Visual Marketing Strategy
Friday, March 3rd, 2023• By Kate Smith
Friday, March 3rd, 2023• By Kate Smith
New year’s resolution: Get my visual branding on point!
Let’s look at how you can create a visual marketing strategy that connects with your audience and then I’ll share some practical tips and tools so you can make it happen.
Visuals are to your marketing plan what denim overalls are to the 90s—pretty darn significant. And just like that trend comes back again and again, I can’t stop emphasising how important this is.
In the internet world where chunks of text are just too much, visuals come to the rescue. They can help you build upon other elements of your marketing strategy and make an impact with your audience.
It’s a comprehensive and effective plan that incorporates images, videos, and other visuals to connect you to your customers.
The idea of a visual marketing strategy is to create an impactful, memorable impression that helps you stand out from your competitors. With attention spans at an all-time low—8.25 seconds (and that seems long compared to mine!), strong visuals are crucial to your marketing success.
Some simple steps to create a gripping visual strategy that wows your audience:
To create a truly strong digital presence, you must focus your efforts on aligning your campaigns with your brand’s identity.
This means you need to create content that is in line with your logo, colours, typography, shapes (visual cues in your brand that distinguish you from others with similar branding) and imagery.
Any incongruence will lose you one of those crucial customer touch-points due to poor brand recognition. Sales research suggests a service-based business needs 8 of these before an initial meeting. Don’t lose one because you didn’t use your company colours!
Always share your brand kit with anyone creating your visual content. If you had a professional brand designed, you should have been given files and guidelines in your branding kit. If you created your own brand or logo, make sure your Canva brand kit is up to date so that you use your imagery consistently.
While it’s easy to follow every passing trend, you’re probably better off steering clear of anything that doesn’t go with the tone of your brand. The media you choose should ideally elevate your value proposition across platforms. If it doesn’t resonate with your brand, skip it. There’ll be another trend right around the corner.
Also known as UGC marketing, this part of your strategy can help you share visual content from your audience in the form of social media posts, web content, testimonials, and more. It lends an authentic voice to your brand while also acting as social proof for potential customers.
If someone posts something about you that’s awesome and on-brand, share it!
When you want to know which direction to take your strategy, one of the best things you can do is look at your competitors.
By performing a SWOT analysis on other companies, you can get an idea of what elements work and what opportunities might be available. Additionally, identifying areas where your competitors are lacking gives you the opportunity to capitalise on those weaknesses.
Since your audience makes up the heart of your marketing efforts, it is critical to understand their journey with your brand. Here is how you can achieve this:
When your visuals are well-placed and carefully curated, you not only come across as an authoritative figure in your niche but you also guide your customers in their journey to make a purchase.
A sure-fire way to succeed with your visual strategy is to use imagery that is created for your audience.
Think about what they like (and not what you like) when creating your visuals. Regardless of the platform you’re creating for, remember to to it for your audience.
So we’ve given you a bunch of theory, but how can you make this happen? Here are some tools we recommend.
Need to choose colours and don’t know where to start? This is a fun, free web app that might help. You can upload your existing logo to extract your brand colours, then use the Generator to choose some great shades for your secondary palette. If nothing else, this is a fun app to use and you’re not starting with an empty canvas, so have a play and see what comes out!
This is a powerful design tool that anyone can use. The base version is free guys, it’s a no brainer, check it out. If you upgrade you can use the Brand Kit and take backgrounds out of images and other cool stuff.
This is underrated. If you don’t want to pay for Canva, you should at least have all your brand assets in a folder. Use your choice of cloud storage (iCloud, Google Drive, Dropbox, etc) so you have it wherever you need it and can share it with others. It should include:
If you’re wondering how to store your fonts and colours, create a text document and paste in your colour codes (see coolors) and list your brand fonts (and make sure these are . This will help you keep consistency and not just use whatever when you’re putting visuals together.
This is a scheduling tool for your social media. Once you’ve designed a bunch of awesome (and consistent!) content, schedule it all here in one fell swoop so you don’t need to think about posting every day, to multiple platforms.
Depending where you are in your business journey, it might be worth investing in a professionally designed brand. They will take the guesswork out of making the right visuals for your audience and you’ll get a kit with everything you need for visual success. You can chat to us at Rove if you think it’s time to make this move.
Look at brands that dominate social media and you’ll see they have something in common—they understand that visuals are much more powerful than text. And with the rise of social media, it’s easy to see how imagery has revolutionised the way people share, engage and learn about brands.
Whether you’re looking to grow your brand’s presence, increase engagement or pull in more online sales, visual marketing is your golden ticket.
Photo by Perchek Industrie on Unsplash
With 10+ years experience, Kate is a roving graphic designer with a passion for dance, a penchant for wine, and a love of all things design
