Visual Storytelling: A Quick Way to Enhance Your Brand Image
Has it ever happened to you that a captivating title compelled you to open the blog post, and you got mesmerized after reading the first paragraph, but as you proceeded further, you lost interest as there was a large chunk of plain text with no single visual image?
The role of visuals is important not only in blogs and social media posts but also in your business presentations intended to increase your brand image. No matter how beautifully you have compiled your experiences and emotions in your brand story, if you don’t have given it a touch up with gripping visuals, you might not be able to get the expected traction.
In this blog post, we will discuss how you can take your brand image to the next level through visual storytelling. Read on!
Some Incredible Stats that Attest the Power of Visuals
A picture is worth a thousand words — this fact is evident from the below-given statistics.
- Images can be processed 60,000 times faster than the plain text by the human brain.
- The human brain can process an image in just 13 milliseconds.
- 55% of visitors on a website spend less than 15 seconds actively reading.
- People remember 80% of what they see, 20% of what they read, and 10% of what they hear.
- In comparison to text-only posts, posts with images generate 94% higher engagement.
- Infographics are shared three times more than any other content type.
6 Significant Visual Aids to Spruce Up Your Brand Story Presentations
- Infographics
Infographics are useful to imprint a strong image of your brand on the audience’s mind. These aids help present every simple to the complex aspect of the brand in a visually impressive manner, thereby capturing the attention of the audience in no time.
An infographic is a beautiful combination of the following elements:
- Graphs and Charts — Visuals that represent statistics, numeric data, and other information stunningly.
- Images — A useful tool to illustrate images of your products/brands.
- Diagrams — Another valuable aid to represent complex data with ease.
- Text — Text complements the visual data to make it easy to understand for the audience.
- Data — Data includes your research on the market environment, competitor analysis, and so on.
2. Animations
By including animations in your brand, you can present the story of your brand creatively, thereby making it easy for the audience to empathize with it.
3. Videos
Most people look for videos of products or services before making the final decision. Videos will make your presentation more impressive and memorable.
4. GIFs
Showcase the most important aspect of your brand through Graphics Interchange Format (GIFs) to make it stand out. You can summarize long content in GIFs to illustrate innovatively.
5. Memes
If used rightly in your presentations, memes help make an emotional connection with the audience. You can add a pinch of fun or humor through memes to promote brand recall.
6. Photos
Representing the features of your products through photos will help the audience grab the information quickly and keep it retained for longer.
Tips to Make Visual Storytelling of Your Brand a Success
According to research, messages and information delivered in the form of a story are 22 times more memorable than just data and facts. Below are a few tips to ace your visual storytelling.
- Know Your Brand Completely
You won’t be able to craft an impactful story and choose the best visuals to represent it until you don’t know what your brand is all about. So, to improve your visual storytelling, you first need to understand the core and unique selling point (USP) of your brand, and for whom (clients/customers) it is intended. Identify:
- What are your offerings?
- How is your brand different from others?
- How will it help potential customers solve their pain points?
- Why do you want people to give it a try?
All this information will provide you with key ingredients to boost your storytelling efforts.
2. Prepare a Story
Now you are aware of the strengths and USPs of your brand; you have to ponder how you want to showcase it in your business presentations. You can use different visual aids, such as icons, silhouettes, etc. to illustrate the uniqueness of your brand. One thing to keep in mind is, your storyline must be in line with the needs, expectations, and pain points of the intended audience.
3. Maintain Consistency
Once you have prepared a story for your brand, don’t deviate from it. Use the same story in your presentations, business and marketing communications, websites, etc. to instill trust and build credibility with your customers/clients. However, you can change the way of delivering it, based on the level of understanding of the audience.
4. Put Yourself in the Shoes of the Audience
Instead of weaving your story around the people who are well-acquainted with your brand, craft it for those who don’t have any knowledge about your niche. Choose the visuals, words, and tactics of storytelling to impress the customers for whom your brand is proposed. Your story must empathize with the audience and make them believe that your brand will meet their demands and solve their problems.
5. More Than One Story is Acceptable
You can prepare more than one visual story to represent the USPs, goals, history, and values of your brand, but all stories must have consistency, and they all must convey your brand’s persona. Depending on the audience, you can add humor in some stories while sentiments in others to pull at the heartstrings of the audience.
6. Represent it in an Engaging Manner
Boring stories won’t captivate the audience, but an engrossing one will grab their attentiveness. Unlike ads, your brand story is not marketing material or a sales pitch. Instead, your story is a strong foundation to develop trust and saga of success and growth. Thus, your story must be driven by personality. In other words, you must combine your own personality with the brand persona while showcasing the story to the customers.
7. Intuitive Designs for a Great Story
Keep your story simple, but represent it creatively to make a positive impact. You can use aesthetic and minimalist designed templates to enticingly put across your story and help the audience connect the dots.
The Inference
The power of the story is apparent from a scientific fact that stories activate the sensory centers in our brain. A well-told brand story personifies the audience’s concern, provides them solutions, and makes an emotional connection with them, which are crucial for the brand’s success. So, you must leave no stone unturned in crafting a compelling visual story for your brand.
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