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Background: Capturing the attention of health consumers online has never been harder. Health marketers have to deliver complex messages to an audience that is short on time and attention, and inundated with advertising both online and off.
Program background: Visual content has become an increasingly important tool in the marketing arsenal to address these concerns. Short videos, photos, infographics and other bite-sized, easily consumable, shareable pieces of visual content are generating greater engagement levels than text-only or text-heavy content, such as blogs, white papers, Web articles and website content. For example, Facebook page posts that use an image receive 104% more comments and 53% likes than posts containing only text or text with a link.1 Visual content also can act as a gateway to longer content that can provide more detail on health topics, essentially acting as a “hook” to get visitors to your site. Pinterest—a site composed strictly of photos with links—is now the 4th largest traffic referrer, indicating the power of the image to drive traffic to longer content.2
Evaluation Methods and Results: The evaluation of the success of visual content is based on industry studies of effectiveness, as well as Ogilvy’s success with clients in improving their reach and engagement through visuals. The session will review successful examples of how health care agencies and programs have used visual content to convey complex health messages to their target audiences, as well as discuss strategies for adapting existing content to visuals and creating new visual content.
Conclusions: Organizations can effectively use visual content communicate their health messages concisely, quickly and effectively. Visual content can fit within an existing health communications strategy, and can be used to support health behavior change theory.
Implications for research and/or practice: Participants will leave with a better understanding of the importance of visuals in their health communications, and strategies for creating a robust portfolio of images for use.
Citations 1Corliss, Rebecca. (Nov. 15, 2012). “Photos on Facebook Generate 53% More Likes Than the Average Post [NEW DATA].” HubSpot’s Inbound Marketing Blog. 2 Perez, Sarah. (Sept. 9, 2012). “Report: Pinterest Beats Yahoo Organic Traffic, Making It 4th Largest Traffic Driver Worldwide.” TechCrunch.