If your visuals aren’t doing real work for your brand, you’re leaving growth on the table. And that’s why you need to ace your visual content marketing strategies.

Why?

For starters, research has it that visuals stick 74% better than dull design.

Additionally, visual-first brands report clearer and more efficient communication at 66%, compared to just 52% for text-first brands. Plus, they report sharper brand differentiation at 61% versus 55%.

The challenge, however, is creating the right visuals for the right moment. To ensure you do, I’ll walk you through some visual content marketing strategies to help you succeed in your digital marketing efforts. 

Let’s get started.

1. Strategically Match Visual Formats to Marketing Objectives

I always recommend choosing visual formats based on what you want the audience to know and do, not what looks trendy at the moment. 

Different objectives call for different visual types, and mismatching them might lead to weak performance.

This approach keeps your digital marketing efforts focused and prevents you from wasting valuable production resources. 

2. Collaborate With Influencers and Employees

Some visual content marketing strategies work best when you think out of the box.

Influencers can build trust and credibility when they showcase your brand. Employees, on the other hand, also add some insider’s perspective. 

These collaborators: 

• Create visuals that feel authentic and less staged

• Add credibility and relatability to visual storytelling

• Bring variety to visual styles without breaking brand consistency

• Humanize brand visuals, making them more engaging

• Show real-world use of products or services through visuals

• It shouldn’t come as a surprise that 86% of digital marketers in the US are already using influencers.

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3. Build a Consistent Visual Identity System

Successful marketing relies heavily on consistency. Otherwise, your efforts can easily crumble because familiarity builds faster than any sales copy. This means having clear visual rules that guide everything you publish so your visuals feel related, not necessarily identical. 

Professionally, I recommend creating a system that includes color rules, typography hierarchy, icon styles, layout patterns, and image guidelines. 

These elements should work together so your digital marketing content is recognizable long before someone reads the text.

4. Optimize Visuals for Mobile-First Consumption

If your visual content marketing strategies favor large screens and break down on mobile, then they’re already failing.

Why?

Well, website traffic from mobile devices is currently dominating.

Personally, I design visuals assuming people are scrolling with one thumb on a small screen, in poor lighting, and with limited time. 

These visuals must be readable, fast-loading, and instantly clear on small screens. That includes large alt text, fewer elements, simple composition, and strong contrast to improve mobile performance.

5. Craft Banners With Eye-Catching Visuals

This is one of the most practical visual content marketing strategies. Banners are often the first visual touchpoint people see across your ads, websites, and social platforms. 

Strong banners use bold contrast, clear hierarchy, and simple messaging so your audience understands the value instantly. I always focus on one clear idea per banner instead of trying to say everything at once. 

A good banner maker helps you create clean layouts quickly while keeping your branding consistent across different formats. Such banners can easily guide the eye naturally and gently push people toward action. 

6. Scale Visual Production Using AI Assistance

A huge challenge with visual content marketing strategies is accounting for speed and volume without sacrificing quality. I’ve seen digital marketing teams struggle because they match the demand. I even had to hire a personal assistant to avoid burning out.

Fortunately, AI can help.

In fact, creating and optimizing visual content are the leading tasks digital marketers handle with AI.

AI transforms visual production through:

• Resizing or tweaking visuals so they fit every platform

• Trying out different layouts and designs

• Making rough visuals you can polish later

• Reusing content across other platforms 

• Picking colors, fonts, and styles that keep your brand looking sharp

• Most importantly, it can help you scale visual production effortlessly.

7. Design Platform-Native Visual Experiences

I never force the same visual elements or designs on every digital channel for convenience. Every channel and platform has its own rules, rhythms, dimensions, audience mindset, expectations, and interaction patterns. What works on social media may fall flat on emails and vice versa.

Your visual content marketing strategies should account for this.

Platform-native visuals feel natural, not intrusive, blending into the user’s experience instead of interrupting it. This might mean looser, more human visuals on socials and cleaner, structured visuals on owned channels. 

People interact more willingly with visuals that blend seamlessly into the environment. 

8. Design Visuals That Reward the Present Moment

Audiences nowadays want instant gratification, not promises that only pay off “someday.” Great visual content marketing strategies acknowledge that attention is earned second by second.

Your visuals should provide immediate value, whether it’s clarity, insights, or emotional resonance. Focus on visuals that feel rewarding the moment someone sees them, not ones that require extra effort to notice.

This could be a sharp headline embedded in an infographic or slide that solves a problem instantly.

People stay longer and engage deeper with digital marketing content that they feel instantly rewards them. 

9. Embrace Eco-Friendly Visual Designs

Sustainability has become one of the top values that audiences today are paying attention to, not just visuals. 

But what if there’s a way to leverage both?

Eco-friendly designs include lighterfile sizes, reusable templates, and fewer unnecessary assets. Simple layouts, honest imagery, and transparent visual cues help communicate responsibility without sounding preachy.

These designs often perform better while also reducing digital clutter and load times. 

Patagonia, known for its strong environmental stance, uses nature-led visuals to clearly show what it stands for in its digital marketing.

10. Leverage UGC for Authenticity

Visual content marketing strategies gain credibility when real people become part of the story. I constantly see stronger engagement when brands incorporate visuals created by their own customers or communities in their digital marketing efforts. 

UGC feels real and relatable, showing real experiences, rather than polished marketing narratives. It also shows how your products and services fit into your customers’ real lives, not staged scenarios.

The authenticity, social proof, and trust that UGC creates is unmatched, a fact that GoPro knows all too well. The brand fills real user footage and action-packed visuals in its digital marketing initiatives

11. Focus on Short-Form Video

Short-form videos are super important in modern visual content marketing strategies. I treat these videos as discovery tools rather than a storytelling marathon. 

About short-form videos, did you know they receive the most engagement?

They help ace digital marketing through:

• Capturing attention quickly in crowded digital spaces

• Increasing reach through platform algorithms

• Driving higher engagement with likes, comments, and shares

• Making brand messages easier to understand

• Encouraging clicks and next-step actions

• Supporting faster brand recall and recognition

Final Thoughts

Attention matters a lot in digital marketing. The right visuals can capture and hold attention, influencing everything from clicks to trust and conversions. 

That’s why you can’t afford not to implement these visual content strategies.

When you apply them consistently, your visuals start doing the heavy lifting, supporting and actively driving marketing performance. Just start with one change, one visual, measure the impact, and build from there.