Marketers Remain Dedicated to Visual Assets Despite Challenges

As visual assets become a significant part of content marketing, research indicates that marketers are feeling more obligated to show their benefits.

This is according to the “State of Visual Commerce” study released by Curalate, which found that 77 percent of marketers feel an increasing amount of pressure to exhibit an ROI from visual content. However, just 11 percent believe that they leverage imagery “very effectively.”

Marketers indicated that their visual content performs best on social media and worst within mobile commerce environments. About 84 percent publish images on social media, while 33 percent attempt to reach customers via mobile.

Developing new, creative content (39 percent) and choosing imagery that resonates with customers (39 percent) were named the primary challenges for marketers using visual content. Measuring ROI was also near the top of the list (37 percent).

Clicks (55 percent), conversions (54 percent), traffic (52 percent) and revenue (46 percent) were the main key performance indicators being used by marketers for visual content. However, 54 percent of marketers lack confidence when it comes to their ability to report on conversions.

The Ongoing Commitment to Imagery

Despite the challenges associated with visual content, research has uncovered that marketers are still dedicated to using it in their strategy. A white paper published in August 2015 by the CMO Council indicated that 65 percent of marketing executives considered photos, videos and illustrations to be essential to communicating their company story.

The majority of respondents said they believed visual assets will only grow in importance in the future. Fifty percent see this happening with photography, while 60 percent cited infographics. About 79 percent considered the prominence of video to be growing.