Humans process visuals better than they do any other medium. As a matter of fact, studies have concluded that the human brain can pull meaning from an image up to 60,000 times faster than it can from text.

That simple truth is why businesses are investing so much of their marketing budget in the creation of stellar marketing graphics. Look no further than your social media feed to see those companies’ efforts first-hand.

If you’re looking to get your business involved in the visual revolution but feel woefully unprepared to do so, this post is for you. In it, our team outlines 10 tips that can help you create and refine your visual communication strategy.

1. Hire a Pro

The fastest way to master visual marketing is to hire marketing professionals to work on your campaigns.

Marketing professionals have been honing the craft of messaging, visual storytelling and graphic design for years. Consequently, there’s very little that you’re going to be able to do on the DIY front that can compete with the quality of agency produced work.

Find a well-reviewed marketing agency in your area and have them pitch your company on what they can add to your marketing mix. While hiring an agency might represent a substantial expense, we’re confident that the value they’ll bring to your organization will more than cover their fee.

2. Use The Right DIY Tools

Is hiring an agency out of your marketing budget’s reach? No problem!

There are some workaround solutions that can help you produce solid marketing graphics at a fraction of the price.

DIY tools like Canva are leveraged by novice bloggers to fortune 500-companies alike. They enable you to create template-based graphics that are exceptionally suited for digital distribution.

Explore the internet to find graphics tools that work for your marketing team. Once you’ve found a tool that offers the flexibility and price point that you’re looking for, build your visual marketing workflows around it.

3. Know Your Graphic’s Goal

It’s not hard to get a marketing graphic to look cool. Add the right colors, sprinkle in a few fun shapes and you’ll definitely get some thumbs-up from the public.

Is that what you’re looking for though? A pat on the back?

We’re guessing that you actually want your visual marketing to inspire consumers to do something that benefits your company (buy, subscribe, etc.). Understanding what your desired outcome is and making sure that your graphic helps to achieve that goal is paramount to getting a good return on your visual marketing investment.

4. Use Colors That Pop

If you create a grey graphic and throw it up on a white background, you aren’t going to get anybody’s attention. Alternately, if you created a marketing graphic that leveraged pops of red, blue, pink or green and set that image against a contrasting background, you’d draw some eyeballs.

The effective use of color is a foundational skill that lives at the center of all outstanding marketing graphics. The better you understand colors, their meaning and who they appeal to, the more effective that your marketing efforts are going to be.

5. Don’t Make Your Design Busy

When you think of effective visual design, what pops into your head? Nike’s logo? What about Apple’s?

What do design’s like those have in common? Simplicity.

In order to engage a prospective consumer’s historically short attention span, you need to hit them with a visual that’s not cluttered and communicates information quickly. Keep that in mind as you design.

6. Test That Tagline

If your marketing graphics are going to include text (and chances are, they should) you need to make sure that text resonates with your audience.

What’s the best way to do that? Testing!

Put your graphic’s proposed taglines in front of your target audience. Solicit their feedback on how they interpret what you’re saying.

If your audience is pulling the wrong meaning from your message, take your tagline back to the drawing board.

7. Consider Your Medium

The designs that you produce for a billboard are going to be different than the designs that you produce for the web. Know what your medium is before you start designing and always keep it in mind as you make creative choices.

Repurposing marketing graphics across multiple mediums without taking unique considerations is a sure-fire way to create something that’s mediocre.

8. Create Marketing Guidelines

Your visual marketing elements should have recurring themes that remind users of your brand. Those themes can be expressed through color, a logo or similarities in messaging.

If your marketing elements don’t have points of connection that are stipulated in your marketing guidelines, they’ll fee disconnected and people may not associate you with the things that you put out with your company.

9. Get Social

Visual marketing plays well on social media. Social media also just so happens to be a great place to experiment.

Given those two facts, we recommend that your design team produces a revolving door of fun, micro-designs that can correspond with your company’s social media posts. Have your designers really push the boundaries of what you typically do, and track your feedback and engagement.

If you’re noticing certain visuals popping on social media, consider adopting elements of what’s working into your broader marketing campaigns.

10. Keep Evolving

Visual communication is not stagnant. It’s changing constantly.

Keeping up with that change is key to being able to consistently engage with your consumer.

Keep learning. Keep growing. Keep challenging yourself to push your marketing graphics to be more engaging, appealing and effective.

Wrapping Up Our Tips to Create Stellar Marketing Graphics for Your Business

Stellar marketing graphics are a bi-product of hard work and experimentation. We hope that our tips will help you to refine your visual marketing workflows and will ultimately improve engagement with your brand.

For additional design tips, browse more of the free content on our blog!