How to improve the effectiveness of information flow advertising by making good use of pictures?

We all know that it is not easy to make a successful information flow delivery . It requires consideration of creativity, copywriting , pictures, color matching, layout, orientation and other aspects. However, it is super easy to ruin a delivery . Just put a wrong picture.

Yes, you read it right. It’s not the copywriting or the targeting, but an entry picture that has the ability to determine the life or death of this placement .

The purpose of most advertisers placing information flow ads is to achieve conversions , but most ads are "dead" during the display stage : users have no interest in opening them, and some don't even notice you, let alone subsequent conversions.

What's the problem ?

Is the title not good enough?

I think it's a picture issue .

We often say: words are not as good as tables, and tables are not as good as pictures . In other words, pictures are better than words in conveying information.

After reading through more than 700 sets of information flow advertising pictures, I decided to write this article today. Combining my 17 years of experience in advertising, I would like to talk to you about how to improve the effectiveness of information flow advertising by making good use of pictures.

Text vs. Image

Images are more likely to attract people’s attention than text.

We often see people using exclamation marks, ellipsis, or some more stimulating words to express something that needs to be deliberately highlighted. However, the text space for each piece of information in the app is limited. In an information platform full of " title parties ", it is actually not easy to stand out with words . However, if you use pictures, you may successfully attract the user's attention at the moment the page is refreshed. If you don't believe it, just look at it -

This is a circle of friends posted by a friend of mine after the Chinese national football team 's match against Uzbekistan. There are no pictures, only 12 characters.

At the same time, I also saw this status in my circle of friends:

Comparing the two states, the difference becomes apparent: although both are wins for the Chinese national football team, the message conveyed to us by the text is bland, but the picture can hit us in an instant , making us feel the players' excitement and excitement, the sense of team honor, and the aroused patriotic enthusiasm. We can even see through the players' actions and expressions the countless hard work and waiting they have put in for this - this is the power of pictures.

A set of data previously published by Marketing TechBlog also fully illustrates the unique power of pictures. For example, he said:

• On social media , posts that include visual elements receive 180% more engagement.
• Articles with pictures are read 94% more than articles without pictures.
• The number of comments on microblogs with pictures is 1.5 times that of text-only microblogs ;
• Users who click on images are twice as likely to convert into sales as users who click on text .
• 93% of the most popular Facebook posts contain images;
• People can only recall 10% of text, but 65% of graphic information .
• …

The advantages of pictures are fully visible.

This also explains why the two social media giants, Instagram and WeChat , both attach great importance to pictures. One only allows uploading pictures, while the other does not encourage text-only Moments. Both are based on the consideration that pictures are better than text .

Images are easier for the human brain to understand than text

Why are pictures so powerful in conveying information? Because it’s the brain’s instinct.

Whether it is text information or image information, it must be converted into visual signals by the eyes before it can enter the visual cortex of the brain and be processed. However, when processing information in text form, the text information needs to be read into the brain first to make the abstract content of the text concrete, which is an extra step of "understanding". It is this extra step that makes the human brain process pictures 60,000 times faster than text .

It's not just you who likes to be lazy, your brain is too. Since processing images is quick and easy, why process text?

Therefore, most elementary school students, middle school students, and even many adults prefer to read comics, pictures, and videos rather than read books filled with text, because reading text is too brain-intensive.

Similarly, when we see an advertisement, we will inevitably pay attention to the picture first. If the picture gives people a good feeling and they want to know more, they may look at the text. In other words , pictures are easier for users to understand and accept than text .

Images are more likely to inspire action than text.

Being easy to understand is not enough. As an information flow advertisement, its ultimate goal is to promote conversion. So what role will pictures play in this process?

Let’s look at another set of pictures:

This is a set of pictures I saw when I was writing this article. I searched for the scallop and shrimp porridge that I just ordered. Based on the search results, I selected three merchants with different pictures from top to bottom. Take a close look at these three pictures. If you were the one ordering the food, which one would you prefer?

In fact, just looking at the monthly sales numbers below the picture is enough to explain the problem: 25 copies were sold in the first month, 3 copies were sold in the second month, 124 copies were sold in the third month, and today's copies have been sold out.

Based on my many years of experience in brand advertising visual work, the first one is the only one that is a real shot. Although its lighting and placement are not as good as the other two, because it is a real shot, the dim lighting and casual placement give it a sense of reality. Even though the photography is not very sophisticated, it has many details that convey "real" information, which makes it sell better than the second one .

The second photo is a posed photo, and a very clumsy one at that: the shrimps are arranged neatly like flower petals, with a wolfberry placed every other shrimp in the outermost circle. Would real seafood porridge be served like this? The light is not real either. With such strong light, even the shadows are almost gone. Anyone who knows a bit about this knows that this kind of light does not exist in the natural environment .

Although the third picture is obviously a posed photo, it simulates a real, well-lit scene, so its details are fuller: it is not only realistic, but the picture is more exquisite and the colors are more vivid - you see, our emotions are so easily "disturbed", and when faced with such a picture, we not only have an appetite, but also are easily aroused to make decisions , so correspondingly, this family has a higher order rate.

Through this example, I believe you have clearly understood why the entrance map and the pictures in the landing page are so important, which directly determine the life and death of the entire delivery - because compared to text, pictures can directly communicate with the user's brain, can communicate with the user's brain first, and can trigger the user's action button fastest.

Good pictures vs bad pictures

Now that we have clarified the importance of pictures in advertisements, the next thing to solve is how to choose pictures. There are two important points to note:

1. Advertising images should contain as many details as possible, and these details need to be effective ;
2. Advertising pictures should be as realistic as possible, but also a little better than reality, making them more desirable .

Good pictures speak volumes

Take a look at this set of pictures:

This is a picture posted by a tea sales WeChat owner on WeChat Moments. In reality, the owner is very distressed: why is his tea so good, but sales are not good?

The answer is simple, look at the pictures he posted:

The first one from the left has no details and no scene. If he didn’t say it, we wouldn’t even know that this is a tea leaf .

The second one also has very few details. You can say it is a tea cake or a straw mat.

In the third picture, a small amount of scenes appear, but there are no details that can illustrate the problem.

In this way, will it make us want to drink tea?

So, the effective details are :

1. Before advertising, it is necessary to clearly state what the advertisement is going to convey to the users;
2. Select images with matching details based on the content.

Taking the tea mentioned above as an example, this time I want to convey that drinking tea symbolizes quality of life, so the following two pictures have much more effective details.

In the picture on the left , there is a solid wooden table, a set of exquisite tea sets, and a person's hands demonstrating the tea ceremony - these details are conveying a message to us that people who drink tea are like this, high-end, elegant, cultured, etc., which makes people feel yearning .

The picture on the right shows mottled light, a slightly wild environment, simple and beautiful tea sets, and rattan tea trays, which convey a message of simplicity, plainness, and refinement. Looking more closely, the transparent, light yellow tea soup makes you want to drink it. This stimulates the viewer's desire to drink tea.

Of course, in addition to quality of life, we can also convey a lot of information. For example, a beautifully packaged tea gift box is conveying the message "you can choose this as a gift", helping users solve the difficulties of choosing gifts, and so on.

If a picture with such information points appears in the WeChat Moments or App's information flow advertising space , it will easily attract users who have high demands for quality of life or who are worried about what gifts to give to appear tasteful . If the advertiser can also match it with better copywriting, the conversion rate will definitely increase.

Good pictures bring joy, anger, sorrow and happiness

Of course, details alone are not enough, the ads also need to appeal to the user’s emotions. A good picture will make people want to buy immediately, while a disgusting picture will make you never want to see this ad again. This is what users’ emotions are all about. For example, in the example of the tea picture just now, we mentioned "yearning", and yearning itself is an emotion.

If there is no emotion at all, it is not enough to convey a lot of details. For example, the following picture:

This picture actually conveys a lot of information, and it is all effective. For example, a mother holding a child can mop the floor with it with one hand, which shows that this vacuum cleaner is very light and can be used with one hand, but why is it still not enough?

Because this scene is too fake.

• Too fake 1: Mom: Although you are smiling, this smile is not from the heart. It is a posed smile . We are naturally sensitive to people's facial expressions and body language. Everyone can feel it without me saying it.
• Too fake 2: The scene in the picture is obviously not a real family . There is not a single piece of furniture. Unless it is a product photo, there will never be a person mopping the floor in a room without furniture while holding a child, so we cannot feel any emotions in this picture.

A principle needs to be introduced here, called psychological distance . This is not a strange principle, we often have this feeling in reality. For example, when making judgments, we will find that the more it concerns our own affairs or the affairs of important people, the more likely we are to make emotional judgments. However, if it is the affairs of irrelevant people, we are just like Zhuge Liang and can make correct judgments very rationally. This is what the saying goes, "If you don't care about something, you will be confused if you care." To explain it in psychological language, the greater the psychological distance, the calmer our decision-making will be.

As advertisers, we definitely hope that users will not be calm. How can a calm user generate the urge to shop? So, although the picture mentioned above expresses effective information, it is an emotionless, illustrative picture. You can also understand that it is more suitable to be used as a picture for Taobao's details page.

Imagine what it’s like when you open the Taobao details page and try to understand a product? You must have a need for this product, actively searched for it or even purchased it, and you need to learn more about its functions - the pictures at this stage do not need to be tempting, as long as they illustrate the problem.

However, we are now on an information flow platform , and users originally come to read information. What we need is to use extremely tempting pictures to hook users from the state of seriously reading information, arouse users' potential needs, and we need to narrow the psychological distance between users.

At this time, more suitable pictures are those that look real and are most likely to appear in real life. Only authenticity is convincing, can attract the user's attention, can make the user feel something, and can arouse the user's needs . For example, the following figure:

This is obviously a home environment: there is a door, wooden floors, green plants, a bookshelf behind the door, and a male host in casual clothes doing housework. This is a situation that would occur in reality, and it brings us closer psychologically.

Of course, the home in the picture may be much better than the environment of most of our homes, but this does not hinder its authenticity and make users feel "I also want such a life."

This also expresses that the product is useful, but unlike the polite fake smile in the previous picture, in this picture we can feel that the male host's expression is joyful and his movements are relaxed. So we can further feel that because of this vacuum cleaner, even men who don’t like doing housework will be willing to clean.

Some readers may ask, can it be more realistic? Just an ordinary house and an ordinary male owner?

If that is the case, it can certainly trigger users' emotions and generate conversions, but the degree of temptation will be lower and the credibility may increase a little. This requires advertisers and optimizers to control it themselves.

But I would recommend using pictures that are a little bit more rosy than the real thing. Because generally speaking, most people don’t analyze their emotions carefully. They instinctively think: If I buy this product, I will have the life in the picture ( and maybe even the man like that ).

If you look at the buyer shows on Taobao, you will find that many buyers think they will look like the models when they wear the clothes. They will even upload pictures to the review section and express their satisfaction. But do the clothes really look good? I don’t know how many new buyers stop buying after seeing those buyers’ shows every day…

So, the human brain is really strange and very good at deceiving itself. What we do in advertising is to take advantage of the habits and instincts of the human brain to increase ad click-through rates and conversion rates .

In summary, when placing information flow ads , the pictures we choose, whether for the entrance or for the landing page, should be pictures that can express effective details and have scenes, and they should be real scenes as much as possible. Of course, we hope that this "real scene" is better than the reality so that users can yearn for it .

For details, please refer to the formula in the figure below:

First, in the user's cognition, the details of the picture are conveying information to them . Maybe they themselves are not aware of it, but this information will be automatically imprinted in their minds. This is a passive skill of human beings, and everyone is like this.

Second, real scenes represent credibility . For example, if you vacuum a clean place where there is no furniture, it is not convincing. Make users feel trust, then they will place an order.

Third, for users, a beautiful scene means that if I buy it, I can have everything in the picture ! Mobilizing the emotion of yearning often achieves twice the result with half the effort.

Fourth, there is the fear of seeing scenarios , which prompts users to take actions to avoid possible and undesirable scenarios - this requires extra caution when using it.

For example, some advertisers who sell skin disease drugs put a bunch of disgusting photos of skin diseases. This is very embarrassing. Common sense is: since it is an over-the-counter drug, its main target audience is patients whose conditions are not serious enough to see a doctor. If you let users see such disgusting picture ads, they will think "My condition is not that serious, I should not need to use this medicine" and then leave. This is obviously a result that advertisers do not want to see. Therefore, exploiting fear and anxiety is a risky tactic, and if you are not sure you can do it well, don't even consider using it.

Finally, the simplest way to judge whether this image can drive conversion is to use our own instincts . Our visual habits are the same as those of users, and our brains are also evolved to the same degree as users. Before placing an ad, take a look at the images with an ordinary person’s mindset and ask yourself, what would you feel when you see them in a pile of information… If even you can’t accept it, then don’t waste the advertiser’s money and start over.

In summary, the role of pictures in advertisements is to attract users' attention and convey information and emotions to them the moment they refresh the page and see the advertisement, thereby making them impulsive and triggering their motivation to take a series of actions such as purchasing, consulting, registering, downloading, etc.

So, we selected the pictures:

1. There must be details, and the details must convey desirable information ;
2. The image should be able to mobilize the user's emotions;
3. Unless you want to evoke sad emotions in users, try to choose pictures with bright colors and good lighting, which will make it easier for users to form a positive impression and make decisions .
4. The pictures should use scenes that may occur in reality to increase user trust , narrow the psychological distance between users, and mobilize users' emotional decisions .

After doing all of the above, we will use other elements such as copywriting to gradually guide users, allowing them to convert without realizing it and achieve our delivery tasks.

The author of this article is @微微 and it is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!

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