Want to elevate your brand? Work on your words and pictures.
Today's marketing offers us so many ways to optimize our brands. It can suck you in, monopolizing your time testing, tweaking, and adjusting. I know. I have a fascination with all the capabilities the digital channels afford us.
But it can be easy to get myopic. We get down in the weeds, obsessing over how to squeeze a few more percentage points of performance with our views, opens, clicks, conversions, and more.
Because it’s so easy to jump down to the tweaking, we can blow by some of the biggest factors that can have a significantly larger impact when it comes to winning the hearts and minds of those we hope to serve. I’m talking about our words and pictures.
The technology: a love/hate relationship
I love the technology. I love how it can help you do things today that you had to send out to a specialist back in the day. And I love how it has made it all so quick and easy.
But, then again, I hate the technology for helping us create something good so easily. Because we settle for good when ‘great’ is within reach.
For example, we’ll do a quick Google search to see how our peer brands are portraying themselves. Then we’ll quickly craft something similar, rather than going through the process of finding brand language that is truly unique and compelling. Maybe we’ll rationalize that it’s just to get us going and we’ll come back to refine it. But we rarely do.
The same goes for the images we choose. Free and cheap stock photos make it dead simple to go grab something that is serviceable. Most often smiley, happy people. Those pictures don’t relate to your words or what you’re trying to communicate. They are simply there to decorate the page. And that results in a monumental missed opportunity. Check out this post to go deeper into the dangers of that.
So what is a brand to do?
Make your words irresistible
We all want to know the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of a brand offering. There is definitely a place for this in what we communicate. But it shouldn’t overshadow what has the real power in engaging those we hope to serve – the ‘why’ or the inspiration.
We need explanations. But we really want inspiration. Great brand language can move you from explaining to inspiring.
To do this, focus on those you hope to serve. Understand their hopes and desires. Understand how your brand serves their pursuit of those. Then create the brand language that captures that.
This is how purpose-driven brands create such strong connections with their customers and prospects.
Make your pictures indelible
Pictures have the power to communicate faster than your words. What’s more, some studies show that pictures are overwhelmingly more memorable than your words. But they have to be relevant to your message. And they must be presented in a way that creates surprise and delight. Do that and you will tap into the full potential of what your pictures can do.
1 + 1 = 11
When your words and pictures work together, the results are more than the sum of the parts. It can multiply the impact of your message. Create language that is supported by the visual. Or create a visual that illustrates the language. Try posing a question that is answered by the visual. These are just a few techniques to make your words and pictures relate. And when your words and pictures relate, your messaging gets exponentially more compelling.
You have a powerful tool in the creative combination of your words and pictures. It can create surprise and delight. It can inspire. And make you memorable if not irresistible. Don’t settle for good. Your words and pictures hold the potential to make your brand great.