Two years ago, I had a client storytelling challenge on my hands.

A large healthcare company wanted to let its customers know that a new portal would more efficiently track their information. When customers called to update address or insurance plan change requests, they wouldn’t have to spend 20 minutes on the phone with a customer service agent who would usually have to go five different places on the back end to update. Since my client company had invested millions on its new portal, it wanted to give it some publicity on its intranet and website. I brainstormed with my graphic designer to come up with visual ideas to be part of the outreach.

If I had this challenge today, going to our iStock photo account to find an image to convey “portal” would have been only one of several options at our disposal. With more tools available now and the importance of video more widely known, we could post a short demo showing how customer service agents were using the portal, send an infographic to customers to show how much more efficient their call with the agent would be, or put together Slideshare  illustrating concepts and processes behind development of the portal.

And why would it have been important to use these visual tools for outreach?

More than 65 percent of people are visual learners, so if your company isn’t telling your story with a mix of images, your brand will get left behind.

Some research to support this:

• The search for infographics on Google has shot up 800 percent over the last two years, Google+ research shows
• For some brands, referring links through Pinterest has brought more visitors to their sites than Facebook and Twitter. Also, more users liked or followed those brands on Pinterest than Facebook and Twitter, according content marketing and brand strategists Ann Handley and Mark Westergard
• 60% of consumers are more likely to consider or contact a business when an image shows up in local search results, according to marketing author Jeff Bullas.
• Facebook’s upcoming redesign of its news feed will more prominently display visual content and push a business’s post up if it can display compelling images.

“So if a business is able to effectively market to its audience on this channel, using content that is visual, relevant and spoken in an authentic voice, the return on investment should be greater,” said one social media manager in The San Francisco Chronicle’s coverage of the redesign.

So how do you do this?

At SocialProse Media, we meet with you to find out the story you want to tell, and then use our team of award-winning photographers, graphic artists, videographers, and illustrators to help your achieve this. Our colleagues have designed websites for national companies, worked at major newspapers and magazines, and designed logos and branding images for common household items.

We also realize we need to tell our story visually, so SocialProse Media has a Pinterest page. There you’ll find a number of infographics that will help you in your marketing efforts — and maybe they’ll inspire you with ways to tell your own story graphically.

If a picture — or infographic, illustration, slideshow, or video — is worth a thousand words, combining it with written content and marketing it onto the correct platforms may be worth more customers. 

Leslie Mladinich is a contributor to SocialProse Media.