The following is an abbreviated transcript from a LinkedIn Live event hosted by brand consultant Ingenuity Marketing Group. In the webinar, Design Consultant Robert Wasiluk and Communications Consultant Christine Nelson discuss digital marketing with more visual appeal. That is, add more visual magic to your strategic content!
Visual Magic Consulting
We included the best of the Visual Magic webinar here if you prefer to read and share the tips rather than watch it.
Ad Landing Pages
Tradeshow Banners
Website Branded Colors
Contact Forms
Social Media
Website Bios
Email Templates
Let us know if you have any questions or need fresh inspiration for your rebranding and digital marketing.
Christine Nelson: Visual design has always been important with marketing, but it’s especially important now because for one, people are scrolling and scanning. Their brains are kind of used to quick flashes of information and visuals. Secondly, short attention spans, which is kind of related. We used to be okay listening to a five to eight minute video, and now we’re lucky if we get a minute to 30 seconds of people’s time. And then finally, we have a lot of competition out there. I guess there are now close to 2 billion websites available in the world and thousands more are created every day. We want to give you three challenges to contemplate today. The first challenge is how to create visual appeal when your project is pretty heavy with content.
Robert Wasiluk: So what types of visual appeal do you need for that content-heavy project?
So here’s just a few of ’em. Photography, because stock photography imagery is used so often, I think it’s really important to try to stand out in the crowd. So see if you can use fun, surprising images to convey your content. Christine just wrote a blog post for a client where we ended up using a box of french fries as kind of the featured image on the blog post, which was extremely surprising.
Christine Nelson: So let me explain that a little bit. I do ghost writing for accounting firms, and the topics can be very technical. One of them recently was about employee bonuses. And so I’m also supposed to suggest imagery for the blog posts, especially if Robert is uploading them and creating the art around them. I just decided, hey, rather than going with a typical money image or regulation type image, tax image, I went with a box of fries because subliminally, you think bonus fries, or at least I do,
Robert Wasiluk: There’s always fries at the bottom of the bag. That’s a bonus, right?
Christine Nelson: Bonus fries. So employee bonuses, bonus fries. So it just gives that subtle hint to like, hey, this is an interesting topic. The image is drawing you in. It’s not a typical thing you would see on an accounting firm blog feed.
Robert Wasiluk: Right. So the next thing, illustration, we can try to use illustration whenever possible, and icons. As Christine was saying, we’re about to start on this report and I think it’s important to use icons to kind of break up content, and basically on this report where we can use icons to show different regions in the United States. So it’s a great ability to kind of break up content and use ’em in call out boxes.
Christine Nelson: And I put longer headlines on because I don’t know if you’re noticing in your news feeds, and particularly as a journalist, headlines used to be subject verb, maybe an adjective, but pretty short and to the point. And now the headlines themselves are the story summary, the digest, if you will, to get people to click through.
Robert Wasiluk: And then just going on here, just to touch briefly, we have video and animation. We can use pull quotes, like I said about icons. You could use call out boxes and tint boxes to really differentiate content. And then charts and infographics are still very popular today.
Christine Nelson: For sure. Any way that you can tell the story visually. So I’ll give you another example. We are working on an ad campaign on LinkedIn for a client, and it’s about succession planning. It’s about M&A consulting, and we didn’t want it to be this typical ad campaign. It’s a series of three ads, but we really needed to grab attention as people are scrolling through that feed.
And sometimes it can feel like you’re being pressured to sell your company before you want to, whereas our client is more about building the relationship first, seeing if there’s a cultural fit, kind of a different take on it.
We decided to go with the concept of a car chase and use car chase videos, use people driving, use, people getting the keys, like taking control of their own process and really grabbing attention that way. And we monitored the ads for a few months and we were finding great traction with open rates and getting to the landing page, but then not a lot of conversion.
So we found that it wasn’t just the ads that needed to be on point and interesting, but then what was the visual look of the landing page itself? So we have moved the form up to the top. We’ve reduced the copy. I tend to write long because I’m the storyteller, but then I have to edit myself back.
Strategic Content Idea: Align Ad Landing Page Visuals with Ads
Christine Nelson: Keep the copy itself to a minimum and then let’s work with the visuals, whether it’s photos or a form, and get right to the point with that ad landing page. You need people to be able to click through and understand exactly what you want them to do.
So that’s why ad campaigns not only have to be visual, but you got to keep an eye on them. Otherwise you’re going to just spend a lot on the budget and it’s not worth it.
Let’s get into our challenge two, which is demonstrating your brand difference visually.
Strategic Content Idea: Create a More Visual Tradeshow Banner
Christine Nelson: So we talked about the box of fries idea, but there are also industries that you’re involved in or that your clients are involved in, services that you’re promoting where you don’t want them to be the stereotypical financial or legal or construction with the safety vests and the hard hats kinds of images…even in your collateral materials you might bring to a trade show.
I can give you an example of that. We create banners for trade shows, and one of our clients is in government contracting. So they’ve got imagery of planes flying in formation.
That’s not like accounting, that’s their audience. They’re trying to draw in that audience of government contractors to come and talk to them. It is about them as much as it’s about you in portraying your brand, and especially if you can elevate the feeling the person gets when they see your information or they go to your website.
Robert Wasiluk: This was a design that we did for a local CPA firm’s website, which they wanted a more modern rural to metropolitan feel. So visually on this agribusiness page originally, it previously had, it was basically a farmer standing in a field with a farmhouse in the background. It was very kind of dark. So we focused on the modern technology side of the farming by finding this really cool stock image of a farmer using a drone to survey his crops. So this immediately gave the page a much more modern and unique feel.
Christine Nelson: And it’s pulling in their branding colors, which I think is a great touch, too.
Robert Wasiluk: We try to do that as much as possible, whenever there’s a chance to kind of bring in those brand colors on an image.
Christine Nelson: And we needed to really have a strategy with the client because we could think about agribusiness in a certain way, but they have a certain client they’re trying to attract and they know, and their client base knows that agribusiness is very modern, it’s very technologically advanced. And so they wanted to portray that on the website to make sure that they were showing their audience, ‘yes, we get you.’
Strategic Content Idea: Creatively Use Branded Colors on Websites
Robert Wasiluk: In this website designed for an East coast CPA firm, they wanted to showcase a more elevated experience for their high net worth clients while keeping the site fast loading. So visually for the hero image on the homepage, we came up with this concept and it came up really quickly in the design phase.
So we came up with this concept of clients seeing their own success by using the image of the champagne glasses toasting alongside with the header, ‘Imagine your Ideal.’ And then I was able to accent it in their brand with this eggplant color and then their gold colors. I was able to incorporate that into the image itself. So it really acts, it almost acts as a cover to a visual story that we can really take advantage of and play through the entire website.
Christine Nelson: I think that’s a good point, Robert, about imagery. You might be using that stock, but then you can use, through Adobe, blending in the branding colors and making it your own image once you’ve purchased it.
Robert Wasiluk: And then for their careers pages, they wanted to give those a more youthful, almost Gen Z type look and feel. So you can see where I blended in their brand coloring into that top header. And basically it has the same design structure as the entire site, but we kept the photos and the colors to be more fun and vibrant to appeal to potential applicants. And there’s also an interactive rollover element on the page down below there.
As you roll over those images, words pop up. And the idea is to give them ideas on how to fill out the form next to it. And the other thing about this too, as we were talking about before, the above the fold idea, there are a lot of interactive elements above the fold of this page. You have three buttons right at the top, so people can take advantage to go off to different locations. And then we have that form that people can fill out.
Strategic Content Idea: Add Visual Interactivity to Website Forms
Christine Nelson: When you are putting together forms, think about ways that you can make it more interactive or allow you to gather more information from the person without making them have to spend a lot of time. So this scroll-over idea, it’s asking which of these areas is important to you. And when you scroll over, it gives you information like professionalism or the environment or volunteering or teamwork, whatever it might be.
Like, oh, which of these is important to you? Okay, quick answer as I include my name and email address and ask for more information from the firm. You want to keep your form short, but if there’s any way to show a visual and just be like, what do you think of this? Or what’s your choice? Then it can just help you grab a little more personalized info for the follow-up.
I think that ties into our next challenge, which is attracting attention in a crowd.
Strategic Content Idea: Scroll to Test Visual Variety on Social Media
Whether you’re trying to attract attention through your search engine optimization for your website, or you’re trying to attract attention on a social channel, the visual comes first. It just is what it is.
People are scanning through company pages, they’re scanning through personal profiles, and you need to test it. Is it providing enough variety? I often go through and I’ll look at a company page or I’ll look at a personal profile and I’ll just scan through and I’ll look at the variety, and is there enough variety? And it’s just a way of testing your own feeds.
Doing a calendar is really great because then you are kind of laying out your structure for what that feed will look like. So for example, on an engineering social feed, you could have personal social outing posts, you can have project example posts with a video clip or a photo. You can have industry updates. And if you’re doing an employee post for a promotion or a new hire, you can use the Canva tool, if many of you have used Canva before, and you can make it animated.
When people are scrolling through the page, they’re not just seeing a static image of the team promotion or new hire, it’s moving! It’s catching their eye as they’re scrolling through, and you’re going to get more interest that way.
Use the photography in interesting ways, or do a photography grid where you’ve got multiple photos in a grid for people to look at. You can show before and after, you can show a succession of project progress.
A quick video clip of one of your subject matter experts talking about their knowledge on a certain issue or what they found the most rewarding from a project they just completed. Or some video footage at an award ceremony, not just photos, pull out the iPhone and do a quick video. It doesn’t take a lot of time. It’s interesting. It’s great for social, and I’ve had to get in the habit of that myself.
Robert Wasiluk: Another application’s popular too, is Adobe Express, which is kind of a direct competitor with Canva, but I’ve had good luck with that, too, using it for short video clips.
Like Christine said, you can always use a still image and do what’s called a Ken Burns effect on it, where you’re actually zooming into the image or zooming out; it kind of gives the illusion of an animated look and feel. So that works, too.
Christine Nelson: Instead of going full color, maybe you change it up with some filters and zero in on different aspects of the image. So you’re telling your audience right away where to look, so you can play around with that and have fun with it…because if we’re not having fun, what are we doing in marketing? That’s all I have to say.
Strategic Content Idea: Liven Up and Personalize Your Website Bios
Robert Wasiluk: Here at Ingenuity, we get a lot of traction on our website bios. People seem to enjoy looking at ’em. A way to get more eyeballs on your bios would be to have some different areas of interest on the page.
For us, we have this initial copy, but off to the right, you develop this collage of images that showcase your interests. There’s family in there and things that we like to do. You can put your pets in there. I’ve seen sites where bios would actually have a rollover image of a professional bio photo, and when they rolled over it, it would be a shot of their pet.
And then down towards the bottom of the fold here, we have a set of accordion folds. So you just roll over those and they open up to present more information and content. Experience in one accordion. And then we have a ‘just for fun’ section where we answer just fun questions that gets updated probably yearly. And then at the bottom, we have our expertise, which is usually a video showcasing us talking about something in our field.
Christine Nelson: Not everybody is interested in sharing personal information, but sometimes they might be willing to answer fun questions instead, or they might be willing to share a couple of photos, maybe someone working in their garden or somebody outdoors just to show the personality a little bit more, or it’s a cause that they care about. You can also go with a quote.
People are willing to share a quote about why they care about their profession or what gets them excited about their work. And that can be a nice visual element on the page as well. But I think this accordion thing is nice because rather than having two paragraphs and bullets, you’re getting people to click through, they’re spending more time.
Strategic Content Idea: Increase Email Opens with Images
So the other thing that I wanted to mention before we wrap up today is email templates. I know all of us do email marketing; it’s still a big thing for high growth firms, for associations. You rely on email a lot to reach your members, to reach your clients and prospects, and you spend a lot of time building a beautiful template through your CRM or through your email program that you’re using. And then what happens, Robert?
Robert Wasiluk: Well, if it goes to somebody’s inbox, a lot of those graphics are turned off initially, so it just comes in as a plain email. So you want to make sure that the subject line and your pre-header text are engaging for one thing, just to pique some of their interests. And then you want to make sure your content makes sense without the visuals. A lot of email applications, though, they don’t consider it an “open” until people load the images into the email.
Christine Nelson: I was noticing it on my Outlook when I was testing things; I don’t see the images unless I download them. And so this must be happening for other people, too. It makes it less interesting when you don’t see the images that you’ve spent so much time on…branding or building into that template.
So I’m going to give you a hack. It’s not actually my original idea, but I think it’s super smart. I’m going to call out Rob Duffield from McKonly & Asbury out in Pennsylvania. He has a newsletter called the Rob Report, and he includes a personal photo in each of his weekly newsletters. And so in order to see the photo, you have to download ALL the images. And so if there’s a way for you with your newsletters, with your email updates to point to an image that people REALLY want to see, that’s going to get them to open up and accept the images for the email.
That’s considered an ‘open’ because they’re interacting with your email, and therefore they will then see the wonderful content you have in there. So thanks, Rob, for that idea.
And also I would say use that longer headline trick because the longer headline is a piece of visual art within your email template, but it’s also getting people to scroll down and learn more if the headline is intriguing.
Robert Wasiluk: The other graphic suggestion on newsletters in particular, which we’ve been finding, you’ve been having good luck with Open, it’s just having that kind of pop-culture, sports related kind of that graphic header at the top.
A lot of times with our Great ThinkING newsletter, we’ll use whatever you used, Barbie themed graphic. We’ve had Lego themed, we’ve done Cinderella’s Shoe for one of ’em, and I think it really helps makes people pause. They’re like, wow, what is this?
Christine Nelson: Yeah, if you’ve gotten ’em to open the template, you can change up that header. It doesn’t have to be the same branded header every time. And the image within that header can grab interest because they haven’t seen it before.
So if it’s a monthly newsletter or quarterly newsletter, e-blast, change up the header a little bit and test it and see what works well. But I also agree that the subject line, the pre-header text…that’s going to get them to open it in the first place and then yeah, some of those tricks to get them to see all the visuals.
Robert Wasiluk: You definitely want to make sure without the graphics that the content is strong enough to stand on its own.
Christine Nelson: Absolutely. Keep it brief and point them to some other resources and make it intriguing for them to click through, because the click-through is in the conversions.
If you’re not just doing it to inform them, if you’re trying to drive them to attend an event or to sign up for something or to download something, make it worth their while because as I said, scanning, scrolling, very short attention spans.
Make it as intriguing as possible, and use your visuals to do that.
Questions? Contact us at Ingenuity.
