Photos are a fantastic way of advertising your business and all you have to offer. Marketing photos span many different categories, including product photos, team photos, photos of your premises, etc. Basically, any images you post online will help towards your marketing strategy. With that in mind, how do you take the best marketing photos? Here are a few of the best tips to try:
Use a Professional Camera
Ideally, you want professional photographers to take your photos. This ensures that they are of the highest quality possible. For product photos and team photos, you should 100% look into hiring someone. Understandably, this might be outside of your marketing budget. In which case, you can get away with using professional quality cameras instead. As good as your phone camera claims to be, it won’t live up to the detail of a professional camera. The best options tend to be DSLR cameras as they have interchangeable lenses and lots of great settings for specific scenes.
You may prefer to buy your own camera as it provides more freedom when taking photos. Whenever you need an image to be taken, you can use the camera and make it pop. This is particularly helpful when posting images on social media sites. Your Instagram feed will look incredible when you have high-resolution photos. In turn, the photo quality can enhance your brand image as it makes you look more impressive. So, don’t take this for granted!
Make Sure There’s Good Lighting
No matter how good your camera is, all of your photos can be ruined by bad lighting. With marketing images, you need things to look crisp and clear – regardless of whether you’re promoting a product or displaying images of your office on your website. Shadows and strange lighting patches can be a real nuisance that ruins your photos. So, be sure you find excellent lighting at all times.
A couple of tips to consider are to stand in front of windows or buy some photography lighting. Windows let in all the natural light from outside and create an excellent photo. The trick is to stand facing the window, with your scenery behind you. If you take a picture with the window as the background, you’re guaranteed shadows! Ideally, photography lighting is the best idea as you can transform any setting into the perfect photo opportunity. Again, this will depend on your budget, and if you can afford the purchase.
Get Multiple Angles of Your Products
Now, product photos are clearly an integral component of your marketing strategy. After all, these images convince people to make a purchase. You can literally lose out on business if you don’t have good product photos. Honestly, there could be a whole article devoted to taking great product photos on its own! For now, you will benefit from the best tip; take pictures from all angles. Don’t settle for one image of a product as it doesn’t show customers enough information. They need to see what the product looks like from different angles to understand what it truly looks like.
Similarly, you could take images of your product in different positions or situations. This kind of depends on what you sell. For example, let’s say you sell shoes. Here, you need product photos of the shoes from all angles to cover the design of the entire shoe. But, you also need photos of someone wearing these shoes. It offers a different perspective and shows consumers what the shoes look like when they’re on a human being. More context is provided, more information is gained, and the likelihood of a sale increases.
Edit Your Photos Before Publishing
No matter what type of marketing photos you take, always be sure to edit them first. People seem to assume that editing is the same as faking something. However, it’s a way of tweaking your photos and enhancing the quality. When you put a picture into some editing software, you can play around with the lighting, white balance, saturation, etc. You don’t photoshop things onto the image or tweak the main subject. Instead, it’s more about improving the way the picture looks. You can sometimes sharpen a photo to get rid of some slight blur, making it look more professional.
Naturally, if you hire a photographer to handle your photos, they will take care of the edits for you. Or, you can ask them to leave it for you to do. Some people prefer to edit their own images as they know what they’re looking for.
Look Smart in Team Photos
Team photos are genuinely essential when marketing your business. People will look at your website to gain as much information about you as possible. This includes looking at who works for you and what your credentials are. You’ll find this is more prevalent in service-based businesses as people want to see who’s providing them with the service. Therefore, you need photos that showcase your team for all to see!
The key to these photos is to look as smart as possible. Smartness translates as professionalism, making your company look more accomplished. Consider this, would you hire an agency to take care of your finances if the team photos showed everything on hoodies and relaxed clothing. Granted, it might have no bearing on how good they are at your job. However, we’re very fickle people, and appearances mean a lot. Suppose there was a rival business with professional images of everyone in suits. In that case, you’d chance your arm that they’re more capable.
So, get everyone to dress up smart and look as professional as can be. You could even put on a few accessories to accentuate your intelligence. It sounds silly, but wearing a pair of glasses could make a huge difference. Even if you don’t have a prescription, you can pick up a cheap pair of glasses without proper lenses online. When people see someone with glasses, they automatically associate intelligence with that person. Therefore, you cultivate a better image for your brand!
Use a Tripod or Something Else That’s Stable to Hold Your Camera
If you take your own photos, you must ensure they come out as clear as can be. The biggest error is taking a picture and finding it blurry. This usually happens as your hands shake or move slightly. To counter this, you can fix your camera to a tripod or another similar device. Now, it remains in a fixed position and won’t move at all. There’s no shaking to worry about, so the image is crystal clear the entire time.
The elephant in the room is that this costs even more money. If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll notice that you probably need money for a professional camera, tripod, lighting, and editing software. Alternatively, you’d need to a may a photographer, which tends to cost more over time. Still, it’s not worth worrying about these expenses as they are investments. The money you spend on great production products will ensure you provide the best photos. In turn, this can enhance your business by improving your reputation and tempting people to make purchases. Don’t underestimate the importance of great images in helping your company make money!
On that note, you’ve come to the end of this article. The bottom line is that you don’t need to be a professional photographer to take excellent marketing photos. Your marketing campaign will be in a much better place when you have high-quality images to call upon. So, follow these tips to ensure you take better marketing photos from now on.
