Yes an image is great… but is it the right image for your marketing content.

When I talk to numerous companies, I often hear that one of the biggest challenges they face is making their marketing material stand out, especially against their competition. It’s tough trying to get your message across to your target market, but more importantly, building that engagement that leads to more sales and, therefore, success for your business. 

Nobody wants marketing material that is overlooked by your target market. I love working with companies’ real heroes - their marketing teams - creating fresh, modern and creative imagery that helps create engagement and in turn, leads to more sales for my clients.

But how do you communicate with your current and target clients as a business? What do you focus your time and energy on? Is all your attention focused on ensuring every punctuation mark is in the exact position and that your grammar is on point? But what about imagery? This critical component of any form of corporate communications is often overlooked. 

The images you use should be the basis of your marketing material. They are a vital tool in your quest to communicate with your target market. Often visual images are the first things that get noticed. Surely you’d want to make that strong first impression on a potential new client?

But what makes images work as part of marketing material? Sadly, there is no one-image-fits-all solution. There are lots of varying factors, including: what you are trying to promote; what the message is that you are trying to get over; where the images are being used, and who is the intended target market. 

And it’s the last point that can often be forgotten about. Who is your target market? What do they want to see? Most importantly for your sales, what will get their attention? It’s all well and good having a great idea, and everyone in your team thinks you have the best campaign imaginable. But if your intended target market doesn’t notice it, then sadly, your amazing idea is a complete failure. 

For an example. Let’s take a gym trying to advertise classes to people over 65. If their marketing material is full of young, extremely toned people using really heavy weights (for example), would the actual target audience (over 65s) relate to it? Would they be able to visualise themselves being in that gym?

Imagine yourself as the target market, and you glance across the marketing material - in whatever format. The image will be the first thing you notice. If it doesn’t resonate with you, will it make you stop and look at what it is saying? If you don’t stop and pay closer attention, then you will certainly not purchase what is being promoted.

This approach might be very simplistic, but I hope it emphasises the point. It isn’t always necessarily about age and demographics, and I’m certainly not hinting that we should be stereotyping. I wanted to make a clear example here. 

So, turning to your marketing material, who is your target market? Can they relate to the marketing material you put in front of them? Do the images you use to communicate with your target market connect with them?