Commercial photography for growth hacking your business: There are numerous marketing ideas your business can adopt for scalability and growth. With creative developments and more innovative marketing strategies, marketers have found various techniques to scale toward their desired business goals.
One main area that you can use to boost your online business profile is professional commercial photography. Why? Because commercial photography lets you set up a solid and impactful brand identity for your small business.
How?
By showcasing your products and services, and other important aspects like your team and company culture, you prove to your audience that your business is willing to take things a step further to provide quality service. That is why commercial photographers are in high demand.
For instance, your customer and prospects often associate the quality of the imagery you display on your website and in other marketing materials with the quality of products or services you offer.
This content marketing element makes your blog or website more appealing and boosts user experience (UX). But many brands miss out on the value of high-quality photography and instead opt to use stock photos or other inferior-quality visual materials. That is a huge mistake.
Table of Contents
What is commercial photography?
Commercial photography definition: Commercial photography implies the process of photographing a specific product, team members, or other aspects of your brand in ways that display the best features and aspects to attract potential customers or for commercial use.
Put simply, it consists of taking photographs for business purposes. Photographers take these photos, and marketers use them for promotional or advertising and marketing campaigns, such as product reviews, ad placement, landing pages, and more.
Types of commercial photography
Commercial photography is prominent in digital marketing, and there are many types of marketing photographs. You don’t need a large team of professional photographers creating images in a studio for ad campaigns.
Hence, you can take photos outdoors or in a studio using paid models for headshots. Or you can even snap candid shots of your team at work with the right lighting and a quality camera on your smart phone.
Here are the most common types of business photography.
The 10 Common Types of Business Photography:
- Fashion photography
- Advertising photography
- Product photography
- Food photography
- Sports photography
- Environmental portraits
- Architectural photography
- Commercial headshots
- Fine art photography
- Lifestyle photography
That said, let’s look at how you can make the most of commercial photography for brand recognition and growth.
How to use commercial photography to improve business growth (5 easy ways)
There are enormous benefits that commercial photography can offer your business. But I’m sharing a few ways your business can leverage this business marketing tip for growth and scalability.
1. Use Marketing Photography to Create a Solid Online Presence
It’s a well-known fact that pictures and other forms of visuals tend to catch our attention more easily. So, when a potential customer looks for a particular product or service, a visual representation like quality product photographs can help him understand your product better.
Further, it increases the chances of site users purchasing the product or service. But if potential customers land on your website and find poor-quality product images, they’ll likely run to your competitor. Thus, it will not only cause you to lose sales, but it will increase your bounce rate and customer churn. Moreover, it will hurt your SEO efforts.
Photos of the product and service are the final reassurance for consumers to go ahead and purchase your product. That is why visual content has gained momentum across marketing channels recently. However, the difference between good-quality and sub-par photos can make or break your customers’ sales decisions.
Take a look at a website like Target.com, for example. Their website’s product images are always crisp, clean, and typically displayed on a white background. This approach makes the product pop off the screen.
Also, they present high-quality visuals of models and others to represent actual people using their products. Look at this engaging image on the company’s home page with a great call to action.
Still on Leveraging Commercial Photography for Optimal Business Growth
Granted, Target has a huge marketing budget. But no matter the size of your business, you can also do commercial-grade photography. Find a local contractor and work out a deal, and you can grab all the engaging images you need to boost your site performance.
Moreover, by giving a unique touch to your photograph with a product photographer’s help, people can easily recognize your brand and spread awareness.
Also, it helps you establish brand credibility. Moreover, using quality photos can establish your brand as one of the best in your industry and improve your visibility.
2. Advertising Photography Improves Business Visibility
As stated above, creating a robust online presence, in turn, means better business visibility. Your business’ services may be of the best quality; however, these services won’t fulfill their purpose without awareness about your company.
Here, commercial photography can significantly enhance your business’s visibility, as photos are one of the best marketing mediums to achieve this goal.
One thing to consider is that the images you use on your website, product page, or advertising copy can add a ton of value to your SEO efforts.
Each picture, therefore, should be optimized for search with proper alt tags and metadata to ensure Google and other search engines understand what they represent.
Thus, Google spider and other search engine bots will add the information into their consideration for where to rank your blog or website.
So, leveraging commercial photography can directly affect your scalability and growth, as better visibility means more business exposure to a more extensive audience base. Moreover, high-quality photographs further help your customers make better purchase decisions.
Or, at the very least, influence them towards investing in your offered services. Additionally, since pictures are versatile, you can use them across different platforms and marketing campaigns to improve your brand visibility.
Hence, leveraging this growth marketing hack is a smart move to reach your blog growth targets quickly. Therefore, use this content marketing tool (commercial photography) to distinguish yourself and stay ahead of your competitors.
3. Business photography provides insight into your business’ services and culture
Although a company’s culture is not explicitly stated, it is essential in forming your business impression. What better way to provide a look into your online career than through the use of professional photographs?
Look at the visuals Traina Design uses to imply a vision of its company culture on its website using natural, high-quality imagery of the team.
When customers understand the brand better through its products and services, they are more likely to rely on your company over others. So, by adopting commercial photography in your marketing strategy, you showcase your company’s values and beliefs.
You also reveal the thought process behind the way your organization works. Additionally, establishing an approachable and open business culture makes customers more inclined toward your product offers. It increases your chances of boosting sales even better.
4. Establish an Approachable and Relatable Environment With Commercial Photography
As a small business owner, engaging with your audience is vital for your company’s success. So, having excellent headshots–professional photos from PR events and other avenues can make your brand more human-centered than many companies’ robotic approach.
Through this approach, you create an inviting atmosphere for your enterprise–making it more approachable for your customers. It is crucial for freelance, consulting, or professional services businesses. But it can be intimidating to reach out to a financial advisor, attorney, or consulting professional.
Here’s an example of quality bio visuals we developed for a client of Gaenzle Marketing when we redesigned their website.
You can see, it’s engaging and not just a straight on headshot with a plain white background. You can see the team member’s personality coming out in the photo, and the textured designed accompanying the image adds depth and energy.
So, to make it easier for your prospects to reach out, it’s practical to incorporate more human, natural images of your team. Then highlight their personalities in bios and team pages, as the example above shows.
Every customer likes an open, inviting environment. And by the intelligent use of photography, you can establish this kind of ground in the best way possible. Moreover, using advertising photography to display your services in a relatable way for customers is always a good move for your business.
Through this business idea, consumers can connect with your company better, making it more likely for them to invest in your services. And since more customers mean more sales, you can achieve scalability and growth through simple yet effective commercial photography.
5. Creates a Stronger Impact Through Graphics
No matter your service or product, photography is a valuable asset that better impacts your audience base. It makes graphics a valuable and essential tool for your company to grow. Pictures of products or services are primarily self-explanatory.
You don’t have to tell your audience what you’re offering; they can directly see it through the photographs you use.
Since seeing things for what they are is always better than an explanation, your potential clients will be more likely to invest in your product after seeing the professional photographs you use for your business.
You can have the best copywriters in the world, but if there are no photos to accompany the fantastic descriptions they craft, no one will want to buy your products or pay for your services. Below is an excellent example of how Accor Hotels, a luxury hotel brand, adds enticing images to take the viewer beyond the simple description of the location.
The website also offers a slideshow to engage viewers in even more depth.
You don’t have to be a luxury hotel brand to do something like this. For example, if you own a small boutique furniture shop, your website could display your products in staged settings.
It could be a set of couches incorporated into complete living room suites to help consumers envision what the product might look like in their homes. This concept can apply to virtually any business model. Think outside the box and go beyond stock images and boring photos with zero emotion or value.
Make your business stand out!
To Sum Up the Use of Commercial Photography in Your Business
Commercial photography is something every business can benefit from, irrespective of industry or the services you offer. Being smart about it by creating strategies that work in your favor will help you use business photography in the best way possible.
It makes marketing photography a valuable asset for your business. Given this, investing in a professional photography company for your business can help you go a long way. Make the most of the types of photography mentioned above for better sales and scalability of your business.
Would you like to add more value to this blog article? We will appreciate your thoughts and insights in the comments!
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I hear you on that stronger impact with graphic, eye-catching, images. Amateur photographer here but my best snaps with a good, middle of the road camera – not super expensive but definitely not cheap – inspires my readers to tell me to sell ’em. The creme de la Blogging From Paradise creme as far as photos potentially pass for commercial offerings.
These are the ones that make people take notice, that generate the most likes and comments and also expand my blog and business presence because each is memorable. Of course, I had to snap many shots and invest in a solid camera to capture such images and in truth, it is more about the subject, lighting, craft and persistence versus me as a photographer.
All good points here.
I like how you mix the pro photos with the quick shot photos, Ryan. It helps the reader connect on a deeper level, because they see you as human. Commercial photos are great, but candid photos make a deeper connection.