These days, brands are harnessing more engaging ways to present information. Infographics, like video, are a crowd favorite. Infographics have changed the ways ordinary users consume data. Since consumers love them, brands love them, too!
In short, infographic marketing is key to your digital marketing strategy. If you’re still not creating infographics to generate leads and conversions, you’re missing out.
In this article, we’ll look at five tactics you can employ to jumpstart your infographic marketing. But first, here’s an overview.
What is infographic marketing? An overview for small businesses
An infographic is a visual representation of textual information. It takes words and numbers and reorganizes them into fun, bite-sized pictures that viewers can understand easily. That’s not to say you can no longer see text in an infographic. You might see some, but it’s always not a lot so it doesn’t turn off viewers who don’t like to read.
Infographics work because they are based on scientific facts. Images tend to trigger human emotions. According to Hubspot, these emotional responses influence action, in this case, shares, likes, retweets, and sometimes even purchases.
Infographic marketing relies on well-crafted infographics to improve lead generation (more on this later). You draw your target audience to you through the stunning visuals.
But infographic marketing doesn’t just refer to infographic creation. It covers the publication of infographics and their promotion. Infographics can also increase brand awareness.
In short, infographic marketing opens up a new world of possibilities for businesses as they look to carve a space for themselves in a crowded web.
Why infographic marketing is a great choice for small businesses
An infographic fits into all levels of digital marketing. That makes infographic marketing a great choice for small businesses that have more limited financial resources and are at a slight disadvantage when it comes to rolling out expensive advertising campaigns.
Infographics are an excellent visual storytelling medium so they’re great for lead generation. According to Contently, infographics receive 90% more clicks and 30 times more leads! They are also a relatively inexpensive way to build an organic audience following. If your infographic is valuable and authoritative, your target audience will view and share the content. That means your brand can reach even more people online.
Infographics are linkable, too. And when it comes to social media marketing, infographics can help as well. You can even include them in your marketing emails after email prospecting to get them to the right people.
In other words, infographics are a versatile medium that can provide value on any digital marketing space. You can leverage that to drive leads and awareness—all at almost no cost.
5 infographics marketing tactics small businesses should use
Now that you know what infographics can do for you, it’s time to learn some strategies to get started. Complement these strategies with a stunning infographic that provides value to reap the maximum benefits.
Resort to independent infographic submissions
This is a great way to get your content circulating on the Internet and get legitimate, organic backlinks. Content is king and many bloggers and publications will give your website credit (via a link) if they use your infographic.
Source: Slideshare
When it comes to the best platforms for independent infographics submissions, websites like Slideshare, Flickr, Pinterest, and Reddit are the foremost options. GoForPost also has a comprehensive list of infographic submission sites with high domain authority.
Note the required submission formats of each platform.
Make sure you get reliable information for your infographic, too, when creating your infographic for submission. You wouldn’t want to promote content that has glaring errors. Your reputation is at stake.
Use infographic in guest blogging
With guest blogging, you leverage the reach of another website’s popularity and your content to draw leads to your website through backlinks.
You can incorporate an infographic into your guest post to complement your text. Let’s say your guest post is on how to design an urban garden. Create an infographic that summarizes the steps. When the site publishes your guest post, you don’t just get backlinks in the guest post. You can also get infographic shares from that website’s audience. And if the information in the infographic is valuable, those readers will also search for your brand to see what you’re about.
You can use Brian Dean’s guestographic method, too. Instead of sending a guest post purely in written form, you send your infographic to a website for publication. That website has an incentive to publish your infographic because it is unique and offers value.
You don’t include embed links at the bottom of that page, though. Google doesn’t like those and devalues them. Instead, you include contextual links in the infographic.
Source: Backlinko
Contextual links are backlinks surrounded by relevant content (see the example in the screenshot above). The good news is, contextual links are more powerful.
One final tip: Make sure the websites you send your infographics to are in your niche. It wouldn’t make sense to send an infographic on urban gardening to a website on marketing. Remember, your goal is to get the right people to your website. And the right people are people who are likely to purchase your products.
So, if you’re selling gardening tools, the right people would be the readers of a website on gardening.
Upload infographics on social media
Upload your infographic on your social media accounts, too. If your infographic provides value, you accomplish several things: you get shares and engage your followers. You can also grow your social media followers.
In other words, you boost your social media presence and your reach.
Always aim for your infographics to go viral on social media. Here are some tips from Content Marketing Institute:
- Be specific: An infographic on how to start a terrace garden in New York will fare better on social media than an infographic on how to start a garden.
- Decide on whether to consider the time element or not: An infographic will perform well if you relate it to something people are already talking about. That’s not to say you should no longer create evergreen content people will share for a long time. If you opt for this, make sure your infographic is something people across generations have an interest in:
Source: Makeup Tutorials
- Ask the target audience for feedback before publication: Ask people about what they think about your infographic. If they say it’s good, go ahead and hit that publish button.
Use relevant hashtags, too, to make your infographic discoverable on social media.
Publish the latest studies in an infographic format
You can get a lot of engagement and share with an infographic that summarizes the results of the latest study. That’s because these are new findings, so people won’t find as many resources about them online. Besides, as I said, people, in general, don’t like to read long texts. According to Bloomberg, many people are working longer hours, too, as they work remotely. In short, they no longer have time to sift through tons of pages even if the topic interests them.
You should choose studies in your niche to make your infographic marketing effective. For instance, if you’re selling eyewear, look for the latest studies on anything related to the eye or eyewear. You can even conduct the study yourself if you have the resources.
You can’t summarize the results of the study without reading the entire study yourself. Understand the study and get the main findings. Make sure you present those in a digestible format in the infographic. Promote your infographic on your digital marketing channels.
Combine your infographics marketing with influencer marketing
Influencers are social media users who can influence people’s purchase decisions and opinions because they have a following and authority in their niche. You can tap influencers to help you in your marketing efforts without breaking the bank.
For instance, you can offer them a free product or service in exchange for an honest review. Or maybe you can promote their social media account to your website visitors, too.
The key is to choose the right influencer. The right influencer is someone whose followers will likely purchase your products. They should also have your same brand values.
Check out your list of followers. You might find influencers there. If you do, they will likely agree to work with you because they already have an interest in your product or service.
Conclusion
People are visual creatures. They would rather go through an infographic than read a long article. Those people include your potential customers, too.
That’s why infographics are crucial to your content marketing. Infographics can help you reach out to those potential customers to generate leads and increase conversions. They can help drive engagement and grow your social media followers, too.
So create great infographics and post these on your website. Use them in your guest posts, too. Add infographics to your social media content and use them in your influencer collaborations.
Infographic marketing can help grow your small business. You just need to follow all the right steps… and create an excellent infographic, of course!
Bio
Owen Baker is a content marketer for Voila Norbert, an online email verification tool. He has spent most of the last decade working online for a range of marketing companies. When he’s not busy writing, you can find him in the kitchen mastering new dishes.