Photography is the single most important visual creative you could invest in for your company. While this may seem like a bold claim, we’ve relied on the statistics to help paint the entirety of the picture:
Facebook posts with photos get 2.3 times more engagement and consumers are 64% more likely to recall that information later compared to ads without. It is absolutely vital to every industry looking to market their business to use authentic, creative, and specific professional photography.
So why can’t you just use stock? Stock photography is a great resource, AND a popular one, which is exactly the reason you should avoid it. Your individual brand identity is your best asset when it comes to consumer recognition and recall. If you are using the same images thousands of other industries are using across the country- how do you set yourself apart? Chances are a competitor could even be using the same photo! You don’t want that. Take Modern Golf Tips for an example, they went out of their way to take custom photos of the different golf grips to give readers a visual representation of each grip. Not something you could do with stock photos.
I get it. You don’t think your business is visually pleasing, you don’t like the camera, or maybe you’re just concerned about the budget! These are all valid concerns, but we can address them individually.
Professional photographers don’t see the world as you do. We can view a single office space and envision it in fifteen different ways based on lighting, angles, focal length, and more. It’s often hard for the average person to grasp our ability to take the mundane and mediocre and create a masterpiece, so this is very much a “trust the process” kind of situation. If you don’t think we can make your business and YOU look like a million bucks, you’re leaving $999,999 on the table. We can, and we will.
It’s okay to be camera shy! An experienced professional should be able to calm your nerves and have you feeling confident, which will reflect in the final result. When you and/or your team can be seen throughout your marketing, it shows potential clients exactly who they will be working with. Why does this matter? Because if you can get a potential customer to begin to envision themselves working with you, you’ve already won them over. This allows them to feel like they are a part of the experience and envision your product or service as something tangible and attainable. When Marketing Experiments tested a real photo of their client against their top-performing stock photo, visitors who saw the real customer were 35% more likely to sign up.
Budget is a concern for many people, but when you consider performance you soon realize that the return on your investment is generally much larger than the investment itself. Take social media as an example- posts from brands that included visually appealing images earned 87% of all engagements on Facebook and tweets with images end up with 150% more retweets than those without. If those weren’t enough to convince you, let’s lean in a little further:
- 60% of consumers say they’re more likely to consider or contact a business that has an image show up in local search results.
- 67% of consumers say that the quality of a product image is “very important” in selecting and purchasing a product.
- 78% of online shoppers want to see the product as if it’s part of their own daily lives.
- 50% of online shoppers say, “large, high-quality product images are more important than product information, descriptions, or even reviews.”
- 90% of online buyers say that photo quality is the most crucial factor in an online sale, according to Etsy and Justuno.
Like most industries, photography is one where you need a professional in order to reap the full benefits of the service. If you want to get the most return on your investment into your branding and marketing, working with a skilled photographer is absolutely essential. Fortunately, here at BBM we have professionals with over a decade of combined experience who are ready to help you reach each of your goals for your company.
