Well, trends may come and go in the marketing world, but some things are here to stay. And visual marketing is definitely one thing with a cemented future. 

The COVID-19 pandemic had a very significant impact on this industry and put the brakes on many campaigns making brands reevaluate their plans. Around 56% of brands admit to changing their plans, considering the pandemic. And what was the dominating theme of marketing ever since the pandemic began? Yes, you guessed it right. 

Increased usage of visuals and graphic design is a major trend in their content marketing and communication. 

Hence, Kimp brings you a roundup of the most important Visual Marketing and Graphic design statistics.

But why the stress on visual marketing?

Whether or not we realize it, visuals have a powerful impact on our perception and memory. Studies tell us that people are more likely to remember a message when accompanied by a visual than hearing it. In fact, hearing it helps us remember 10% of it while graphics amp it up to 65%. 

And companies that focus on graphic design and visual marketing benefit immensely from it. Adobe’s survey tells us that design-led companies that value creativity is more likely to have a 1.5x share in their industry. 

Great, right? This is like getting a cheat code for your favorite game. But it is not all roses and happy songs. 

As important as visual marketing and graphic design is, 37% of marketers struggle in creating visually consistent images that align with their brand identity. While there are many DIY tools, graphic design has a lot of elements, and each marketing medium demands a different design style. 

So marketers and brands need to understand the market trends in graphic design, statistics, and techniques to achieve success. And that can be extremely challenging. 

If you too feel the same way, explore Kimp Graphics and Kimp Video unlimited design services to solve all your problems in a single click! 

The question still remains – what is going on in the visual marketing industry in 2021, and what can we expect in 2022? How are your peers handling these challenges? 

9 Visual Marketing + Graphic Design Statistics You Need To Know

To answer your questions and more, let’s go ahead and check out the top 9 Visual Marketing and Graphic Design statistics. Knowing these can help you grow your brand successfully in 2022.

So let’s dive right in. 

1. Popular Graphic Design and Visual Marketing elements 

Now that you know that investing in visual marketing is not an option but a permanent fixture, the next question is – what works best?

Yes, visual marketing is a very vast field. You have photographs, stock images, stock videos, recorded videos, animated videos, infographics, graphic design for digital mediums, designs for print mediums, and so on. 

A brand can’t invest in all these without knowing its merits. 

In 2021, marketers heavily preferred original graphics over stock images and videos for their marketing campaigns. Of all the categories, illustrations and infographics took the cake, with 41% of marketers in the survey rating them to be the most effective. 

Even though only a few used videos and presentations in their campaigns, these were the second most effective in conversions and impact. GIFs, Memes, charts, and other data visualization tools followed these formats in effectiveness.

The major takeaway here must be the renouncement of stock photos and videos by marketers by rating them to be the least effective in conversions.

Kimp Tip: Stock images were a social media manager’s favorite tool, but that is changing now. Invest in a service that can create custom images for your marketing and deliver creative ideas that convert. 

Kellogg’s campaign in 2019 celebrating the brand’s achievements aimed to have artwork that highlights the brand’s heritage. They chose custom illustrations for this on their packaging and became a huge success. 

You can use illustrations to depict a process on social media too. Wondering how that looks? Check this example by Kimp for reference.

2. Graphic Design Spend from Businesses 

Do you now know where your peers are focusing in graphic design and what the popular formats for 2022 are? Let’s move on to money matters. Depending on the scale of your business and the marketing intent, your budget may fluctuate. Knowing the industry standard can help you make informed decisions. 

From a broader perspective, it may amaze you to know that the graphic design industry in the USA alone is worth $15 billion. What takes up the lion’s share in it? Logo design.

In the UK, this number goes up to 3.4 billion pounds and is only expected to grow higher. 

In fact, 70% of small businesses will pay up to $500 for a branded logo. 

Since unique and custom graphics reign supreme in conversions and engagement, brands will invest in these services. Over 70% of small businesses in the USA agree that they have increased their graphic design volume and budgets, at least by 10 times. 

Most of these budgets are going towards digital channels as is the norm in the current marketing industry. 

3. Visual Marketing and Viral Content 

Each of us working in the marketing field has one standard goal – we want our campaigns to go viral. What if we told you that the only chance you achieve that is by leveraging the power of visual marketing? 

And this is not a hunch or an estimate. This is what the numbers are telling us.  Visual marketing has the power to make you go viral. Images, videos, Memes, and GIFs can connect with users emotionally and trigger the response you want. And higher engagement ensues. 

Blog posts with images experience a 650% increase in engagement than text-only blogs. Twitter threads and Facebook posts with at least an image improve your chances of being shared. 

The meme culture and the love of all things visual are here and here to stay. Memes can, in fact, improve your engagement rates from 5% to 60% on a post on social media. And that is why you are seeing an explosion of memes from branded pages too. 

Hopping on trends and meme culture is a great way to promote your products as you can see from this example by Kimp. 

Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok are everyone’s favorite platforms, and these are visuals-only platforms.  

So the more you invest in visual marketing, the higher your chances of going viral. And that includes GIFs too. In an ad for Mist Twist, GIFs improved the CTR by 75%, which is completely unprecedented. 

To help you with consistent design creation without bank-breaking bills, Kimp Graphics and Kimp Video unlimited design services are here.

4. Data Visualization and Infographics 

Long-form content helps in SEO, and educational content is a crowd favorite. But the challenge remains to make them attractive and engaging for the attention deficit customer base. And that is why the marketing community loves infographics and data visualization elements. 

The number of campaigns with infographics and charts almost doubled from 8% to 15% from 2020 to 2021. Designing them is still a challenge for marketing teams, but that has not deterred its usage. 

In B2B marketing campaigns specifically, Infographics come in handy in breaking down complicated concepts. Over 41% of marketers agree that this visual marketing element helps them in getting to their goals sooner. They improve the readability of a concept and also enhance the readers’ understanding capacity by 323%. 

Infographics are extremely versatile. Be it blogs, presentations, reports, or social media posts, they can be useful across. Consider this post by Twitter to spice up mundane data and generate impressions that text cannot. 

From influencers to the cloud. Retro gaming to esports. The gaming conversation is exploding across the timeline. pic.twitter.com/CqDT7tVZmH

— Twitter Marketing (@TwitterMktg) August 4, 2021

A simple How-to is also more attractive when you present it as an Infographic.

Kimp Tip: Choosing the right image and design style for your Infographics is very important. Not to forget the importance of visual hierarchy and color usage to make the infographics easy to digest. Check our detailed guide on this here to know more. 

With Kimp Graphics’ unlimited design subscription, you can create as many data visualization tools as you need with no additional charges. 

5. OOH Advertisement 

We have been discussing the digital medium for a while now, but let’s quickly shift gears and check what is going on in the offline world? Yes, offline marketing is still a thing, not to be forgotten by brands. 

And in this field, we have a new and emerging entrant. Digital billboards are dominating the offline marketing world, and how? Customers love them, and it helps immensely in brand recognition. 55% of travelers can recall digital billboards messages most of the time if they pass one. The number goes up when we look at monthly impressions. 82% of travelers admit recalling digital billboard ads they have seen in the last month. 

And 71% of people in a Neilsen study said that digital billboards stand out more than online ads. Now, that’s impressive, isn’t it? 

Is that all in offline advertisements? Well, no. 2020 and 2021 have revived a long-forgotten marketing tool – business cards. A study tells us that there is a 2.5% increase in sales for every 2000 business cards you distribute. Given how inexpensive and versatile they are, it does not hurt to invest in a few, does it?

Print marketing is also on the rise with newspaper ads, magazine ads, and inserts gaining traction over the years. In fact, the print ad revenue globally has reached 2.207 billion dollars in 2020. 

Kimp Tip: Brands do not have to necessarily create specific creatives for billboards, print ads, and business cards. Repurposing your digital designs can help you save money, time, and extend branding consistency as well. 

Netflix’s GIF billboard is a great example of combining offline and digital visual marketing tools. 

6. Character illustration and Mascots 

Mascots are a brand staple, right? Everything from a plumbing company to breakfast cereal has a mascot. But have you ever wondered why? Studies tell us that having a primary character or a brand protagonist improves the brand’s recallability immensely. 

You can relate to the brand on a human level and seek interaction from the character rather than the brand. This is well-demonstrated in the success of every mascot to date. Do you remember the brand Aflac? No, maybe you remember the Aflac duck. You are not the only one. 9/10 people in Japan and the USA know the brand only because of the mascot. 

And an Italian insurance company saw a jump in its leads (26%) and revenue (17%) when its beloved mascot came back on television. 

Designing a brand mascot boosts the likeability of a brand. Check this illustration by Kimp done for a client. 

Designing a mascot for a business is not an easy feat. You want an image that can affect the customer and reflect your business in the right way as well. Thankfully, you have Kimp Graphics at your disposal so that it becomes easier. 

7. Social Media Visual Marketing 

Interesting images on social media can secure 105% higher engagement than links. This means visual marketing on social media is your gateway to generate traffic to your ecommerce store, website, YouTube channel, and so much more. 

And the marketing fraternity vouches for this statement. 49% of marketers agree that their social media strategy for Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter comprises visuals regularly. 

But there is a new kid on the visual marketing block, and that is Pinterest. No longer just a platform for DIY and hobby-enthusiasts, Pinterest is turning into a haven for generating social commerce leads. 85% of users admit to completing a purchase based on what they saw on the platform.

This means that your product images are not just for your ecommerce sites or Instagram stores, they have a bigger purpose. Repurpose those images with the right branding for Pinterest and start getting pinned to generate sales. 

Visual marketing in social media is also crossing over to the B2B networks. And yes, we mean LinkedIn. LinkedIn posts with 8 or more images perform the best. These are the third-highest performing long-form articles after how-to and listicles. 

8. Landing pages 

Brands spend an inordinate amount of money on running advertisements but sometimes cannot notice that landing pages play a crucial role in conversions too. And recent studies tell us that the design of these pages affects the result as well. 

46% of marketers agree that the form layout on a landing page significantly affects clicks and conversion. Often, the way to go here is to design simple forms, limit copy, and leverage visual marketing. 

Images, symbols, and branding consistency are what the customer expects more than anything. 

The choice of color also plays a role, perfectly per marketing color psychology one might say. Your choice of color scheme will affect the customers’ readability and the first impression of the brand. 

Consider the landing page by Kimp for Bizzy. The color scheme, choice of font, and layout make it attractive to the eye and completely consistent with its brand identity. 

Negative space is an underrated design technique, especially on landing pages. Check our guide on creating landing pages that convert for quick reference. You can also connect with Kimp Graphics and Video teams to create interactive and engaging landing pages for your brand. 

9. Logo Design  

Finally, it is time for the crowd favorite. Last but not the least, logo design is the pinnacle of visual marketing. It is the art of conveying volumes about the brand with a single stroke. And it is highly successful at that too. 

Studies tell us that humans process visuals faster than text, and that is why we always recommend having a unique but memorable graphic design in your logo. The logo design handles most of the impressions your brand secures. In fact, even when a visitor is there on your website, they take up to 10 seconds to study your logo. 

And that is why brands are ready to spend up to $1000 for their logo to get started on the right path. 

Leverage Visual Marketing with Kimp 

The importance of visual marketing and graphic design is abundantly clear now. However, we understand the challenges small businesses and brands face while trying to leverage these trends. 

Securing quality design teams can be a challenge physically and financially.

But those days of running in-house agencies or working with freelancers are long gone. 

The unlimited design service is here, and Kimp is ready to serve. Our Kimp Graphics and Kimp Video subscriptions give you absolute freedom to design your campaigns the way you want. 

No restrictions. Unlimited design requests, unlimited revisions, and hundreds of design categories at no additional charges. 

So why wait?
Sign up for the free trial now and get ready for 2022.