4 Visual Branding Tips That Attract and Retain Customers

They say a picture is worth, well, a lot, and it’s true, particularly when it comes to branding your business. It’s more often your logo that creates recognition with your audience, not words or anything else. In an era where our attention spans are shorter than that of goldfish, lasting a whopping 8 seconds, you need to use your visual marketing strategy to capture people’s focus.

 

1. Be Consistent in Your Branding

Have one version of your logo, and use it everywhere: your website, emails, blog, social media, signage, print material. It takes consumers several times of seeing your logo before it really registers and they recognize you easily, so that’s why consistency is so important.

 

If you do update your logo (something you shouldn’t do more than every two to three years) make sure you put the new version on all your online and offline properties.

 

2. Keep Your Website Simple

You may feel like more bells and whistles on your website might keep people there longer, but the opposite is true. Today’s customer seeks simplicity in design and function on a website. Absolutely have a professional or stock photo on each page…but don’t go overboard by peppering every single page on your site with images or graphics.

 

If you haven’t updated your business site in several years, look to today’s sleek website templates. Not only are they visually what your audience wants, but they’re also responsive, meaning they adapt to whatever size screen they’re being viewed on.

 

3. Don’t Overlook Your Content

While your logo and website are the primary places you want to ensure consistent visual branding, the content you create gives you another opportunity to hook people with great graphics.

 

Marketers — 40% of them — find that original graphics like infographics drive the best engagement in content, followed by videos and presentations, charts and data visualization, stock photography, and gifs and memes. Diversify the types of visuals you include in blog posts, whitepapers, ebooks, and emails, then pay attention to which have the highest engagement rate so you can produce similarly.

 

4. Keep Your Social Media Full of Visuals

Because people tend to scroll quickly through their social media feeds, it’s images that tend to stop them in their tracks. If you share a blog post that has an image in it, this should automatically upload, but you can also post images and videos directly and measure impact.

 

Don’t forget to refresh your social profile cover photos occasionally. This is your opportunity to promote current marketing campaigns or just ensure that your visual content is up-to-date and on point.

 

Find a balance between keeping permanent visual assets like your website design and logo consistent and continually refreshing other graphics like those on social media or your blog. Always name your graphic file a keyword that tells Google what it’s of (rather than keeping it IMAGE3533.jpg), and only use high-quality images. There are plenty of stock photography websites you can subscribe to that can provide an endless stream of images for your site and blog.