Seeing is believing – now more so than ever.

From 1990-2013, the use of visuals in literature increased 400%, while the use of visuals on the Internet rose over 9900% from 2007-2013 alone. This proliferation of visuals fits right into our physiological sweet spot; almost 50% of our brain is involved in visual processing, and 70% of all of our sensory receptors are located in our eyes, allowing us to comprehend a visual scene in less than 1/10 of a second. It comes as no surprise, then, that Facebook posts with visuals receive 53% more likes and 104% more comments than those without images, while Tweets with visuals are over 200% more likely to get retweeted.

Image via NeoMam

Brands that are able to harness the power of visuals and connect with our visually-wired brains are able to explore, explain, and act in ways that give them a leg up on the competition. That’s why we’re thrilled to announce the launch of our new interactive data visualizer, which allows you to chart progress over time for yourself and any of your competitors.

To introduce you to the TrackMaven Visualizer and its place in the proactive marketer’s toolkit, we’ve compiled four case studies illustrating how you can graph your way to success.

1. Visualize for Exploring

One of the basic tenets of proactive marketing is to look before you leap. Whether it’s determining the quality of leads coming in from paid Facebook ads vs. LinkedIn ads, or knowing the ideal time to publish content for the greatest interaction across channels, mastering the causes and effects of your marketing tactics is paramount for maximizing your ROI.

Using the Visualizer, you can take the guesswork out of understanding your company’s unique marketing levers and see how actions and reactions correlate. For example, graphing JC Penney’s recent Superbowl #tweetingwithmittens anomaly, we can determine the correlation between the incident and their change in Twitter followers.

Visualize to explore cause and effect.

Looking at the intersection of JC Penney’s retweets and Twitter followers over time, we can see the “mittens” tweet is in fact highly correlated to an increase in Twitter followers of more than 8,500 users, which is a 3.037% increase and considerably higher than their average daily follower increase of .398%.

2. Visualize for Explaining

Marketing budgets are constantly under scrutiny, and all the while, marketers must continually out-perform competitors and stay relevant to customers. This challenge is multiplied by the continual rise in new content channels and technologies. Proactive marketers understand this challenge and endeavor to redistribute resources as the digital landscape shifts. To aid in this process, it helps to start by visualizing how you stack up against direct competitors in the areas that are of greatest concern to you and your overall brand.

Visualize to explain your story

For example, if we were JC Penney and noticed our direct competitors were consistently outperforming us in SEO, sharing this visualization with colleagues would tell much of that story. Researchers at the Wharton School of Business found that visual presentations stimulate decision making, promote group consensus, and even shorten meeting times compared to purely verbal presentations. Whatever it might be that you’re looking to justify for your digital marketing efforts, employ a visualization to help explain why. Seeing directly how you stack up against the competition helps build credibility for your case to invest resources in your company’s growth in that area.

3. Visualize for Action

Rather than wishing and hoping that your digital marketing strategy is effective, a proactive content creation strategy involves research and meticulous surveying of the topics and types of content that engage your audience. This process, however, can be time consuming if you’re not sure what to look for or what questions to ask.

Being able to see how, when, and why competitors are getting spikes in interactions from their customers can help explain much of their digital marketing strategy. For example, you can start noticing trends in their most engaging content – is it due to specific calls-to-action? Contests and giveaways? Holiday or seasonal content? Understanding your competitors’ marketing home runs can help shed some light on how robust and effective they truly are, so you then know how proactive and consistent you must be to win out.

See what is driving competitor’s viral content and visualize actionable insights

The Visualizer allows you to not only view when you and your competitors saw spikes of engagement, but also what caused the spikes. This data shows us exactly what strategies your competitors are deploying and how effective they are over time.

4. Visualize for Success

Ah . . . to enjoy the fruits of our labor. There’s no question that longevity means constantly innovating and evolving faster than our competitors. But along that journey, tracking successes and progress is equally as important as isolating areas for improvement. Whether you’re on the front lines creating content or a CMO strategically planning the future for your brand, visualizing your own success is not only a personal boost but also a requisite for self-reporting.

With the Visualizer, you can create stacked graphs to show performance increases for any custom date range you choose. Whether it’s week-by-week, month-by-month, or quarter-by-quarter, you can easily tell your story to those you’re responsible to.

Visualize your efforts to validate your success

Are you ready to graph? If you’re interested in learning more about the Visualizer, comment in the section below or tweet me @trevormills13!