Let’s be frank: if you’re not using powerful imagery to drive your marketing content, you might as well be throwing money away.
Why? People are inherently drawn to visual content, which allows them to process information far more quickly. One study by Lewis PR found that content that includes relevant images receives 94% more views and that social media posts are massively more likely to receive engagement when they include photos.
However, you’re not going to land at the top of the SERPs by stuffing your content with generic visuals. You need images that are optimized, appropriate, and add value to your brand. In this guide, we’ll walk you through some tested strategies for identifying the best visual content for your B2B business.
How to Select the RIGHT Images for Your Content
When integrating photos into your marketing content and branding, consider these critical elements:
· Is it conveying your message?
While clickbait photos can generate engagement, it might not be the kind of engagement you want, especially if it leads to your viewers feeling misled. Your visual content will tell a story—make sure it’s the story you want to tell.
· Does it fit your brand?
Your content and images should reflect the personality of your brand. For example, if you sell apparel, you might want to emphasize style and glamour, or utility and comfort, depending on your niche. Using images that represent your brand well will generate more leads and positive attention.
· Is it engaging and original?
It can be tempting to save money and time by using stock photos instead of commissioning photos or taking them yourself. But if you’re working with stock images, beware—your competitors could be using the exact same photos to promote their brand. The true price of using stock images is that your web presence may wind up looking generic at best. Using your own images gives you the opportunity to tell real stories about your products and convey a wealth of information that viewers can absorb far more quickly than words. That’s a massive branding advantage over a hastily-selected stock photo.
In addition, keep the following in mind when choosing marketing photos:
1. The bigger, the better
Yes, it’s important to optimize your images to avoid slowing down your webpage (more on that later), but you also don’t want to cut corners when it comes to critical marketing content. Make sure you’re using large, vibrant, high-quality images to draw your viewers in.
2. Keep up to date with current trends
The B2B industry is forever shifting. When choosing topics and aesthetics to promote your brand, make sure you’re creating trendy, relevant content and not recycling old, out-of-date images. One easy hack is to never use photos that are over two years old, and to try to theme your content around current pain points in the industry, showing your prospects that you’re attentive to their needs.
3. Use infographics
Most B2B customers are savvy and expect more than promises—they want hard numbers that demonstrate the efficiency and quality of your products. But don’t expect them to wade through a mess of statistics and sales numbers to get the message: present the complicated stuff in a clear, attractive format with infographics, and work with charts and illustrations to boost the readability of your content.
How Many Images Should You Use?
There’s no magic number, though if you’re reading this guide, chances are you’re not using as many as you could be. With that said, there are drawbacks to stuffing your website with as many photos as possible. Each one should serve a purpose and improve the user experience, and ideally, you should replace text with images where possible.
Your images should be:
· SEO friendly
· Frequent enough to break text into readable chunks
· Engaging
Be warned that too many high-resolution images will increase your page load time, which can be a killer for your business. According to research, you could lose 40% of your audience if your page takes more than three seconds to load. Make sure your images are optimized to ensure good loading times.
What About Image Size and Quality?
The size and quality of your images will depend on your medium.
· For blogs, use images that cover the entire width of your publishing screen.
· For websites and social media, images should be at least 72 px per inch. Photos that are 800 x 1,000 px will work across multiple channels.
· For banner ads, images should be wide enough to cover the entire top of the computer screen without being stretched.
Make sure your images are not lengthened or distorted and choose photos that work well together and look consistent and professional. If you’re looking for ways to improve the quality of your visual content at a low price point, consider using an AI-powered photo editor to spruce it up.
Tricks for Selecting the Appropriate Images
1. Understand what speaks to your audience
Marketing imagery works best when you understand it as a conversation with your audience. Make sure you’re speaking in a language they can understand! Before choosing photos, do your research to find the messaging and aesthetics that resonate with your customers.
2. Communicate your brand values
Having clear, well-articulated brand values will help you build a long-term connection with your audience. It’ll also clarify the purpose behind your content, help you craft consistent messaging, and ensure that it evokes strong, positive emotions in your customers.
3. Perform A/B testing and track your metrics
Not all marketing is going to pull its weight, no matter how carefully you craft it. Success in B2B demands data-driven analytics and regular testing—and the humility to put aside underperforming content and try and fail repeatedly until you find a winning strategy. It’s essential to use A/B testing and carefully track your metrics to verify that every step of your funnel is increasing conversions and engagement.
Bottom Line
Ultimately, including high-quality, relevant, original images in your marketing content can increase traffic, boost conversions, improve engagement, and enhance the overall user experience.
On the flip side, if you choose low-quality visual marketing or forego relevant images entirely, research suggests that you’ll have a difficult time capturing your audience’s attention and will struggle to compete with brands that use strong imagery. Is your brand’s visual identity powerful enough to drive your success as a business? If not, try the tips in this guide to give it some fresh polish. And if you need a helping hand to make your photos shine on a budget, don’t go it alone—you’ll always have a partner in photo-enhancing tools like autoRetouch.