Killer Visual Strategies: Engage Any Audience, Improve Comprehension, And Get Amazing Results Using Visual Communication Author, TEDx Speaker & CEO Amy Balliett on Episode #0219

Amy Balliett [0:00]
Hi, my name is Amy Balliett with Killer Visual Strategies and you’re listening to the Expert Authority Interviews.

Intro [0:06]
EA Interviews, Episode 219, inspiration, transformation, success stories and the Imperfect Action Round seven days a week. Join Mario Fachini for today’s Expert Authority Effect Interview.

Mario Fachini [0:19]
Have you ever wanted your business to look better? Have you ever wanted to implement those fancy things you see people doing? I know I have. And I’d like to think I do. But I’m super excited to have author and speaker from South by Southwest and Adobe Max and CEO of Killer Visual Step Strategies, Amy Balliett on the show today because she is going to deep dive into how you can have killer visual strategies. I’m going to bring her up right after we thank our sponsor.

Sponsor – Free Business Book Publishing Course [0:52]
Every business needs a book, including yours, visit FreeBusinessBookPublishingCourse.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Once again, that’s FreeBusinessBookPublishingCourse.com.

Mario Fachini [1:08]
Here she is, ladies and gentlemen, Amy Balliet. Amy, how are you feeling today?

Amy Balliett [1:13]
Feeling great. How are you feeling today?

Mario Fachini [1:15]
I’m having a great day, a really great day. And I’m excited to dive right in with you for one of my favorite things to talk about Visual Communications. Why would you say it’s so important?

Amy Balliett [1:25]
Honestly, it’s important because it’s in a world of information overload. The fact of the matter is, is nobody’s reading anymore. Today’s audiences only read about 20% of the text put in front of them. Yet, when they’re doing when they when they have visual information that’s put in front of them, they engage with it almost immediately. In fact, it actually resonates with the brain 60,000 times faster than any other form of communication that exists. So in a time of day, where every single brand is competing for your attention, visual communication is the end all be all, it’s the most important way to connect with audiences today.

Mario Fachini [2:04]
That’s a pretty impressive statistic that I did not even know I just pretty much was like I think it looks better. I mean, I’m simple, but 60,000 times

Amy Balliett [2:15]
60,000 times. And that’s actually the lowest number out there, there have been so many different studies about it. And some studies say 100,000 times faster. But the most reputable study out there says 60,000 times faster. So that’s the stat we go with.

Mario Fachini [2:32]
Who wouldn’t want that for their business? That’s, that’s crazy. Now, let me ask you further on that does it depend on the medium if we’re talking magazine cover versus a postcard versus video or book cover?

Amy Balliett [2:49]
You know, honestly, everything’s a book cover at this point, the the whole concept that you know, we judge a book by its cover, it is 100% true. 94% of first impressions are based on design. So that means the first impression of your service, your brand, whatever marketing message you’re putting out there, it’s going to be based on the design of that collateral. So whether it’s a magazine cover or a social media image or the thumbnail on a video, these are all things that get somebody to either open the magazine or in the digital realm to click and dive deeper. And that’s what we want in the digital space. We want clicks, we want people coming to our websites and entering our conversion funnels. And so the way you do that is you deliver great book covers that get them to crack open that book and learn more about your brand or service.

Mario Fachini [3:42]
What if someone doesn’t think it’s important or just kind of kicks it with it to stick if it’s good enough, I’m here to say to that,

Amy Balliett [3:50]
That’s perfectly fine for them. But there are multiple studies out there that show that visual content is in high demand. In fact, I think it was HubSpot, who recently released that 91% of today’s audiences demand visual content. And the companies that are actually using visual content and all of their content marketing, we’re really prioritizing it and delivering quality visual content. They’re growing their revenues an average of 49% faster than the companies that aren’t. So you’re welcome to not do it. But you’re going to get left behind the curve a little bit if you if you avoid using visual content or proper visual communication in your content.

Mario Fachini [4:32]
So you’re fine using Lex. You know, less or not so good graphics. But if you want to profit more easier and faster you should.

Amy Balliett [4:43]
Exactly, exactly. And that’s you know, one of the things you said there was not so good graphics. If you have the option between not using visual content at all or using really low quality graphics, choose no visual content at all. You need that have high quality visual content to really succeed. If you think about it, this this concept that visual information gets to the brain 60,000 times faster, combined with the concept that 94% of first impressions are based on design. All of that says that your text doesn’t matter. So your headline, whatever you’re using to contextualize your visuals, that doesn’t matter as much as the visuals themselves, people will be forming first impressions right off the bat before they read your text, they’re going to be judging you from the from right out of the gate. So you really have to deliver content that they judge as quality. And quality is a little bit different than beautiful, you know, yes, we all want beautiful, pretty design, we want something really engaging and eye catching. But it’s not high quality, if it doesn’t also deliver value to the end audience. And so it’s really important that you’re marrying form and function in your design and producing content that truly leads with a great eye for detail and, and design, along with something that’s really valuable for that end audience that that really hooks them.

Mario Fachini [6:13]
If someone’s really struggling with this, what would you say some are some of the first things they should consider or take into account to say, hey, I’m not the best at this. Where should they be starting? You know, I’m not the best. But what’s step one.

Amy Balliett [6:30]
So there are many different ways you can attack step one, but in my opinion, one of the very first things you have to do is start to look at the best of the best that’s out there. Because we kind of live in a world where 99% of the content that’s put out there is actually really low quality and design and conception. And as a result, people think that that is the bar and they just have to hit that bar. What they should be doing is instead searching for things like the best infographics of all time, the best motion graphics of all time, checking out Webby Awards, going to dribble and checking out the most followed artists on dribble, this will start to reset expectations for what real quality is. And not to toot my own horn, but I did just write a book all about this and exactly how to create great visual content. It’s also called Killer Visual Strategies. And if you don’t know where else to start, start there. It’s meant to really help drive people, you know, through step one through step 40, basically, to really ensure they’re taking in every necessary bit of information to create great content.

Mario Fachini [7:47]
Yeah and Infographics are so huge. Now if I gotta be honest, well, I always am. I don’t even know where that comes from. I’m like, I’ve been lying to everyone, the last few 100 episodes. If I can’t find an Infographic on it, I’m probably not going to read unless I get the book on the subject matter. And I want to dive in. If it’s an article that’s like one of 14 pages, we’re going right back to the Google search that finds the Infographic or more than likely YouTube, because I know it will be a three to five minute video that has all the same points and I can conceptually, I can visualize it conceptually. I can figure it out quicker. And just see where it’s at, especially with chronology or timelines. There is a site oh my gosh, what is the name of it? It’s it’s like everything infographics, I mean, you can you go there, and it has infographics on every single thing you could think of in the actually has a search. It’s like, what’s my end? I don’t even want to say something because that is probably wrong. But why are those so vital now, compared to even 10 or 20 years ago?

Amy Balliett [8:58]
You know, it’s funny because 10 years ago, infographics became all the rage. It was this really big boom of content that all marketers really wanted. They wanted the infographic is kind of that new hot trend. And I remember when I started my company, killer, Killer Visual Strategies. Our original name was Killer Infographics. And we were known as the infographics company in the country. And all we did was produce infographics for the first couple of years. But then we started moving into motion graphics and ebooks and all of these other types of visual content as well, for exactly what you said. I mean, the fact is, is people want to get information as succinctly and easily as possible. So infographics provide that solution for them as do motion graphics. It’s kind of like spoon feeding information to your audience. But there’s a reason why that’s so important. And the fact of the matter is, is there’s actually brain science behind it, our brains are hard wired to think visually and to communicate visually. We weren’t born to write, we weren’t born to text and to share information through the written word. That’s something we evolved to. But when we first as a species needed to connect and communicate, we turned to cave paintings on walls. That was our most instinctual way of connecting and expressing ourselves. And so the fact is, is our brains are actually made to process visual content. 30% of the cerebral cortex is just combined is just built with neurons combined to fire and process visual information. Whereas you think about all of our other senses. And the second strongest sense is, is, I believe it’s hearing at 3%. So you go from 30% to 3%. It’s just clear that we’re meant to connect and communicate visually and the fact that Pinterest and Instagram, Snapchat, Tiktok, all of these different social sites have just exploded through the power of connecting visually, it’s just more proof in the pudding. So that’s why infographics are so important, because we expect it as consumers and as audiences today, because we honestly need that information to be quick and easy to digest.

Mario Fachini [11:32]
Where do you think it’s going to go five to 10 years from now?

Amy Balliett [11:36]
Honestly, I think we’re gonna see some big shifts with augmented reality and virtual reality, that’s going to be some of the biggest kind of new evolutions in the world and visual content, for sure.

Mario Fachini [11:49]
What do you think it’ll be incorporated in everything or just specific niches?

Amy Balliett [11:55]
I think augmented reality is going to become part of our daily lives, I don’t think virtual reality will I think virtual reality, it’s just one of those things where to truly experience it in the best possible way you need a headset, you need to be fully immersed, whereas augmented reality is truly about augmenting our actual physical reality. And so the concept of using augmented reality, to help people interact with their physical environments, is really powerful. And I think what we’re going to find is five years from now, if let’s say we’re visiting a city for the very first time, we can pull up our phone and look at the look at the phone or look at the city through the lens of that phone and all of a sudden have things like restaurant ratings pop up in front of us, and maybe even a map to get us to a location, or a scavenger hunt or something like that. So I think augmented reality is going to be a huge part of who we are as a society.

Mario Fachini [13:02]
Yeah, I’ve done some things with augmented and it’s cool to see like, you’re seeing the ratings, you know, as you’re walking through Times Square or something, it’s like, here’s this, here’s that and you’re looking through it, but also for like tours of, you know, cities, or you know, the history of America or something, where it’s like you’re standing where George Washington stood. And it’s like, literally right there, not just oh, we’re in the area. I mean, I’m looking forward to some of that stuff. I’m looking forward to all of it. It’s just a matter of how we use it. And it’s interesting because everyone always has a different take on what’s going to happen with AI. But I think you’re seeing it for the benefits of what it’s going to be doing for us.

Amy Balliett [13:45]
Yeah, I mean, when it comes down to it, AI has many different implications all around. And some are incredibly positive. And some we just have to be wary of and and planned for, honestly, as a society.

Mario Fachini [14:00]
Yeah, the thing I keep telling people is no matter how much technology, how much this that the other thing, human interaction, I mean, we’re hardwired for human interaction, social connection community, you know, that there’s nothing ever will replace in real life. But you can enhance it. And, you know, just like computers did, people are freaked out about computers. And now it’s crazy to think, you know, how would you do a lot of things, it doesn’t mean it’s a replacement for it enhances it, but it’s also your personal choice if you’re the one stuck on it 23 and a half hours a day or not.

Amy Balliett [14:36]
It’s so true. It’s so true. And you know what, what you’re saying about computers. What’s really funny, is I think it was the late 90s when Bill Gates expressed his concern about whether or not people would be willing to look at screens for a long period of time. And here we are today and we carry a screen in our pockets and we’ve got our computers in front of us and we’ve got our TVs usually playing in the background. We’re just a screen culture at this point.

Mario Fachini [15:05]
Yeah. And it’s crazy because before it was like, everything was in real life, and it was a treat to go to the movies or have a computer. And now the treat is getting away from it.

Amy Balliett [15:15]
So true, it’s yeah, I can’t even express how much I feel that way. And I remember when I was buying the iPhone for the first time, I waited three years to do it. And that third year, I finally said, okay, now I can’t work without this. But I spent three years saying I don’t want to have something that I have to be plugged into at all times. So unplugging is always, always great. When you can.

Mario Fachini [15:41]
Yeah, and it’s interesting, because not just from a marketing and design or branding, identity or video standpoint, but just what you said in the statement about we have all these screens. And usually it’s multiple, it’s not just a phone, it’s multiple screens while watching the T, while this is I saw some stat about the average household has 10 to 14 screens. And I’m like, but the average family is three to four people. I’m like the math doesn’t add up. So what what’s going on there but aside from business, and all that the importance of visual, it’s on everything, the fact you’re looking at a screen denotes that you have some graphic design incorporated in it. I mean, that’s one of the big selling points of the iPhone, as you mentioned. And I know for a fact, people ask me since I launched my app, for this show, EA Interviews app.com. They go, why did you wait to do it, and I didn’t want to wait. But the reality was, Apple won’t let you start even start the process until you have 10 episodes. And I thought it was just like they want to see if you’re serious. And I’m thinking of these big reasons. And, you know, they want to see you’re committed in businesses and success and whatever. And I asked Robert Lipson, who we’re partnered with. And it was interesting, because he was like, no, they just want to make sure when they open the app, there’s enough episodes that it looks good on the screen. And I was like, that’s it. Like this whole thing came down to they were they take design that seriously. And it’s clear to see why they’re winning for it.

Amy Balliett [17:26]
It’s so true. I mean, every single aspect of even just the the UI UX of any Apple product is constantly taking into consideration the visual communication of every piece and element that they put into place. If you think about texting as an example, the reason that we are so inclined to write very short form texts to one another, is because we’re being told to do so through the visual user experience. The user interface has a very small, small word, word bubble to put your, your text your information in. And then it’s constantly suggesting emojis or emoticons so that you can put those in instead of text. And so we’re kind of through Apple and through other devices being trained to communicate in as little text as possible, and find other ways to connect and contextualize our emotions and our own conversations with one another.

Mario Fachini [18:31]
Yeah, it’s interesting how, over time things change. And I’ll probably never changes as long as the abilities there. I’m not a huge texter. It’s like, I’ve never been one to just sit there all day, just, I mean, if I spend more time texting than I can jump on the phone real quick and just talk to you. It’s like I, but I get it if you’re in a loud venue or at an event. Hey, where are you? We’re over here. But tell you what, voice to text in video messaging? Absolutely. Hey, how’s your day going? You know, great. I’m in the middle of filming the show right now. I was years ago. And and, you know, I shot one off even before I started the first interview today to my friend. And this was all in the shot and everything. Because I’m not going to sit there for a minute or two to type it. Ican say it in what eight to 10 seconds.

Amy Balliett [19:22]
Exactly, exactly. And honestly, if you do that, people are going to actually remember it much longer as well. When you connect with people through a visual element versus a text based element. They’re going to actually recall what you said weeks later, whereas if it’s text based, you’re going to be having a debate on what you said five days later.

Mario Fachini [19:44]
Yeah, and the tone and inflection also, what are you autocorrect heaven forbid that thing ever works. You know, you you forget you forget a comma or what is it? Oxford comma, like, whatever. That’s why I love video there’s you can you can sense my sarcasm, you can sense the humor, hopefully, you know, but you put it in a text, who knows what it means? Other than that, yes, that’s true period. I mean, that’s kind of boring. But that’s the fun of communication.

Amy Balliett [20:17]
So funny. Oh, sorry.

Mario Fachini [20:19]
No, go ahead.

Amy Balliett [20:20]
Well, what’s funny about that is, there’s actually a recent study that came out that said, Generation Z hates periods. And it’s because they’re so used to communicating short form text, that when somebody adds a period because the the actual speech bubble in the text contextualizes, the end of a conversation or an end of a thought. So when somebody adds a period, they think it’s passive aggressive. They think it’s actually somebody implying that they’re angry with them. So it’s interesting, just how much our entire methods are all of our methods of communicating have changed because of all of the screens that we interact with these days.

Mario Fachini [21:02]
That’s interesting. I, I’ve left them out, not for that reason. And I remember when all this started, and people were like, grammar nazis correcting me on a text.

Amy Balliett [21:16]
Mm hmm.

Mario Fachini [21:17]
Okay, it’s articles, books, I get it. We’re we’re trying to figure out where the restaurant said, relax. This is supposed to be fun time. And if you keep this crap up, you’re not going to be invited to fun time next time. So relax. But the reason I left them out and that’s a true story I that was out loud. But that’s my thoughts. I left them out for Christopher Walken. I was reading you know, actor Christopher Walken, kind of cool. And he, he the way he has is like, wow, stranded, the way he does that talk thing, come to find out he would use whiteout and all the periods in the scripts. And just I’m like, I like that. We’re gonna go with that one.

Amy Balliett [22:06]
I love that.

Mario Fachini [22:06]
But it’s interesting you say, because it can come off as passive aggressive. You know, I thought we’re done talking now. Okay, cool.

Amy Balliett [22:15]
Exactly. And I mean, you think about it, and Gen Z, especially, they’re digital natives. They’ve been brought up in a world where they have to kind of learn how to communicate in ways nobody else has. I mean, when I got access to the internet, I was already 18 years old, I had already lived in a world with no internet. And all of a sudden now, I’m learning how to communicate digitally with people over, you know, sentences online and trying to find ways to contextualize my thoughts. And Gen Z, I mean, they’ve got 1000s of emojis at their fingertips to contextualize their thoughts. So why use something that was created in no joke 300 BC, as a method of contextualizing your thoughts, when you have 1000s of other choices and you can just use emojis as punctuation.

Mario Fachini [23:08]
Yeah, I remember the early stages, the internet with prodigy and I was emailing my friend down the street to see if he wanted to go ice skating. And I come to find out there was actually a 30 email a month limit. And we burned through it in about 30 minutes. Just I was just so enamored, I’m like, do you see the snow outside send? I’m like, yeah, just send a message without talking to him.

Amy Balliett [23:33]
That’s awesome.

Mario Fachini [23:34]
The rest of the month kind of sucked. But that was an interesting day. And we ended up going ice skating and didn’t care at that point. But that’s all there was. I mean, you tried to even download a single image of it was, you know, 28, it would take 10 minutes just to do that, let alone the live stream video.

Amy Balliett [23:53]
Mm hmm.

Mario Fachini [23:54]
So I’m all for tech, but I’m also for the ice skating and doing and stuff in person. So the companies that don’t want to embrace it, clearly, I think we’ve made a strong enough case that it’s not going anywhere, if they don’t want to embrace it, what are some things we could mention to them? I mean, other than what we already have? What would be something they could start with, as far as maybe take their menu or their business card or the website? Where’s one actionable piece of a property that they probably already have in their arsenal that could be updated for the maximum return on investment? Would you say website or flyer?

Amy Balliett [24:37]
I would say website I mean, if you’re if you’re going to invest in one space, your website should be the one because if you’re sending a bunch of traffic to your website but it isn’t properly set up to convert that traffic, then what’s the point? And so if you think about a typical visitor to a website, today’s audiences 99% will land on your website and look for video first, so read with a video in your upper upper fold. If the video is under 90 seconds in length, then you actually have about a 90% chance for all of those visitors to watch that video. If it’s over 90 seconds in length, you’re only going to have about a 46% chance for all of those visitors to watch that video. And the thing is, is a quality video on your homepage, something that explains your product or service, or quality video will increase your conversion rates on average 80%. So it’s a really good first thing to produce. The other good thing about that is you could take that video and cut it into multiple shorter versions for use on social media. So lead with a video on the upper fold. The next thing users look for when they land on a website are infographics and other forms of visual content. Because today we take in information by looking for a headline plus a visual plus a headline plus a visual. If we’re met with a wall of text, we will typically bounce away from the sight. And so I always say to people, rule number one, always think about context, it is a con when there’s too much text. And that is a rule that you should apply to every piece of content you produce. If you break up every 100 words of content with a visual that exemplifies that content, then you’re moving in the right direction, it makes it much more digestible for your audience. But if you’re trying to just use text to land that audience and convince them of your value, it actually kind of can come across as lazy these days. The fact is, everybody out there, we’re all content creators now. We can create so many different types of content, great videos, Instagram has made us professional photographers, big air quotes there. You know, we’ve we’ve found all of these ways to get better at creating great visual content that we actually expect the brands we work with, to step above that, to do something better than we can do ourselves. And that also means another rule that I have that I dive into, in my book, avoid the stigma of stock. Today’s audiences do not like stock imagery, custom illustration converts seven times better than stock photography and stock vector assets. So you really do have to spend time showing your audience that you’re willing to invest in their wants, you’re willing to meet their demand and their expectations to earn their business.

Mario Fachini [27:52]
I love that you’re saying the truth number one and two, that you’re backing it with facts, because I didn’t know it was seven times better. I just knew it worked better, even for my own stuff. And I’ve told my marketing clients the same. But wow, it is seven times more.

Amy Balliett [28:10]
Seven times more on your website 3.3 times more on social media. So I I’m kind of a world of stats, I had to you know, I do public speaking all the time about this subject. So I know all the stats, but at the same

Mario Fachini [28:26]
Yeah, you’re not batting an eyelash on any of them. I’m like, what else do we got in there that you can share?

Amy Balliett [28:31]
Right? Well, the reason is because we have to practice what we preach. So all of the content we put out for our clients, for instance, we’re doing all the research on it first, and we’re always making sure we’re finding the primary source because that’s so important, especially in this day and age, you really need to make sure that you’re finding the primary source and that you’re learning the context of that data to ensure that you’re actually expressing it properly. And so I’ll tell you this, my content team will not let me give a stat that is incorrect or a stat that hasn’t been thoroughly researched first. So everything I know has been very much vetted by my content team or else they’d fire me even though I’m their employer.

Mario Fachini [29:14]
That’s fantastic. And what you’re saying about the vector for anyone that doesn’t know what I was actually going to ask you about clipart and I know they’re not directly the same, but I can tell you one of my landing pages and conversion funnels, all I did was changed the first slide and it went from people dropping off after six or seven seconds of the video to a minute and a half.

Amy Balliett [29:40]
Wow.

Mario Fachini [29:41]
just from one stupid slide and it was some guy riding a horse that was all cartoonish looking. The clip our look and feel I I think you can make it without it being vector but for anyone that doesn’t know a vector is vector versus raster. Once you tell them what that is

Amy Balliett [30:00]
So vector is an illustration, anything that looks or feels illustrated is going to be a vector image. Ultimately, if it doesn’t look or feel illustrated, it’s not considered a vector file. So I could be saying illustrations, I just live in this world all the time. So my vernacular kind of fits in with whatever my designers are constantly saying on a regular basis.

Mario Fachini [30:26]
No, and it’s a great point you bring up because there is a difference. And I know we could do a whole training on graphic design. And you know, if you’re doing a billboard in an image versus a thumbnail on a website, why one’s better than the other. But the other thing was the above the fold, you were sharing some great insight on the websites. How do you define above the fold.

Amy Balliett [30:49]
So above the fold is when you land on a website, and you don’t scroll down yet. So before you scroll, everything you see on that site is considered a above the fold. And that’s really where you want to hook somebody because you need to encourage them to scroll down, they’re not going to scroll down if they’re not hooked from the very start, they’re also not going to scroll down If your site’s taking too long to load or anything like that, we actually in the first one 10th of a second and the first one 10th of a second, when a website loads, that’s when we’re forming our first impressions. And so it’s really important to hook somebody in that one 10th of a second. And if you can get somebody on your page for five seconds, then you have a higher likelihood that they’re going to actually stick around and pay more attention to your service. But those five seconds can actually be really hard to achieve with all of the options that are out there for every consumer.

Mario Fachini [31:49]
And I’m just gonna have some fun with this. But you’re also going to improve the bounce rate, wouldn’t you?

Amy Balliett [31:55]
Exactly. When it comes to bounce rate. Bounce Rate means how often somebody lands on your site and bounces away before clicking on to another page versus how often they land on your site. And they click into another page. When they click into another page, your bounce rate decreases, and you want your bounce rate to decrease, because it’s one of the many factors that Google and other search engines take into account when determining how to rank your site for different search terms.

Mario Fachini [32:24]
So you are a very intelligent woman. And I’m going to ask you this because I have no doubt you can handle it. But when you said above the fold, it’s the in that I know it’s actually originated from the newspaper.

Amy Balliett [32:37]
Mm hmm.

Mario Fachini [32:38]
Yes, you know, and that’s where the coin term the coin ology came on, whatever. That’s where it came from. So here’s the kind of devil’s advocate question because if you’re talking above the fold, before you get to that scrolling point, how do you compensate for desktop versus laptop versus mobile devices and take into account screen resolution as well as the size of the monitor because these are all going to affect the fold on multiple devices? How do you overcome that question?

Amy Balliett [33:10]
I love that question. So there’s this concept and design, it’s called Mobile First Design. And that’s really what it comes down to you design for the smallest screen first. So you design based on the idea that all of this content is going to live above the fold on a small screen. So that means landscape and portrait view, you have to really take that into consideration. And then as you design outward, basically, you’ve done your mobile design, now you start saying, okay , let me think about a bit of a larger device, like an iPad or tablet. And now let me think about a desktop computer or laptop. And so it’s all about starting at mobile and then designing outward from there.

Mario Fachini [33:53]
Is a great answer. And I did not know the answer, I would have had to talk to my web development team. And I was just like you, you’re, you’re a rock star and I knew you could handle it. So thank you for that because these are the questions that come up, you know, it’s like that book, if you give a mouse a cookie, you start with, okay, let’s start with the website. You know, let’s do better design. And then let’s do the website. And now we need to focus on this. But what about this and five layers deep, you’re going wow, this is pretty complex.

Amy Balliett [34:24]
It’s it’s quite true. And you know, I’ve been living in this world for so many years. But my background is actually in marketing. And so what I’ve found is, I can speak pretty well to marketers and kind of take the complex ideas of design and really drill down to what a marketer can take in and act on immediately. And it’s just because I’ve had to kind of reverse translation for so many years.

Mario Fachini [34:50]
Well, that’s a perfect segue because I do want to jump into your background. How did you decide I want to start this company and what were you doing before

Amy Balliett [35:00]
Honestly, it was a bit of an accident. So my background is varied, like most millennials, although I happily take the term zeneo, which is that concept of the, you know, I think it’s 1978 to 1982. Those are xennials. So I just hit that. So I jumped around in a lot of careers, but I really wanted to be a filmmaker, I went to film school, I minor in marketing. I went to film school in Cleveland, Ohio, at Cleveland State University, had an amazing program there. It was, it was really fantastic. And it’s where I’m from. I’m from Cleveland. And then I moved out to Seattle, right after graduation, and started in well, after spending about six months kind of figuring out what I wanted to do, and playing my guitar in the street to make money, which is what I did for the first six months. After that, I got a job in film marketing. And that really got me into the concept of marketing as something I was a little bit more passionate about. I still did some video editing jobs and learned graphic design while taking on the video editing work. And then completely pivoted into SEO and online marketing. So my career just did this whole 180 when I moved into this world of SEO and online marketing and because of everything I had known already, after a few years in that world, I was starting to build websites and monetize them in different ways. And that was my original business plan. I had a co founder, we started in 2009 while we had day jobs and then we quit our day jobs in June of 2010. And started focusing full time on one of our many websites. It was a site called Zippy cart.com. And it was really you know, bringing in the right amount of revenue for us to focus on it. And I created an infographic for Zippy cart to drive backlinks because I was focused on SEO, and it was 2010. You could slap the word infographic on any piece of visual content and see success. And I will say it was and still is today. The worst infographic ever designed. It was apps.

Mario Fachini [37:25]
But you did it.

Amy Balliett [37:26]
I did.

Mario Fachini [37:27]
You didn’t let that stop you.

Amy Balliett [37:29]
Exactly, exactly. I thought it was wonderful at first because I had put so much my own time and energy to it, that you get this confirmation or prime you get this bias against your own work, you start to say, well, all these hours were put in this must be high quality. And in reality, it was I mean, full of mixed illustration style vector images. It had five different font choices on it instead of just a few way too many colors. It wasn’t to scale. It was just awful. Do you want to look it up it just look up the history of e commerce infographic and you’ll see the Zippy cart logo on the bottom to know which one is which one was mine. It’s so bad. But it succeeded. We got 1000s of backlinks. And so immediately I said this is a strategy I need to follow. So I created another infographic. And that infographic was ripped to shreds online because it was just paragraph after paragraph after paragraph of information. It wasn’t an infographic at all.

Mario Fachini [38:32]
It was good info but less graphic.

Amy Balliett [38:36]
Exactly. But it’s still got a bunch of great backlinks. And so this was kind of a continued pattern until people started requesting that we designed infographics for them because we were seeing so much success with ours that people wanted the same success. And that worked for about a year for about a year we’re able to just burn and churn infographics and really start pivoting into this world. We were doing 40 infographics a week at one point in time.

Mario Fachini [39:04]
Wow.

Amy Balliett [39:04]
It is a ridiculous amount of content for our clients. But it around 2012. So in 2010, when the first order came in, it was actually 10 years ago last month. But around 2012 we were just at this point where we’ve kind of felt like a fast food industry for infographics. Like we’re the McDonald’s if you like McDonald’s, that’s my favorite of that of all the fast food restaurants. So that’s why I say McDonald’s. But I think we’re like McDonald’s of infographics just burning and churning out. Not the highest quality content but good enough. And so we made a shift, we actually use the advice of Neil Patel. He was living here in Seattle, we took him to lunch. He’s the founder of Crazy Egg if you haven’t heard of him before. He’s a really well known thought leader in marketing. And he said your problem is you’re too cheap, raise your prices so that you can get better talent and really produce better quality content. And that’s exactly what we did. We doubled our prices brought our talent in house instead of using freelancers, then we doubled our prices again, so that we could really ensure we are putting in the right time and effort into the content and delivering something of high value and high quality. And as we did all of this, we really started to lay the groundwork for the best practices in infographic design and became thought leaders in the space people started looking to us for those best practices. And the fact is, if you apply those best practices to all other forms of visual content, then you actually can start to see a huge level of success across the board. Because an infographic is meant to be the truest form of visual communication. And so if you can create a high quality infographic that you don’t have to read every bit of to understand, instead, you can look at it in five seconds or less know the topic and one key takeaway. That’s visual communication really working in your favor. And so we started to define best practices around that shifted our focus from just infographics to a visual communication agency, and released our definition of visual communication, which is now the industry standard definition.

Mario Fachini [41:29]
And what is that?

Amy Balliett [41:31]
Visual communication efficiently and effectively represents information through graphics, it’s, it’s meant to really take information to that next level. So it graphically represents information, I kind of mixed it up a little bit back there graphically represents information to efficiently and effectively create meaning. And there’s one other sentence in the definition and that sentence is when necessary, limited text is used to explicate the meaning.

Mario Fachini [42:01]
And remember what you were saying earlier? Like 100 words and then the image.

Amy Balliett [42:07]
Yeah, exactly. And that’s, that’s if you’re doing an article or your website, if you’re delivering something for social media, six words or less treat it like a billboard. If you’re delivering something like an ebook, then every page that ebook should have no more than 100 words on it. So that means you’re really using visual content throughout the E book. I mean, I could go on, there’s rules for every different type of visual content out there and how much text you should really incorporate.

Mario Fachini [42:38]
Well, I appreciate you for explaining all of that because not everyone focuses on the graphics and the ones who do it’s more of a kick with a stick approach. I’ve in the last few I’ve always focused on them. But even in the last few years, I’ve taken that more of approach, the more the more of approach, I’ve taken the approach of doing more quality because I’d rather, you know, explain quality one time than have to apologize, you know, for bad quality, ongoing. And…

Amy Balliett [43:10]
Exactly.

Mario Fachini [43:12]
It’s just so much easier. In a turn, you have such a better product. And I know for a fact, when people say why are you doing the show, like the way I am? There’s been people who literally I know they’ve only watched three, four seconds of maybe even this clip, maybe this episode, maybe this whatever you said, how long does it take for them one 10th of a second. Like if someone sees this interview right now they see you me boom, boom, boom, they might not listen to the whole thing but it’s what was it one 10th of a second?

Amy Balliett [43:43]
Hmm, yeah.

Mario Fachini [43:47]
You can’t go back the next day and be like, well, now we’re gonna photoshop it, you get one chance. And my mentality even before I started is when I have Oprah on the show. I never wanted the internet to be a problem, the software, the onboarding that this there’s so many different things that go into it is the same thing with your website, you know, your app, your calling cards, they call them that anymore. Business cards, your e whatever your books and I’m so glad you’re sharing on this. I have one more question before we do the Wheel of Whatever. And that is regarding your infographics early stage 20 circa 29 2010. Were you doing them strictly as backlinks or were you also using them as a lead lead magnet for lead gen?

Amy Balliett [44:37]
Strictly as backlinks, although they’re fantastic lead magnet, we just didn’t have lead gen websites at the time. So we went full on backlinks trying to rank for the best terms we could.

Mario Fachini [44:50]
Okay, okay. And for anyone that’s listening lead magnets you should be using in your business if you’re not, there a way to generate leads To create something that’s basically a magnet to get the lead in is a huge value add for them. So now, the Wheel of Whatever. These are random fun questions, you see them all right there. And my question for you thought of it early on. What is one campaign business, personal, political, I said personal, whatever it is, what is one advertising campaign or graphic design campaign, no matter what it is or who it is you would love to work on? And how could you help them?

Amy Balliett [45:47]
Oh, political 1,000% political. I think that the biggest thing missing from politics right now is quality visual communication, and proper showcasing of the data. So personally, I would absolutely love to have had the opportunity to, to kind of produce the RNC and the DNC, both of those events. Imagine if during those events, as each speaker was up talking, there was something to the left of them actually visualizing what they were saying, actually unpacking the policy issue in a way that makes it easier to understand for everybody. There were so many points where, for instance, let’s say, in the DNC, where they were talking about the Affordable Care Act and its effect on on the country, if it goes away. Well, just saying numbers like 20 million, it means nothing to people, people can’t really contextualize what 20 million is out of our population of 300 plus million. And so actually contextual contextualizing that through proper data visualizations, could help people understand what that impact actually looks like or speaking to numbers about COVID. correctly, there’s so much incorrect data out there related to COVID. It’s crazy. But if if the actual candidates were able to get out there with their messages, with data backed visuals that are truly accurate, that really put things into perspective for voters, I think voters will be far more educated and much more able to make decisions. So political all the way. It’s something that we’ve always wanted to do. And it’s not just live political work. It’s also the concept of creating all of the social content that could go out there. And all of the mailers that could go out there, every which way of educating voters, but in a way, that just that makes it easy to digest and understand where you don’t feel like you’re being fooled or tricked by political language, because often, politicians will dance around the issues and contextualize things the way they want. And if you are really focusing on the numbers, just the numbers, they don’t lie, and we can contextualize those accurately through visuals that help people understand how it affects their daily lives.

Mario Fachini [48:19]
I, that’s a great answer. And the good news is, I think just like visual communications and the marketing we were talking about earlier, I don’t think politics are going anywhere, anytime soon. So I hope you have the opportunity because visualizing stuff, like we’ve been talking about is such a great way to go. What are the real facts? You know, instead of having to read something for half an hour, which, and I think that’s the sad thing is most people just, I think they they’re most people are good hearted, no matter what we’re discussing. They just after 20 minutes, I know in sales, if you can’t wrap up or get a answer in 19 to 20 minutes, you’re drastically exponentially going down and you’re losing. So to expect someone to read something for half an hour to come up with one out of two dozen answers on in this instance, policy issues. Or maybe it’s your staff or whatever the case is, no one’s gonna do the work. It’s just too much work plain and simple. You can, if you can articulate the image in 30 seconds, you have a lot better chance. So love what you’re doing. I hope you do get the opportunity and do let me know when you do. We’re gonna thank our sponsor and we’re gonna come back for the imperfect Action Round.

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Mario Fachini [51:11]
And we’re back with the Imperfect Action Round Amy, are you ready to take Imperfect Action?

Amy Balliett [51:17]
I am ready.

Mario Fachini [51:19]
All right, rapid fire answers. I got a couple of questions for you. And the first one is, what is the fastest path to the profits?

Amy Balliett [51:30]
Learning from your mistakes as fast as possible, don’t let them knock you down.

Mario Fachini [51:35]
Excellent. Number two, what is the biggest problem you see your prospects making, and the fastest way for them to fix it.

Amy Balliett [51:42]
They’re creating the wrong type of visual content, I see them mixing illustration styles all the time and relying on stock. The right way to fix it is to go custom and get the right team behind you.

Mario Fachini [51:53]
I’m so glad you mentioned that stock thing I could go on a tirade I think I did in one episode about it. Alright, focus. Number three, what is the best way to maximize customer lifetime value?

Amy Balliett [52:07]
Honestly build great relationships. The fact is, if you build relationships with your customers, and you show them that you want to constantly earn their business, then they’re going to rely on you as their go to partner for everything they need. And if you can have those types of relationships, it’s more than just customer value, you get to create great work with him the whole time.

Mario Fachini [52:27]
Excellent. All right. Well, you passed that with flying colors, like the entire thing. Thank you for sharing there. When I asked you about some books, you’d recommend Expert Authority World, what ones have made the biggest impact on your life.

Amy Balliett [52:42]
There’s a book called Built to Sell. It’s a book that’s really easy to get through. Actually, I read it on a tarmac while I was stuck on that tarmac for three hours. But it’s a great book, even if you’re not trying to sell your business, it’s a good way to just make sure you’re setting up your business for success all the way through. Speaking of books like that Traction and Scaling Up, those are also two great books about making sure that you’re running your business properly. I like to start with scaling up and then about five years into the business switch to traction, because they’re pretty much the same methodology. But I think traction, helps you get over a hump, it helps you really kind of bump up from what from maybe, let’s say two or 3 million in revenue to 10 plus million revenue. So definitely, those are those are just some amazing books to read. For sure.

Mario Fachini [53:30]
Great, great recommendations. Where would you like people to learn more about you.

Amy Balliett [53:38]
You can learn more about me on my website, Amy Balliett.com, you can check out my book on Amazon, Killer Visual Strategies on Amazon. And then you can tweet at me at at Amy Balliet or find me on LinkedIn. Honestly, I’m I love when people reach out to me and connect with me on LinkedIn. And especially if you read the book, I’m happy to jump in and answer any questions you have as you go through it.

Mario Fachini [54:03]
Excellent. Well, this has been incredible. Thank you so much for sharing. I’ve got a lot out of it myself. Thank you again.

Amy Balliett [54:10]
Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Mario Fachini [54:14]
All right, expert authority world. We’ve got another great episode here today. I’ll see you tomorrow. Have a great day. And God bless.

Sponsor – Free Business Book Publishing Course [54:22]
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www.EAInterviews.com [54:56]
Hey, thanks for listening to today’s episode. I hope you got a lot out of it. I know I sure did. If you haven’t done so already, I invite you to subscribe to the show. And also be sure to check out EAInterviews.com for complete shownotes the full interview video experience, links to the resources we mentioned and more. Have a blessed day and I’ll see you tomorrow.