Why Professional Photography Matters for Small Business
Running a successful company takes a lot of hard work and dedication, especially when you are starting a small business. Depending on the industry you are entering, you may hire a few employees to help get your business started with a proper foundation. This could include an IT professional, sales specialist or web developer. What you need to also consider is hiring a professional photographer.
You might be wondering why hiring a photographer is important for your small business when you have access to stock images online or using your phone to snap some shots to use for a new landing page or social media post. Using these types of images in a pinch can work (example: posting a team photo during a work holiday party to post on your Instagram), but if you want to make a significant impact on your potential customers’ buying decisions, you need to use professionally-taken photographs.
First Impressions
In today’s fast-paced digital world, a blurry or irrelevant image on a web page or social media page can turn potential customers off before they even read about what you have to offer. As they say, a picture is worth one thousand words! When you hire a professional photographer for your promotional materials, the high-quality pictures allow you to prominently showcase your product.
No matter what industry you serve, you need to make a good first impression on your new customers as well as continue impressing your loyal customers. One of the best ways to show that your products or services are worth purchasing is by pairing them with professional-looking images. If you run a restaurant, a high-quality picture of your signature dish that was appropriately staged by an experienced photographer may entice somebody scrolling through your menu to try it that night. If you manage an HVAC company, setting up a professional photo shoot with your team to use as your homepage banner can provide a sense of familiarity when somebody hires you for a furnace tune-up or general maintenance. You can also bring your photographer to a house call to take pictures while the job is being done to use for digital and traditional advertisements. These pictures will also show your uniform and logo to help improve your brand recognition.
Enhance Your Brand
As a small business owner, you want to show your potential customers that you are an expert in the industry. There are many ways to do this, including creating digital or traditional ads promoting your services, building a website and running multiple social media channels. A lot of entrepreneurs will handle these aspects themselves because they know their brand the best. However, when it comes to finding images to complement their brand, they may stick to stock images or try to take the pictures themselves with their phones.
Trying to find the perfect stock photography can be a time-consuming and expensive process, especially when you want to find something that best represents your brand. If you want to set yourself apart from your competition, using pictures taken from a professional photographer will always look better and perfectly represent your brand. Working with a photographer allows you to set up a custom photo shoot with proper lighting and state-of-the-art equipment. You can tell the photographer how you want everything to be framed and give them guidelines on how you want the final images to look.
When you build a rapport with a photographer, and you hire them to take more pictures as your business expands, they will already have your brand in mind and can easily set up a photo shoot to take pictures that meet your image standards. Consistency is key in all aspects of creating a successful small business, including the content that you write for your website and the images that you use to portray your company.
Avoid Copyright Issues and Scams
Finding stock or royalty-free photos online can be an easy way to fill in empty space on your website. However, if you accidentally use a copyrighted image, you could be faced with heavy fines. Scammers may also target your website by claiming they own a certain picture that you used on your website and demand that you pay them a large sum of money, or else they will pursue legal action.
Unfortunately, it can be hard to distinguish between a scammer and the actual owner of the image, so you could end up either paying a scammer or ignoring the owner and having to go through a legal dispute.
To avoid these issues altogether, hire a photographer to take pictures for your website and promotional materials.
Enhance your Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an essential strategy to help you reach more customers and become a leading force in your industry. Ranking high on Google search results is extremely important because over 95% of people will not click beyond the first page. If you secure a spot on the first page, you will have a better chance at converting new business and helping grow your brand recognition.
Want to rank higher on search engines? Utilizing high-quality images with proper metadata and alt text can show Google’s algorithm that you are a trustworthy business, which can help your website shoot up to the first page of search results. Having interesting or engaging images can also keep visitors looking at your website for a longer period of time, which also helps increase your website’s analytics!
Professional Photography is Cost-Effective
One of the biggest myths surrounding using professional photography is that it is too expensive. While the upfront cost may appear too high, if you use the images properly, the profits that you make selling your products will be worth it.
As we talked about throughout this blog, leveraging high-quality pictures that were taken by a professional photographer for your website, advertisements and social media posts can yield bigger returns on your investment. Help improve your small business’ image and credibility by hiring a professional photographer today!
