes max. That would probably have taken me 30 minutes+ to do in Adobe Photoshop / Illustrator.

Reason 2: It makes me look good

I have to openly admit that I am no skilled designer or illustrator. Heck, who am I kidding? I suck at it.

From a scale from 1-10, I am probably a 1 or 2 when it comes to designing pictures and make them look good. However, Canva works like an optimizer, making my pictures look like I have the skill of 5 or 6. In short words: Canva makes my designer skill go from VHS-quality to Blue-Ray quality.

Reason 3: It`s free! I love good free resources.

Conclusion:
Canva helps me save A LOT of time, while pimping my stuff like only Xzibit could have done.

 

Elizabeth Kelsey

Visual Marketing Strategy:

Creating pinable content, by that I mean blog posts that contain an image with clear copy and branding.

Tools Used:

Picmonkey, Canva, plus my own photos, or ones I find on free stock photography sites such as Unsplash.

Why:

Pinterest is my top source for traffic, and it’s due to my optimizing my blog for this image-friendly platform.

 

Lou Bortone

Visual Marketing Strategy:

Creating video montages and sharing them to Facebook

Tools Used:

Animoto.com and/or Stupeflix.com. (And, of course, Facebook)

Why:

When you create photo/video montages of your clients or colleagues, it works on many levels: First, you’re featuring others and making them the star of your video. Next, by posting the videos on Facebook, you can tag the people you feature in the video, so the video shows up on their Facebook wall, as well. (Only do this with peeps you know, and who will be okay with you tagging them!)

Once you tag your friends and share the video, chances are they will like and comment on the video. (After all, they’re in the video!) This creates enormous visibility, goodwill and fun all around! The clients get a kick out of being featured, while you’re enjoying all the buzz of having your video plastered all over Facebook! Everyone wins!

Both have free versions and are very user-friendly. Just upload your photos, pick a theme or template, add music and click “create.” The video sites quickly produce a slick, professional video montage that you’re ready to post.

I’ve got an entire video webinar featuring this tactic along with numerous other cool video marketing strategies. You can check out the video tutorial for free HERE.

 

Ian Anderson Gray

Visual Marketing Strategy:

Twitter Lead Generation Cards to increase email newsletter sign ups

Tools used:

Mailchimp (or other email newsletter service)

Why:

I use Twitter lead generation cards to boost the number of relevant sign ups to my email newsletter. The cards make it really easy for people to sign up for my newsletter with a clear call to action. I also found that pinning a tweet with the lead generation card on Twitter increased the number of sign ups significantly.

 

Mike Allton

Visual Marketing Strategy:

Branded Blog Post Images

Tool Used:

Canva

Why:

I am a writer. Not just a blogger, but someone who is passionate about writing and teaching. But even great blogs need great images, so I was determined last year to improve my blog post images.

At the time, I’d been sourcing images from the Internet (adhering to all copyright laws, of course), and had begun to edit the images to include some amount of text. But my graphic design skills are awful. I was relegated to using Mac Preview and adding basic text and virtually no other elements or image editing other than size.

But then my entire blogging world shifted 45 degrees. I saw Peg Fitzpatrick and Rebekah Radice talking about this amazing new graphic design tool called Canva. I started to play with and immediately saw a dramatic improvement over what I’d been doing.

So I started building every blog post image in Canva. Those first images weren’t great, to be sure, but they were obviously better then what I’d been doing before. And as I went, I continued to learn about the Canva platform, as well as what makes for a great blog image. I studied those ladies and others, and came to realize the importance of branding within your blog images.

Once I’d reached a certain skill level, I set to create a brand template for myself. Fortunately, my wife is a great graphic designer. She designed the look and feel of my logo and website, as well as my book cover. I took elements from those and created a reproducible style of image within Canva – a template. Here’s a blog post where I wrote about how I used Canva to create an entire series of graphics for promoting my book.

My blog post image template within Canva is a combination of colors, font choices, branding and visual elements. There’s a space for text, as well as a background image that might be a photo or a screenshot, or just a texture. And now every blog post image has a consistent look & feel that is recognizable.

I think this is an approach that every business needs to take to blog images. It has helped establish and maintain a brand image on social media. It has presented blog content in a more meaningful and professional way
It has saved time. And that’s really what it boils down to. Creating one or more templates for yourself within Canva will help you create better blog images faster. Who doesn’t want that?

 

Mallie Hart

Visual Marketing Strategy:

Lift Lame-ish Stock Photo Lurgy … With Layers!

Tools Used:

I’m an Adobe Fireworks fan girl, so that’s my tool of choice when it comes to ending the lame-ish lurgy that plagues many a stock photo purchaser.

Why:

Let’s face it, every visual marketer AND every graphic designer has to, at some point, rely on stock photography. Stock photos have earned a sometimes well-deserved bad rap, but I’d like to boost them up with a little love today.

Adding layers to add pizazz and branding elements to stock photos is one of my favorite visual marketing strategies.

The careful addition of layers takes often flat and listless/lifeless stock photography to the next level, while also allowing you to brand enhance the image with your colors, graphic effects and logo.

How do I do it?

1. I create a blank canvas in Fireworks with the sizing specific to my end use of the image.
2. Import the stock photo and resize or crop as needed.
3. Layer it up! This includes any, not necessarily all, of the following options:

Adding a textural overlay, be it dots, argyle, hex, checkerboard … what have you. Opacity determined by the stock image and other layering effects used.

Adding a gradient, using my brands color scheme, of course. I have several gradients set up as templates and I alter each one specifically to fit the image in use. Same thing goes for opacity.

Text layers. I don’t think these need any explanation.

Logo layers. Gotta brand that shizz, right?

I use this system with every graphic I create. Sometimes it’s as simple as adding just the logo to brand the end product, a two-layer wonder … so to speak. More involved lame-ish lurgy battles might require five or more layers.

In the end it’s all about making the most of the very imagery we are often forced to work with. Of course, you can also apply layers to give extra oomph to the images to carefully create with your own camera or phone.

I’m sharing two examples here, so you get the visual va-va-voom along with the written word. Whadaya think? The layers add a little something-something, don’t they?

 

 

Chris Hufnagel

Visual Marketing Strategy:

Using images with my Tweets

Tools Used:

Pixelmator (mac), IconFinder, The Stocks, Buffer

Why:

Using this strategy I have been able to drive targeted traffic to specific landing pages. The landing pages are converting 10.7% of the traffic into subscribers and the rest are turning into blog traffic.

This strategy has also helped me grow my twitter following to over 6,200 followers in just 3 months! My tweets are retweeted and clicked on more than ever! The tweets with images are getting clicked on 150% more than the ones without.

 

Ileane Smith

Visual Marketing Strategy:

Revive an old blog post with a new image

Tools used:

Pinterest and Google Analytics, iStock Photos, Canva

Why:

With over 500 posts on my blog there’s always an old post that’s in need of some new love. I’ve found that the best way to revive evergreen content and introduce it to a new audience is through Pinterest. One of my favorite examples is a post that was written in 2011 called Why Most Bloggers Never Make Money.

When I checked Google Analytics I could see that this article (a guest post by my friend James Pruitt) was bringing in quality traffic to my blog but I knew that it could do better. I started with a stock image that I got from iStock (for free), I uploaded it to Canva and used one of their awesome blog image templates.

I find it incredible that to this day, a simple image consistently drives traffic to my blog from Pinterest and all I had to do was drag and drop a cute stock photo onto an eye-catching template in Canva. This screenshot from Pinterest Analytics gives you a small sampling of how effective this strategy is for me.

 

 

WRAP UP

Can I get a ‘Oh hell yeah’ kinda high five for all this visual badassery?!

20 result inducing visual marketing strategies straight from the horses mouth. Oops, did I just refer to these rockstars as livestock? My bad!

Real talk, if you want to grow your business and reach new levels of success do yourself a favor. Choose ONE of these strategies right now and go get er done. You’ve got no excuses now.

There are rewards right on the other side of that strategy that can get you one step closer to your loftiest entrepreneurial dreams. Chose the right visual secret sauce for your biz and drizzle that shit all over your brand building chops.

I double dog dare ya!

To the badasses that contributed to this post. To you I say, you f’ing ROCK!! Thank you for generously sharing your visual secret sauce with us. You’re good karma bank just got a little bit richer. BAM!

ONE MORE THING before you go…