Questions That Will Help You Create Your Visual Marketing Strategy

If you are familiar with this blog, you already know that I have a big interest in everything that represents visual marketing.Starting from big visuals as infographics or Slideshare, continued with little visuals as gifs and emoji and finally, with social networks that embrace the power of visual like Instagram, Snapchat, Slideshare or Pinterest.

But if you came here for the first time, let me tell you that here on this blog you can read topics about digital marketing, social media, evangelism marketing and visual marketing. These are the domains that I’m interested in and these are the topics from which I hope I can bring you valuable information.

Today I want to talk with you about a topic that I have not covered yet and I know that you are very interested in it: How do you create a visual marketing strategy for your company or for your personal brand.

But before we got into this subject, let me tell you something; you won’t read a step by step guide that will make you more successful, but I will help you ask you the questions that you need to write down when you want to create a visual marketing strategy.

So are you ready? Let’s start with the most important question you need to ask yourself before creating a strategy.

1. Why do I want a visual marketing strategy and what is the purpose of it

Maybe you read a lot of content about the importance of visual marketing and all the stats and reports shows you that visual is important in everything you put on the internet. Even if we talk about blog posts, social media status or other content which interest you.

But this is the most important question you need to ask yourself: Why do I want a visual marketing strategy?

Give yourself an honest answer. Why do you want it? Because it’s cool? Because it’s trendy? Because someone told you that you need a visual marketing strategy? Because your boss told you so?

Think about it. Those reports that you just read about visual content were made in a context  different from yours. Maybe you are in a different industry, have different resources and have a different purpose than other brands had when they created their strategy.

If your answers are based on your customers and on your brand authenticity, then you are on the right path.

Without the answer to this question, the other questions won’t help you create a professional strategy that will help your visual marketing.

And now, let’s get into the purpose of this strategy. Everything we do, everything we create and every step we take in the marketing areas needs a purpose. Without a purpose, we don’t have a goal, we don’t have a road and we don’t know what to do when we got into a hard situation.

What is the purpose of your visual marketing strategy?

Let me help you with this question and give you some helping answers:

• maybe you want more engagement from your community and help them connect with you easier
• maybe you want a bigger brand awareness
• maybe you want to sell more with your brand and with a clear visual marketing strategy you can get to those people that don’t know your product
• or maybe you want to create a stronger community on a network (we will talk later about the importance of a community on Instagram)
• or maybe you want to be more transparent using a network that will help you get a better experience with your brand (Snapchat is a great way to do this)

You can write down these answers and think about them. Yes, you can use one or more, but you can’t use every one of them.

Now that we know what we want with our visual marketing strategy and what is the purpose of it, we need to know who is our target?

2. Who is my target?

This is another important question you need, in order to clarify your visual marketing strategy.

If you don’t know who your target is, where they connect more, how they use the technology and other questions related to them, you can’t understand who will use your content.

Maybe your target is in the B2B industry and you want to get closer to them with your visual marketing strategy. So you will use Slideshare combined with Linkedin more often.

Or maybe your target are the millennials and you want to be more transparent with them. So you will use….you guessed it, Snapchat and Instagram – the today king and queen of visual marketing.

There are several methods that can help you understand who your target it. I will let you define it yourself.

If you have a product and you have a community who is using it, just give them a place where they can give you a feedback, or give them a little survey to ask about them.

Or maybe you have a blog with a lot of comments from them. Take the time and look at them, see how they are commenting on your blog, what kind of websites they used, who they are on the internet.

Your target will help you get deeper in your visual marketing strategy.

And now that we know why we need a strategy, what is the purpose and who is our target, we need to look at ourselves and see what resources do we have.

3. Who wilI create the content

This is the topic with which I risk making you hate me or love me. Why? Because I will be very honest with you and I don’t want to manage any situation out here.

Not everybody can create visual content. Even if you are a content marketer and you know how to work with a free design app, that doesn’t mean that you can create a great visual content that will engage with your audience.

I believe that if you edit a template, you didn’t create a content. It was just a simple edit and that’s it.

I believe that if you want to gain more with your visuals, you need to hire a professional designer. Even if we talk about designers, illustrators, visual marketers or other creators that understands the power of good visual and know how to create a beautiful piece that the people will love it.

So who will create the content?

I understand that you are a small business and you don’t have enough money to pay a professional designer. I understand that you can’t afford to work with someone who asks a lot of money. And if you want to work with these free design apps that let you edit a quoted template, you can do it.

But never ever do not expect to get the same results you can get with a professional designer.

I believe in the power of designers and I love the designers who understand how to create great content that will engage.

If you are not a designer, just don’t design. Work with designers and let them do their job.

If everybody will do his/her job, maybe we will create more valuable products or content.

But where will you share all these content that you will create? This question will take us to the next important question:

4. What channel do you want to conquer the most?

You need to understand that you can’t be good in everything, everywhere and everytime. This is why you need to figure out what channel do you want to conquer the most.

Which channel is the one that you will be the best at and you will create valuable content that will engage with your community.

Do you remember the question with the target? Well my friend, this question is kind of related with the target one.

And if you know which channel will that be, you need to get deeper into it. Read and learn everything possible about it. Experiment and test on it. Talk with the influencers over there and don’t forget to measure your experiment.

Maybe you want to be the best from your industry on Instagram. Look at your competitor, speak with your community and engage with the influencers. See how you can get a deeper and different approaches of that channel.

Talk with the specialists and take courses and go into webinars. Be careful, not everybody who is saying that is a specialist god really is. Look at numbers and what other people are talking about him or her.

Don’t forget that you have other visual channels that you need to be on, where your target is connecting.

If you choose a channel, be the best on it, work hard and connect smart. But do not overlook other channels. Why? Because the market is moving so fast and you don’t want to be left behind.

5. What kind of visual content will I use

This is the same question i hear over and over again. What kind of visual should I use on my next content?

The answer is simple: if you have a visual marketing strategy, you already know what your next step will be.

It is very important to understand the power of each visual in every context. You just can’t upload big infographics on Facebook because the context do not allow it. But you can upload a long form infographic on Pinterest, because that platform is designed for it.

I will get deeper in another blog post about the importance of big visuals and small visuals.

There are big visual types such as infographics or slideshares. These visuals need more research, and get deeper into the topic. Sometimes I allocate 2 days only to create an infographic.

There are the medium visual types such as photography, screenshots, memes or comics.

Also there are the small visual types that gained a lot of fame recently- emoji and .gifs.

And let’s not forget about videos that now are coming in different types:

• livestreaming videos
• long videos: documentaries
• short videos: snapchat, instagram or vine types
• medium videos: youtube, facebook or vimeo

I just mentioned them, but I promise you I will get deeper later in this topic too.

And the last question that you need to ask yourself to start creating the visual marketing strategy is about the influencers.

6. Who are the influencers in my industry?

If you work in the fashion industry, you need to look around you and see who the influencers in your industry are.

Maybe they are a celebrity, bloggers, instagrammers or vloggers.

Why do you need to know who the influencers from the industry are?

Because in that case you can connect with them, and when you finish a great piece of visual content, you can send them so they can reshare it with their community. In that place, you will help them create valuable content for their community and you will get bonus points to.

The influencers are not just personalities you can look at other publication from your industry and just connect on social media with them when you have something to show to them that will appreciate.

Conclusion

I hope that now that you have those questions in front of you, you can write down a visual marketing strategy that will sky rocket your brand!

Questions are important, so don’t neglect them.

Because you get the best answers only when you’re truthful with yourself.

Now let me know if these questions have helped you and what other topics regarding visual marketing you want me to cover.