I recently finished a few photo shoots, working with some incredible people and their growing brands. These experiences inspired me to reflect on how I’m applying the portfolios created to help better market their businesses.
Human psychology has proven that our relationship with what visually stimulates us can alter our realities and influence us to make life-changing decisions.
The Oxford Journal touched on this subject briefly when addressing how “Our experience is primarily one of living in a ‘real’ world and having ‘real’ experiences of it and of ourselves within it” in their 2022 article, Editing reality in the brain.
As we share our story, mission, and offerings through brand photography (and videography), we are encouraging our audience to think about how they can better their lives and bring themselves more happiness through the connection and relatability offered in those moments.
We challenge our audiences to answer questions like, “How are you spending your time?,” “Do you want to live a healthier life?,” and “Are you ready to make a positive change?”
By presenting different types of exciting, informative, and authentic content to an audience, a business can effectively share its message, story and passion, influencing its audience to join in too!
I’ve shared five ways brand photography can help market your business below:
1. Create An Experience For Your Audience
Ask yourself, how do you experience your brand? Do you feel inspired, uplifted, or motivated by the visual aspects of how you’re sharing your business and its story/mission?
Does your content generate the same feeling and experience that your product/service would offer?
To authentically develop a connection with your audience, brand photography will help to create the experience of what your product/service would offer, prior to the decision one would make to invest in your business.
When planning a photo shoot for your brand, plan for a series of images that would offer your audience a ‘taste’ of the benefits, life changes, and emotional fulfillment they would receive through the experience of your brand.
In other words, what would life look like, feel like, and essentially be like, if someone were to join your mission, start using your product, or after having applied your service?
2. Encourage Transformation + Growth
We’re always working to be better, healthier, happier, freer, smarter, and the list goes on …
Most of us know how much easier life can get once we start putting the effort into ourselves to change. It’s tough though, because it’s not always made clear how to better ourselves, and as a result, our lives overall.
That’s why when we see other people (like in branded imagery) successfully evolving and becoming happier, healthier versions of themselves, we want access to the same resources they might be using to get themselves there.
When your audience views content that shows the potential for them to receive, experience, or obtain self-evolution and growth, the desire is created to get to know your brand and consider what you’re offering.
Show your audience their own potential.
3. Tell + Share Your Story
Images and content that tell your story also help your audience understand your ‘Reason Why.’
Why did you start your business?
Why did you create your brand?
What were and are your bigger-picture intentions?
Generating a branded portfolio of images and content that answers these key questions will reveal a relatable purpose that can be easily understood and shared with others.
Is your story translating through your content?
4. Showcase Realtime Benefits
This one may be obvious, but you would be surprised how many brands/businesses only list out the benefits of their product or service without actually showing them off.
Brand photography is extremely useful in assisting your businesses with illustrating just how your offerings will impact the lives of your audience.
That’s why a majority of professionals utilize partnerships with ‘influencers’ for this exact reason, proving the results of real-time benefits showcased by real people.
Actions speak louder than words.
5. Inspire Change in Environment/Movement
As humans, we enjoy movement (yes, even those becoming a part of their couch right now). We thrive in constantly changing our environment. It can look like redecorating, traveling, going outside, or even relocating where we call home.
We like to move. We like to see and experience a variety of environments.
While not every brand may inspire this kind of motion, the ones that do benefit from showing their audience the envied change and newness.
Even if you don’t own a travel company revealing the awe of grand destinations in their content, you can still inspire your audience in this way by showcasing images of your product/service taken in a variety of appealing locations.
“We see our desire in an image. We start to embody the same emotion as what having our desire would feel like. We start to consider the effect it would have on our life if we took the action being asked of us by the brand. Then we make the choice to invest.
Would this make my life better? Would this make me better? How we answer these questions is directly influenced by the brand ways we connect to it as an audience.
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