Tough Love Tuesday: Why You Need Custom Branded Photography
You spend so much time learning your craft. You spent countless hours building your product. You spend so much money on creating your website. Yet you invest no money is getting great imagery to show it off even though photos are what sells a product. Now time for some stats:
“It takes 50 milliseconds (o.o5 seconds) for a user to form an opinion. First impressions are 94% design related. That means the colors, structure, symmetry, and overall visual appeal of the photo was considered before the actual content.”
“67% of consumers say image quality is “very important” for choosing a product in e-commerce, compared to product info, long description, or rates & reviews.”
The first thing that gets people’s attention is the imagery, so why is it an afterthought?
I always wondered why some restaurants had such bad photos on their social media (and none of their websites). You eat with your eyes first so why post gross photos of your food? The chef may know the food tastes good but as a new potential patron, I sure don’t.
Every year, a local magazine has a section where female business owners can share a profile on themselves and their business. These are really inspiring women, yet they are using selfies as their profile photo. You want to show potential clients that you’re a professional, which you absolutely are, yet you’re using a selfie?
Investing in custom branded photography is the key to up-leveling your business. In the day and age where smartphone cameras are getting better and better, it seems like everyone thinks they are a photographer. You can absolutely get great photos out of an iPhone, but a professional photographer is the one who has the eye to really make you and your product shine.
Even stock photos aren’t cutting it anymore. When I was editing The Lady Project Blog, I had to find stock photos to use for all the posts so I became very familiar as to what was available on stock websites. There is amazing stock photography available on the internet now but the problem is, you can find many people using the exact same photos. I started seeing the same photos being used everywhere.
Depending on where you get the stock photo, you don’t have to credit where you got it but it does show a level on inauthenticity to me. Once viewers see people using the same photos, they will start to wonder. “Did you steal that photo?" “Did someone steal your photo?" Or they will just think it’s yours. I saw an entrepreneur I follow on Instagram share a photo I’ve seen on all the stock photo websites. It was a very cute photo so everyone commented on it saying how much they loved the photo. She never said that she didn’t take the photo.
I debated on selling stock photos before but decided against it because people need photos that are of them and represents them. When you are a small business owner or entrepreneur, you most likely are on the front lines and talk to customers directly. They need to see you and to get to know who you are. It could be jarring for a person to hire someone and they look completely different from the photo on their website. Even worse, they have no idea what you look like because there are no photos of you at all.
As a business owner, you have your hands in a lot of pots. Planning out a photo session may not be on the top of the list for you. Sitting down with a photographer to get a grasp on what kind of photo imagery you need to represent your brand is incredibly helpful so you can focus on the things that need your full attention. Leave the photo taking to us.
