Visual marketing is the discipline of studying the relationship between an object, the context it is placed in and its relevant image. Representing a disciplinary link between economy, visual perception laws and cognitive psychology, the subject mainly applies to businesses such as fashion and design.

As a key component of modern marketing, visual marketing focuses on studying and analyzing how images can be used to make objects the center of visual communication. The intent is that the product and its visual communication therefore become strategically linked and inseparable and their fusion is what reaches out to people, engages them and defines their choices (a marketing mechanism known as persuasion). Not to be confused with visual merchandising, that is one of its facets and more about retail spaces; here, Marketing gets customers in the door. Once inside, merchandising takes over—affecting the placement of products, signage, display materials, ambiance and employee staffing.

Utilizing images and visuals makes a marketing plan better. Images make concepts and intangible ideas more concrete, influencing the perception of the audience. This helps the audience envision a brand and its message in their mind's eye and make it more memorable during the time of purchase.

Visual marketing can be a part of every aspect of the Communication Mix. Marketing persuades consumer's buying behaviour and Visual Marketing enhances that through factors of recall, memory and identity.

Growing trends in the usage of picture based websites and social networking platforms like Pinterest, Instagram, Tumblr, and Timeline feature of Facebook justifies the fact that people want to believe what they see, and therefore, need for Visual Marketing.

Visual marketing includes all visual cues like logo, signage, sales tools, vehicles, packaging, labeling, uniforms, right to your Advertisements, Brochures, Informational DVDs, Websites, everything that meets the Public Eye and can create a direct visual reference for a brand, product or service.

The roots of this way of interpreting objects lie in Susan Sontag's essay Notes on "Camp", written back in the 1960s; the author points out that objects are not interesting in themselves but rather in the way they are represented, being the result of a series of considerations that touch upon the object's history, its symbolism, its manifestation and realization in the eyes of the beholder. As it developed, visual marketing highlighted the masking of an object, which instead of just being a product, turns into the star of its own 'production", so it changes from itself into something else, at the precise moment it enters the market. According to Paolo Schianchi, architect and designer, an Italian visual marketing academic:

“(...) Objects are: real, as what we see; visible - what they are made from; perfect - their classic identity; communication - their bond with taste; form and function - container and content; emotion - the story they can evoke; critical operation - the language that consecrates and exposes it; industrial operation - making them active and productive; image - the what and the how; anonymous - merely because it exits (...)“