Infographics as an International Marketing Tool
March 27, 2015 | By Elizabeth Victor | No Comments">No Comments
Most companies are used to focusing their marketing efforts to the country or region they do most of their business in. If you do this, you might be missing out on a large amount of business that you could be acquiring from businesses in other countries and regions. Looking to trends is very important and allows you to “speak the language” of everyone in your target audience.
Infographics are a prime example of how you can reach important, new, or growing markets. Some marketers might think that infographics are not as popular as they once were. Of course, that can be a matter of opinion and especially depends on where in the world your target audience is.
APAC Success with Infographics
Companies with a target audience in the APAC region of the world along with South Africa, and India should take heed, and start planning to incorporate infographics into their marketing strategy. Companies like Isentia, that focus on media monitoring tools for Asia – Pacific countries can gain a great advantage by using tools that are popular in the region of their target audience.
Regional Interest in Infographics Photo Credit: MarketingTechBlog.com
As you can see from the infographic above, South Africa and India, along with several APAC countries including Singapore, Philippines, New Zealand, and Australia top the list of high regional interest in reading infographics. As you probably already know, personalizing content to the interests of your audience will increase the success of your marketing efforts. Give your audience what they like and they will respond very positively.
Why Infographics?
Why You Need Infographics Image Credit: Visual.ly
If you are not familiar with the overall benefits of infographics, the reason they are so popular is because they appeal to the human nature to be attracted to visual stimulation. The eye is drawn to infographics, so it appeals to readers in a visual way, but the other added benefits is that they can be quickly scanned and the information is easily retained.
As the infographic above illustrates, even though more people would rather read infographics than text, 87% will read text on infographics.
- Only 20% of read text is recalled afterward.
- 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual.
- Publishing an infographic increases traffic by 12%.
The average internet user is subjected to so much information daily, there is no way to absorb and process all of it. Much of what people see will be skipped over, ignored, or forgotten. Infographics combat that tendency because visual processing helps us consume all of that information and organize it. Consider these five statistics from neomam.com:
- We receive 5 times more information today as we did in 1986.
- Outside of work, on an average day, we consume 34 gigabytes of data, or 100,500 words.
- Users only read an average of 18% of words per visit.
- 70% of all your sensory receptors are in your eyes.
- We can get a sense of a visual scene in less than 1/10 of a second.
How Do Infographics Help Your Target Audience Retain Information?
The human brain looks for patterns, this not only attracts the eye to an infographic with images, but also helps to better process and remember the information than with text alone. Since so much of our brains operate more efficiently with images, we figured it best to use two visual examples to present this data.
Visual Processing Photo Credit: CoolInfographics.com
Superiority Effect Photo Credit: CoolInfographics.com
The picture above shows how the superiority effect works on memory retention 3 days after subjects participated in the study. Even though this study is from 2006, it is still relevant today, and given the amount of data the average human consumes daily today; the percentage is likely even more balanced in favor of visuals. What it all boils down to is that the human mind is designed to better process imagery and therefore, we retain that data better.
Summary and Takeaways
We have established why using infographics is an excellent strategy for your marketing plan. It is even a better idea to use them if your target audience is more prone to read infographics. Personalizing your marketing strategy is an ever increasing trend in marketing. Even average consumers are learning to expect customized communications and are disappointed if you treat them as one of the crowd. Specific regions where infographics are trending will help you achieve that level of customization and personalization while also ensuring that more of your content will be read and retained.
Meet Elizabeth Victor
Elizabeth Victor is Brand Advisor for Isentia Media Advisory. She enjoys sharing tips on media analytics and monitoring, as well as press release distribution services.
