Do marketing hurdles crop up every single day for you in running your business?
Becoming an entrepreneur is not everybody’s game. It takes a lot of practice to attain self-discipline and determination to handle small business problems and challenges. One of the major problems faced by small businesses is the lack of proper marketing. When I started to establish my photography business, I didn’t get a notebook with the marketing strategies list written in it. It’s important to learn the art of marketing to tell people that you exist and can solve their problems, and one of the most efficient forms of marketing is visual content marketing.
Researches say the human brain can process visuals up to 60,000 times faster than texts. When it comes to marketing, content created with visuals is naturally more engaging and interesting for viewers, and who else can help you better than a professional photographer in creating such impactful content and a voice for your brand?
So here I have to offer you 5 reasons why you need photography help for your business for exponential growth. Especially if you’re just starting your business.
1. Your Images Represent Your Brand
Does the cost of professional photography often get you tempted to shoot your images yourself, or rather find a lower-cost alternative to hiring a professional photographer? I often come across clients who negotiate with me over my pricing. They are willing to book a location for a photoshoot for 40,000 bucks for a day, but they aren’t willing to invest 50,000 in a professional who can create their desired images for their brand. At times, they are also ready to compromise for a cheaper alternative. It’s not that they can’t afford it. It’s just that they feel professional photography is not valuable enough. If you value something, you don’t feel it’s expensive. For example, my professional camera which costs around 2.5 lacs just for the body is quite expensive for my mother or probably also for all of you. But it seems pretty reasonable to me because I know its value. The same goes for a Hermès or a Louis Vuitton handbag to me. I find them super expensive, as they are worthless for me. People are only willing to pay a price for something if they feel it’s valuable enough to them.
In that case, remember- your images represent your brand. If you can’t afford a professional photoshoot for your brand, that’s completely OK! Go for an economical option, because that’s what you can do at present. But compromising with a cheaper alternative even if you can afford it, just because you don’t value professional imagery, that’s where the problem lies. With such a mindset you will not be able to uplift your business marketing.
Now that digital marketing has become an integral part of modern business, we must accept that quality content is the key. Your images on your website, social media or advertisements are greatly important when it comes to making a first impression on customers. Clever marketing and high-quality content can get your business exponential revenue growth. If you value your brand, start valuing professional imagery and its necessity for your business.
2. Photographers Are Problem Solvers
Deciding what you want to convey through your images and how to achieve that can be a daunting task. Professional photographers are creative geniuses. Depending upon what you want to communicate, they can bring your brand’s voice into life in the form of an image, making it more accessible to your audience.
Photographers learn all their lives about how to communicate their emotions through images. They study principles of lighting, perspective, focal plane, fundamentals of visual communication and many other things. Creative decisions like what focal lens to use and what perspective, what style of lighting to bring what emotion can only be achieved by a highly trained professional. They ask questions to understand your brand and work out the best possible results to solve your problems. They fully understand the tone of communication for your business and make sure all the images they create are infused with that harmonic tone.
Photographers are industry experts too. Working with many other professional clients, they know what is a hot cake in the market and what is right for your business. So if you aren’t sure what exactly you need and how to communicate it efficiently, then seek the help of a professional.
3. Time Is Money
We often hear ‘Time is Money’, but very few of us get the real sense of it. People often interpret this as wasted time equals wasted money. Whereas Sadhguru, an Indian Yogi and an author says if time was truly money then why are we not able to make time by doing something productive as we can make money. Unlike money, once spent, time can never be recovered or made up. This is important for entrepreneurs, especially the ones who still wear all hats in their business. A minute spent doing something you aren’t good at is a minute that can’t be spent doing what you are best at. We all try to do every little job on our own when we start a business, provided we have ample time available and don’t have enough funds to outsource it. But if you think you can efficiently multitask things then watch this:
This is why business mentors teach their pupils to outsource stuff that doesn’t require their specialised expertise. They advise them to jealously guard their time “for their best work”. Now since my business has started generating a little more revenue, the very next business decision I am taking is to hire a marketing professional, even before a studio or an accountant. I know how important digital marketing is in today’s time, but I can’t give up my valuable hours struggling to create a digital presence for myself. Especially when I can work on doing personal photography projects or creating those contents for marketing.
The other alternative to this can be using stock images. Stock images can be very useful for things that are not directly related to your core business like blog posts, presentations, tweets etc, but you can’t use stock photography to represent your brand. That’s not what you are. Imagine a client scrolling down a random article and recognise an image that you have used on your website from stock. Getting your products and business photographed is something you will always be proud of. It develops an emotional connection with your brand.
4. Builds Your Reusable Image Bank
Getting professional photography done creates a bank of reusable images for your business. American photographer Joel Grimes explains the theory ‘Power of Eight’ as a successful marketing tool. Studies have shown that if we exert ourselves in the marketplace, we at most make two attempts at soliciting a potential client before giving up. The odds of securing any kind of return on two attempts is less than 10%. Not good odds! This falls under the fact that we are human. He suggests, if we make at least eight attempts to get our name into the brain of the person who we want to hire us, the odds go up to 80% that we will get a return on our marketing investment.
You need to market your business on every possible platform to ensure a profitable return. So you do need a wealthy image bank to consistently promote your business on all such platforms. I have clients who still use the images in almost every content efficiently even after a year from the same shoot. Getting photography done for your business not only helps you in any particular campaign but also facilitates building a bank of reusable images which can serve you again and again to create your space in your consumer’s mind.
5. Business Angle
Don’t be just concerned about how much the photography might cost. Reason it as how much revenue it can generate for you instead. If it’s not worth investing in, don’t do it. It isn’t worth your money and precious time.
We have reached an era where sales and marketing are no more two sides of a coin. You need to upgrade your marketing game if you need to multiply your sales numbers. It is a time where consumers spend more time identifying needs and problems, researching products and services, and reading customer reviews than in the past. Due to which the sales cycle has become a fraction of what it used to be.
For most businesses today, 70% of the buying decisions are made before even contacting the company. The sales process doesn’t start when the consumer is face to face with you but rather when they trip over your content. Content should drive sales, not just brand awareness. Using impactful images, your company can build a relationship of trust with prospects way before the first sales meeting.
It doesn't matter whether you are just starting or you are the market leader. You constantly need to upgrade your marketing game. Not only to create brand awareness but also to increase your sales numbers and retain your market position. Whether it's images or videos, visuals will help you expand your business drastically. If you have been in a dilemma so far about whether to invest in getting your business photographed, then I hope this post will help you in making a wise decision for your business.
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