B2B buyers are inundated with various forms of content every day. From blogs to case studies, ebooks, and more, buyers have a lot of information to sift through. And usually, this content is primarily displayed as written content. To stand out from the crowd, and to increase buyer engagement, organizations need to prioritize creating and distributing visual content.
According to Dr. John Medina, a developmental molecular biologist focused on human brain development, “We [humans] are incredible at remembering pictures. Hear a piece of information, and three days later you’ll remember 10% of it. Add a picture and you’ll remember 65%.” If you want to not only keep buyers engaged throughout their buyer journey but also retain the key information you’re sharing with them, visual content is essential.
What is Visual Content and Why is it Important?
The definition of visual content seems fairly obvious, doesn’t it? It encompasses the type of content that contains visual elements such as pictures, videos, infographics, presentations, and more. The key to making visual content stand out is to keep the content entertaining, educational, and engaging.
According to Backlinko, 37% of marketers report visual content as their “most important” type of content. Why? Because it’s captivating, engaging, and memorable. For example, you might remember the 1993 “Got Milk?” ad campaign from the California Milk Processor Board. This campaign was a worldwide phenomenon that led to a plethora of parody campaigns. Even all these years later, people are still using the phrase, “Got [insert item here]?”
Visual content ensures that people remember the information they are being presented with. Because humans interpret visual information almost instantly, with zero effort, these illustrations are more recognizable and easier to memorize. Similar to the “Got Milk?” campaign, visual sales and marketing content is essential to ensuring buyers are presented with visualizations that will help them understand and retain the value of your product. With visual content, buyers are enabled with the right content at the right time in their buyer’s journey to make an informed purchasing decision.
Visual Content Allows You to Showcase Value and Prove ROI
Visual content is key to illustrating the value of your product or service and is also key to proving the ROI. Case studies, ebooks, infographics, and videos are all great ways to illustrate the value of your product. For instance, an infographic that leverages graphs, data, and other visualizations, serves as an impactful resource that communicates the value of your product through images. With minimal text, the graphs and associated images do all the talking.
Another example of effective visual content that showcases value would be a product overview video. This type of video will often provide detailed visualizations of your product’s features, capabilities, and use cases. Thus, instead of reading about these features, the buyer can actually see them in action.
When it comes to proving ROI, interactive visualizations, like value calculators showcase, in real-time, what a buyer’s specific return on investment would be if they were to purchase a product. Since the buyer needs to input their information into the calculator to get a personalized result, these types of visualizations keep the buyer engaged. By encouraging buyers to engage and interact with the calculator, the results are more easily memorized.
Examples of Visual Content and How to Leverage Them Throughout the Sales Cycle
In this digital age, there is no shortage of visual content options. From videos to presentations, visual content comes in many forms. Let’s take a look at a few examples below.
Video Content
It’s no surprise that video content is the primary form of visual content used in marketing and sales collateral. Ultimately, video is the most efficient way to process information. Viewers can understand how a product works, learn a new skill, and/or gain insight from previous customers through recorded customer testimonials.
Videos can be embedded in blogs, sent via email, inserted in presentations, and more. With all these various use cases, video content is one of the easiest to create and one of the most accessible forms of visual content.
Interactive Presentations
Interactive presentations are essential to increasing buyer engagement by showcasing videos, images, charts, and more to support your claims. The interactive elements of the presentation encourage buyers to engage with the content and keep them involved and interested throughout the buyer’s journey.
Presentations are also a great medium to share your brand’s story or sales pitch. Storytelling through presentations enables the buyer to feel a connection between themselves and the product, increasing their ability to relate to your brand and remember the information you’ve provided them with.
Images and Illustrations
An image says 1,000 words, right? It’s true! Images and illustrations can invoke feelings from buyers, captivate their attention and keep them engaged throughout the buying process. For instance, imagine social media without images. It would be like reading everyone’s personal diary or newsletter on a daily basis — boring! Without images, no marketing or sales material would stand out to buyers and make a significant first impression. Images are used to grab the buyer’s attention and keep it.
Data Visualizations
Graphs and charts are key to communicating valuable information quickly and efficiently. Not to mention, they are also vital to helping buyers remember the information. For example, telling a buyer that interactive presentations lead to a 25% increase in buyer engagement is one thing. Proving this statistic with an accurate graph depicting the best ways to engage buyers is even better.
Final Thoughts
Keeping prospective buyers engaged doesn’t have to be a chore. In fact, it can be really fun and rewarding to create visual content to increase buyer engagement. All it takes is the right tool to create the most beautiful and effective visualizations. With the right technology, you can create interactive presentations that:
- Maintain and increase buyer engagement
- Showcase value through visualizations and value calculators
- Enable you to add personalized graphics and elements
Start increasing buyer engagement, by empowering your sales and marketing collateral with visual content.
About the author
Sara Leander-Pehrson is the CEO of Prezentor, a Sales Enablement platform that optimizes the customer dialogue, automates CRM entry, and increases sales productivity. Sara has a background as a management consultant and she is born into a family of entrepreneurs, where she has always been surrounded by sales. She is a passionate believer in value-based sales.
