We know we’re not breaking ground when we use imagery with our marketing and advertising content. Since man’s ability to print and distribute, we’ve used images to catch the eye, to make readers pause for a moment so that we can convince them to make a purchase.

By studying people’s reactions to various images and the words that accompany those images we’ve learned what’s most likely to prompt a conversion. Some tactics have worked for decades; others we’re still discovering as technology evolves.

Here are a couple things you should know.

People Like Seeing People

Studies show that more than 91% of people will notice an ad with faces over ads without. When you pair that with “gaze cues,” meaning the person in the ad looking toward something important—say, the product or the brand name—you can essentially guide the viewer through the ad with only an image. No words needed (and that’s tough for us to admit, being writers and all).

Now, does it actually work? Does it translate to sales? We used this tactic of replacing illustrated images with human faces, and discovered that yes, it really does work. By including people in ads, the sales attributed to those ads increased by 1,750%. That is not a typo.

Message Matching Builds Trust

If you’ve ever clicked on an ad out of curiosity and been taken to a website that didn’t seem to match the ad, your spidey senses probably started tingling. It’s a breach of consumer trust to offer one thing and try to deliver something else, even if that something else is the homepage of a website rather than the specific product the prospect was interested in.

To increase buyer trust, make sure your messaging matches, from the imagery to the headline to the offer itself. Studies have proven that message matching can increase conversions by 212%. Don’t give any impression that the product they were interested in is no longer available by linking to a homepage or a general product page. If you are advertising for brand recognition and not specific products, match your homepage imagery to the ads you distribute.

Again, we put this to the test and experienced an even higher conversion rate than the studies showed. Our matching ad and homepage imagery resulted in 380% more sales than the next best performing ad.

The images you use can be very powerful when created and applied with intent. It’s not about going viral. It’s about reaching the right person with the right message at the right time. It’s about informing your buyers, allowing them to see themselves with your product, and building trust so they’ll make the purchase.

We put several other psychological effects into practice for our latest case study. You can see our gains through advertising imagery, as well as SEO improvements and social media marketing wins. Just click here to see the full case study.