Visual content marketing (VCM) came to the fore back in 2012 but has really held it’s place in the spotlight ever since. Now, when you look at digital or internet marketing, there is a huge focus on why visual content works and why you should be using it in your business. For good reason too. It would appear that we as human beings are becoming more visual as a race, part of that is built in, as we are wired to process images faster than text, 60,000 times faster in fact. The other part is that our society is becoming more and more time poor. We live in a 100mph world, where we expect everything to happen fast. Not least of which we expect whatever web property we are looking at, to grab our attention within 3 seconds. Visuals pique our interest before we have even processed the information, and if you are in business, you want to pique as much interest as possible in the shortest possible time frame.
Whilst VCM came into the mainstream marketing world in 2012, it’s been around for a long long time. Going as far back as 10,000-40,000 years in fact. Cro Magnons, or European Early Modern Humans to use their correct term, introduced engravings, sculptures, body art and of course cave paintings. These were all visual representations of content for early man to consume. They also served as lasting records in many cases. People in Neolithic times introduced Petroglyphs – images carved into the rock and then ancient Egypt with their hieroglyphs which were images designed to represent a word or sound and formed their writing system. So as far back as ancient Egypt, visuals were used to convey written messages. The main difference now, is that we have a different vehicle to use to share our visual messages. It’s also a little bit quicker than etching into a rock!
What we also have is the flexibility in the type of media we decide to create our visual content in. And rather than explain it all in text. The guys over at Kwikturn Media have put together this great visual to represent just how important visual content is, and why you might think about incorporating say video into your marketing mix. That last quoted figure should convince any business person out there that video ought to be a core element of your visual content. ‘Consumers that watch a video are 85% more likely to purchase that product.’ Speaking of which, check out our video on the home page 🙂
