Infographics and Return on Investment [Infographic]

The growing tide on the use of infographics to increase business visibility should lead any entrepreneur to ask the question, would infographics be a valuable asset in their business? Like any other investment, prudent entrepreneurs should check for the real value added by measuring its’ worth in terms of returns.

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The return on an investment (ROI) is technically expressed as a fraction of the revenue, divided by the cost incurred in order to operationalize the investment. However, a marketing investment, such as infographics could have far-reaching benefits that exceed the basic financial analysis. Here’s why infographics are an indispensable asset for your business.

Measuring the Costs versus Revenue
The costs associated with engaging an infographic are centered on its design, publishing and promotion. When compared to other conventional approaches that seek to increase a business’ visibility, such as participation in trade fairs or sponsored advertisement, a well-designed infographic could be considered as a less costly investment.
A well-crafted infographic that creatively communicates with your audience, would demand about $ 250 to $ 500 in design costs. The cost of publication and promotion would vary with the target market, the lifespan of the promotional activities and desired reach. After the infographic is designed, published and promoted, you can set milestones every month / quarter / semi-annually or annually to monitor and review the productivity of your investment.

It is important to note, however, that it may be difficult to extrapolate the overall benefits of infographics by analyzing revenues gained resultant from the direct employment of infographics. Such analysis would fail to reflect the real impact of an infographic campaign on your business.

Measuring the Real Value of Infographics
In order to derive the real value of infographics, it is prudent for investors to turn their attention to other parameters which are measurable and eventually build up to revenue growth, the bottom line for any business. These metrics are used to measure the increased recognition, higher audience engagement and other intangible benefits of content marketing. They indicate the extent of exposure that an infographic receives across the various channels.

Increased Recognition of Your Business
Web sites that use infographics have a higher growth in the web traffic, by at least 12%, as compared to ordinary posts. This can catapult your web traffic by 400%.
Each well-crafted infographic has the potential to reach over 15 million internet users who can in turn translate to tangible leads and conversions for your product. To measure site traffic and page views, tools such as Google analytics give figures on how many views each infographic generates. Google analytics can go further and provide an analysis of how many unique views are generated by each infographic.

Other metrics that would increase as a result of using infographics include the number of searches; the number of inbound links the number of subscribers to your website or blog. These can be measured using Google analytics, and other tools such as Google webmaster, as well as other analytics applications, used to track email subscribers and social media following.

Audience Engagement
The whole point of increasing traffic on your website is to engage a larger audience with your content. Whereas the average internet user will only read 28% of text content, the same users will read over 80% of your content when presented in the form of an infographic. Think of how much more you can communicate by this added attention to your content.

The increase in audience engagement also reflects through other measurable metrics such as the number of comments on a blog, and the average time spent on your page both measured by tools such as Google analytics. Products that communicate through infographics also experience a higher social sharing. This is measured using social media dashboard tools such as Brand24 or other applications that provide analysis on specific social platform such as the number of tweets, mentions on Twitter and shares Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+

Intangible Benefits
In addition to the aforementioned measurable benefits, infographics deliver other benefits which though intangible, they can offer viable incentives to your business.
An audience is three times more likely to understand your message when conveyed through an infographic as compared to plain text. This will, in turn, help the audience have a better experience of your product, build relationships that are centered on your product and improve the brand credibility within your audiences. These attributes work together to generate an increase in referral sales and create a wider base for your market.
Additionally, when information is conveyed through infographics, your audiences will make decisions in a shorter time, by up to 20% less time. Your infographic which directs audiences towards the desired benefits of your product does a better job at convincing audiences to take action on your product.
Moreover, through infographics, your content can be enhanced to include trending material which would translate to a higher ranking on search engines. To measure how well your infographic is rated on major search engines such as Google and Bing, use tools such as RankChecker.

Translating the Benefits to Business Value
Both the measurable benefits and intangible gains generated by infographics contribute to the overall growth of the business.
This is seen through increased product visibility which translates to more inquiries about your products, and a greater number of better quality leads that give an overall growth in new customers recruited. Infographics have been attributed to significant growth in the number of leads in businesses, in some cases, growths of up to 4500% in the number of leads.

Infographics present a proven way that increases the recognition of a business by enhancing its’ online visibility and enabling customers to engage more with its products. The affordability of infographics make it ideal for upcoming businesses, while the intangible benefits establish infographics as a must have for well-known brands.

In conclusion, any business that seeks to increase its customer base creatively should seek to explore content marketing mechanisms that yield traceable results that can be converted to sales easily. A well-crafted infographic such as the below by infobrandz is an indispensable asset for your business.

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