By now, it’s no secret to marketers that the visual trumps the written. According to a study by Hubspot, visual content generates a staggering 94 percent more views than text alone, and most audiences don’t read more than 20 percent of a webpage.
A picture really is worth a thousand words.
With the emphasis on visual content and the availability of tools to create high quality photos and graphics, platforms like Instagram have come to dominate social media marketing.
Of course, when you’re selling rainbow bagels or lip kits, Instagram marketing is easily done. The stunning photos basically take themselves. But what if you’re an insurance company? It takes a little more creativity and strategy.
But don’t write off Instagram just because you don’t have a sexy or even tangible product to sell. With the highest engagement rates of any social media platform, Instagram is too valuable for any marketer to ignore, regardless of their industry. Take some tips from these B2B business Instagram case studies and learn how to create a killer visual presence for your brand.
Lesson 1: Learn how to visualize your brand voice
Fido, a Canada-based personal communications service provider, sought to boost brand recognition among millennials. To do this, they latched on to the word “Curious.” They developed a series of ads using the hashtag #getcurious.
The ads, which featured millennial smartphone users, may have been for technology services, but the tone of these ads clearly invoked whimsy, curiosity and possibility with the use of somewhat abstract imagery featuring clouds, doves and plenty of sunlight.
Lesson 2: Show your audience themselves
Salesforce had a tricky question to answer: how do you market marketing services to marketers? The CRM provider wanted to raise awareness about its annual Dreamforce Conference among young professionals. The obvious answer would be to use photos from the previous year’s conference. But Salesforce had a different idea.
It’s no surprise that people like to see themselves, so Salesforce decided to create a campaign that featured individuals that their target audience could easily identify with. They used Instagram’s targeting tools as well as their own attendee demographics from the past year to create four visualized personas – developer, marketer, saleswoman and salesman – and then used these to create Instagram ads.
Lesson 3: Use visuals to tell a story
Capital One is a great example of a brand with a hard product to visually market. Financial services don’t lend themselves to pretty pictures. But the brand found a way to take a complex offering and boil it down to its most basic, visual element: the wallet. Reimaging their slogan, “What’s in your wallet”, the brand did so much more than just create a visual.
They built out a whole photo series that paired visual images of their customer’s wallets with compelling stories in the description, and boosted audience engagement in the process.
Here’s the takeaway
Visual marketing is about more than just pretty pictures of your product. Instagram can help you create a visual presence for your brand, your audience and your corporate story.
LUC Marketing 399 