How to Use Visual Marketing to Develop Your Brand in 2017

How to Use Visual Marketing to Develop Your Brand

Today I’m going to show you how visual marketing helped develop my New Jersey brand to give me almost 300% more business in 2017!

Hello Everyone! Welcome to Alyaman Alhayek Design-New Jersey brand development digital agency.

This is our first blog but I’m gonna cut right to the chase everyone.  

The best part?

You can use this strategy right from the start as a business in New Jersey, New York, or anywhere!

YOU are Your Brand:

What That Means in 2017 and the Digital Era

You have to represent your brand throughout everything you do.  You’ve probably heard that a million times before but how do you do that?

In the digital age the best way to do that is with visuals.

Visual marketing was the most important form of content for 37% of marketers’ businesses in 2016, that’s second only to blogging! (SOURCE)

Woah, woah, visual marketing, what’s that?

In short with the internet, social media, and digital media it’s the cheaper, more effective,and efficient way to reach more people than you could before.

Graphics, videos, and websites are all visuals that will develop your brand.

And I am going to give you the step by step process on what you need to do to use these to develop YOUR brand.

The Logo Design that Made Me Say: “I Totally Have to Do This!”

One day my classmate asked me if I wanted to design a logo for one of her colleagues.  

We were both designers but she hadn’t had a good experience working with him.

I took the job knowing this as I wanted to raise awareness of my brand within my New Jersey New York community.

Word of mouth was how I was getting most of my business back then, as some of you may be.

The first thing I was asked by the client:

Do you have any past work(logos) for me to look at?

….

The problem wasn’t that I didn’t have any, even though I had been doing graphic design for a while.

I just never organized it into a portfolio for clients to view!

Showcase Visuals: Your Work is Your Brand

Fast forward to 2017 my portfolio is constantly updated with my designs for you all to see! (3rd most visited page on my site)

I can keep talking but with this I can SHOW you.

It still surprises me how I didn’t do this sooner…

You may say, but wait Al my business doesn’t have any tangible product for visuals.

Visual marketing is essential, dictionary.com literally has more visuals on their site than words.

D-I-C-T-I-O-N-A-R-Y.COM

No excuses everyone.

Now that you’ve seen results I’ll walk you through the exact steps I used

The 3-Step Process to Brand Development and Marketing With “The Brand Rebirth”

There are 3 steps to The Brand Rebirth:

Step #1: Compile existing viable work/product.

Step #2: Create a brand promise of excellence.

Step #3: Visually market your brand

Here’s why this strategy is so effective:

First, new customers see your old work/product.      

New customers are a continuous focus of any business, and they all have never seen your old work.

Visuals allow them see it so they can benefit from it too! Can anyone say “resale value”???

Second, you make your work/product better.    

At least some of your existing work/products are outdated. You’ve got to give customers an incentive to choose your brand.

“The Brand Rebirth” shows them your product in a new light updated and visualized for the future.

Better work/products = more sales!

Third, you use an existing foundation     

The products are updated, better, and have a reputable history on Day 1!

Step #1: Compile Existing Viable Work/Product.

Your first step is to find work to “rebirth” using visual marketing.

Here’s how:

1. Products that have been updated.

Have a new version of a product coming out?

Perfect rebirth material!

Just make sure newer is better and explain why!

Existing customers will love new changes

63% of customers like it when manufacturers offer new products (2016). (SOURCE)

* Remember, updating existing products to new is cheaper than brand new products

AND

New customers will see an established history they can trust with existing products.

2. Products that have become relevant recently.

Sometimes products/work simply come back into the market

• Seasonal or trend based industries revolve around this. (Fashion, Real Estate, Tax Preparation)

• Changes in other fields/industries create a need for your product/work (New phones > new phone accessories, new field of medicine > new tools )

• Business partners or relationships change (Co Branded products/services)

• Social media trends and viral hits that involve your type of products/work

Step #2: Create A Brand Promise of Excellence.

Now that you’ve gathered the work/products time to make it all rebirth ready!

Here’s how I make my work meet my brand’s promise of excellence using visual marketing:

1. Use visuals; images and videos

Like I mentioned earlier, I update my portfolio with new work constantly.

As a digital designer this means new visuals.

However this applies to any business.

Remember dictionary.com?

Pages with visuals get 94% more views than text-only pages. (SOURCE)

That’s almost double the views!

Old stock images and videos on your website make visitors think to themselves:

“Jeez this looks shady, how old is this anyways?”

This makes them leave, you don’t want that.

Using original updated visuals also makes you stand out, eliminating competitors who don’t.

2. Improved content

Quantity AND Quality

Get rid of the fluff, but give them the good stuff.

People are so used to BS descriptions and ‘About Me’ sections.

Write ONLY useful, high quality information about your product/work (features, benefits, etc).

Give what your product/service is to them straight.

Then write ONLY useful high quality information about it(features, benefits, etc)

Content marketing leaders, who create the most high quality content, experience 7.8 times more site traffic than non-leaders. (SOURCE)

Better content = More traffic = More sales.

3. Add testimonials/reviews

72% of consumers will take action after reading a positive review (SOURCE)

Nothing is better than a real person telling you how good a company is.

People trust this because the reviewers were customers just like them.

Your excellent product/work satisfies customers, showcase it and more customers will follow.

Reviews provide an exponential growth cycle!

As long as you maintain your brand promise.

4. Address existing customer inquiries and comments:

Perfect segway from reviews: while we want all reviews to be perfect, that isn’t realistic.

BUT

That’s okay.

It’s actually better because you can reply to those comments directly.

Customers end up spending 20% to 40% more time with companies that engage and respond to customer service requests over social media! (SOURCE)

That’s more time to sell them your product/services!

Bottom line?

Make sure you reply to those comments!

Step #3: Visually market your brand

Now that your brand is living up to its promise of excellence…

Here’s how I made my content at least 2x better to show it with visual marketing:

1. Visualize everything

You’ve put in all this effort don’t let it go to waste.

Create visuals for all your content and work befitting your new and improved brand!

Remember!

Visuals = 94% more views than text (SOURCE)

This doesn’t mean to fill your pages and posts with random pics and memes.

Stand out with unique and creative visuals.

Companies that foster creativity enjoy 1.5x greater market share(SOURCE)

Let that sink in…

Even if you’re a small business just starting up, using well designed creative visuals you can turn 100 customers to 150 customers or 1000 to 1500!

While visuals of course mean graphics, it also means videos!

55% of people watch videos online every day.(SOURCE)

By 2017, online video will account for 74% of all online traffic.(SOURCE)

The only way for all these videos to reach everyone is your website.

I know you have a Facebook, Instagram, or other social media page.

That is NOT enough!

Your friend’s dog has a Facebook page, and albeit depressing, it probably has more followers than your business does.

Social media is HUGE.

You can and SHOULD use your videos and graphics on it to maximize traffic.

58% of consumers follow brands through social media!(SOURCE)

BUT

Your website is where you want to drive traffic so you can convert $$$

Over 2.4 billion people online daily, and over 90% of them have purchased from or contacted a company online in the last 12 months. (SOURCE)

They’re finally on your site so you know they’re interested.

This is where web design will keep them here to make you money

Or

Scare them away from your shady looking business.

Don’t lose them to competition!

Your website must reflect your brand just as your graphics, videos, and other visual marketing mediums do.

41.5% of marketers said that original visuals performed best!(SOURCE)

Don’t miss out, hire a professional and grow your business using visual marketing.

2. Let your customers know “The Brand Rebirth” is coming

Now that you met your brand promise and created all those visuals it’s time to market it all!

You’ve actually already been doing this if you’ve followed these steps till now.

Take it to the next level using these methods

Email Marketing | Social Media Marketing | Press Releases | Forum/Community Marketing

Your customers will love the improvement and come back for more.

Existing customers – Check

They’ll leave reviews and share the “new you” with others.

Referrals – Check

People searching will see an established business that keeps up with the latest trends.

New Customers-Check

The Brand Rebirth – Is Here!

Congratulations

You’ve made it to the end of my first post:

How to Use Visual Marketing to Develop Your Brand

Case in point:

It’s almost 21 pages long…imagine that was all text!

Now It’s Your Turn…

Now that you’ve seen my stats and results, I’d like to hear from you.

What do you think of The Brand Rebirth?

Or maybe you have a question.

Leave a quick comment below.

I’ll be around and check back often  to reply and help as best I can.

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