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Connecting to a wide audience and keeping customers engaged isn't particularly difficult in today's modern business world. As mobile technology connects us all through Internet, entrepreneurs and marketers have an easier process of sending out product and/or service information to their selected market. Today, one of the successful mode of digital marketing is digital visual storytelling that utilizes images, videos, and all sorts of visuals presented in a short period of time to current and potential consumers online. Experts from AZ Big Media said that visual storytelling is the new social footprint of every startup. Photo- and video-sharing applications, such as Vine and Instagram, are the common platforms used to disseminate this digital advertisement.
Let’s Get Wise on Twitter retweeted an article from Ad Age about digital storytelling with a caption: “Real-time marketing is coming.” Author Kendall Thornton of NewsCred wrote that storytellers aren’t just about narrating a blunt fairy tale, but they cater for two marketing demands of consumers: immediacy and relevance. Unfortunately, not all businesses are well-versed or even maximizing its potential for their success.
If you're just as curious on how to utilize this digital marketing approach, we’ll show you below everything you need to know about visual storytelling and how you can utilize it to your startup’s success.
Creates a backstory that spurs emotional connection
Depending on the social platform that you’ll be using, your marketing technique must have a human touch to it, where you bring emotional connection with your readers. The story of Compare the Market, a United Kingdom-based price comparison website, is a good example here. In 2007, they released a campaign that involved an aristocratic (but very cute) meerkat named Aleksandr Orlov and his business (www.comparethemeerkat.com) that focuses on anything and everything about meerkats.
Google AdWords was a valuable input to the campaign. During the time when they were formulating the best keywords to use online, the word “market” was expensive at £5 per click, whereas the word “meerkat” was only priced at £0.05.
This served as the idea wherein the character was created. The website and its first TV ad presented ways on how different comparethemeerkat.com is to comparethemarket.com (a car insurance comparison site).
Twelve weeks after the release of their marketing campaign, the traffic to the original website, comparethemarket.com, went up by 186%. With its outstanding execution, the campaign and the company were recognized as one of 2010’s New Media Age Effectiveness Awardees.
Visual content as the answer to “Infobesity”
A joint study by AOL Research and Nielsen in 2011 revealed that there are at least 27 million content created daily. With a competitive market, marketers and advertisers are pressured to make their own content stand out from the rest. The best way to start is by investing on visual content. Citing a data from Content Plus, writer Michael Brenner of Business Insider said that 94% of customers are more inclined to browse written content that are bundled with images, than those without any visuals. Also, he stressed that this has allowed social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Vine to focus on adding more visual elements to their platforms to target more readers.
Bulk of visual storytelling tools
Despite the growing number of visual storytelling tools, all of them are unified under one goal – to allow your startup to reach its peak of success. Here are a few of these tools and how they can help you:
· Infogr.am
In 2012, Media Bistro revealed that infographics being shared on Twitter are retweeted 832% times more than simple articles and images. Infogr.am takes advantage of this trend, allowing you to inject your marketing message into an easy to digest infographic. In you’re writing articles, infographics are a great way to present your facts to make things easier to the readers.
· Tableau
Tableau is a data visualization platform utilized by the Guardian and the New Scientist to communicate hard-hitting news in layman’s terms. It can be used to make interactive diagrams, graphs, and maps which can be embedded into your website. It’s known for its wide database of visualization techniques and its mapping technology, tasked to automatically code the city and zip code level.
Visual storytelling invites your patrons to join your cause
By uploading photos and videos to your official website and social media pages, you’re able to invite your followers to adapt your mission and values as a company. TOMS shoes is a prime example, where they give away a pair of shoes and eyeglasses to less fortunate children in remote areas, for every item that their customers purchase. In their official page, they presented how many children have benefitted from the contributions done by their customers, which in return, made them garner more followers.
These four ideas we’ve presented may be tough to practice. But, with proper execution and brainstorming, you’ll be able to place your business on the map without investing too much.
On his official Google+ account, Kyle Albert shares interesting and inspiring stories of startups businesses here and abroad. He believes that with the right mindset and tools, nothing is impossible to sell in this very competitive market. Add him on your circle if you find this article interesting.
