Infographics are a tool used to graphically represent information. The earliest use of infographics was when cave men painted on walls. Today, infographics are just as appealing to the masses, with thousands being shared online every day. Infographics take complex information and data sets and make them easy to digest in a visually stimulating design. This allows the viewer to quickly grasp the main points from the data or information, which is important in our 30-second society. The Internet is filled with information and the infographic helps disseminate that information with ease.

Infographics have had many purposes throughout time, but lately they are used primarily for online marketing. This is because infographics help to drive inbound links to websites, making those sites better optimized for search engines and thus improving their rankings in search results.

Of course, this is not the only use of infographics; it’s just the most dominant use currently. Over the past year, however, infographics have been used for a variety of things including brand building, product launches, resumes, and more. As consumers continue to feed off of mass amounts of information delivered in micro formats, the need for infographics will continue to grow and their versatility will expand dramatically.

Online marketers have added infographics as a must-have element of any successful content strategy. Not only do they provide fresh, unique content for websites, but they are also highly sharable and can often kickstart a good viral marketing campaign. There are many ways to measure the ROI of infographics, but the most concrete measurement of success is likely inbound links. This is due to the sharable nature of infographics. Many bloggers repost infographics using simple embed code that is provided with the infographic itself. This embed code includes a followed anchor link back to the original host of the infographic, acting as a natural way to grow inbound links quickly.

Beyond inbound links, infographic success may also be measured by social shares on sites like Facebook, StumbleUpon, Digg, LinkedIn, etc. While this is sometimes harder to measure, it still provides a good metric of success.

Traffic is sometimes also used to measure the ROI of infographics, but sometimes an infographic will not have a direct impact on a specific page of traffic and will instead impact site traffic as a whole.

As infographics grow in popularity, there are more agencies out there that have added infographic design to their offerings. Even better, there are agencies that strictly focus on designing infographics and nothing else.

Infographics are not easy to design and require a unique mindset. This is why it is often best to work with agencies that focus entirely on infographics, rather than working with a larger firm that acts as a jack of all trades, so to speak. The best way to think of it is this: If you wanted to play every single instrument in the orchestra, it’s not likely you would be amazing at each one. This is because not all of us have the ability to master everything in the wind, string, percussion, and brass sections. If, on the other hand, you focused just on the trumpet, you could become the next Louis Armstrong. Similarly, working with a design firm that has a core focus on that unique type of design gives you the chance to get amazing work every time.

Infographic marketing requires a little bit of elbow grease, just like any online marketing campaign. To get the most out of your infographics, you should either have an in-house marketing team push them out to the masses or work with an infographic design agency that can get your designs the attention they deserve. As mentioned before, the ROI of infographics is usually based on links, and this often means that the infographic needs a marketing push to get you those links. Otherwise you could have an amazing design that nobody ever gets to see.

This depends on the scope of your project as well as the design agency you are working with. A good agency will meet your schedule, whether that be a few weeks or a few days. Most agencies can even accommodate an overnight turnaround, but you should expect to pay rush charges for something like that. At Cinconize, we typically turn around your design in 1-2 weeks and complete all edits within 3 business days of a request.

You will find a wide range of pricing from agency to agency. At Cinconize, we pride ourselves in having some of the most competitive pricing out there with quality that mirrors some of the highest priced infographic agencies out there. We want our clients to achieve a good ROI with their designs, and can’t expect that without offering a fair price.