So, how’s your business looking? By that what we really mean is what does your business actually look like? What are people seeing when they look you up online; either via your website, your blog, or your social media platforms?
What image are you projecting?
What story are you telling?
How do you appear to potential clients?
Can they actually see you?
Do they get to meet your team?
Can they see what it is you do, how you do it, where you do it, and what products or services you offer?
If you own your own business or if you’re responsible for the online presence of a brand there are a lot of great statistics and lots of evidence suggesting that having unique photography to represent your business or brand is essential. It would seem that having a library of great images should be a focus of your advertising and marketing spend. And here’s why.
1. Should I stay or should I go?
Apparently, when people come across your website online, it takes them between 4 and 10 seconds to decide whether they’re going to stay or go. We don’t have an exact figure as research differs but what research into this does have in common is that you really don’t have long to grab a visitor’s attention. You need to hit them with what you have. And fast!
So with just a few seconds to grab a potential client’s attention, you’ve not got time to engage them with lots of fancy jargon and lots of carefully crafted copy. The web is cluttered and competition is tough. You need to capture the attention of your target audience and you need to do it quickly.
Hit them with a great logo, a strapline to sum up what it is you do,
and an image that packs an attention-grabbing punch
Okay, so the copy, the detail, the impressive jargon; yes, that is all needed. But only once your web visitor has made the decision to stick around.
‘SCREEN AND GLEAN’
Have you heard the term ‘screen and glean’? Well, it’s an actual, real thing. We live in an era of skimming. Web users are time-starved but info hungry. Potential customers call your website up on their device (usually a smartphone) and they very quickly give it the once over (glean). If they like it, they’ll stay to find out more. If they don’t, they’re outta there. Before you can shout “hey have a look at this”, they’ve back-clicked out and moved onto the next website. And let’s face it, that next website is very possibly your competition.
2. ‘A picture is worth a thousand words’
A much-overused phrase but you can see where we’re coming from here. You’ve got to look good or rather your business has got to look great when people come across it. That first impression really counts. A whole chunk of information can be conveyed with just one image. Photos are a great way to tell your business story. An image can show emotion, style, atmosphere, quality and information – all in one hit. So make that image count and put some thought into it. What is your brand personality? Who are you trying to attract? What are you trying to say?
3. The ‘trust’ factor
People are twice as likely to trust a business or a business owner if they can see a photograph of them online, according to a US survey*.
The survey found that 60% of consumers were more likely to consider using a business or contacting a business when a photograph or photographs to illustrate the business show up in local search results.
So showing no images inspires very little trust in a business. Don’t hide behind a logo, the Twitter egg, or the mysterious Grey Man of Linkedin.
4. About 10% of the photos ever taken have been taken in the last 12 months!**
That’s super crazy but when you think about it, Instagram has more than 75 million daily users and over 300 million people are using the platform every month.
There are a billion photos on Instagram
300 million photos are uploaded to Facebook every day
It’s estimated that mankind has taken 3.8 trillion photos.
This is what 3.8 trillion looks like…
3,800,000,000,000
If a picture is worth a thousand words, that’s 3,800,000,000,000,000 words!
So, what do all these numbers mean for your business?
What they mean is that your audience, your website visitors, your potential customers LOVE photographs.
Not only do people LOVE photographs, but they are also now much more VISUALLY SOPHISTICATED. They like photography and they expect to see it. What’s more, they know a good photograph when they see one. On the flip, they know a bad photo too.
So, photographs really do matter when it comes to your business. They are fast to create, easy to consume content & they will make you and your business stand out from the crowd.
But one word of caution…not all of the 3.8 trillion photos we’ve created have been created equally. Just have a search, you’ll soon find out what we mean!