We are highly visual creatures. Despite having spent millennia with written texts surrounding every area of our lives, visuals still get our attention and help us understand information more easily. No wonder visual content plays such a crucial role in digital marketing.
However, you can only use visuals with a well-planned image marketing strategy. There are decades of research and practical experience that can guide you in correctly using digital marketing images.
This guide will walk you through every aspect of using images in digital marketing, from SEO to affiliate marketing.
You’ll learn why using imagery is important and understand how to implement it across eight different marketing channels.
Let’s dive in!
Why is it important to take advantage of images in digital marketing
The main reason you should use visuals in your marketing is that images translate directly into sales.
- Illustrations help people follow directions
- Images improve brand recognition
- Images in Google Ads result in a 10% CTR increase
- Posts with images are twice as likely to be shared
- Blogs with 10+ images receive 22% more traffic
No matter what type of marketing you’re doing, the odds are it can benefit from visuals.
8 Ways to Use Images and Photos in Digital Marketing
There are multiple types of digital marketing, and the way you approach using visuals depends on the digital marketing strategy you use. Now we’ll discuss the eight major approaches to digital marketing and how to use images in each of them.
1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Though SEO and content marketing are very closely connected these days, using images for each of them can differ quite a lot.
SEO is more of a technical field that involves on-page optimization tailored towards optimizing website loading speed and crawlability by search engines.
The first and most important thing you should do when using a digital marketing image for SEO purposes is to minimize it. Good-looking visual materials like blog illustrations and visual materials for landing pages tend to be large files. These large files slow down your website loading speed quite a lot and can potentially result in lost leads.
Image Optimization
You can compress JPEG or PNG files with Colorcinch’s image compressor or a WordPress plugin. If your website has thousands of large images, consider converting them to WebP. It’s an image format created and supported by Google that can cut down file size by 20-30% without significantly compromising the quality.
Another thing you should do with every visual element on your site is add an alt-text. This HTML tag lets the search engine know what the image features and the image could potentially show up in Google Images results. Even if that doesn’t happen, it adds to the keyword structure of your pages.
If you have a large website with many images, you can detect the areas that need improvement by running an audit with the SE Ranking site audit tool. It will highlight digital marketing images that are too big or missing an alt-text.
It also shows you broken images and points out image-related issues so that you can quickly fix them.
SE Ranking’s website audit tool provides a lot more insights into how your website can be optimized, apart from images. In just a few clicks, you can audit the whole website and see crawling issues, a Core Web Vitals assessment, and much more.
Now, here’s an advanced way to use images in digital marketing. Add them to the schema markup of your pages. This allows Google to display the pages on the SERP, potentially improving the click-through rate.
2. Content marketing
Since content marketing is intertwined with SEO, you should be using the best practices from the chapter above in your strategy. On top of that, make sure there are enough images in your blog posts — blogs with visuals tend to have a higher viewership.
Apart from a featured image, use illustrations throughout the content. They could be screenshots that serve as examples or graphs that show data that proves your point. It’s best to create featured images and graphs in-house and include your brand in them. But taking materials from other companies is okay too, as long as you indicate the sources.
Using screenshots in your how-to articles to make the information easier to digest is a great practice.
However, you should avoid using simple image types like stock images. They don’t add anything positive to the content and can only serve as featured images. If you want to use them because you lack the resources to hire a designer, it’s best to use them to create collages instead.
If your business is going for a more friendly tone of voice, consider adding GIFs to your content. It’s a nice way to create more relaxed and informal content.
3. Email marketing
Using images in marketing is a good way to attract attention. It’s especially beneficial for a marketing strategy like email marketing, where you have mere seconds to grab a user’s attention before they close the email without clicking. Integrating a QR code into your email images can provide a direct link to additional content or offers, enhancing user engagement.
In email marketing, it’s important that the image is small in size. Otherwise, it could take too long to load and mess up how the email is displayed. Moreover, it should be attention-grabbing and feature your brand so the user instantly recognizes who the email is from, which contributes positively to your email sender reputation. Ensuring your SPF checker is up-to-date can help maintain email deliverability by authenticating your emails and showing that they’re sent legitimately from you.
But put less emphasis on images in email marketing. Many users avoid loading images to save data, and if you place most of the communication in images, it may not reach all of your users.
In the email, the visuals grab your attention, but all of the communication is done via text. So even if the images fail to load, the email still does its job.
4. Social media marketing
Social media is an intrinsically visual marketing channel. Even if you center your social media posts on the copy, an image can attract attention to the post. LinkedIn posts with images gather more views on average.
Of course, you can’t supply every post with a relevant image. Consider creating a brand image that can go with your posts. It can be something very simple like this one.
Social media graphics play a vital role in various digital marketing fields, from local business owners to book marketing and beyond. A smaller B2C business may also use a platform like Instagram or Pinterest, where images play an even larger role. These platforms require you to produce your own images and care for the quality yourself. This could mean hiring a photographer or designer to create unique, high-quality images that feature your brand.
In addition to those images, since you will post constantly, you will also need a set of identifier images for your business. Those images will be displayed at the top of your page on Facebook or LinkedIn.
When you’re working on your social media marketing images, it’s useful to know what size image you need. Instagram may crop too high or too wide photos, so creating visuals that fit the platform’s standard is best.
5. Influencer marketing
Working with influencers is another way of conducting SMM. Instead of attracting users to owned media, you could promote your business through already-established influencers. This is mostly useful for B2C brands, but B2B brands can also benefit from it.
For influencer marketing, you want to work with user-generated content. Instead of creating visuals yourself, let the influencer create them in their own style. However, it’s best to provide brand guidelines to make sure the content adheres to your standards.
6. Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing is quite different from working with influencers. It involves working with dozens of affiliates, most of whom need more resources to create images on their own. Therefore, it’s best to develop a marketing image kit that affiliates can use.
This will help your brand identity stay consistent across the web and ensure the quality remains high. The kit should only focus on providing brand imagery, and the actual marketing should be left to the affiliate.
7. Pay-per-click marketing
People are paying less and less attention to display ads, so grabbing their attention with an image is paramount. Apart from being attention-grabbing, the image you use in a PPC ad should depend on your business and the type of customers you serve.
Showing something that covers a customer’s pain is your best shot at getting their attention.
It’s always a good idea to include a brand logo to increase brand awareness passively.
8. Native advertising
Native advertising includes content you post on paid media channels, typically in the sponsored section. Even though it might have a sponsored tag, you want it to closely resemble the type of content each particular media posts.
Creating imagery for native advertising should follow suit. The images you use should be similar to those used on the website you’re posting on.
In many cases, the company you’re advertising with will take care of image and content creation on its own.
Conclusion
No matter what kind of marketing you do, using images will likely have a positive effect. However, every marketing channel is different and requires different imagery.
It will take some time to figure out what works best for your brand and for your marketing channels. Approach this process like you would an experiment, and don’t fear failure — it only shows you where you need to improve.
Above all, try to build a consistent brand image. This will ensure your brand is recognizable across channels, be it a blog article, display ad, or email.
About Guest Author: Diana Ford
Diana is an experienced digital marketing specialist and freelance business consultant. She is an expert in search engine optimization, content marketing, and social media promotion.