How to use visual communication to connect with your customer base

When it comes to capturing and holding your customers’ attention, strong visuals are a must. Well-designed visuals can help you to communicate with your customers in impactful ways that help them remember your message and keep you front of mind. 

Done right, visual communications can convey complex ideas efficiently, with less demand on your audience’s time and attention. With so much messaging directed at individuals every day, being noticed, let alone remembered can seem impossible. By crafting enticing visuals, companies stand to spark their customers’ interest and connect on a much stronger level. 

Showing, rather than telling your audience what your company can offer them is a much more effective way to communicate. By doing so, you can set about influencing perceptions of your brand and start to generate that coveted customer affinity.

Visual communication can be applied to many different mediums. To connect with your customer base, here are some of the best ways you can use visual communication.  

Website and other online content  

Depending on what kind of product or service you offer, your website and social channels are usually the portal to your organisation.  

 This is your first opportunity to connect with your customers and tell them what you’re all about. To really stand out, make sure that your website has been designed with strong aesthetics in mind. This will tell your customer what you can do for them in the first few seconds of having seen your content. A well-designed website or social media feed should be cohesive and full of your own personality.  

Whether you add tongue-in-cheek typography, a charming html format, or some aspirational images, creating a non-generic online presence that is communicated visually will make a huge difference in how you come across to your customers.  

 Events  

If you are hosting an event, you will already be expending a lot of energy on planning and organising. In the midst of all the chaos, your visual communications might not be front of mind. Events, however, present the perfect opportunity to connect with your customer base, and influence their perceptions of your brand. 

Why not use your event as a way to communicate important information about your company? For example, you could use beautifully designed digital signs to creatively tell your origin story or demonstrate what is unique about your brand-new product.

Whatever visuals you are using, make sure that theyconnect with your main message. Don’t just present an image because it looks interesting or quirky – your visuals have to have a reason behind them, and that reason needs to be easily ascertained. Otherwise, you couldconfuse your audience rather than engage them, causing a disconnect – disastrous! 

Film  

Video is an incredible resource when it comes to communicating quickly. What could take an age to say in an article or a speech, a video can say in minutes – or even seconds.

You could use cleverly conveyed animated explainers to demonstrate your service, creating short adverts or conducting interviews with team members to connect with the viewer on a personal level. These can be used across many mediums, including social media, online advertising or at events. 

The important thing here is to illustrate your messages, rather than putting them literally. For example, a video of someone speaking directly to camera with no cutaways offers no value – you just won’t generate that connection or intrigue. Instead, craft your film in a way that puts into visuals what you would ordinarily say in words. 

Experiential 

Another great way to create standout is to engage with customers in ways that encourage interactivity. Encouraging people to participate in your communications, rather than asking them to act as a passive viewer, can be one of the best ways to generate interest in your organisation.

Why is this communication method so popular? Because it’s fun! A crucial, but often overlooked aspect of customer engagement. Getting the opportunity to be a part of something different makes people feel like they form part of a company’s identity – that is, they feel a true connection.

There are all sorts of ways to connect with customers in experiential ways – whether online or out in the real world. Whether it’s websites that wait for cursors to be placed in just the right spot, physical moving displays or even some really well-designed handouts with clear calls to action, creating visually appealing activities for your customers to take part in is a great way for them to get a better feel for your brand. 

Creating amazing visuals shows your customer that you are a credible and noteworthy organisation that is worth their time and attention. By investing time in the image you put out there and how you talk to your customers, you will see more interest and a better connection between them and you.

If you need help with your visual communication, consider bringing in the pros – a good agency should be able to offer you a variety of visual comms services, and should be responsive to the needs of your particular company or sector, as well as your customers.