This article is by Apu Gupta, CEO and co-founder of Curalate, a marketing platform for the visual web.
(Image credit: AFP/Getty Images via @daylife)
Digital marketers, take note. Consumer behavior is undergoing a substantial shift, and it’s going to affect how you engage with your fans, grow your audience and stay relevant. This shift involves a migration away from text towards a much more emotional and compelling medium – images.
Between Facebook FB -0.63%, Instagram, and Tumblr, consumers share nearly 5,000 images every second of every day. Add in Pinterest’s estimated 40 million users and even SnapChat’s meteoric rise, and it’s clear, a shift is afoot – a desire to share what matters most in pictures rather than words.
On this new visual web, it’s not enough to simply sprinkle in a few pictures on Facebook and call it a day. Now, in order to be relevant and to be loved, your brand must think visually, natively and cross-channel. Marketing without words enables you to tap into the underlying power of images – emotions. Images cause people to react, and those reactions can humanize your brand and turn transactional relationships into emotional ones.
Two of these newer visual platforms, Pinterest and Instagram, are particularly noteworthy to digital marketers. Content on Pinterest is largely sourced from the websites of brands and represents what people want to buy. Content on Instagram is generally user-generated and frequently relates to what people have purchased. This continuum from pre-purchase admiration to post-purchase celebration offers brands new opportunities to leverage images to engage consumers throughout their life cycles.
For brands that persist in sitting on the sidelines, playing catch up later will be costly. Smart brands are investing in capacity-building now. They’re learning to measure visual engagement, testing visual campaigns, creating visual content, and leveraging the content fans have created. These brands are generating awareness, affinity and revenue at a time when it’s still easy to stand out from the crowd. Now, these forward-looking brands are starting to realize that the implications of images go beyond social. The social signals from visual networks are starting to be used to inform display ad campaigns, email marketing and ecommerce merchandising. Some interesting examples of how brands are using these new visual platforms include:
Collaborate With Fans–Visually
Auto brand Buick recently turned to Pinterest to source the interior and exterior design elements of their new 2013 Encore, asking nine leading design, food, and fashion bloggers to create thematic boards based on each individuals’ passions, dreams and lifestyle.
Buick’s lead designers then took inspiration from these boards, which included beautiful summer inspired photography, the well-recognized chevron pattern, and beautifully photographed recipes, to impact the vehicle color, texture and overall feel.
In addition to generating nearly 17 million unique visitors, followers, and/or users across their social properties, the campaign gave Buick the opportunity to engage with their community visually, which generated stronger emotional connections and provided the brand with extremely valuable insight on the lifestyle of its consumers.
Creative Optimization
In addition to social media, innovative brands are trying to repurpose images from Pinterest and Instagram for the purposes of the image in a display ad. Ben and Jerry’s asked fans to post photos of themselves enjoying their ice cream on Instagram accompanied by the hashtag #captureeuphoria. Nearly two-dozen of these fan photos were then selected for and used in print and outdoor advertisements.
Social Proof
Retailer Free People’s ecommerce site now enables and encourages consumers to upload photos of themselves wearing Free People clothing on specific product pages. The authenticity of seeing real people celebrating Free People’s products provides a compelling endorsement for potential buyers to see.
Overwhelmed and not sure how to get up to speed? Here are some things you can do today, to get started:
1. Leverage user-generated content.
Encourage fans and employees to share their brand stories and ask for permission to highlight these photos on a Facebook tab, a Pinterest board, or even a section of your website.
2. Don’t do it alone.
Cultivate relationships with those who engage with you frequently. Provide these advocates exclusive content to share and invite them to collaborate on your visual presence. Invite users to collaborate on Pinterest boards or invite an influencer to take over your Instagram account for a certain period of time.
3. Make your site shareable.
Integrate “Pin It” buttons throughout your site. If you’re still using Flash, stop!
4. Be authentic.
Know your brand identity and your brand voice. Even if you don’t have your own content to share, act as a curator and share content that fits your brand’s personality.
By speaking this new visual “language” and getting a deeper understanding of what matters to consumers, brands that master the visual web will find that they will become more relevant and meaningful to consumers. This adjustment requires brands to recalibrate their approach to social and also requires brands to think beyond social. It’s not easy, but the opportunities are too good to pass up
