The Power of Visual Marketing

If anything, the adage that “a picture is worth a thousand words” downplays the comparative value of visuals and text. And while we can intuit how powerful images are, we don’t have to leave that understanding to our imaginations – there’s plenty of data that makes the point very clear. Although text still has an important place in marketing, research proves that visuals are far more powerful drivers of engagement and conversions.

 

Our brains were built for visual information:

1. 90% of the information processed by the brain is visual.

2. It takes only 13 milliseconds for the human brain to process an image.

3. The human brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text.

4. 80% of people remember what they see, compared to ten percent what they hear and 20 percent of what they read.

5. In responses to a recent survey, 95% of B2B buyers said that they wanted shorter and highly visual content.

6. Publishers that feature visual content grow traffic 12 times faster than those who don’t.

We don’t have much patience for text:

7. Most people only read 20-28% of the words on the page.

8. 80% of people will watch a video, but only 20% of people will read text on a page.

9. 55% of website visitors spend less than 15 seconds actively reading

We aren’t great listeners, either:

10. When people hear information, they’re likely to remember only 10% of that information three days later. However, if a relevant image is paired with that same information, people retained 65% of the information three days later.