CMOs: 3 Tips to Spice Up Your Content Marketing with Great Visuals

I won’t go there but we all have heard the cliché a million times. Yet what’s interesting is how much attention visual content has been getting lately. As a graduate student in the Northwestern Medill Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) program and content marketer, I have looked at two articles on visuals – why they are important in social media and what mistakes to avoid.  

Although visual content marketing is on the rise, posts with images can also increase your visibility and response. The first article, titled “EverythingYou Need to Know about Visual Content Marketing” by Brett Relander published in April 2015 compares response rates to tweets and posts with and without images to make a compelling case for why one needs to use visuals. But not just any image; our image choices should enhance the UX. 

Image source: http://www.dailyinfographic.com/right-vs-left-infographic

Another article from January 2015 by Chuck Frey of the Content Marketing Institute talks about common mistakes marketers make. These include anything and everything from using poor-quality image to confusing pictures that don’t align with the brand’s perception, and look and feel. This piece, titled “Experts Share Visual Content Mistakes to Avoid,” discusses why graphics and images can be just as powerful as words in content marketing and branding. It then outlines recommendations on how to avoid some of the mistakes and provides a list of helpful questions to help marketers guide their visual strategy and design work.

Three tips for you to consider if you want to hit a home run with your visual content:

• Think Visual – You have invested in your content marketing strategy. It’s time to also carefully evaluate your visual strategy and what you are trying to accomplish with your visual content.
• Quality is King – Don’t take the easy way out: find the time and money to create the quality of image your target audience expects.
• Know Your Audience – Carefully select the type of visual that best fits your audience’s needs – video vs. photos. 

More and more companies are investing in content marketing. Although visual content is becoming more prevalent brands continue to face pressure to deliver outstanding user experience online. The challenge is in picking the right type and quality of visual that enhances your content as opposed to detract from it.

Dora Bank is a M.S. Candidate in Integrated Marketing Communications at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She has worked in print and digital media in travel and financial services focusing on marketing strategy, content marketing and direct response. You can follow her on Twitter @dbnyc2004 or connect on LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/dorabank 

Marketers: 3 Steps to Make Big Data Work Better for Your Company

Today, marketers are focusing on the power of new types of Big Data to improve their analytic systems, to better drive profits to their company's bottom line. As a graduate student at Northwestern Medill School studying Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC), I have been following many thought leaders in the world of analytics to learn where this trend of Big Data is headed. Here are two articles that focus on moving forward from Big Data being just a buzz word to becoming a valuable resource for marketers everywhere.

Alon Even, VP of Marketing at Appsee points out an often overlooked challenge in “Big Data and mobileanalytics: Ready to rule 2015”. Although the volume, variety, velocity and veracity of big data has brought us an abundance of information, the rate at which new data is being collected simply cannot be handled by the number of data analysts in the industry. Therefore, instead of being blindly excited by the abundance of collected data, marketers must shift focus and invest in finding “next-generation analytics” that can effectively and efficiently identify the valuable “whys” among the plethora of “whats”. It is not big data itself, but the ability to sift through it, find the valuable insights, and create actionable plans based on the information that will ultimately bring value to businesses.

Image Source: http://nextgendistribution.com.au/industry-trends/big-data/

Andrew Sheridan of Business 2 Community believes that "2015 Will Be the Year of Turning Big Data into Actionable Insights". While the act of collecting data has provided us with a strong foundation to work with, we must take simple aggregation a step further, really looking into the data to answer “why” questions and provide explanations for customer behavior.

From my graduate learning in the Northwestern Medill IMC program and my review of these two articles, I have developed 3 action items you need to consider to convert "Big Data" into "Smart Data". They are:

• Actively Seek New, Smart Data– Collect information regarding your customers, but  keep efficiency in mind. Today's world offers marketers an endless supply of data so instead of collecting everything, make sure to keep the marketing goals in mind and collect only what is relevant and actionable. Who is the target? If  it is mobile customers, look into data from the company's mobile app users. Using the appropriate sources is key.

• Find Greater Value by Translating Data – Go a step further and ask what the data is saying. What do the numbers mean? Why are the customers behaving in a certain way? What trends are there? What improvements is the data suggesting you to make? These questions will enable marketers to discover the hidden insights within the data.

• Utilize Data for Feedback – In addition to providing insights, data can also provide feedback, allowing marketers to reevaluate their plans and strategies after they have been implemented. What are the results? Rely on analytics to evaluate your performance and make modifications or improvements for the future.

Marketers can transform big data from being simply a buzz word into actionable marketing strategies that will bring positive impact.

Jaeyeon is a graduate student pursuing a M.S. in Integrated Marketing Communications at Northwestern University. Previously, she has worked at a travel technology company that aggregated flight data coming in from hundreds of sources into a comprehensive database. After seeing how big data can bring value to businesses, she decided to become a data-driven marketer herself. She also holds a B. A. in Economics from Amherst College. You can follow her on twitter @JaeyeonC or connected with her on Linkedin.