Typically, a business that believes professional photography in their marketing is an expendable or unnecessary expense, simply hasn’t seen what high-quality imagery can do for both their branding or their marketing strategy. The truth is, no matter what industry, what demographic of customers, or what you are selling, every business can benefit greatly from implementing professional photos into their marketing strategy and onto their websites and social media. There are countless benefits of professional photos in marketing, including captivating consumer attention, encouraging engagements, building brand image and credibility, and increasing website SEO.
When marketing, brands have around 3 seconds to make an impression for a first-time user on a site or page. It can be difficult to make that impression with text alone. Visual content is processed by the human brain 20 times faster than text, so photos provide an instant share of information to your customers. One of the biggest reasons for professional photos in marketing is that it’s used as a competitive differentiator, between your brand and others. Grasping and maintaining your audience’s attention is competitive, but crucial. Exceptional photos have the power to captivate your customer’s attention, evoke emotion, and encourage interaction with your company. It’s been shown that posts with quality photos receive 2.3 times more engagement, than those without. Customer interactions and engagements are essential for a successful marketing strategy. Poor imagery weakens the effect that a post will have on its audience.
Secondly, photos in your marketing, and on any content that you post, establish your brand’s identity, and are a large part of how your brand displays itself to the public. Professional and high-quality photos in your content display a polished appearance of your company and provide a good first, but lasting, impression to customers. They give an authentic visual representation of your brand and show that your company is serious about quality and professionalism. Photos play an important role in establishing credibility and demonstrating the value of a brand. Businesses instantly lose credibility with customers when promoting low quality, poorly lit, or pixelated images.
While stock photos can be helpful at times, they don’t show your actual company or what you offer, and chances are another company is using the same photo. With a professional photographer, you receive customization and photos that are completely unique to your brand. You decide how your brand is displayed, what types of photos you want, and what message you want them to deliver. All of the photos you display should correctly and consistently express your message, personality, and the value of your brand.
Lastly, images on your website can also help increase your site’s SEO. High-quality images on your website encourage customers to spend more time exploring your site, in turn showing Google that your site produces fascinating and engaging content. There are also a number of components for optimization, such as metadata, captions, and alt tags that will increase your site’s image SEO, by producing more content for search engines to pull for results. This leads to your content appearing in both search results and image searches, exponentially increasing the chance potential customers will find your business online.
Overall, professional photos are an extremely valuable and versatile resource, as they can be used across all platforms, both digitally and print. Professional photos are not expense but an investment. Display your products in the best light, show the value of your brand, and get the most out of your marketing strategy. Contact our creative team and let us show you what photography can do for your business.