How important is image to a business and its brand reputation? How important is it to choose the right image for your business and how important is your intended tone and message?
Short answer: very important. But first, let’s dig a little deeper into why.
Anecdotally, I think anyone can remember an occasion where our first impression of a business/brand was established by something we saw. Whether it’s a TV commercial, a storefront display you’ve passed, or countless other examples.
That impression often lasts and is the first thing that comes to mind when someone mentions that brand. This emphasizes the importance of choosing the right one images that match your brand.
Scientifically, the idea that the images used by businesses tend to leave the most lasting and most impactful impressions can be explained through several key data points.
From research that 90% of the information transmitted to our brain is visual, and beyond that, our brain is actually processing images 60,000 times faster than text.
Images have tremendous marketing value to businesses of all sizes and industries. But how can those brands ensure the image they’ve chosen will drive their engagement with the right message and tone?
How to promote your business with images
When businesses want to leverage their image to grow their business, they have to guarantee anything. All the images they use serve four essential purposes: help your business stand out from the crowd, align with your intended message, resonate with your intended audience, and finally together, in line with the current trend of the day, when possible.
First, it’s absolutely essential that any message used in your images – whether it’s based on actual text or derived from visual implications – should be consistent with your message. intended to convey to the consumer as well as the overall tone and message of your brand.
Yes, choose the flashiest and the most expensive attention-grabbing images can certainly get the attention of many consumers. But what good is it if those images attract consumers without actually communicating your brand’s intended message?
Not only can you waste your marketing budget, but it can also have a pretty profound impact on the overall brand image of your business. Marketing industry research shows 71% of companies agree that inconsistent brand presentation often leads to customer confusiondamage the reputation and brand image.
With your message refined and aligned with your brand and its intended brand image, the next area you’ll want to tackle is choosing images to help your business stand out from the crowd. competitors.
Choosing images that are eye-catching and visually stimulating will ensure a lasting impression in the minds of the consumers you want to attract.
Strengthen your brand image
In addition to simply choosing the images that stand out the most – which is essential – you can also use this as an opportunity to reinforce your brand’s image and message through a visual element, such as: such as a feature palette.
If you don’t already have a signature color for your brand, it’s a good idea to establish one, as research shows that leveraging a signature color palette can increase your brand awareness by 80%.
The last two important aspects of promoting your business with visuals – making sure you’re resonating with the right audience and taking advantage of any trends of the day when possible – go pretty closely together. , at least in terms of technological solutions.
But let’s learn the importance of these two aspects first before diving into today’s technology that directly addresses these important issues in a way that can transform a brand’s marketing efforts. your brand now and in the future.
Attract the right audience according to today’s trends
First, you have to make sure your image resonates with the right audience. Yes, you can have attention-grabbing visuals tailored to match exactly the message your business wants to convey. However, if the image you choose doesn’t resonate with the right audience, then all those efforts are in vain.
In the past, making sure your images were relevant to the right audience would have required a dedicated market research team, which was often expensive, time consuming, and simply not feasible for businesses with smaller scale.
Likewise, for businesses that aim to align their marketing efforts with the most current trends – visual or otherwise – the old-school methods of engaging the public and implementing Market research is rapidly becoming obsolete and becoming too costly and time consuming for businesses of all sizes.
Use modern solutions
So what modern solutions to this problem exist for today’s businesses at an affordable price point and with the flexibility and scalability needed in today’s business landscape?
Today, technologies are available to shorten this process and revolutionize the way businesses stay in tune with their favorite consumers and trends that will resonate with consumers of the day, which we all know. will go into more detail below.
Leverage technology to resonate with your audience
As mentioned, making sure their image matches the right audience are two of the biggest challenges for those looking to promote their business. Another way is to make sure those images promote trends that consumers are paying attention to.
These issues have challenged businesses and their visual design teams for decades. The consequences of not aligning images with the right audience or trends – whether images on actual products or images used in your marketing campaigns – can be huge.
Failure to match these important aspects can leave you with a large inventory that consumers don’t care about, or even worse, you’ve poured your entire marketing budget into one campaign. that the image doesn’t resonate with the right consumers and leaves you with no budget left to rotate your image for a new marketing effort.
Keep your business up to date with its intended audience
In the past, when today’s technologies weren’t available, trying to keep your business up to date with your target audience while using current trends of the day was a cumbersome, time-consuming task. and costly.
For businesses that can afford it, these efforts often fall into hiring a market research team. However, this strategy is not viable for companies of all sizes, as the costs associated with using a market research team can be quite substantial and impracticable for small businesses. than.
Keep your business up to date with current trends
For other businesses with little available capital, staying in touch with their audience and the trends of the day requires business owners and their employees to stay immersed in the market and its trends; find ways to interact with existing customers to make sure their needs are being met, or meet potential new customers at industry events to see what your intended audience is looking for from your brand .
For one thing, the second strategy lacks precision, and both of these strategies lack the agility, flexibility, and scalability required by many businesses in today’s modern landscape.
So how can these businesses leverage technology to shut down these processes?
Scalable and affordable data-driven design tool
In today’s modern age, technology plays a vital role in helping businesses ensure their image matches the desired audience and the most recent trends.
An important area of technology that is ripe for use by brands today as they seek to drive their business forward with visuals is the innovative and modern data-driven design tools available. on the market.
Use the right Data-Driven Designer
The right data-driven design tool (try Vexels dot com) – powered by analysis of your target audience through various aspects like global trends, search trends, download deals and subscriber requests – will give enables businesses to leverage its visibility and insights into the market and its trends to help them identify the correct image that will resonate with their audience and succeed in matching them. in line with today’s trends.
The right data-driven design tool not only really ensures your business is leveraging the right visuals for its products, services, and marketing efforts, but it does so while saving money. Significant savings in both budget spending and allocated hours and the scalability and flexibility required in today’s business landscape.
Inference
With the technology now available to them, businesses of all types and sizes can leverage the power of visuals to drive their business with more impact than ever before.
Featured image credit: Photo by RODNAE Productions; Bark; Thank you!
