How to use photography in your marketing to engage your audience
High-quality photography that captures the essence of your brand is an important element of your marketing. When sharing on social media, creating blogs or running an advertising campaign, your image should capture their attention and draw them in.
In this article we are going to be looking at the following:
It’s a well known fact that photography is marketing and more importantly it is a glimpse into your business showing your audience who you are, what you do and what happens within the business. This might be pictures of the team, your products and services, attendance at events or a bespoke project you’re working on for example.
Emma at EH Photography Services says “you have 0.5 seconds (if that) to grab your audience’s attention. People will make an assumption of what you do because of what photographs you have used. Our top tip is to have photographs that match what you are talking about. Creating content can take time and is challenging. Go back through your photographs and you will remember a variety of stories and different topics will come up. This is a great place to start. Brainstorm ideas and just put them on paper.”
Using photographs for story telling
You may have heard the saying ‘a picture tells a story’, well it really does! Emma agrees “whatever content you create it’s important you have the right images to get your message across. These should represent you, your business and your brand, but most importantly they should match with what you are talking about. Using photographs to break up long form content will help your reader get through all that content faster and with greater ease.” Do not forget your call to action! What do you want your reader to do once they have digested the information? Add a button, link, sign up form or contact details.
Terry Bower at Inside Stories explains the emotional connection and why images are so powerful in story telling. “They say a picture paints a thousand words. Absolutely YES it does! The emotional connection between what we see and how it’s introduced by way of the ‘story’ is the key to conveying what emotions we want to invoke in our chosen audience.
Marketing Channels
You can share your content in many ways, through social media, blog posts, website, emails etc. In order to have higher engagement you should absolutely include imagery that conveys your message.
Start with the end result in mind, plan how you will use your photographs. We’ve come up with a variety of channels and marketing assets where your images can make an enormous difference to your messaging and how your audience engage with your content –
- Blogs
- Email marketing
- Social media posts
- Display advertising
- Webinars
- How to guides
- Case studies
- Presentations
- Videos
- Brochures & flyers
Why branding is important in your photography
What is personal branding photography?
Emma says “they are photographs that represent you, your business and brand, they are the eye into your business.” her top tip is to make sure you have photographs that represent what your key messages and business values are. If you say you are a friendly, approachable company, your website and social media team pictures should be happy and smiley.
Start by answering these questions –
- Who are you?
- What do you do?
- What are your interests/What do you like?
- Who are you targeting?
- Who do you want to work with more?
- What do you want to do more of?
- Where are you based?
- Do you have an office?
- Do you travel?
Think about the style of the shoot, the right outfits, who will be in the shots, where the shots will be located and the photo formats – i.e. landscape, portrait, circle for example.
Emma says branding is much more than just headshot photographs. “It’s important to capture your personality and highlight your key services and projects, these might be:
- Delivering talks and webinars
- Hosting workshops and events
- Book launches
- Pitches to prospective clients and customers
It’s then what you do with the photos that counts”
Creative tools
There are some fantastic tools you can use to jazz up your images. We are big fans of Canva and we have to admit we’ve spent quite a bit of time playing around with it – but it’s worth it!
Emma provides some great insights into Canva “Canva.com is a free tool and a great way to add text easily in a matter of seconds. You can choose templates and adapt them too. That way when you are posting on social media, every time you can have the same theme, everyone will get to know your style.” You also have the option to resize your images based on the marketing platform you need the images for, i.e. Facebook & LinkedIn banners require different sized banners – Canva is great for this! Read our blog on how best to use Canva for your marketing graphics.
Soon you’ll discover you can never have too many photographs.
Emma also recommends Coschedule, a headline analyser. “This free tool helps you to find headlines that will attract your audiences attention. You’ll receive a number of suggested headlines that are more likely going to reach your audience and drive engagement.” These headlines are also suggested with SEO in mind – feel confident that every headline improves your SEO ranking and visibility. If you’d like some guidance on how to write content with SEO in mind you might like to read our blog on why SEO and content must work together.
Article guests –
Emma Hollings is an amazing event and brand photographer and I’m really pleased she has been able to support with this article to help businesses get the most out of their photographs and effectively use them within their marketing activity and promotions. If you are looking to create some amazing photographs that represent your brand and support your marketing efforts you can find out more about Emma’s work on her website – EH Photography Services.
Terry Bower is co-founder of Inside Stories who are a different kind of Marketing Agency. They do not make websites, write copy or look after your SEO. Audience first! is their expertise. Quite simply they Define, Refine and Recraft the Narrative or Story of your business, in a way that’s meaningful, memorable and moving to your customers, staff, suppliers and partners.
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