Why and how to combine visuals + copy
They go together as cinematography
+ script do for an Oscar-winning film!
Once upon a time, there was a business owner named Bob who spent all his budget on high-quality visuals and neglected the importance of good copy.
Bob thought overused clichés like "the mountains are calling and I must go" would do the trick.
Little did he know that people were only stopping on his posts for a split second before moving on, thanks to the meaningless caption.
As a result, Bob's engagement rate was lower than a snail's pace, and his sales were suffering.
Down the road to Bob was another business owner named Sarah. Sarah was a master of copywriting. She believed that her words were all she needed to attract and retain customers, and she invested all her resources into perfecting her copy.
But here's the catch: Sarah's website and emails were so text-heavy that they were literally fatiguing to scroll through — potential customers could not hit the back button faster!
So, her content had low session durations and click-through rates and Sarah struggled to convert people into actual paying customers.
The moral of the story here? Don’t be like Bob or Sarah.
Though visuals and copy are 2 separate elements, they go together like cinematography and script do to make an award-winning film.
When you give equal love to both visuals and copy, you will:
attract a wider, bigger fan base — because you using 2 different methods of communication
charm potential customers — because visuals can grab attention and quickly communicate complex ideas and a well-crafted copy can create an emotional connection with the reader
keep existing customers happy (and coming back) — as you show up consistently and foster trust and credibility with them
reinforce your brand identity and build brand recognition.
5 ways to ensure visuals and copy complement each other
Consistency is king. When you are creating new content, refer back to your brand guides to keep your copy and visuals aligned with your identity and voice.
By doing this over and over again, you’re hammering home your branding to your audience so that one day, they’ll see your logo or brand colours or read some text, and instantly know it’s you (the dream)!
Quick tips:
Use the same colour palette across your online and printed materials like your website, social media graphics, business cards, and brochures.
Be a stickler with your brand typography! Don’t throw in random fonts for the sake of it.
Be consistent with how you write on different platforms, such as more professional and direct on LinkedIn and more casual and conversational on Instagram — it’s useful to have this captured by your brand voice guide, which a skilled copywriter can take care of!
For your social media posts, use eye-catching visuals and back it up with a strong opening line of copy.
Quick tips:
Be mindful of where the platform cuts off your caption and use the characters wisely! The objective is to entice your reader to tap on “more”.
If you’re adding text to your graphic, treat it as a headline, and don’t waste space in your caption and repeat yourself.
Add captions or subtitles to all video content, including Stories. This is for accessibility and because many people will watch with the sound off.
Strategically design and write your call-to-action buttons to motivate your audience to take action.
Quick tips:
Your button should be styled in contrasting colours.
Your copy should be brief and urgent like “order today” or “reach out now”.
It should also be specific — don’t write “click here” because firstly, it’s obvious where they need to click; secondly, it’s boring and thirdly, it doesn’t give any context to where the button will lead them!
For your marketing emails, leverage copy and visuals together to create an email that is quickly digestible.
Quick tips:
If you can’t help yourself and your emails are like novellas, use lists and subheadings to organise information.
Use images to break up chunks of text.
Use white space between all components to make your email look clean and easy to read.
Much of the above is also applicable for your blogs and articles! With subheadings, format them properly with H1, H2, and H3 tags to boost your SEO. Don’t forget to add ALT tags for images too for accessibility — they also help your SEO ranking.
I don’t have the resources to focus on both visuals and copy — what should I do?
You might feel like you have to choose one over the other because of budget, time, or creativity so we’re here to equip you with X strategies so you can have your cake and eat it too.
Plan ahead. Stop chasing your tail. Give yourself a month to create blog content and marketing emails and 2 weeks to schedule social media posts; social moves at a faster pace and so don’t want to work too far in advance as your content might become redundant!
Use digital tools. As much as we love putting pen to paper, we would miss many a deadline without our digital tools like Notion, Creator Studio, and Mailchimp; they allow us to work ahead and schedule content to publish or send at a certain day and time.
Outsource :) Focus on what you do best or what you love to do, and leave the rest to specialists. Start seeing outsourcing as necessary for growth, rather than a luxury.
At Anema Designs, we can create social media bundles that are on brand and help you keep feeding the Instagram monster. And when it comes to copy, we couldn’t rave more about our resident copywriter, Fiction Agency, who writes our blog content — yes, this very one that you’re reading! Our blogs form the backbone of our social media and email strategies so they’re the VIP of our content.
With all the above quick tips and easy-to-action strategies in your toolkit, we hope you feel inspired to create content where your visuals and your copy work together to your advantage!
We’re *obviously* super passionate about this topic so if you want to dive deeper with insights tailored to your business, book a complimentary 15-minute enquiry chat with us today. Together, we can mesh visuals and copy together and unlock a stronger brand with higher engagement and conversion rates.
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Just like Mr Magorium’s Wonder Emporium, where we share a variety of (branding and illustration) tips that bridges the gap between designers and business owners.
