Content marketing is as important and as the captivation that’s conjured through the design. This is because stories (and the words that tell them) are the influential key to your audience and enforces their decisions to like you; or not. Customers cry out for somebody who understands their needs and supports their requirements and they are looking out for keywords and facts all the time. This triggers sales and conversions as your copy heightens their reassurances; you are the business ticks the right boxes. That is why the brand storytelling can’t be done with visuals alone.
Publicizing a marketing campaign requires great visuals communicates and grabs attention, but whilst a great design can demean how creative, innovative and unique your credentials are as a company, the bait lacks a hook. Within that lure needs to be a great hook, a great conversation, and these words spoken in this sense leverage the deal.
Think of it this way; you are planning a trip to Manhattan, but only had pictures of skyscrapers and John Coltrane, but no descriptions of what time to book your trip to the Empire State building, or the places to go for live music written by “Trane”? What if you were searching for a new necklace but just found visuals for some silverware but there was no flare or descriptions of the features, no product reviews nor testimonials?
Words are the mould in which you shape up your sales and your pitch you should let them tell us the stories about your brands; you can win if you make them converse with the audience!
There’s power in those words
Words shine and strike emotions, transporting people into a different mind-set. A great example of this is seen in a video that went viral in 2011 called, “The Power of Words.” It shows a blind, homeless man sitting on a city street collecting change. Initially he held up a sign that simply said, “I’m blind, please help.” The video shows most people just glancing and walking by. The turning point comes when a woman stopped and rewrote his sign to say, “It’s a beautiful day and I can’t see it.”
Why do these new words become impossible to ignore? They forge an emotional connection between the experience of one person and another. They make the passers-by relate in an entirely different way to what and whom they see. This short film illustrates how the power of words can dramatically change your message and effect upon people.
Words on the web
Google ZMOT demonstrates the power words have over the internet shopper. In 2011 people researched and digested 10.4 unique pieces of content before making a purchasing decision. If the internet was solely a place of pretty designs and visuals, would it be capable of marketing? Your online content is the voice of your company, speaking to your customers and telling your story while you’re busy growing your enterprise.
Words empower the internet and we live in a time when most people instantly search online pre-planning on your site and another 9.4 different sites, before making a purchasing decision. What do you do when planning to purchase goods? You search online, sometimes over and over again, until you have finally pin pointed a good idea about what you want and which vendor you want it from.
Too many companies emphasize strong competitive marketing visuals, whilst the storytelling is underweight and lacks the knockout detail buyers strictly want to sort out before making a deal. This overstretched angle neglects the communication which makes the difference between the site visitors selecting your goods and a high drop-off at the latter, more crucial stages of the user journey to the cart.
I work in eCommerce with separate Consumer and B2B sites, for different types of buyers. One thing needs to remain consistent and that is storytelling, every item is crafted out with beautiful descriptions and at the top of the page. Development of UI (Usability Design) is crucial to online conversions and goes beyond just design and development.
Words & visuals telling a different story
There are many companies who struggle to understand their own brand’s story, which leads for this to their marketing lacking the right direction. If you enterprise is selling traditionally “boring” products (such as vacuums or washing machines), then words can be a fantastic way informing your audience and of presenting your items.
Recently we had a website review from SEO expert Rob Millard from Distilled, who explained to us a few ways in which ASOS are an extremely good brand for web layout and communication of their product.
“AsoS products have a very clear brand description, which is at the top and centre of the products page. The emphasis on a clear item description allows buyers to make informed decisions, added to which accelerates sales because the product has a story built around it, which points out some of its main features and qualities, if not popularity”.
Words and visuals need to be relative to one another to fill in the key areas that users will question otherwise. Package designs, websites, blog themes, catalogues or brochures need compelling words to fulfil its main task of portraying it’s brand idea, it’s goods, it’s services along with a pure complementary design. Design is supplementary to words yet wills the reader, the viewer to keep reading. A good design lures the viewer yet a bad design would be off putting and no one wants to read something that doesn’t look well designed.
Written by Daniel Vince of Corporate Gifts Co, a business gifts Specialist Corporation
