U.S. manufacturing continues to step it up with a solid gain this year of 3.5% or better according to this week’s Kiplinger Report. For seven months in a row factory jobs have increased, and there is growth in every region across many industries. Biotech has experienced double digit growth and there are steady gains in medical equipment, aviation, and auto.

There is an old expression, “Use a picture, it’s worth a thousand words”, first expressed by Arthur Brisbane to the Syracuse Advertising Men’s club, in March 1911. Numerous studies have backed that visual content holds superiority over verbal content when it comes to conveying a lot of information quickly and succinctly. It stimulates a perceptual and emotional response among viewers that ultimately influence their purchase behavior. We are now surrounded by visual images – from smart phones, web pages, TV screens, tablets, and other mobile devices. As ProfessorPaul Martin Lester points out in “Syntactic Theory of Visual Communication”, “we are becoming a visually mediated society… For many, understanding of the world is being accomplished, not through reading words, but by reading images”. In this high-tech era where visual imagery is not just confined to images; social networking sites, info graphics, blogs/vlogs, online videos, games, 3D movies and so forth take visual stimulation to another level. Over the past few years, content marketing has developed into part of the marketing strategy of B2B companies. Business to Business marketers are using blog post with images and video, or webinars containing audio and images. There is an upward trend in content marketing toward all things visual.  Relevant findings from industry reports and trends have supported this claim –

At Grant Marketing, we like to stay ahead of the curve and that’s also the reason why we spend a great deal of time researching, monitoring current marketing trends, gathering consumer insights and pushing beyond this to deliver customized marketing solutions. This year we bring the concept of marketing automation into our zeitgeist. Although it is an evolving concept that many companies particularly in the B2B space are still grappling to acquire the right knowledge in order to leverage this technology to its full potential which exists today. This blog aims to impart a degree of understanding on the importance of embarking on a marketing automation journey for B2B, as there is a general consensus now more than ever, the value of marketing automation capabilities needs to be understood by both small and medium-sized B2B to large enterprises.

As mentioned in our previous blog, B2B companies are slowly and steadily dipping their toes in the social media water, and rightly so. But there is another storm brewing in the present digital ecosystem, which is integrating mobile into the current B2B marketing mix. According to Forrester Research report for 2012, “By 2016, smart phones and tablets will put power in the pockets of a billion global consumers, and mobile is the manifestation of a much broader shift to new systems of engagement”. This power shift is compelling not only for B2C companies to pay attention to mobile marketing, but B2B companies are also waking up to the innumerable opportunities, this evolving and interactive “touch point” can offer them.