What Visual Marketers Need to Know About Social Media Marketing in 2015

Data and Insight is what drives every step of your campaign, from creating an entire marketing strategy, to choosing the Hashtag for your next tweet and everything that comes between.

And the more informed you are, the better the results you’re going to get.

Which is why data driven reposts – like this years Social Media Marketing Report from Social Media Examiner – are great ways to improve your understanding of the landscape and to help you leverage it for your own campaigns.

In this article you’re going to learn everything you need to know about Visual Marketing that’s talked about in this report, and gain actionable ways to leverage it for yourself.

So, if you’re ready, let’s get stuck into the data…

And, they’re right.

That’s because visual content helps you as a marketer tell better stories about your brand. And, as Seth Godin points out in his book, “All MarketersAre Liars Tell Stories” your story is why people buy from you.

For example, let’s take a look at the energy drink, Red Bull.

They’re currently the worlds largest sports media company. And if you were to look at their website or Twitter Feed, that’s all you’d think they were- because there is little to no mention of their physical product at all.

Instead they share videos and images of extreme sports, awesome stunts and the crazy things their brand ambassadors get up to:

Each piece of visual content adds to their branding and tells the story of a product that helps you live life outside of the ordinary.

Now, they didn’t just start doing on a whim either.

They did it because this is the content that their audience wanted to see, because this is what people who drink their drink care about. Even if it ismostly used for getting yourself through a bad hangover (but that’s visual content none of us want to see!).

When you’re choosing or creating your visual content remember to keep your brand identity – you can build one of those in five days right here – in mind, and to only use content that your audience is going to care about.

In essence: less filtered images of your lunch and more content that tells the right story about your brand.

There’s something that’s often forgotten in the world of B2B Marketing, and that’s this:

You’re still selling to people.

The decisions made about your product, services and whether they’re going to invest a lot of their businesses money in you is still made by a human being.

And, much like the B2C Marketing you just read about, these people respond well to emotion. In fact, a study conducted between Motista and Google discovered:

Because, well, the stakes in a B2B situation are often worth millions of dollars. And, trust plays a huge factor in these decisions. Which is a bond that visual marketing can help build.

The SEO Powerhouse, Moz, uses visual content to build trust with their B2B clients – existing and potential – with their video series, Whiteboard Fridays.

Every Friday since March 2007, they’ve published a video of one of their employee’s explaining how to tackle a tricky SEO task, like:

• How to build better links
• Creating Google Friendly on-site content
• Getting past Spam Filters
• Other SEO stuff I don’t understand

All with the end goal of building a higher level of trust with their audience, so that when it comes time for a business to fork out a lot of money to them, they know they’re buying into a service they can trust.

But you’re probably thinking right now, “Well, the other 76% of Marketers can’t be wrong about visual content, can they?”

 And wrong would probably be a harsh way of putting it. So, let’s just say it doesn’t line up with what B2B buyers want.

Because, as HubSpot found:

So not only is the demand from buyers there, it’s being neglected by the vast majority of marketers. Which means now is the time to take advantage.

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