How to Write a Story That Deserves Consideration – Outbrain

Visual information is an essential element of human communication. Images and videos are easily digestible and shareable, which is so important in our digital age with data overload and social media.

delightful Visual content can help businesses stand out stand out from the competition and grab people’s attention. In addition, compelling images can evoke emotion and form strong brand associations.

In this article, we’ll share visual advertising techniques that can help you create a compelling visual story, grab attention, and stay competitive in the marketplace. We also share tips for creating engaging content. Read on to find out more.

What is visual storytelling?

Visual storytelling is part of it content marketing that primarily uses images or video to tell a story. It can be used to deliver powerful messages without a single word. This method not only focuses on storytelling, but also on using emotional triggers.

visual advertising techniques

To create eye-catching ads and engaging stories, you must be proficient with visual advertising techniques that capture people’s attention and evoke an emotional response. Below we’ll go through some techniques that will help you stand out from the crowd and connect with your audience on a deeper level.

visual weight

Visual weight is the significance level of a scene object. This is often accomplished through the use of contrast, color, or both. The more visual weight an object has, the more contrast it has. And the greater the contrast of an object, the more attention it attracts.

Visual weighting allows us to accurately place focus in a scene and indicate which objects are important to the story and which aren’t. This technique helps advertisers focus people’s attention exactly where they want it.

An object’s visual weight is determined by a number of factors. This includes size, color, shape, texture, alignment, contrast, saturation, density, movement, white space, Z depth, and other factors.

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visual movement

Visual movement is a technique that guides viewers through content in a specific way. When people see a new image, page, or ad, they show similar visual patterns based on typical eye movements. As a result, everyone navigates through the content in the same way.

People often follow two literal visual paths. The first is a Z-shape, where the eye movement is from the top-left corner to the top-right corner of a page, then diagonally to the bottom-left corner, and finally to the bottom-right corner.

The second is an F-shape where the eyes move from the top left corner to the top right corner of a page, then drop slightly and repeat the same movement across the page.

composition

Composition plays a crucial role in visual advertising. Composition refers to how all the components of the image are arranged in visible space. The composition should be harmonious and balanced.

You can use the golden ratio, rule of thirds, focus, negative space, and symmetry to achieve a balanced composition.

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Colours

Colors have the ability to evoke strong emotions. Marketers and designers use a limited range of colors for specific products within an industry. They combine color with a product to evoke certain feelings and create the desired mood, as people tend to associate a product with the emotions experienced.

For example, people associate green with calm, peace, balance, harmony, and the environment, while red is a vibrant color associated with passion, risk, confidence, anger, and danger.

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associations

Advertising primarily aims to evoke positive associations with a product in the consumer. Marketers use happy or wealthy people to entice consumers to buy their products. People associate the condition of people in advertisements with the goods they own or use. Such messages are extremely powerful and have an impact on the human mind.

People also like to associate with famous and successful people. For example, when they see athletes in advertisements, they believe that if they buy the same sports equipment or clothing as those celebrities, they will become the same.

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symbolism

Symbolism is a form of visual advertising that relies on associative bonds. Symbols usually have a deeper meaning that lies beneath the surface of the visual.

Marketers use symbols in visual advertising to communicate deeper meanings in simple forms and create stronger unconscious associations with a product.

For example, if a brand wants to emphasize that their product has a fresh scent, they can use ice, frost, water, mint, or citrus.

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Before/after picture

Displaying a before and after image is a popular way to encourage people to buy your product or service. The before and after technique helps brands immediately and openly demonstrate the value and relevance of their products.

Marketers can use this method for products designed to show instant results and value, such as: B. Self-tanning products. Alternatively, before and after images can demonstrate life without the product and then life with the product. The second picture should of course be more positive.

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How to draw more attention to your content

Marketers should use visuals to draw people’s attention not only to the company’s advertising, but also to other online marketing and branding materials used by the company. Here are five tips to help you create engaging visual content.

Follow trends

Many brands use visual communication in their content marketing strategies. To communicate effectively with your target audience, You have to keep up with trends.

Outdated content is unlikely to attract a consumer’s attention. Keeping up with trends keeps you ahead of the competition, offers your customers new experiences and identifies new advertising opportunities. Watching trending content can also help you come up with new ideas faster, avoid creative pitfalls, and identify what works and what doesn’t.

Keeping track of the latest visual trends in your industry gives you useful insights into your customers and what makes them respond positively.

Avoid overused stock images

Many companies want to control their budgets by limiting their visual production spend. With stock content sites, you can do that quickly and easily Complement your text with trendy and affordable graphics.

Modern stock content platforms offer a wide range of ready-made products such as images, videos, vectors, illustrations and even music. However, it is very easy to fall into the trap of using generic and overused images.

When looking for visual content for your business, avoid cliche photos with fake smiles and unrealistic attitudes. Choose photos with minimal retouching and visually appealing colors.

Use professional design tools

Reinforce your message with an impressive design. Use professional design tools to create unique content. Today’s market offers a wide range of tools for professionals of all levels to help them create compelling visuals.

For example, you can use a platform like VistaCreate, an online graphic design tool for quickly and easily creating a wide range of visual content for commercial and personal use.

The service offers many professionally designed templates for different platforms and is suitable for creating animated graphics. You can even remove the background and add your own text, images, music, and branding elements.

Transform text or audio content into visual elements

Reach new audiences and draw more attention to existing text or audio content by turning it into engaging visuals. Infographics, charts, and checklists can help you make number-heavy content more digestible. Animated graphics and Video can help you visualize audio.

Long formats should be distributed on specific platforms, short formats – on social media. Upload long videos to YouTube and share short snippets of those videos on other platforms. The same can be done with infographics. Share complete data on your website and cropped images on social media.

Adapt visuals to any platform

Visually appealing ads can reach your target audience anywhere. However, to be sure of your success, analyze how well your visuals fit into different sharing platforms.

Think in advance which formats you need for different platforms. Consider the size format and image or video orientation for each social network.

Make your ads stand out visually

Understanding basic psychology and design principles can aid in creating ads and content that are visually appealing and will help promote or sell your company’s products or services. For brands to communicate their messages and ideas quickly and easily, there is no substitute for the power of visual advertising.