Businesses and personal brands often don't just want, but NEED, photography, they just haven't realized it yet. Photography may pop up in the 'WANT' section in your head for one reason or another, but there are many reasons why you might NEED brand or business photography. Here are some of those reasons:
1) When Starting a Business or Becoming an Influencer.
It may not seem like this would be beneficial to your businesses planning, marketing, or financial strategy along with everything else going on at the moment, but it is very beneficial!
Why not set a precedent for what your brand will look like, from the beginning? A lot of brands will change their style or look, but usually that is to go from a cluttered in-cohesive style or from self-made images to professional images and style.
You can get more clients and followers with professional images, when you need it the most; when you are just starting out!
Don't know what your brand is? Check out this blog about branding.
2) When Revealing New Products Or Revamping Old Products
What Says 'BUY ME!' more than an amazing image that grabs the buyers interest? If you are rolling out a new product or even just trying to sell something that is just not flying off the shelf, professional photography can enhance the product & make it sell.
Showing that product in a way that relates to your consumer makes the photography that much more valuable as well! This can be done through brand photography, which is explained below.
3) When Wanting to Raise Profits
Nothing does a better job at marketing for profit than showing your audience your personal or business brand (or story). The best way to do this is to connect with each person that you come across.
Let me guess, you're either scoffing at the screen or you're laughing right now, aren't you?
Who has time to connect with every single person we come across? Of course if we did this we would never get any actual work done, so we have to go with the second best option, brand photography.
Brand photography is showing your story through un-posed, styled, lifestyle business sessions. Telling people who you are and what you do without words. Do this with every website click, every time someone looks at your social media page, or sees the image in a publication.
Capture. Connect. Convert: Capturing your true brand, connecting with your audience with relate-able images, and converting them into buyers. Thus increasing profits!
4) When Wanting to Be a Professional
Like they say, "If you want to walk the walk, you have to talk the talk" the same is true with photography in business & personal brand settings. If you want to be a professional or Influential in your industry you have to act like one and look like one, in every shape and form.
Some may think "Well my stock photo's look professional". Sure stock photography can be used by anyone, but Stock photography does not correctly depict who you are or what you do. Other businesses, including your competition , could using those same images.
There is a whole twitter feed full of #badstockphotosofmyjob or #badstockphotos. Just by my last search alone it seems that all businesses do is shake hands awkwardly all the time!
Not only does Stock photography not represent your brand with an authentic or accurate image, it could actually negatively effect your business. Say you didn't know that a stock photo was being used by a scamming website. Now clients will associate that image with a scam. It will not set you apart from your competition, especially in social media either. Marketing on social media is all about Authentic Content to reach audiences. Social media and business advertising platforms will not be successful because the content is not authentic and viewers may have seen that image used by someone else many times before in other advertisements.
5) When There is No Time to 'Do It Yourself'
Not having enough time to do everything can be a business owners biggest obstacle. Now having to figure out what kind of images to take, where to take the images, what to style the images with etc, can be nearly impossible in a short time frame, on a daily basis.
Of course social media wants daily new content to stay active, as well as fresh new images on your website every 6 months or less in order to be successful.
Is that achievable as an influencer or business owner who is always on the go? No, successful businesses just do not have the time to DIY content on a daily basis.
They hire a photographer to capture their stories through branding photography , video, or send them the products they want images of. They plan out 3-6 months of images if not more through pre-planned story sessions with their photographer, often hiring that perfect one who will allow them editing and commercial rights. Most portrait photographers do not allow editing to images or allow usage for marketing purposes. Editing is necessary to stick to their brand, add lettering and phrases/quotes, or even just to add filters (depending on what a business or influencer needs)
So as you can tell, Photography has become a big part of businesses and how they are seen by their audiences these days. How does professional photography benefit your business? Feel free to leave me a comment!
Alyssia McCaslin Photography is a Family & Brand Photographer located in Maryland.
www.AlyssiaMcCaslinPhotography.com/branding-photography
www.Instagram.com/Alyssia.McCaslin
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