[VistaCreate x CMI report] How to create marketing visuals that work in 2023

What do marketers use to create visual content for their social media pages? Which visual content works and which doesn’t in 2023? 

We took the liberty to answer the aforementioned questions (and many others, too) by partnering with Content Marketing Institute to produce an exclusive study of visual social media content in 2023.

Learn more about the CMI x VistaCreate report on our main page and download it right away to figure out whether or not you need a visual marketing strategy, where you should be placing your efforts, and what types of content help social media marketers achieve their goals.

We’ve also compiled a collection of the most effective visual ad templates for different platforms. Check them out!

About VistaCreate and CMI

VistaCreate is an online graphic editing tool that lets small business owners, content creators, and people from all over the world create professional-looking graphic designs in a matter of minutes.

With VistaCreate, you don’t need to be a skilled designer to craft compelling visual content. We offer a heap of extensive photo and video editing functionality, as well as advanced features like Background Remover, Picture Outline Maker, Color Styles, and Resize.

➡️ How to use VistaCreate: A guide to creating designs in minutes
➡️ Everything you can do with the free version of VistaCreate
➡️ Why upgrade to VistaCreate Pro? All the features of a paid VistaCreate account

Most importantly, we offer a vast library of ready-made design templates created by a team of professional designers, and millions of royalty-free photos, vectors, and videos in our Creative Assets library.

We’re experts in all things design and marketing, and we share our expertise on the pages of our blog. We regularly publish actionable how-to articles, thought leadership pieces, and ultimate guides on design and marketing.

Content Marketing Institute (CMI) is the leading content marketing education and training organization, teaching marketers and creators from enterprise brands, small businesses, and agencies how to attract and retain customers through compelling, multichannel storytelling.

The CMI website is packed with practical how-to guides, insight, and advice from content marketing experts, as well as comments and contributions from their active community of over 215,000 content marketers at brands and agencies.

Why did we create this report?

Social media marketing can give businesses an opportunity to go viral, increase their brand awareness, create conversations around their brand, and generate leads.

But it can also make them invest a ton of money and countless hours of work into planning and executing a social media marketing strategy — all to get little to no results.

The difference between the two scenarios lies in the content businesses share on their social media platforms.

Content can make or break your business online.

The ideal social media content formula differs from business to business, but it’s not unpredictable. If you approach the process of creating visual content for your business’s social media strategically, there’s a way to create balance.

As a small business’ best partner, we always want you to be able to create this balance, ace social media marketing, and feel more confident about the visual content you share online.

This is exactly the purpose behind this report — to study visual social media content and reveal valuable insights that will help you better plan your visual content strategy.

Our methodology

To acquire relevant and reliable results, CMI surveyed a slice of its opt-in subscriber list of marketers in June 2022. 

Out of our targeted outreach, 167 respondents were qualified for analysis. 

Qualified respondents were those who indicated that they create or have input in the visual content their organization uses on social media. 

The most successful (whom we refer to in this report) are those who said their organization is “extremely” or “very” successful with its overall approach to visual content on social media.

Respondents represented a range of industries, based mostly in the United States.

Key insights: How to create marketing visuals that work in 2023

Our respondents had a lot to say about visual content creation. Here are some of the key findings of our study:

1. In many cases, a brand’s attempts to enforce its “taste” in creative may be preventing the evolution of success.
2. Marketers are typically satisfied with the quality of the visual content they share online.
3. Over 50% of marketers create visual content themselves or have in-house professional designers; only a third use freelance designers. Some resort to all three options.
4. Almost half of the in-house visual content creators do not have a separate budget for social media visual content.
5. Some of the top goals for social media advertising are brand awareness and engagement. 
6. The top-3 social media channels for paid promotion/advertising are Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. 

Based on the answers of the respondents partaking in this study, we’ve made the following takeaways:

1. Test your assumptions – and let customers influence your creative choices.
2. Look at visual social media as a platform where you can pay to influence and engage people.
3. Build repeatable processes that show where you are succeeding and give you confidence that you’re creating great content in conjunction with the business’s success.
4. Match those processes with a documented and formal budget that enables measurement from end to end.
5. Empower your visual content creators to tell stories that aren’t impeded by your institutional momentum or restrictive brand guidelines.

Find more insights, stats, and takeaways in the full report!

A free collection of the most effective ads based on the report’s findings

We’ve created a curated collection of free design templates inspired by the report’s findings. These templates embody effective visual content that will work in 2023. 

The most effective Instagram ad templates

Use this template

Use this template

The most effective Facebook ad templates

Make sure you browse most effective ad templates we’ve collected for you!