Frequently in these posts, I have emphasized your goal in Content Marketing is to attract new prospects to your product or service and to move them from being unfamiliar with your company and your product or service to being hot prospects ready to buy.
You may be able to do that quickly with some. However, it’s going to take time with most. The way you do that is providing them information of value on your company and product or service on an ongoing basis.
You send them emails, and supplement those with articles, white papers, case studies and all of the other marketing pieces in each of your Content Marketing campaigns. In the process they move through your marketing funnel to a hot prospect ready to buy.
How Do You Accomplish This?
The first step is getting them to look at your marketing pieces. You do that with the title or headline. That interests them and gets them to want to find out more.
The second step is to for them to read what you have sent them.
Copywriters like me will tell you it’s through what we write that gets them to this point. Our goal is to get a reader to read the first sentence. Then get them to read the next one and each subsequent sentence all the way to the end. We do that by making sure our marketing pieces are interesting, At the same time we avoid over exaggerating and hype because that turns readers off and stops them in their tracks.
The problem that arises is that we may have written the most interesting marketing piece. However, if a prospect doesn’t read it, we have not accomplished our job.
There Has to be Something Else
What is it?
There has to be graphics in our marketing. Most copywriters are reluctant to admit this because of the fear that a graphic designer will overpower every marketing piece with graphics. The reader will not read the words and will not get the message intended.
In the War Between a Copywriter and a Graphic Designer, the Only Loser is Your Company
So, copywriters and graphic designers have been at war with each other for quite awhile. There is only one loser in this process. That is the companies they’re working for. The company is losing great prospects who will become great customers.
How do you resolve this? How do you guarantee a copywriter and a graphic designer work in unison to make each Content Marketing campaign as success as it can be?
They both have to realize they each want the same thing – their company to be as successful as it can be. At times, you may find it necessary to help them see this.
Graphics Properly Placed in a Marketing Piece . . .
. . . will get the reader to read what it is written and will help them remember what they have read. In an article, “Visual Content Strategy: The New” Black” for Content Marketers, “published in 2015, Neil Patel commented:
“Generally speaking, you should use at least one image in your articles for every 350 words you write. If your article is 2,000 words, you should have six images or so. Add images at regular intervals so readers can “breathe” as they read.”
What can these images be? They can be
- Pictures
- Graphs
- Charts
- Cartoons
- Signs
Anything that hooks the reader and gets them to read the message.
Let me give you an example. It is from a post I did a little while ago. Here is the rough version:
“How can you do this? Start by adding pictures and graphics in your marketing that will catch the reader’s attention. A picture draws people to read what’s written. If you’re a writer, this may be difficult. You’ve always heard graphic designers always want to come up with graphics that detract from the written word. That’s true. So, keep that from happening. Work with your graphic designer to find the right graphics for the message.”
I have increased the size of the font here to separate this from the current post.
I think you’ll agree with me this paragraph is a little difficult to read. Also – there’s nothing to attract you to read it. A prospect might skip it totally.
Now here it is as it appeared in my post:
“How can you do this?
Start by Adding Pictures and Graphics to Your Marketing . . .
. . . that will catch the reader’s attention. A picture draws people to read what’s written.
If you’re a writer, this may be difficult. You’ve always heard graphic designers always want to come up with graphics that detract from the written word. That’s true. So, keep that from happening. Work with your graphic designer to find the right graphics for the message.”
I broke it up into easier to read chunks. I added a subheading in a different color and in a larger font. More importantly I added a picture of an egg frying on a beach.
The picture caught the reader’s attention.
Breaking it up into easier to read chunks told the reader at a subconscious level, This Is Easy to Read.
The subheading also pulled the reader in to read more.
If you look at websites on the internet today, you will find many of them have quite a few pictures on every page. This does two things:
- The pictures catch the reader’s attention.
- They make them more personal.
Until recently most white papers have not had many graphics. Now more of them do. If the white papers you produce don’t have enough graphics, I suggest you add them.
Traditionally case studies have not had any graphics. You may want to add them to yours. More people will read them.
The objective of your Content Marketing campaigns is to get more prospects interested in your product or service and to select your company over your competitors. One way you can increase the number of people reading each piece in your campaigns is by using graphics properly.
Oh, By the Way . . .
. . . this post is a little over 1,050 words. Going back to what Neil Patel said in his 2015 article I should have 3 graphics. See how may there are.
