Brand Photography and Why It’s Important for your Business

Let’s look at a few situations together.

Scenario 1

You develop a business idea, select a business name, pick out your website domain name and rush to Twitter and Instagram to secure your ideal handle.

Then you pick out your business colors, have a logo designed and start building your website. You know you need pictures on your website but don’t have any to use, so you go to a stock image site and pick out a few that will work well enough for now.

Do those stock images accurately represent your unique products or services? No, not exactly.

Scenario 2

You’re quickly becoming a leader in your industry and you’re asked to speak at a conference next month. Woohoo!

You need to submit your headshot for the conference program and website by the end of the week. You don’t have any current headshots but you really like this picture your mom took of you at your cousin’s wedding two years ago.

You’ve lost 30 pounds and died your hair red since then, but it’s close enough.

Is that headshot (that looks nothing like you currently look) going to help you build trust with your audience? Not likely.

Scenario 3

You’re starting pre-sales for your new e-book and have developed a marketing strategy that involves posting 5 days a week to Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

Your plan is just to set up a picture really quick every morning, whether it’s a selfie or a flat lay or even a cute coffee-mug-with-your-keyboard type of picture.

Only problem is that it’s taking you a lot longer than you expected to get this done. Some days it’s taking 20 minutes! The pictures aren’t ending up the way you wanted them to either.

Are those time-consuming sub-par cell phone pictures going to instill confidence in your audience and encourage them to purchase your product? Probably not.

The images you use to represent your business are just as important as your brand colors, logo and fonts, if not MORE important.

Pictures can say so much in an instant. They can convey emotion. They contribute to your visual brand and need to be consistent in order to help you build trust with your audience. It seems unfair, but low-quality images create doubt.

The images you use should be high quality professional images that are unique to your business. They should represent the stories and messages you want to share with your audience on a regular basis. The pictures on your website, social media and print media should match in content and style to help build brand recognition. And they should NOT match the same stock images that your competitors are also using.

It takes about 50 milliseconds (that’s 0.05 seconds) for visitors to determine whether they like your website and whether they want to stay or leave. That’s all the time you have to draw them in! Make it count!

Consider hiring a professional photographer to help you with this aspect of your business. It matters.