We are always on the lookout for creative ideas for doing standard things. Standard things like annual reports of companies. Enter Warby Parker and its application of creative visual design content to its most recent annual report.
A creative mind is like a parachute. It doesn’t work if it is not open.
Never heard of Parker Warby? As they write on their website, Warby Parker was founded with a rebellious spirit and a lofty objective. The objective was to create boutique-quality, classically crafted eyewear at a revolutionary price point.
Eyewear with a purpose
Almost one billion people worldwide lack access to glasses. This means that 15% of the global population cannot effectively learn or work – a problem that Warby Parker is determined to address. They’ve partnered with non-profits like VisionSpring to ensure that for every pair of glasses sold, a pair is distributed to someone in need.
Eyewear startup Warby Parker just released its 2013 Annual Report, a perfect example of how important tone is in creating great visual content. This very different approach to a year-end report uses a calendar format, highlighting company events on each day. Some events are significant company milestones; others are little anecdotes showcasing office life and culture.
Wow … what a change from the typical financial results and strategic initiatives that typically fill the pages of annual reports.
The report is an excellent example of a brand showcasing its ideas, creativity, and culture in a visually engaging way. At its core, the strategy of content marketing is not just about distribution and visibility. It is about telling the world who you are and what you stand for. This design goes a long way in turning customers into brand advocates.
The design shows how to empower your content. So many companies just don’t take advantage of their great content, or they don’t know how to present their content in a creative way. Often, in the end, they are fighting for survival as we all are. However, brands that can express their personality, their creativity, and passion, and manage their content in a way that speaks to people will create loyal customers.
Types of visual content.
Here are nine important takeaways all brands can learn from Warby Parker’s design approach to creating great content.
Push the edge to be different
What does the Warby Parker (http://www.warbyparker.com/annual-report-2013/#march-11 class trip have to do with eyeglasses? What does it matter? It is an interesting story, and Warby Parker uses the story to illustrate its personality and culture. Your content should be relatable, valuable and interesting for your audience. If you capture these qualities, your marketing will create a captive audience with ever-increasing brand loyalty.
First and foremost, prioritize visual design in your efforts. Presenting your content in a visual format has some benefits. First, humans recognize and process images much faster than text; this is why visual content has much greater appeal. A study by 3M showed that 90% of the information sent to the brain is visual, and visuals are processed 60,000 times faster than text.
Utilize visual design.
Second, using a diversity of image types makes your content continuously fresh, which encourages readers to explore more. In the Warby Parker design the combination of photography, illustration, videos, and data visualization keeps the eyes interested and moving around the page. More time on site means more engagement with your brand.
Apply data in comparison
If you are going to visualize data, display a comparison—that is what makes the visualization more meaningful. The infographics revolution has brought with it many missed data visualization opportunities in the form of single-data-point pie charts and big numbers with fancy typographic treatment. Distilling data into a statistic removes the context and comparison that makes it insightful. Don’t fear complexity; take advantage of the opportunity to add clarity with many visualization design elements.
Show your personality
Business is becoming increasingly personal—not in the waiter remembers my name sort of way, but more in the way that we crave more personal connection in a web-based world. People want to know that the businesses they support are run in a way they can relate to, that its employees are people they might hang out with and potentially even someone who could become a good friend.
Marketing content is all about making connections. Your level of success has a lot to do with how your readers react to what you write. People connect with your brand because they relate to what you’re saying to them. They want to feel that your content is specifically crafted with their interests and needs in mind. In other words, it should feel personal.
Show off your people
Your customer community wants to know that there are humans behind your brand, and they want to know more about them as people. Don’t make the mistake of hiding your people, relationships, interactions, and office pranks behind a shield of professionalism. These things are most often as interesting as your products and services … and certainly as how much money you made last year. In today’s marketing landscape, whether you are a product or service-oriented business, you are selling your culture, and your culture is your people.
The growth in content consumption is not just because people are looking for a satisfactory distraction from work. Customers have an appetite for real, interesting information. The vast knowledge-sharing that the web has facilitated has brought with it an increased curiosity and hunger for understanding. Don’t believe that everything you do at the back end of your business is boring. Turn it into engaging content that will deepen your customers’ understanding of what your world is all about.
Create emotion
In his book, Contagious, Wharton professor Jonah Berger showed that one of the key reasons people share creative content is because it arouses a person’s emotion. His point is… content has to go beyond just being useful; it has to be unforgettable. Rather than trying to churn out quantity, take the time to figure out what kind of emotions move your audience.
In doing so, it’s important to remember that not all emotion is created equal. In his research, Berger identifies that certain kinds of emotions – those that get people “aroused” like awe, passion, and anger – are much more likely to drive shares than those that make people feel toned down – like sadness, relaxation, or contentment.
Don’t be afraid to shake things up.
Integrate products/services naturally
Your products and services don’t have to be ignored. In the midst of all the other ways to add to your design, you often can overlook them. Feature your product or service naturally within content, but don’t make it an abrupt deviation from the other fun stuff. This means that you will want to tone down your calls-to-action and any other hard-sell tactics. Use them as an opportunity to remind viewers what you do, without killing all those good vibes you have been building.
Share how you are awesome
One important element of marketing is about bringing attention to how awesome you are. However, this doesn’t mean your awesomeness-recognition abilities should be limited to your pursuits. Calling out the big (and little) wins of others—vendors, customers, ex-employees, maybe even competitors—shows that you are not afraid to give credit where it is due. This fresh perspective will add authenticity to your content.
Amplify who you are
Your content is a perfect place to let your audience know why you do what you do. Clearly articulating the values that give your company meaning helps you connect with people on a level beyond the business transaction, and it attracts people that share those same ideas. This powerful means of communication helps truly differentiate your brand—more than low prices, and fancy features could ever do.
Do you have a lesson about making your content creation more creative you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
So what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is there is no conclusion. There is only the next step. And that next step is completely up to you.
It’s up to you to keep improving your ability to learning to learn. Lessons are all around you. In many situations, your competitor may be providing the ideas and or inspiration. But the key is in knowing that it is within you already.
It’s up to you to keep improving your continuous learning from all around your environment.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new lessons.
When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.
Need some help in capturing more improvements for your staff’s teamwork, collaboration, and learning? Creative ideas in running or facilitating a teamwork or continuous learning workshop?
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy continually improving your continuous learning?
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.
More reading on learning from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
The Nine Most Valuable Secrets of Writing Effective Copy
How Good Is your Learning from Failure?
10 Extraordinary Ways for Learning to Learn
Continuous Learning Holds the Keys to Your Future Success
Content is evolving, there is no doubt. No longer are white papers the secret to inbound marketing success, visual is becoming the norm. Get ready to kick the tires and light the fires around your digital marketing images design. We show you how to effectively utilize digital marketing images like infographics, video, visual note-taking, memes, and even Instagrams in your marketing campaigns.
More on image tools: Enhancing Graphical Content: My Favorite 8 Tools to Achieve
When it comes to visual content, your customers expect something very different compared to just a few years ago. It is now supercharged by mobiles and visual social media networks.
It used to be OK to have a static website gallery, post text to your social channels, and use corporate photos and videos online. Not ant more. Now, readers depend on visuals to figure out whether your content is worth their time.
According to a survey of 300 online marketers, stock photos are the most popular form of visual content, used by 35% of those surveyed.
Original graphics, including infographics, were used 30% of the time.
Videos and presentations, charts and data visualizations, and GIFs and memes made up the rest.
Interestingly, even though stock photos are used most often, they were reported to get the lowest engagement next to GIFs and memes. However, since you are probably most likely to choose stock photos, be sure to try to choose wisely. Look for photos that tell a story, add interest, and haven’t been used by every other marketer out there.
Another thing that is interesting, while 60% of marketers believe visual content is essential to their 2017 marketing strategy, for 56% of marketers, only 20% of their marketing budget was allocated to producing visual content.
Expectations of consumers have changed too. They no longer have time to click through to an image or link to see what your content is about. They make split-second decisions based on the visual content provided.
So whether your content is being consumed within social channels or on your website, visual content remains a powerful tool – but only if done correctly.
More to learn: 12 Fundamental Laws of Content Marketing
Here are some fresh thinking ideas on digital visual content marketing design:
Digital marketing images … credible always
The law of credibility states that your customers must be willing to stand by your brand by publicly aligning themselves with it.In layman terms, if your customers are posting images and sharing their experiences, they should be linking back to you or tagging you in their social media updates.
Think about it. What would you trust more? An image or video shared by a company showing how happy and satisfied their clients are? Or the same thing shared by one of their customers?
Here is an excellent example. Dole is an international brand which markets and distributes fruit including pineapples, bananas, and pawpaws. They often get their customers to share content from events or at home consuming the product.
When we go online, most of the content we consume is from the last few days. Content from last week is practically unreachable unless you’re looking for something specific. And content from last year has become history so ancient; it might as well be obsolete.
Skeptical? Try to disprove it.Go to your favorite social network. Open it up and take a look at your home feed. Can you find a post from last week in the first 25 updates?
Notice something else? The only way you can tell how recent a post is is the time stamp on them. Posts from today will either have the time they were published visible or tell you how long ago the post was made. E.g., an hour ago, five hours ago, yesterday.
For your content to be relevant, it has to be recent. The best way to do that is by time stamping your content or featuring topical events.
Show lots of personalities
For too long brands have been bland and boring. Think stock photos.
Thankfully, the recent developments in visual content make it easy to bring a brand to life.
The right visuals, including photos, videos, infographics, and e-books can add depth to your brand story and reinforce your culture.
One of the easiest ways to do so is to give your customers a “behind the scenes” look. Show them what goes into making or marketing your brand, post pictures from office events, maybe even how you brainstorm. The more your customers know about the culture of your company, the more your brand’s personality will shine through.
Maintain authenticity
People are more likely to trust a referral from a friend or relative than a company.
In fact, research has shown Millennials are even more likely to trust a complete stranger than a company. It’s why user-generated content is considered far more compelling than any content a brand produces.
Photos and videos from your customers tell the real story of your brand and are far more effective.
NZone is an extreme sport (skydiving) company. Customers who share personal pictures of their experience increase authenticity and can instill trust for anyone considering making a purchase.
When content says the thing people want or need to hear, magic happens, doesn’t it?
How about a great example?
Visual content examples.
In 2013, H&R Block, with their agency Fallon, responded to something they heard while interviewing consumers. What people seemed to care about most was getting taxes done right and getting every dime they are owed back.
The creative bomb that went off birthed the now famous, “Get Your Billions Back America” campaign, which launched at the start of 2014.
It was a message consumers heard, understood and were instantly captured by.
The genius of the campaign lies in what isn’t stated. There’s no reference to Block’s size and some locations. No mention of total refunds they’ve secured for their customers. No detail about their processes, services, prices or proficiency of their accountants. It was not about selling H&R Block, was it?
No noise, interference or distractions.
Sure, these things matter. But every accounting firm markets around the obvious things that make them great. Block took an alternative route and marketed around what people want – a message that gets them what they deserve.
Although very few of us can claim to fulfill such a tall order on a consistent basis, there are companies out there who have completely revolutionized how people see them – so that they’re no longer just another “me too” player in a crowded sphere. Wouldn’t that be great to join that crowd?
Visual content needs to be presented in context. It has to be relevant, informative and well organized.
So if you’re selling a product online, you need to provide corresponding visual content for it. Make sure you place relevant content in the right place.
For example, if you are selling a particular line of clothing not only do you need to place photos of that on the right web pages, you also need to place the correct user-generated photos on the right web page, which in this case may involve your customers with those clothes in a real-life situation.
Superette is an online retailer. They take care of this by linking customer photos to their products.
Digital marketing images … give an awesome caption
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a caption or headline can often bring it further to life.
There’s no denying that we process visual content faster than text-based content. But a simple caption is often required to tell a visual story more effectively.
A caption also helps you communicate your brand’s identity. For example, if your brand focuses on making things easy and fun for your customers, then the caption can be humorous.
The Press, a daily newspaper, ran a photo competition and asked their readers to submit their best backyard cricket photos for a World Cup promotion. One user submitted the image below with a caption that made a photo infinitely more interesting.
Consistency is essential
Apart from engaging customers, the role of visual content is to reinforce your brand. For that to happen, your content needs to have consistency.
This isn’t strictly new, but it’s worth reinforcing. We’re not referring to publishing visual content consistently. It’s more about elements in your visuals that tell your target market that the visual is from your company – even if you’re not linked or tagged in it.
You can do this by using the same:
Fonts and colors as your website
Images in your company’s social media accounts and profile page headers
Design element like a background, banner, or logo.
Customers should be able to recognize the content is from your brand at a glance. All Blacks, New Zealand’s national rugby team, have their photos naturally branded. Whether their visuals are from their team or fans, they all include the All Blacks in one form or another.
Relationships start with being social
Your customers expect to be able to interact with your visual content – whether it’s on your social channels or your website. Make it easy for them by providing them opportunities to comment on your content, share them easily on their preferred social networks, and even email the content to their friends if they want to.
Social experience doesn’t end here though. Your customers also expect you to acknowledge their efforts. If they’ve left a comment, reply to it. If they’ve shared on social media, thank them for it. Find a way to make it worth their while, and they’ll continue giving your visual content the same attention.
Interislander is a very useful example. It is a ferry service ran a photo contest that asked their customers to share their favorite Interislander memory on their website or Instagram and tag them.
Content never sleeps, and neither does your online presence. Visual content is not a campaign that ends in a few days or weeks. It’s not a one-off thing. It’s an on-going strategy.
Make creating, publishing, and maintaining visual content a key part of your marketing strategy.
Quality wins every time
With cell phone cameras getting better and better by the day, customers have learned to take great photos and videos themselves. And with the numerous filters available through Instagram and others, it’s possible to source high-quality content from your customers.
The good news is, you can use that content and combine it with your in-house efforts to help with your marketing activities.
The bottom line
The days of the old website photo gallery are far behind us. When done right, visual content can drive traffic to your site, increase page views, lower bounce rate, and convert website traffic into sales.
Use these ideas for visual content to up your marketing game and grow your business. Ignore them, and you risk becoming obsolete.
Need some help in capturing more customers from your marketing strategies? Creative ideas to help the differentiation with potential customers?
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy improving your marketing, branding, and advertising?
Do you have a lesson about making your marketing strategy better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed how reasonable we will be.
More reading on marketing strategy from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
11 Steps to Media Framing Messages for Optimum Engagement
Digital Storytelling … 4 Ways to Employ for Message Persuasion
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.
