Infographic Marketing Strategy

What is an Infographic Marketing Strategy?

An infographic marketing strategy is a popular content marketing technique that uses eye-catching images and data to attract links and website traffic. The ultimate goal of promoting an infographic is to generate leads for sales teams. The infographic itself is a large image designed to target an audience’s question or problem through images, captions and statistical information.

Infographics should achieve a balance of content and design. Too many images with splashy colors will distract viewers. On the other hand, overloading your infographic with heavy blocks of text will usually scare away viewers. The key to B2B infographic marketing is to gather interesting content and present it in a way that pleases the eye and immediately captures the viewer’s attention.

3 Reasons to Develop an Infographic Marketing Plan

Just like any other marketing tool, lead generation is the ultimate goal of an infographic marketing campaign. B2B companies engage in infographic lead generation because infographics have proven so successful at building brand strength, particularly across social media channels.

Marketing an infographic is also beneficial because:

It’s a visual way to solve problems and offer solutions. An infographic or information graphic is about solving problems. Creating a visual display not only helps viewers grasp important concepts more quickly, but it draws their eyes down a visual and intellectual roadmap, promising helpful content all along the way.
It’s absorbed in small chunks that are easy to comprehend. Another great facet of the infographic is that the content is usually split into bite-sized pieces that make it easier for the reader to digest. No one wants to read huge walls of text. That’s why so many businesses develop infographics; to showcase relevant (and useful) industry information in a way that’s hard to resist.
It’s a technique that portrays data and statistics in a visually striking manner. Say you have compelling statistics or percentages that would shock and intrigue your audience. Incorporating them into an infographic is an easy way to attract readers and command their interest.

How to Create and Publish Your Infographic

Before plunging into infographic marketing strategies, it’s necessary to understand the fundamentals involved in creating a compelling infographic. Without interesting statistics or visually arresting design, none of your marketing strategies will get off the ground.

Here are a few steps to focus on as you create your infographic:

Identify your audience. You need to know who you’re targeting with this infographic. Create a profile of your ideal client and brainstorm what kind of content and graphics they would want to see. Ask yourself: Who wants to see this infographic? How would they want the data presented? What will catch their eye?
Create content based on a need or want your audience has. The worst thing you could do is identify your audience and then create content that is irrelevant to their needs. The whole point of the infographic is relevancy, to answer a question or solve a problem your audience has so that they’ll continue coming to you for answers.
Perform research to find data and statistics. How do you become a credible resource for future clients? Research. Any infographic marketing agency will tell you that solid research is the bedrock to any successful infographic. You must reveal something that is amazing and urgent, but most of all it must be true.
Present your information from a unique angle. Chances are someone else probably has the same information you’re preparing to present. The trick is to offer up your data with a twist—one your audience won’t expect. Do additional research to discover a clever angle you can use to spotlight your information.
Tell an interesting story. Creating an infographic involves more than slapping a few stats on a picture. The stats combined with the graphics must tell a story. Explore the facets of any gripping narrative: A beginning, a challenge, a struggle, and a resolution with a moral at the end.
Design with the purpose of engaging your audience. Most of the time, stuff that goes viral isn’t necessarily useful or particularly valuable; but it’s usually material that makes the reader feel like other people will find it clever or interesting. That’s why it gets passed along. You want your audience to feel like your infographic is giving them the inside scoop.

Where Should You Plan on Marketing Your Infographic?

An infographic marketing firm like Sprint Marketing will always remind you that it isn’t enough to create a clever, eye-pleasing infographic. You also need to know where to place the infographic where it will reach the largest audience. Here are a few free infographic marketing sites you can start with:

Your website should be the number one place to market your infographic for lead generation.
Pinterest is popular because it’s a great place to share visual content. Your infographic can be pinned and repined dozens or even hundreds of times. You can even add a “Pin It” button to your infographic so that readers can easily and instantly upload it to their account.
Twitter is a social media avenue for getting the word out. If you want to announce your latest infographic to the world, tweeting about it is a sure-fire way to get the word out.
Facebook is also a great venue for sharing thoughts and ideas, especially if you have a lot of friends. There’s value in taking time to professionally present your infographic on a social media site, whether it’s Twitter or Facebook.
Infographic sites are great places for marketing. Here are a few to choose from:

-http://dailyinfographic.com/
-http://www.coolinfographics.com/
-http://submitinfographics.com/
-http://www.infographicsshowcase.com/
-http://www.infographicsarchive.com/

Breaking Down the Steps to Marketing Your Infographic

Aside from knowing where to market your infographic, there are additional infographic marketing steps to further establish your presence online. Sprint Marketing has identified these steps and created an infographic marketing checklist to use while you’re developing your infographic strategy:

Create a blog post that supports and describes your infographic. Take the opportunity to show sections of your infographic, go into detail on the research behind the statistics, and be sure to link back to the infographic whenever possible.
Involve the sources you consulted to help you promote the infographic. Normally, they will want the free press an infographic can bring just as much as you do. This can also add another layer of credibility to your data.
Take screen shots of the infographic so it can be shared on blog posts, Flickr, Pinterest. Give people a taste of what you have to offer.
Submit your infographic to directories and aggregators.
Publish an article or issue a press release that promotes the infographic.
Send out an email promotion that highlights the infographic.
Share the infographic with influential users of bookmarking and social media sites.
Share it on Slideshare, Scribd or Docstoc.

How to Track the Success of Your Infographic’s Marketing Strategy

The last of our infographic marketing tips includes how to gauge the success of your infographic. Understanding the level of success and the factors driving it can be extremely helpful to future marketing efforts, including your next infographic. Here are a few metrics to watch:

Page views. See how often your infographic page is viewed. This is often a good baseline number to have when comparing those who viewed your infographic to those who shared it or went on to view more content.
Social shares. How often your infographic is shared is perhaps the single greatest indicator of success. The main purpose of an infographic is to be shared and to familiarize potential customers with your brand and thought leadership.
Reposts. The same as social shares, these are an indicator of how shareable your content is.
Comments on blog posts, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
Feedback from resources involved. Go back to your sources and ask for their feedback on the infographic. This is also a good time to pump them for more information you can include in a new infographic.

Get Your Own Free Leads Analysis to See How Sprint Marketing Can Improve Your Infographic Marketing Strategy Today

Sprint Marketing can help you develop an infographic marketing strategy and even show you how to create an infographic. But, while infographics can enhance your social media standings, ebooks can increase your web leads. Let us teach you how to create an ebook and how to implement an effective ebook marketing strategy. Contact us today for your free leads analysis.