I asked in my Facebook page what your biggest challenge was when it comes to visual marketing.

Lack of creative bone in my body. Not being very arty. Not being visual. Lack of time. There were many reasons.

Visual marketing is a way of enhancing your material and standing out from the doldrums of boring text by using images to tell a story.

Through images, we can increase engagement, make something shareable, bring more awareness to our brand and even go viral. If you haven’t thought about visual marketing and how it can help your small business, you’re not only missing out, but you’re missing a chance to tell your story, spark interest, and march to your own beat.

Let people know who you are by creating a unique visual brand distinct to your business and then implement that with a visual marketing strategy.

From Boring to Dazzling With Visual Marketing

Art is like masturbation. It is selfish and introverted and done for you and you alone. Design is like sex. There is someone else involved, their needs are just as important as your own, and if everything goes right, both parties are happy in the end.
-Colin Wright

Turn something ordinary into extraordinary with visual marketing. Your marketing strategy could be the difference between standing out and getting ignored. It’s almost like dating! Instead of being completely self-serving with boring walls of text, dazzle your target audience or ideal client avatar with images that support who you are and encourages brand recognition. Here are 6 steps to create stunning images for visual marketing to help you shine on with biz success.

1. Utilize sites like Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, youtube and Slideshare

Brand Partnerships – Opportunities For Growth from Janet Brent

Drive traffic to your website or raise brand awareness by using popular social share sites that get lots of traffic. We’ll be using these sites to post our stunning images with our visual marketing strategy. Above is a sample of a slideshow I uploaded to talk about brand partnerships.

2. Create images through DIY sites

Not a designer? No problem. Use DIY sites like picmonkey or pixlr.com (hat tip to Lisa Selow for the resource) to edit your photos and reflect your brand. Take advantage of infographics and DIY infographic sites like infogr.am, piktochart, visual.ly, and easel.ly. These sites provide a basic, limited start for people who do not have design skills. Choose from various templates, backgrounds and icons to start customizing your infographic to fit your brand. And then post on Pinterest and Facebook to get more attention.

3. Use typographic design to creatively layout text

Typography is an art form and can be a creative way to display inspirational quotes, manifestos and other powerful messages to create memes on Facebook or garner repins and likes on Pinterest. The act of designing text can give it that extra oomph to make it stand out.

Tip for Photoshop: When designing transparent images, be sure to save it as a PNG-24 file because .jpgs do not retain transparency. Always use File > Save For Web & Devices to save web images.

4. Access your brand

What are your top five values that drive your business?

Creativity, spirituality, playfulness, courage and compassion are mine. Your brand values should be behind all of your business decisions, including what images you use.

Also, choose your brand colors and stick with it, including your visual marketing or any programs you launch or joint ventures you become a part of. Try to limit your brand color scheme to 2-3 colors. If possible, choose specific colors down to the hex code (example #FFFFFF is white) for web, or pantone color for print. That way you know exactly what color you should be using and it remains consistent throughout all materials. Use color combo sites to get inspiration on color palettes. Creating a brand guide also helps to standardize the process, especially when your business grows.

5. Snap your own photographs

Stock photography is great and there are even free stock photo websites, but nothing beats snapping your own images. Farnoosh Brock, of Prolific Living, is one blogger I know who uses her own images 100% and has made that authenticity a part of her brand. What better way to make stunning images than having them be 100% your own? Avoid the hassle of searching through stock photos and worrying about copyright. Don’t forget the law of thirds when capturing your image.

You can’t get more original than trekking 2,900+ meters above sea level and taking a photo amongst the sea of clouds in the “Playground of the Gods”, Mt. Pulag, Philippines

6. Hire a designer

If you lack time and want to hand off the visual marketing and design to a professional so you can concentrate on what you do best, consider hiring a designer. It should be no secret that I am passionate about helping others shine in their biz by using my talents as a designer to support their big why in visually creative ways. Whether that’s creating ebooks or slideshow presentations to help spread your message, designing your website to reach a bigger audience and attract your ideal client, or creating a strategic visual social media marketing plan, I’ve got you covered.

Action Steps

1. Gather quotes and images that relate to your values, mission/vision or big why and use picmonkey to design the quotes into a relevant image.

2. Use the images on your blog posts, Facebook fan page, and Pinterest. Sharing and promoting your material is a must to get content to spread.

3. Install the “Pinterest Pin It Button For Images” WordPress plugin to easily pin images on your website onto your Pinterest board. This also encourages others and makes it easier for them to pin, so be sure your images are relevant and memorable.

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Note: This entry is my submission for Prosperity’s Kitchen week 5 assignment on SEO: Optimizing your website for humans! “Stunning Images” was chosen for the global search rate of 12,100 monthly searches. “Visual Marketing” was chosen for the global search rate of 9,900 monthly searches. “Create Stunning Images” also has a global search rate of 320 per month. All three have low competition and would therefore be easier to get to the top of Google. I had considered keywords with graphic design and web design but virtually all of them had a high competition rate. While my choices definitely don’t produce the biggest search results, I felt this was actually an advantage to ranking, though I am mostly clueless on SEO so I could be completely off. Also, I chose visual marketing because I love the psychology behind design, which I feel is what things like marketing and branding provides. Meta description: Turn something ordinary into extraordinary with visual marketing. Your marketing strategy could be the difference between standing out and getting ignored. Here are 6 steps to create stunning images for visual marketing.