Most often, business owners would only consider professional photography when they are launching their websites. But once their websites are up and running, having another professional photography session would normally be at the end of their to-do list if it ever makes it on the list again.
But regularly updating your professional photos is so important to grow your business in a visually crowded space especially you are using online platform to market your business. If you are consistently generating and sharing content, then professional photography has to be included in your ongoing (not one-off) marketing budget. Many business owners, re-use their old photos again and again because they don’t have sufficient amount of professional images to keep up with the amount of content they are generating and sharing online. Imagine your audiences, who are following your content keep seeing the same old few photos every time you put out new contents. How likely will they be intrigued by your visual and stop them from scroll?
I know what you are thinking; everyone is showing up on video nowadays. Why should you be investing in professional photography on a regular basis when video is “the new thing” ? I won’t be arguing with you on this one, as I am in fact increasing my use of videos in my own contents too. But in the world where individual’s attention span is getting shorter and shorter, still image is still the fastest way to capture your audience’s attention and evoke feelings in a split of a second, so photography should always be part of your marketing strategy. This is exactly why big corporations, and well known brands always include photography as part of their advertising campaigns.
The bottom line is, high quality visual is essential for your business. But having regular professional photoshoot is no small investment. To maximize your return, be sure you make good use of your professional photos whenever and wherever you can.
So here are the places and ways (other than your website) you can use your professional images:
The obvious one is social media marketing. These includes FB, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest etc. Statistics shows that a post include an image increase engagement substantially. But do use images that can differentiate yourself to stop the scroll.
Sales and Landing Page. You want to grab the attention of your audience and stir their emotions in a crowded market with high quality images that are uniquely you. Remember purchase decision are often a result of an emotional response.
Your Lead Magnets like cheat-sheet, workbook, ebooks etc. Incorporate authentic photos of you can strengthen your personal brand and ensure consistency across all platforms and all marketing material.
Submit your own photos for interviews/features on newspaper and magazines. If you have a library of up-to-date image of you, you can save a lot of prep time on photoshoots for every appearance. The best thing is that you have a full control of your image as you can just pick and submit image of your choice at your finger tips.
Stick a photo of you on your business card can help people to remember who you are. But do avoid printing large quantity of business card as you want to update your photo on your business card on a regular basis and not using old photo of you that have little resemblance to your current look.
If you are writing a book or planning to write one, use your own photos on the cover.
Why not include your photos on your emailing marketing content, and email funnels.
Last but not least, your profile photo for any other PR engagements, collaboration, events etc.
There are just so many ways and channels you can use your professional personal brand images. Having regularly professional photoshoot to update your bank of images and using them across different platforms can ensure coherency of your brand and also ensure all your contents are always on brand and of “scroll-stopping” quality.
Can you imagine the feeling of never running out of professional images to use for your business? With annual subscription, you can get a new bank of images every quarter to add to your image library. Contact Peggy to find out more.