Source: Online SMSF Audit Explainer Video

Your boss it right. Your company is doing just fine with simple content marketing. BUT there’s a reason why your competitors are using videos, GIFs and infographics to market their product, and that reason is really simple- “visual marketing works way better!”

You might see the numerous merits of visual marketing but does your boss?

Bosses are our mentors, roadblocks and teachers all rolled into one. But sometimes, they need to be shown the what, why and how of opportunities. If you think your business needs visual marketing, let us guide you through the process of convincing your boss into investing into a campaign.

Brace Yourself! These are the arguments you’ll hear against visual marketing:-

#1 What Your Boss Will Say:  “This is too expensive.”

It goes without saying that bosses will want to know how much the campaign will cost them, bottom line. Let’s face it, visual marketing campaigns are expensive because they are well-researched and well-planned and those two things require time and effort.

Your Pitch: Focus on ROI, Not Cost

Your boss is right about the cost BUT the good thing is that visual marketing is a medium that gives back more than it takes. So your pitch should focus on the Return on Investment (ROI) rather than the cost.

A good way to direct attention towards ROI is to avoid absolute numbers and talk in percentages and proportions.

Here’s an example:

“With an investment of $ ABC, the campaign will give us $ XYZ in revenue” is not as convincing as “A visual marketing campaign will boost conversion by 14% and revenue by 17%”.

(Source: Digital Warriors)

#2 What Your Boss Will Say: “This stuff is for B2C or non-technical businesses, not for us.”

It is a common misconception that visual marketing is a new age method suited only for quirky, creative businesses. It is wrongly considered ineffective when it comes to promoting businesses that are more technical or in the B2B sector.

Your Pitch: Show Success Stories, Don’t Tell

Versatility and adaptability are two of visual marketing’s strongest points and to make your boss believe this, you need to present your case well, with the help of case studies. Dig deep into your industry and find examples of organisations like yours who have embraced visual marketing with both arms wide open.

It’s even better if you can present your competitors’ campaigns to your boss, since that states, “They’ve done it, so can we.” But don’t worry if your business is a highly specialized or niche one and none of your competitors have delved into visual marketing. Then you should shift your focus on firms in related fields and present their success stories. This might turn out to be a blessing in disguise as your pitch will now shout ‘first mover advantage’ – if our competitors haven’t done it yet, we need to seize this opportunity before they do.

The main idea is to show your boss that visual marketing transcends industries and its high adaptability makes it an effective method for all kinds of businesses.

#3 What Your Boss Will Say: “This is only meant for social media and we don’t want to be active there right now.”

While pitching a visual marketing campaign to your boss, your first approach should be to convince him/her that it will fetch great returns even off of social media. Forget Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or any other platform, having a digital presence is a must for any business and the first and foremost way to establish that presence is through an official website.

Your Pitch: Show merits on platforms other than social media

A website is like the brochure of a company. It gives preliminary information to interested parties and it is often the first part of your brand that most people will come across. The value of the first impression is very high in this scenario. A lot is riding on the landing page—it can make or break a deal.

So how can you make your website powerful enough that it not only attracts customers but also impresses them enough to take action and get in touch with you?

That’s where visual marketing comes to your rescue. According to the Nielsen Norman Group, viewers only spend 10 to 20 seconds on a website. Visuals are known to be quick, catchy and effective. By employing the elements of visual marketing (videos, infographics, gifs, etc.) in your website’s pages, you can easily lengthen every viewer’s time on site and lead to at least 20% more conversion into clients.

(Source: Animaker)

(Source: Animaker)

The merits of visual marketing don’t just end at the landing page since it also boosts SEO by leaps and bounds. Search Engine Watch reveals that search engines like Google work towards having a mix of content types like text, images and videos displayed in search results. To ensure this, they give higher preference and ranking to video content over text which leads to a consistent balance of text and visuals. This means that having a video on your landing page will improve your website’s chances of appearing at the top of search results.

While it is a precious thing to achieve, appearing at the top of search results can still happen for text-only pages by following SEO guidelines. But video results have a 41% higher click through rate than plain text ones which means that videos on your home page, as a part of your visual marketing campaign, will not only make sure that you’re at the top of search results but it also means that prospective customers are more likely to actually visit your website.

#4 What Your Boss Will Say: “I need to focus on my tech right now.”

For many businesses, the sole focus is on building the core product or service, not marketing it. This holds especially true for financial startups and legal practices and services. Allied activities like marketing and outreach are not given immediate attention and filed away for consideration at a later stage.

Your Pitch: Visual marketing will only support, not dilute the core function

Visual marketing is a powerful tool which can really help a new business take off. The belief that marketing activities must be taken up later, once the core business is dealt with, is nothing but a misconception. Adding visual marketing to your arsenal early on in the game will lead you towards a speedy victory.

Consider this: in its startup phase, Dropbox’s explainer video Raised 10 Million Additional Customers & $48,000,000 Extra Revenue in the year 2009. The best part about visual marketing is that even if you invest in it just once, you can fetch long term gains.

Visual marketing can, in fact, improve your core business in multiple ways, one of them being narrating your brand’s story. Explaining your products and services to customers can be a challenge especially if they are highly technical and complex. Through a simple explainer video, your brand’s story can be showcased in mere minutes, hence simplifying your core business process and making it more approachable.

Your main aim here is to convince your boss that investing in visual marketing will act as a foundation for your core business to flourish. It will in no way complicate the process or take attention away from the main product or service. Focusing on just the central business is short-sighted and to be successful, a business must play the long game.

#5 What Your Boss Will Say: “We need an immediate solution and this will take too much time.”

It is true that crafting a visual marketing campaign takes time. For example, an explainer video can take anywhere between 4 to 6 weeks to produce.

Your Pitch:  Slow & Steady Wins the Race

When convincing your boss, you can follow multiple approaches. The first one is to justify the time taken—the reality is that visual marketing is highly conversion driven which means that every campaign requires extensive research and planning. Marketers delve deep into your business’s story, product and consumer base to figure out the best possible way to present your brand. That’s why it takes so long to produce but one thing is for sure—the quality of the visual marketing campaign will be phenomenal. Rushing a campaign will only lead to a badly researched end product which won’t fulfil its purpose.

(Source: Adweek)

A great visual marketing campaign has the power to boost conversions, create brand awareness and help your business take off, but all this will only happen if the campaign is given time to brew properly. Another good path to take would be to show your boss the longevity of a visual marketing campaign. It may take weeks to produce but it gives back returns for months or even years.

#6 What Your Boss Will Say: “It’s a fad, it’s not effective for the long run.”

Having a strong presence on digital media is considered an essential part of business branding since it boosts consumer attraction, conversion and publicity. Even though it has permeated deeply into our social fabric, there are quite a few industries which still do not believe in social media’s power and reach—B2B or tech startups being two examples.

Your Pitch: The Internet Is forever, so is Visual Marketing

A good approach to take here would be to invest time in research and prove your point with facts and figures. There are countless visual campaigns which became so popular that they are almost iconic now.

(Source: How2Media)

Visual marketing is all about storytelling and by narrating your brand’s story right, half your battle is already won once customers have a clear picture in mind. While it is true that going ‘viral’ is a temporary form of fame, it is also true that there lies high potential of financial gain in it. By the way things are going now, it is safe to assume that visual is the future of marketing.

According to WebDAM, approximately 84 % of communications will be visual by 2018 and around 79 % of internet traffic will be video content by 2018. So, while pitching a campaign to your boss, you need to make him/her see that this is not about riding a fad, but about making an investment into the future which will provide long-term returns.

#7 What Your Boss Will Say: “It doesn’t deliver as well as other direct marketing modes.”

When considering marketing activities, there are many options available such as Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising, Paid Social Media Marketing, content marketing, conferences, etc. Since these have been around for longer than visual marketing, it’s possible that your boss might find these more reliable. 

Your pitch should aim to establish visual marketing not as a wild stunt but as an element of the marketing mix which will bring all these together.

Your Pitch: Visual Marketing binds all marketing efforts together

Having great visuals will definitely attract more and more people to your direct marketing efforts since content with relevant images gets 94% more views than content without. Hence, adding visual elements to your marketing mix will help polish it all up. Think of it as the spark which will ignite these campaigns and allow them to really make an impact.

(Source: MarketingDonut)

(Source: MarketingDonut)

In your pitch, you can use the example of a successful product/service from your portfolio and outline the efforts needed to market it. Equate it to a video or infographic and make sure to highlight the sky-high engagement possible because of the latter.

It is also important to remember that a marketing campaign is like a product—it requires time and effort to succeed. Just launching an explainer video and expecting it to give you phenomenal returns on its own is unfair. It will have to be marketed on social media, your website and the internet to make sure it reaches the right people and leads to conversions.

In Conclusion

Visual marketing really is the future of brand storytelling. It’s an investment which will give valuable returns in the long run. Getting your boss on board might seem like a mammoth task but we’re sure you can get it done. Happy pitching!

By: Deepasha Kakkar