10 Reasons Your Business Needs Professional Photography
Professional photography can help your business maintain a cohesive brand identity.
Is your website filled with stock images or too much written information?
If so, it’s time to consider enhancing your business and brand identity by investing in professional photography.
Many businesses tend to put photography on the back burner and think they can do it themselves.
Not only does this waste your time, but also consumers can tell when an image isn’t high quality or a stock photo.
We’re going to cover how professional photography can impress your customers and make your business stand out from others.
1. Show, Don’t Tell with Professional Photography
Any business can flower its website with believable language.
Anyone can have the “cleanest office space in town” or “high-tech computers at every desk,” but how is that believable?
People are not just going to take your word for everything. If you are saying you have a diverse workplace and business, consumers need to see that.
Taking a group picture of your employees will stand out to visitors on your website.
While you can still have pride in what your company provides, it’s essential to also show that pride.
Having professional headshots of management and owners is a good way for customers to get a sense of who you are and who’s behind the company.
Putting a face to the name is what’ll help you gain customers. People want to work with others they feel they can identify and work with.
2. Professional Photography Establishes Brand Identity
Your brand identity is one of the most important feature of your business.
When you imagine a circle with the colors red, blue, and white inside, you may think of Pepsi’s logo.
Or how about everytime you see that white swoosh?
Nike comes to mind.
Professional photography is a great way to have someone capture your brand. You can then use the images to promote your business to your customers and community.
People associate colors, images, and shapes when trying to picture a specific brand.
Which is why having a professional photographer capture the elements that represent your brand is critical.
How do you want customers to picture your brand? What do you want them to remember about your company?
These questions and details are important and represent who your company is.
And keep in mind – Photographers have a greater understanding of lighting, angles, setting, background, and visuals.
They’re professionally trained to bring your brand to life in photos.
3. Quality Photos = Quality Products
If someone visits your website, they’ll have a pretty good idea if your photos are amateur.
Most of us have a good eye for a good photo, a professional photo, and an amateur photo.
Sure, smartphones are capable of taking good photos nowadays, but the person behind the camera should be a pro.
If you don’t know how to use lighting, angles, work the settings of your camera, or how to pose, your photographs won’t be as nice.
Professional photographers know how to play with light and colors.
Not to mention, they’re also able to edit the photos afterward to create masterpieces.
When a customer lands on your site and they see average, boring photos, it could make a bad impression.
Since consumers don’t know you and can only go off your online presence, they’ll judge more critically. So use high-quality images on your online, they’ll build your credibility.
When a consumer sees that a company has put time and money into its photography, they’re more likely to buy.
Quality in your content whether it’s written or visual will reflect on your business.
4. Great Photography Can Lead to a Higher SEO Ranking
SEO which stands for search engine optimization is how customers naturally discover you or your business online.
If your website’s doing poorly with Google’s algorithms, consider adding more high quality images to your site.
When you use images, you can add “alt texts” that should match the keyword on the page you are optimizing.
Search engines will crawl your pages, looking for images, optimized keywords, and readable content.
If you’ve optimized these correctly, you’ll get a higher ranking.
And feel free to reach out, we offer SEO Consultations.
5. Professional Photography Builds Your Reusable Image Bank
One thing every business needs is a content bank.
This bank should contain brand standard messaging and all of the brands’ most important images. You can reuse these images for your social posts, blog photos, emails, etc.
And having a professional photographer help you create your bank of images will make your life easier.
Your content manager or whoever manages your website will always have a bank of images to use when needed.
An image bank will help your branding remain consistent and memorable. These images will reflect your business’ reputation.
It’s essential to understand how you want consumers to view your brand.
Tip: Customers and clients are more likely to share images that’re high-quality and resonate with your company.
6. Beautiful Images Beats Stock Photography
A lot of businesses use stock photography, but is it a good thing?
Stock photos can be useful in some ways, like if you’re writing a blog article on a specific subject.
We use stock photography in many of our posts.
It’s all about striking the right balance. You shouldn’t have all your social media accounts and websites loaded with stock photography.
Because when it comes to your brand, do you really want a random stock photo reflecting your entire brands image and online presence?
Anyone can access to stock photos online. And the last thing you want to have happen is someone using the same stock photo you’re using.
What were to happen if a consumer recognized the stock photos you were using?
If you’re okay with that then good, carry on. But if not, don’t use stock photography. Get some photos taken by a professional.
Professional photographers will equip you with quality photos that’ll represent your brand.
They’ll be unique to your identity and no one else will have access to them except you.
You can operate and conduct things as normal, knowing for a fact, your business and brand identity is unique and customers will notice this.
7. Photographers Have Unique Industry Knowledge
What’s wonderful about professional photographers is that many of them have industry knowledge.
They’ve worked with plenty of businesses, and they’ll know how to position your company in an unseen light. You can also bounce ideas off your photographer, and they’ll take your suggestions and turn your vision into reality.
If you aren’t sure how you want your photos to reflect your business, then trust in your photographer.
They have the knowledge needed to make your brand a success. They’ll set the scene in a unique way and bring your brand identity to life.
Photographers understand you have competitors.
And they should be aware of the industry. So, trust in the fact they know what they’re doing and they’ll make your brand shine like no other.
8. Images Grabs Attention
Images are like good headlines: they catch our attention. When someone sees a long wall of text, they’re less likely to read it.
But, when this text has a stunning images attached to it, we are more likely to read it.
Posts that include images produce 650% higher engagement than text-only posts.
As humans, we get distracted very easily. We spend most of our time on the internet skimming articles, social media posts, and websites.
And when we’re constantly seeing new content every second, it’s hard for us to choose which ones are worth our time.
But, when you include quality images, you have a higher chance of grabbing the consumer’s attention.
Photographers understand this.
This is why they apply themselves and do their best to take the best photos possible. Photos that not only look good when taken but… end up going through an extensive editing process.
And end up 10x better than the rest of the images you typically see on your Instagram or social media feed.
9. Professional Photography Helps You Stand Out
Stock photos and smartphone images aren’t the key to being innovative.
As a brand and local business owner, if you want to stand out from your competitors, you have to invest in your business.
It can be easy as putting things like photography on the back burner.
But professional photography services are what WILL help you stand out and get noticed.
And put your brand on the map.
Take a look at your competitors’ social media pages and websites.
Can you tell if they’re using stock images? Are their images unique?
If you think their images are average, then try going to a major company’s website. You’ll see a huge difference.
The companies that go above and beyond are the ones that invest in themselves and their image.
Customers and clients don’t just buy products and services. They want to know who you are as a company and what you stand for.
Make a lasting impression by hiring a professional photographer. You won’t regret it.
10. Photographers Make Things Convenient
Let’s be honest. When you have a professional photographer handling your images, it’s pretty convenient.
It can require a lot of time on your behalf to schedule photo shoots. And if you’re using your phone, it won’t come out the way you want it.
When you hire a professional photographer, they’re coming to you with quality equipment.
You don’t have to worry about buying an expensive camera or learning photoshop.
Photographers already come with the knowledge and will only take several hours of your time.
And as a result, you’ll get professional images that reflect your brand and will enhance your reputation.
What Kind of Professional Photos Do I Need?
Okay, so you’ve decided that you’re going to hire a professional photographer.
Now you have to consider all the kinds of options there are for professional photography.
Most photographers will sell packages depending on what kind of images you want. We’ll cover some of the main types of photographs below:
Headshots: It’s good to have a photographer take headshots of the owners and managers of the company.
Consumers will want to match a face to the business and this is the best way to do it.
People are more likely to do business with you if they know who you are.
Having headshots of all the company’s executives can help establish trust and build credibility.
Social Media Images: You can hire a photographer to take a ton of pictures for your social media.
This will help create a social media bank of quality, professional photos.
When your social media feed fills up with these photos, your profile will be consistent.
These images will also reflect your brand identity.
And most importantly, they’ll have a cohesive visual presence that will be pleasing to the eye.
You’re more likely to gain a social presence if your images are eye-catching, especially for apps like Instagram.
Website Photos: These photos are specifically for your website.
While they can go into your image bank, they’ll be sized for a website.
Your photographer will help you determine how you want to portray your brand online.
They’ll then take pictures reflecting your vision to bring it to life.
Business Photography: This encompasses taking pictures that reflect your product and services.
When working with products, the photographer will take pictures of the product.
And once they have these images, they’ll edit them with visual effects through photoshop and other applications.
Portraying your services is a little bit different.
If you run a local restaurant or a store, the photographer will have to take pictures that resemble your service.
For instance, they might take pictures of you while you’re talking to a customer or of the food. The photographer will stage the scene to portray the services and what your business provides.
These can also go on your website, social posts, or used in paid advertising campaigns.
The Takeaway
Professional photography will take your business to the next level.
Investing in your business will show consumers who you are and build trust.
If you’ve been wondering how to enhance and grow your business, then it’s time to hire a professional photographer.
Here at Red October Firm we use our photography services to make both our business stand out and those we work with. The visual needs and success of our clients’ is important.
And we want to make sure their brands’ identity will be on full display during our photography sessions.
If you’re interested or know someone in need of affordable, high-quality photography services book a session with us!
We look forward to working with you and taking your brand to new heights.
