Visual Content in Modern Marketing: Strategies and Examples

Visual content marketing involves the use of visuals such as images, videos, infographics, and others in attracting, informing, and converting the audience. This need is proven by video: according to Wyzowl’s 2026 research, 84% of respondents would like to see more video from brands (Source).

Content Whale uses visual content marketing for client services. Below you will find an example of how this was done. For the KnowledgeHut project, high-quality graphics were the basis for 12-15 SEO blog posts monthly, and the traffic increased from 278k users in April 2022 to 2 million+ in September 2023.

In this guide, you will learn the essence of visual content marketing, discover how to create a visual content strategy and get some examples of visual content to use in your projects.

1. What Is Visual Content Marketing?

Defining visual content is not complicated. It can be an image, video, graphic, chart, or interactive tool that delivers a message without using words only. Visual content marketing utilizes those tools to reach some goals, like making people aware of something, attracting traffic, gaining leads, or closing deals.

Examples of marketing visuals are photos, infographics, charts, short videos, gifs, slides, and any other type of tools that need a goal and a creator first, before they become a part of a post or a page. Visual marketing is a broader concept that includes planning, creating, and distributing those visuals.

There are four ways visual content marketing helps businesses:

• It stops a user from scrolling through a feed full of other users’ posts on platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest, where you can find many different posts per minute of scrolling.
• It explains complex things faster than any paragraph can, especially when it comes to information and processes.
• It gives evidence.
• It makes a brand recognizable.

2. Why Visual Content Matters in Modern Marketing?

Visual content marketing matters because research ties the right images to higher engagement and attention, while the wrong images get ignored. The findings below come from published studies and surveys.

Capturing Audience Attention

A study of Twitter and Instagram data in the Journal of Marketing Research found that adding an image raised retweets by 119% for air-travel tweets and 213% for SUV tweets, and raised likes by 87% and 151% (Source). Pictures with human faces raised Twitter engagement by 38% to 291%, but the effect did not appear on Instagram.

Enhancing Brand Messaging

Relevant images carry the message, and decorative ones do not. In Nielsen Norman Group eyetracking research, users ignored purely decorative images and stock photos of generic people, yet team portraits of real employees drew 10% more viewing time than bios that took up 316% more space (Source).

Improving User Experience

Visual content marketing also improves usability. Charts, diagrams, and short videos explain a process faster than text, so place each visual beside the sentence it supports, and write a caption that states the takeaway in plain words.

Boosting Engagement and Reach

Video leads visual content marketing formats. Wyzowl reports that 91% of businesses use video marketing and 82% of video marketers report a good return on investment, down from an all-time high of 93% a year earlier (Source). The survey covered 266 respondents, so treat the percentages as directional.

3. How to Build a Visual Content Strategy?

The development of a visual content marketing strategy transforms random posts into a planned strategy with defined objectives, format, and owner. See the six steps outlined below, as well as our guide on content marketing strategies for a bigger picture.

Understand Your Audience

Audience analysis defines the types of visual content marketing to be used. For instance, the younger audience loves short videos on Tiktok and Instagram, while the professional audience prefers carousels and charts on LinkedIn; thus, do your audience analysis by checking the metrics of age, occupation, and device before choosing a format.

Define Objectives

Every visual content marketing campaign should have one objective; brand awareness, website traffic, and conversions are some of them. Choose the format and key performance indicators that match them using the table below.

Choose the Right Platforms

Platform choice shapes visual content marketing results. Instagram and Pinterest suit images and short video, YouTube suits longer video, and LinkedIn suits charts, slides, and professional stories.

Maintain Consistent Branding

Consistent branding makes every visual content marketing asset recognizable. Keep one color palette, one typeface family, and one photo style across every asset. Canva and Adobe Express make it easy to save a brand kit that your whole team can reuse, and a shared folder keeps every logo, font, and template in one place.

Plan and Schedule Content

Put every visual on a content calendar with a format, an owner, and a publish date. A monthly calendar kept KnowledgeHut’s 12 to 15 blogs a month on schedule.

Measure Performance

Track engagement, click-through rate, and conversions for each format, and compare results against a 90-day baseline before you change the plan.

4. Types of Marketing Visuals and When to Use Them

Visual content marketing uses many formats, and each one fits a different goal, so the list below says what each format does best and gives a sample use.

Images and Photographs

Custom photos build brand identity better than stock images. Li and Xie found that high-quality, professionally shot photos earned more engagement across platforms and product categories, and screenshots earned the least.

Infographics

Infographics turn data and processes into one shareable image. Use them for comparisons, timelines, and step-by-step guides.

Videos

Use video for demos, tutorials, testimonials, and brand stories, and add captions so it works without sound, because video is the most active format in visual content marketing today and it suits every stage of the funnel. Our short-form video guide covers formats and length by platform.

Memes and GIFs

Memes and GIFs add humor and suit casual channels and younger audiences. Keep them on brand, and skip them in formal B2B pages where a joke could undercut the claim.

Presentations and Slideshows

Slides work for education, pitches, and LinkedIn carousels. Put one idea on each slide.

Interactive Content

Quizzes, polls, calculators, and interactive infographics invite action and collect audience data. QR codes bridge print and digital experiences by sending a scan to a landing page.

5. How to Create Effective Visual Content?

Effective visual content marketing starts with quality and ends with a clear message.

• Use high-quality and original images that represent the product, the people, or the data.
• Tell a story: Start with a problem, go through the actions, and end with the outcome, be it a victory for a client or your company’s vision.
• Select the right tool based on what you have to do: Canva for graphics, Animoto and iMovie for videos, and Piktochart or Venngage for infographics.
• SEO optimize your media with good file names, alt text, and descriptions using our checklist for creating SEO-friendly content so that Google can see every image on your page.
• Use one visual style consistently across all channels.

6. Visual Content Examples From Real Campaigns

These visual content examples show how brands use a single idea across images, video, and packaging. Visual content marketing examples work best when the idea is simple, and each one below follows that rule.

Nike’s Dream Crazy Campaign

Nike released this campaign in 2018 on the 30th anniversary of its Just Do It. The campaign featured Colin Kaepernick. Black and white imagery and video stories were employed showing athletes overcoming obstacles, where the graphics spoke much louder than the copy.

Coca-Cola’s Share a Coke Campaign

In Coca-Cola’s case, the company personalized its bottles and cans with popular first names. Packaging was designed in a way that made every can and bottle photographable, and the customers did that.

KnowledgeHut’s Graphics Backed Blogs

For KnowledgeHut, we utilized premium graphics to engage students through educational content. Additionally, a monthly calendar was set out containing 12 to 15 blogs SEO-focused. About 65% of traffic was driven by informational queries like “CISSP certification” and “PMP boot camp.”

7. How to Measure Visual Content Marketing?

Content marketing using visuals requires three key metrics.

• Engagement: Likes, comments, shares, and saves divided by impressions, indicating engagement in the visual itself.
• Clickthrough rate: Clicks from the visual to the page that it supports.
• Conversion: Leads or sales generated through the visit to the page containing the visual. This is measured through Google Analytics, either as a goal or an event.

These metrics are reported through Google Analytics, HubSpot, and the native analytics of the platforms themselves. Analyze these metrics on a monthly basis and keep the formats that outperform your benchmark while discarding those that don’t since formats that succeed in one platform may very well fail in another.

Conclusion

The key to using visual content marketing is that each element must have an objective, a format, and a metric, and that the image itself delivers a message rather than being purely decorative. Base your approach on the six steps outlined above, create your own marketing visuals that deliver a message, and look at the numbers once a month to ensure that each format earns its place.

Talk to Content Whale’s content team to plan a visual content strategy and a visual content marketing calendar that match your goals.

FAQs

What is visual content marketing?

Visual content marketing involves the utilization of images, video, infographics, and interactivity to engage an audience and make a sale or gain more traffic.

Why should visual content matter in today’s marketing?

Visual content stops scrolls, explains complex concepts, and backs claims. In their study, Li and Xie noted that images increased engagement on Twitter. According to Wyzowl, 84% of survey respondents wanted more videos from brands.

Which type of visual content performs better?

Short videos, original photography, infographics, and interactivity work best. Choose the right format based on your objectives and channel. Try one new format quarterly.

How can I make high-quality marketing visuals?

It will require original images of high resolution, consistent brand style, adding captions and alt-text, and having one idea in each visual.

What tools can be used to create visuals?

Canva and Adobe Express can be used to create graphics, Animoto and iMovie for videos, and Piktochart and Venngage – for infographics.

How can I determine the effectiveness of my visual content?

I can use engagement rate, click-through rate, and conversions from Google Analytics and each platform analytics, comparing them against 90-day baseline before making changes in terms of format or budget.

What should a beginner’s visual content marketing strategy look like?

It should start small with one goal, one platform, and one format, regular publishing within 90 days, comparison of the results against baseline and then adding another format to my visual content marketing strategy.

What is the difference between visual marketing and visual content marketing?

The first includes all the types of visual communication; logos and packaging, for example. The second refers to publishing visual content in order to attract an audience and convert it.