You’ve seen GIFs plastered all over Instagram stories. You probably are always sending silly GIFs in response to your friend’s text messages. But have you ever thought of actually incorporating them into your marketing strategy?
When thinking of how to grow your business, GIFs probably have not crossed your mind, but why? Having your own branded GIFs can be so much more than just a set of cute decorations to use in your IG stories. Believe it or not, these “decorations” can be used strategically for your business and personal brand.
What Are GIFS?
Let’s get nitty-gritty here. GIF stands for Graphical Interchange Format. They are a series of images or videos without sound that has a constant loop. Many use GIFs as a form of communication with their friends. Over the past few years, GIFs have been making their way into the business world.
How can GIFs Help Grow Your Business?
There are many great benefits to incorporating branded GIFs into your marketing strategy. Here are some of the most effective ways GIFs can grow your business:
Increased Audience Attention & Engagement.
I have found that when I use my personalized Gifs on my stories, I get more views and less view drop-offs! This is because GIFs are easy to consume, and they increase interest – especially when the GIF is totally customized to your brand.
Create More Visual Interest in Your Marketing.
As most of you know, having imagery in your marketing content helps to ease readability and makes it more “skimmable” (think of a typical sales page layout). Custom GIFs totally stand out on the page – and the movement actually brings the reader’s attention to the content it is situated next to (this is why I love featuring custom GIFs on sales pages)!
GIFs Help Strengthen Brands
GIFs are an amazing tool to represent a brand and make your content super recognizable for your audience. They also help show off your brand’s personality and allow you to stand out visually in your niche! You can also use certain GIFs to add to the relatability factor of your brand. People love being able to relate to a post because it can make situations a lot funnier, extra endearing, or more interesting.
GIFs Can be a Great Promotional Tool
GIFs are great ways to promote a product or service. You can use a GIF to highlight the amazing features and benefits of your product or service. If I am launching a certain offer, I will usually create promotional GIFs as part of its branding. Using GIFs to promote offers is a great idea. Your warm leads that are already interested in your offer will become all the more excited about it when you use fun GIFs and branding in your marketing!
GIFs Are Just Really Fun!
Incorporating GIFs into your marketing strategy is really fun, and everyone loves them! GIFs can teach your customers about your brand and be silly at the same time.
Where to use GIFs
E-mail marketing
I like to incorporate GIFs into the weekly emails I send out to my list. I aim to include at least one GIF in each email, but at times I will include multiple (especially if the email is a longer format. What’s great about using GIFs in email marketing is that they help to break up the written content, making it easier for your reader to digest. Using GIFs in your email marketing also just helps to bring more personality into your copy, and allows your readers to feel a stronger emotion that is represented by your GIF(s) of choice.
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Your website
I personally have several of my personalized GIFs scattered throughout my website! Most importantly, I strategically placed a GIF that I created with photos from a brand photoshoot at the top of my homepage (you can check it out here for a peek). When someone visits my website for the first time, I want to immediately grab their attention and interest the second they are greeted by my homepage. Adding in a slight movement to any webpage will instantly draw your visitors in, making them want to explore more of your site and therefore stay on for longer.
Sales/landing pages
Similar to adding GIFs on your website, you can use GIFs to capture the attention of your viewers. This is especially important when we want them to consume sales content to increase the likelihood of a conversion. When adding GIFs to your sales pages, a good tip is to place them right next to the most important parts that your ideal client needs to read in order to make their buying decision.
→ Example:
Instagram stories
Instagram stories are by far (in my opinion) the most fun way to use GIFs in your marketing. I’ve personally created a branded bundle of GIFs for my brand, and use them often on my Instagram stories. All you have to do is save your GIF to your phone photos, copy it, and paste it into your IG story by double-tapping your screen and hitting “paste”. You can also upload your GIFs to Giphy.com so that your audience can use them for THEIR stories by searching your username in the GIFS/Stickers bar on stories.
Most of my GIF clients hire me to create their own custom GIF bundle for them to use on their Instagram stories. They are a really fun way to make your stories stand out and make them super on-brand for your business.
How Can You Create a Custom GIF for Your Brand?
Option 1: Create them yourself using Giphy.com, Procreate, or Photoshop
If you have video footage you’d like to turn into a short GIF, Giphy.com makes it super simple to do so! All you have to do is upload the video file to the platform, and giphy will give you step-by-step instructions on how to complete your GIF from there.
I personally use both the Procreate app to illustrate myself and my client’s GIFs, and then upload the illustrations to photoshop to create a moving effect. Here’s a tutorial from Adobe on how to create GIFs with Photoshop.
Option 2: Hire a designer or illustrator to create customizable GIFs for your brand
Illustration and photoshop aren’t your things? No problem. You can easily hire a designer or illustrator to create your own GIFs for you so you don’t have to spend hours and hours trying to DIY them.
I offer a variety of custom illustrated GIF bundles for entrepreneurs that are ready to uplevel their branding and implement GIFs as a marketing tool for their business.
Want your own set of GIFs to use for your business? Click here to check out my custom GIF Packages!
I hope this really helps you to scale your business by giving you ideas on how you can use GIFs in your marketing strategy. Your marketing strategy is key to growing your business and you should be doing everything you can to continue to scale it. GIFs are a wonderful tool to use in your marketing strategy. Try it out!
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