This past June, HubSpot held an online marketing workshop where we taught marketers and business owners how to use visual marketing to attract and engage audiences across platforms.

With mobile video reaching 54.92 billion views annually, and businesses shifting towards more video content, we thought it would be really useful for attendees to walk away with tips and tools on how to best use photos and visuals in their marketing.

In this article, we will tell you about three things you need to know about using photos and visuals in your marketing.

Understand The Platforms

It’s important to understand the different platforms your visual content will appear on. The first thing to check is the size of your target audience.

Will you be using photos to attract and engage men, women, or both? What about people of a specific ethnicity or age? These are all essential questions to ask before making any content decision.

Nowadays, there are many tools and platforms that can help you determine the reach of your content. For example, you can use Google Analytics to find out the demographics and psychographics of your ideal buyer persona. In addition, you can analyze the behavior of your current customers and website visitors to get a better grasp of what resonates with them and what doesn’t.

Think About Design

This is more important than you think. When used effectively, visuals can help brands forge emotional connections with consumers and create memorable experiences for them. Designing with a purpose in mind will help you determine how to best utilize all the content you’re creating.

For instance, if your aim is to encourage customers to make a purchase, you might want to consider using bright, bold colors and eye-catching imagery. On the other hand, if you want to encourage people to sign up for your email list, you might want to go for a more subtle approach and use pastel colors instead.

Create A Routine

Marketers are regularly bombarded with a never-ending stream of new ideas and approaches. It’s important to set aside time to reflect and process all of this new information so that you can apply what you’ve learned to your own practice.

To that end, it’s vital that you create and follow a routine when using photos and visuals in your marketing. By establishing and following a set of predictable processes, you will be able to consistently produce high-quality and successful results.

This workshop followed a similar pattern. We started with a quick recap of the state of video in 2022, followed by an introduction to visual marketing. Next, we walked attendees through a detailed plan on how to use photos and visuals in their marketing. And finally, we applied what we’ve learned and answered any questions.

The Importance Of Attribution

Since the beginning of time, marketers have debated the virtues of organic vs. paid search. Truth be told, it doesn’t matter which approach you take. It’s simply important to understand how each performs and the difference in performance between the two.

Organic search brings real users to your site while paid search only shows you what the adverts can buy. Naturally, the two combined can form a powerful asset for marketers.

However, organic search is a very difficult metric to track and manage. If you want to see how a campaign is doing, you can look at paid search as an approximation. In our experience, sponsored posts usually generate between 4x and 7x the amount of organic traffic compared to our normal posts.

As a result, if you’re looking to increase your organic traffic, it’s best to try and integrate your paid posts more seamlessly into your content so that they seem more organic.

What’s Next?

With these three things in mind, you can start to use photos and visuals in your marketing and begin to see the benefits.

For example, if your target audience is more interested in products that appeal to men, you might want to create content specifically for them. On the other hand, if you want to target women, you might want to consider creating content for both genders but featuring females prominently.

Similarly, if you’re creating content for people in a certain age bracket, make sure to consider the tools and devices your target audience uses to consume content.

Also, check out our free online marketing tutorial where we teach you how to use Instagram to gain more business leads. Or, if you want to dive even deeper, be sure to check out our full-blown guide to marketing on YouTube.