Visual content has taken over marketing campaigns, aided by advancements in technology and a continued drive by consumers to digest as much information as quickly as possible. Smartphones and tablets in hands all over the world means potential advertising real estate in every pocket and a marketing pitch in every messenger bag. Today, content marketing is as much about images and video as it is about the copy, and smart marketers know how to blend the complementary mediums to create inspired campaigns.

Are you stuck in a stale blog spiral, churning out paint-by-numbers articles on a bi-weekly basis to no audience in particular? Do you scramble for a stock photo five minutes to deadline before kick starting a new campaign? Is video in your repertoire? Get visual, and move your content marketing to a room with a view.

Why Visual Content is Worth the Investment

It may be less expensive to stick to a routine bi-weekly blogging schedule, but with little risk comes little reward. That’s to say, it’s easy to sink into a template-driven slump, with each week’s article taking the same shape, covering the same topics, and existing, it would seem, to fill a quota. That kind of marketing model rarely brings in the big bucks. With that in mind, you’d be surprised how much a little effort and well-invested marketing money dedicated to visual media can change the picture.

Take a look at a few noteworthy statistics compiled through a partnership study between the Content Marketing Institute, MarketingProfs, and Hightail:

• Some studies say 80 percent of all web traffic will be attributed to video by 2019.
• Half of marketers surveyed said video provides the best ROI.
• Posts with relevant images have 94 percent more views.
• Conversion rates are 7 times higher when using custom visual content.

Sure, taking custom photos and shooting marketing videos takes more time and costs more money, but the additional investment almost always leads to greater returns. Fortunately, there’s no one-size-fits-all model for melding visual content with your written campaign components, so the sky is the limit when it comes to creativity. That said, unfocused visual content can be more harmful than helpful in the long run.

Focus is Still Crucial

Visual content must serve your brand, first and foremost. Focus is crucial, even if your focus is to be as casual as possible. The marketing message shouldn’t be sacrificed for a catchy photo or a “guaranteed viral” snippet of video. The images and video you use in your campaigns can (at best) become iconic or (at worst) become an embarrassment to your brand, so it’s important to understand the place and purpose of each piece of visual content.

It’s tempting to try and make a video or photo go viral, but the secret is: viral content often comes from happy accidents or highly orchestrated gimmicks. For often unexpected reasons, videos made for fun or photos taken on the fly find an audience and are suddenly spread around the world, and sometimes it’s great for business. That’s not to say an exceptional piece of visual marketing won’t go viral if it strikes the right chord with the public, but setting out to make a viral content almost guarantees you’ll be disappointed with anything less than world renown.

Opening up Pandora’s Visual Content Box

Content marketing strategies for implementing visual elements are as varied and subjective as they come. Once you’ve opened up that Pandora’s box, you’ll find it hard to stop looking for ways to make the most of the visual content you can create. Start a YouTube channel, produce informative how-to videos, upload relevant branded photos to an Instagram account, and in general branch out to connect with your audience on a visual level. They’ll thank you and you’ll see conversions climb if you create quality content, and don’t hesitate to give in to the Harlem Shake or be a part of the Ice Bucket Challenge if it’s good for business.

Andrew is a word wizard/content creator extraordinaire who considers himself a bit of a dabbler. From writing to reading, exercise, outdoor exploration, art, music, photography, and even a little existentialism, it’s all color on the creative palette.