What are you looking for? You’ll know when you see it!
Great marketing design, whether digital, print or environmental, has one thing in common. For your marketing messages to be effective, all you really need to start with is this one thing. Without it, people will gloss over your web pages, eblasts, brochures social posts and ads without caring whether your message registers in their mind or not.
But you care!
You can put a ton of effort into writing your messages but you need the key supporting element to give them enough life to make people stop and interact – to engage or be called to act. Your brand needs this desperately and so does mine; bright, high quality, high-resolution visuals – Photographs and Videos!
Through the eyes is where most marketing magic happens. So it doesn’t help when you cut corners on photography and video production.
Impressive cameras on phones are a blessing and a curse to marketers. While you can sometimes capture a great image just by pointing and shooting, people become convinced that they’re great at DIY photography. As they scroll through nice photos they took on vacation or out on a walk, they think they can shoot pictures of their location, people and products for their website. The odds are very low that you’ll get anything truly marketable with an impromptu session using your phone.
Caught you looking!
Now you know this is true about pictures. When you “see what you’re looking for” what do you do? The right image tells a story in proper context within the viewer’s mind. When you are perusing anything, it’s the most striking and high-quality images that arrest your attention; make you stop, look and pique your interest.
One of the fundamental reasons that iconic brands are successful is they take their image seriously and they execute visuals with consistency. You’ll notice how leading companies that you can immediately recognize, whether local, national, B2B or consumer, all invest in creating great looking images and they produce them professionally across all media.
The Social Classroom
The quality photography phenomenon is demonstrated over and over in Social Media. I was recently trying to figure out why a self-promotion post on LinkedIn got so much more interaction than most of my other “interesting” stuff. Then it hit me. It was the beautiful picture. That is all. The link content wasn’t really all that impressive so I’m convinced that people just liked the photo, so they hit the like and share buttons. Social metrics always prove that pictures and videos draw!
About 5 years ago on Facebook, I shared a beautiful bed image with a giveaway promotion for a furniture store client. It went viral! The Facebook Page went from just over 200 Likes to over 20,000 Likes within 2 weeks. To this day, they enjoy a very large Facebook following originating from the impact of one high-quality photo!
If you must do this…
When you decide to go Do-It-Yourself with website and promotional photography, take the time on every snap to be happy with what you see on the screen. Shoot each subject at various angles and keep lighting bright (or focused) and above as well as behind you. Sometimes a good designer can work with non-professional photography as long as it has high resolution. Zooming and cropping can be beneficial here.
Do you want your website or print designer to wow you? Provide excellent photography and graphics or else let them help direct a professional photo shoot. The best way to distinguish your brand in website and marketing design is to start with high-quality visuals.
Remember that video adds another dimension and it’s just as important to keep video production value up to your audiences’ expectations. For more about implementing video in your marketing, click here.
If you don’t have a big photography budget and you still need a great website design, have no worries. There is a superior approach to website design that creates an excellent user experience even if your graphics and photo assets are limited. Read about this extremely cost-effective approach.
We’ll close with a sincere wish to you and everyone in this audience: Thank you for reading this post about photography. I hope your day started out pretty as a picture and ends in a photo finish!
