When you think of world-leading brands like Coca-Cola, American Express, Apple, what comes to your mind?
I bet, whatever it is, you have a distinct image for each brand. Perhaps, with Coca-Cola, it could be the clunking or cheers of the iconic Coca-Cola bottles. For American Express, it could be happy families or people enjoying the small moments like on holiday. With Apple, it could be a minimalistic image of their iPhone, Macbook, or any other product.
Regardless of the company, I’m pretty sure you can differentiate them quickly. The reason you can do this is that they have bold and powerful brand photos showcasing their products or services that resonate with you.
The right brand photos can raise your authenticity and shape your target customers’ perception of your business.
There are a lot of psychological elements and benefits associated with them. So let’s jump right in.
How can brand photos alter your clients’ perception?
Having the right brand photo can make a crucial difference in influencing the buying behavior of your customers. Potentially, brand images can help create a connection by doing the following:
Enhances your credibility
When selling something online or offline, everyone is looking for a way to trust you. One of the best ways to trust your brand is for others to see it being used by someone else. This is why you see companies like Walmart, Disney+, Samsung, and more constantly promoting their brand by having families in their branded photos.
Research even supports this, showing that firms who use family brand photos are more likely to experience increased brand authenticity from their consumers. This is because the families they’re targeting can more visualize their own family using their product.
In all honesty, you don’t have to use families in your photos; just having your target audience in them can act as a form of social proof, showing your reliability and popularity.
Establishes identity and recognition
Where are you selling your product or service? Is it strictly online, or do you have a physical presence within a store? Wherever you’re positioned, you want to capture your consumers’ attention over your competitors in the 8.25-second window you have.
Brand photos are highly effective in you doing this, as it quickly captures the visual elements of your brand, allowing people to associate with it before their attention diverts elsewhere. Consistent, high-quality brand images can allow you to stand out from afar and create a connection in a chaotic marketplace.
Forms a strong impression
It’s not really rocket science, but having a brand photo over a stock photo is more appealing to your consumers. Brand photos are high quality, more visually attractive, and elevate the desired value of your product. Whereas poor stock photos may not be well pixelated, used elsewhere on the internet, and cause consumers to question your product’s or service’s quality.
Cultural and socially relevant
By using brand photos with real people, you will look more culturally and socially relevant. They reflect all the different aspects of your target audience, celebrating their values and experiences and allowing you to connect with them personally.
Creates a story
Brand photos can help evoke emotion amongst your consumers if captured well. If experiences, moments, or situations with you are captured, they can create a narrative and story, making you look more meaningful and authentic. The more your consumers see the photos, the more likely they can resonate with your brand and connect to it.
Showcases your personality
Your products and services must speak for themselves when you’re not around. Before your customers even use or engage in them, they have to represent you on and off the shelf. Working with a photographer to capture your products and services can help showcase the values and personality of your company.
For instance, if you are a sustainable company, you might want to conduct a brand photo shoot highlighting your green practices and commitment to the environment. If you have a strong company culture and want that highlighted, you could have a brand photoshoot showing team-building activities. An experienced brand photographer can learn about your values and help you highlight them effectively in photos.
Brand photos vs stock photos
When showcasing your brand to the world, using stock photos may seem pretty tempting. After all, many websites provide free stock photos without any royalties, and at the moment can seem like a cost-effective option at the time.
But the truth is, it can significantly damage your brand in the long run. Why?
Because stock photos are everywhere and are used by many across the internet. If you use them for your brand, you could confuse consumers and businesses with your identity, preventing them from knowing who you are as others use the same photos. As a result, it’s unlikely to create a lasting impression and be able to differentiate yourself from your competitors.
Investing in high-quality brand photoshoots can give you a distinct voice and allow you to stay consistent with your identity. Often, stock photos can’t align with your brand guidelines, values, and personality.
After all, you can’t customize stock photos or alter them to suit your brand. With brand photos, you’re in control of what to shoot and how to fit them in line with your brand.
Helping with E-E-A-T
One of the hidden benefits that’s often overlooked when using brand photos is that it helps with an SEO strategy called E-E-A-T. If you’re unfamiliar with E-E-A-T, let me explain how this concept works. Basically, E-E-A-T stands for:
- E: Experience
- E: Expertise
- A: Authority
- T: Trust
Basically, it’s a framework that Google uses to review the quality of content on your website. It helps determine your website’s value and ranking on search engines. To fully explain the strategy and guidelines behind it involves another post in itself. But brand photos unique to your business can help with this, as they help establish trust and authority and aren’t being used by other businesses online, allowing you to stay original.
The Bottom Line
Overall, fresh brand photos can elevate your identity and demonstrate a strong sense of authenticity to your customers. Depending on how you conduct your shoot, they can tell a story, evoke emotions, and create a connection with your customers.
If captured effectively, they can create a strong identity and increase the likelihood of long-term engagement amongst your customers. Whereas choosing stock photos can do a lot more harm to your brand image than good, causing a lot of confusion.
If you’re not sure how to capture the right brand photos for your business, I can help. I work with you to capture your values and give you a distinct look from your competition.
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