It’s impossible to understate the importance of branding for individuals and businesses looking to get ahead in today’s crowded marketplace. Presenting a cohesive, well-thought-out, visually appealing message is an essential step in ensuring that prospective customers pay attention to your brand — and keep it in their minds.
There are, of course, many integral aspects that contribute to having a strong brand identity, including logo, tone of voice, and customer management. And then there’s the matter of your business professional photos, which function to cement your visual identity.
As with all branding-related matters, it’s important to think carefully about your brand photography, which in many cases often functions as the first thing a prospective customer sees during their initial point of contact with a business.
In this post, we’ll run through some handy tips that’ll help you to create and select the business professional photos that push your brand forward.
Think: What Message Do You Want To Convey?
Your brand photos don’t exist simply to show your prospective customers a nice image. They exist to send a message. So, to begin, think about what message you’re aiming to convey via your photos.
A good place to start is to think about how you want your customers to see you. What do you want them to think about when they see your brand photos? There’ll be a lot of work that needs to be done to actually convey that message, but it’ll be a good starting point.
In Sync With Your Target Audience
While it’s important to convey your own message via your brand photography, you should also think about your customers. Ultimately, the best brand photos are the ones that reflect both the subject of the photograph and the customers’ expectations and desires.
For this, you’ll need to put yourself in your customers’ shows. If you’ve already created “buyer personas” during the market research part of your business development, then dig it out — it’ll come in handy when outlining what’s important to your target audience, the other products and services they buy, and the type of content they like to consume. Effective brand photography will speak to those characteristics and ideals.
Assess Your Competitors
It’s unlikely that you’re the only business in town offering your goods and services, so look to see how your competitors have done their own brand photography. This can be useful in that it can provide a solid point of reference that can help shape and guide your own brand photography, and it can also help you to pinpoint what you don’t want your brand photography to be. Take a look at as many competitor websites as you can, and make a note of what you liked and did not like about their photographs. Over time, you’ll find that your own ideas begin to take shape.
Silver Lakes Therapy
Style Yourself With On-Brand Colours
Your brand photography won’t exist in isolation. It’ll form part of your broader branding, such as your tone of voice, brand colours, and other materials. On the day of your shoot, it’s recommended to style yourself — assuming you’re the one being photographed — with on-brand colours and styles. The photos will likely appear on your website, so they should seamlessly fit with the colour of your theme, your logo, and so forth.
Consider the Setting
It’s not just you that’ll appear in your brand photography. Where you are photographed will appear, too. It’s important to choose a location that makes sense for you and your branding. For example, it’d make sense for a food blogger with a focus on healthy ingredients to be photographed outdoors in a farm-like environment; for a corporate lawyer, a city-centre office would be more logical.
If you’re not sure which location works best for you, then speak to your photographer, who may have some ideas of their own.
Work With a Professional
You can take photos on your own; but outstanding photos that truly reflect your brand? That’ll take an expert hand. A quality brand photographer will have the experience and expertise required to take photographs that add real value to your business. Aside from their technical ability, they can also provide valuable guidance on how to present yourself/your business in the photographs.
If you’re looking for branding photography services in Brisbane or beyond, then don’t hesitate to get in touch with me. I have extensive experience in helping businesses and individuals get the brand photos they love — and which help push their business forward. You’ll find all the information you need to contact me by clicking this link.
