6 Ways to Use GIFs to Enhance Your Digital Marketing Strategy

GIFs are any easy way to add some multimedia flair to your digital marketing content. They are great because they have a small file size as opposed to a full video and they add a similar effect to the content. Site pages and blog articles that leverage video have proven to get more engagement than those the do not. We can all agree that GIFs are effective but knowing how to apply them to your marketing strategy can not be as clear. Below, I have outlined 6 ways to use GIFs to enhance your digital marketing strategy.

1. To explain a process

Instead of just writing out how to work through a process for creating a blog or a website page, or any other piece of digital content, having a supporting GIF or multiple supporting GIFs can be very valuable. Think of it as taking the bullet points and creating a visual representation. You'll find that people will tend to catch on to the processes quicker than just reading through the process write-up.  

2. Promotional Material 

For retail businesses, it can be tough to sell your product with a still image and for many a video isn't possible because they don't have the budget for it. Well, what if I told you that there's a way to create quality video content with little to no budget? Everyone has a phone camera now and many of them rival the image quality of professional cameras. Simply, take photos of the product from each angle to create a 360-degree image slideshow. You can then upload it those images to Giphy.com to create a GIF and voila, you have a perfect GIF that shows your product in a much more dynamic way than a simple still image. 

3. Replace video on site pages

Video can be a very powerful tool to get more engagement in your digital marketing strategy. According to an article published by HubSpot in 2017, 43% of people want to see more video content from marketers. Many marketers have started to use video in site page banners on site pages. The issue with that is that video files are large and can slow down the loading speed of the website. This is why we turn to GIFs. The small video size of a GIF doesn't affect the loading time and speed of a site page and it automatically loops the video so you don't have to worry about any additional coding. 

4. Video teasers

Once you create your amazing new piece of video content you need to promote it. Instead of just sharing the link, use clips for the video to create GIFs to share teasers. You'll want to focus on more visually exciting parts of the video such as graphic intros, beautiful BROLL montages of stock footage or your own capture footage, or eye-catching text callouts. This gives you more opportunities to share your content on social media, especially since some sites don't allow native video playback. 

5. Living CTAs

Using CTAs is a great way to draw conversions from your digital marketing content. Generally, CTAs are static images with some action text. You can spice up your CTA with a GIF that attracts more clicks by drawing more attention and guiding the reader's eye. Even animating just one portion of the CTA like the button can be enough to produce more engagement. See the example below. 

6. Social Media Content

All social media platforms support the GIF file format natively so any of the GIF content that you created for any purpose can be shared on social or used in social advertising campaigns. They are effective on social media because they are easy to consume, they can have an emotional impact, and can have a big impact on new audiences. Social platforms are also a great place to share funny GIFs and culture based content.

In conclusion, using multimedia content can boost engagement on your digital marketing content has proven to convert more leads and GIFs are a great way to add more multimedia content to your campaigns. Use the methods above as a starting point and if you have any further questions, set up a consultation with our multimedia team.