by Dana Kachan
Illustration by Julia Hanke for Fireart Studio
The powers of digital illustration and motion design are equally impressive. Both of them work as influential customer decision-drivers and brand image-creators when it comes to interaction with a company in the digital space. The modern marketing landscape is crowded with tones of annoying ads with a quite straightforward and repeatable design. The online audience is thirsty for fresh air in what they see and interacts with.
Today, we’d like to talk about how you can boost your online business using digital illustration trends and motion design. While considering some digital marketing practices, we will also uncover how digital art illustration and the latest digital marketing hackstion can affect your customer minds and psyche, creating a positive brand image and doing it really unobtrusively. Fasten your belts because we start a short but exciting drive throughout the jungle of digital art and the latest digital marketing hacks.
Some Impressive Data
Here is some statistics that will reveal the power of digital illustration and animation in for your marketing:
1) According to molecular biologist John Medina, vision is our most dominant sense, taking up half of our brain’s resources. (Brain Rules)
2) 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. (Brain Rules)
3) 70% of companies invest in content marketing, which could include visual marketing strategies. (HubSpot)
4) Animated walkthroughs are much more engaging than a static one (since animation is excellent at grabbing attention). (Shopify)
5) Including video on a landing page can increase conversions by 80%. (Dream Grow)
Are you still thinking about whether to invest or not in creating branded digital illustrations and animated videos? Let’s take a deeper look at how digital art can bring benefits to your business.
The Emotional Appeal to Customers
Animation by Aslan Almukhambetov for Explain Ninja
We love beautiful things. That’s simple, like 123. But, what if to try to maximize the beauty of your digital presence with astonishing digital illustrations and motion graphics? It must have an even more amazing effect on your marketing, right?
Humans are humans. They experience a whole palette of emotions. When interacting with a beautiful illustration on the company’s website or social media, we often feel more loyal to a brand. Why does it happen? Because digital illustration has the power to instill positive associations with a brand and stick these images to specific pleasant emotions. While pictures may be forgettable, strong emotions (both positive and negative) aren’t.
If we see the image and feel specific positive vibes, we will surely recognize it among thousands of others. We get a dose of fun and pleasure when looking at a masterful illustration or motion graphics and we willingly share it with our friends on social media.
Illustration by DAN Gartman
It’s what we call the emotional appeal. While people are enjoying your digital illustrations, they start perceiving them as attributes of your brand. They associate these digital illustration styles with your company and its products or services.
So, the first step to creating a perfect illustration for your brand is to formulate what feelings, concepts, and ideas you want to encode in the image and share your vision with a digital artist. The illustration should reflect the inner world of your brand and its customers, including conceptions, values, and interests.
The desirable effect is when people see your brand name, they should start feeling a recognizable specter of positive feelings, which they are used to experience when seeing eye-catching illustrations accompanying your company everywhere on the web. It significantly contributes to a positive brand image.
The Brand Voice Empowerment & Increased Brand Awareness
Moreover, digital illustrations (as well as its sibling, motion graphics) are a perfect way to empower your brand image. You can design eye-catching and memorable heroes that can become mascots in the future. They introduce a brand and interact with users during a whole customer journey. For example, you can apply them to create an engaging user onboarding experience in a mobile app or website.
Illustration in App User Onboarding by Valeria Rimkevich
You can also use them during the checkout process, at the “Contact Us” page, or when making announcements on your social media profile. Mascots can become a part of your branding.
Now, imagine that you can breathe life into these flat images. Animated logos, animated mascots, GIFs, onboarding animation, animated explainer videos, and more – these are miracles created thanks to the fast evolution in motion design. You can even use the same brand color palette for your illustrations to emphasize your company’s unique style. It will help you raise brand awareness and recognition.
More Eye-Catching Digital Advertising
Animation by James Curran
You might wonder how to boost business and multiply sales in times of the Coronavirus recession? Digital advertising might be the answer. However, before you start promoting your products or services online, you should keep in mind that the web is already saturated with ads, and you must be exceptionally creative to stand out from the crowd.
Perfect advertising should look like a spot of rest for the customer’s mind and a point of entertainment. The last thing to mention in your ad is your brand offering. Try to be as unobtrusive as possible. Don’t worry, people will surely recognize your brand and will reveal interest in your products and services if you’re lucky to catch their attention with creative advertising.
Digital illustration and motion graphics can be a visual part of your brand message. Regarding motion pictures, they are probably even more effective in advertising. All social media and search engine algorithms work according to the logic that implies that the system will recognize a post (or an ad) as valuable content and direct more traffic to it if the user spends more time watching it than on average. Consequently, it will help you cover the broader audience and promise the more powerful effect of digital advertising.
The Power of Engagement on Social Media
You can spark the whole tsunami of user engagement by enriching your social media content with digital illustrations and artistic GIFs. Honestly, I also have a few favorite brands whom I follow on social media just to enjoy their unique images and masterful motion graphics they share to promote their brand. Here we can also mention the power of aesthetical appeal for customers.
If your visuals are the embodiment of positive customer emotions, beautiful graphics, and a pinch of humor, your brand is very likely to reach popularity on social media quickly. Digital illustration and motions graphics are creative ways to tell your brand story and transfer your marketing message the most effectively.
Digital Illustration & Animation Will Drive Your Customer Loyalty
Both digital illustration and animated visuals can boost your customer loyalty by evoking positive user emotions, instilling powerful associations with a brand, and creating the company’s distinctive online image. They can also help you eliminate negative digital customer experience.
Just imagine, your customer has faced some technical issues on your website or in your mobile application, or maybe he or she is merely unsatisfied with a purchasing experience. You can soothe user pain and eliminate negative emotions by displaying funny animations or digital illustrations. They are more powerful than you can imagine.
The sales and marketing outcomes are worth investing in producing branded visuals, choosing specific digital illustration styles, and applying web animation techniques. They can help boost your business online and multiply sales in 2020.
Source: Customer Think website