Whether you’re a new business starting out from scratch, or an established company looking to raise your profile, creating brand awareness will be a key part of your marketing strategy. Not only do more people become mindful of your business when you employ efforts to raise brand awareness, but when your target customer is ready to buy, your brand will be the first to come to mind. Here we’re taking a closer look at how commercial photography can be used to give your business a boost to the next level …
What is commercial photography?
Put simply, commercial photography involves capturing images for commercial use. These images can be featured in adverts, brochures, leaflets, merchandising and menus, to name just a few of their uses. A commercial photographer has the skills to capture all that’s unique about your brand, in order to promote or sell a product or service. They create images that inspire emotions and thoughts, visually supporting text. It is all about creating a rich reserve of cohesive images that give your visual identity consistency and help demonstrate your business’ core values.
Clear visual representation
We’ve all heard the saying ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’, but in fact, when you consider the science behind visual communication, it seems that a picture could be worth a staggering 60,000 words. We humans are wired to process visual information better and faster than we process text, and we’re much more likely to remember content with images compared to that with just words. Therefore, it goes without saying that a set of engaging, high quality images is vital to help attract and absorb potential customers. Commercial photography gives your brand the visuals it needs to stick in the minds of consumers and really make an impact, thus raising brand awareness.
Stand out from the crowd
Commercial photography is an excellent way to get your brand to stand out from the competition, which is essential if your business is in a particularly crowded marketplace. Using stock photographs, which often lack originality or emotion, might mean you struggle to humanise your brand and build a long-lasting connection with your audience. The key is to use unique and original photographs that will resonate with your target market and encourage customer engagement. This consequently helps raise awareness of your business and what you can offer, differentiating your brand from competitors. Many photographers are happy to take the initiative and set the creative direction of the project, offering plenty of unique and imaginative ideas to help enhance your profile.
Plymouth College
Our commercial photography project for Plymouth College’s swimming programme demonstrates how imaginative and unique images can help a brand stand out from the crowd. We produced a series of underwater shots, which bring a sense of fun and excitement, helping the audience to connect with the photos and imagine themselves enjoying the water. These commercial shots are a powerful tool that help inspire emotions, and, when used across different marketing platforms, these memorable images help to differentiate the College’s swimming offering from that of its competitors, thus raising brand awareness.
Brand continuity
Another way in which commercial photography can help to raise brand awareness is through providing brand continuity. A set of professional photographs produced in a uniform style with consistent colours really helps a business reinforce its image. These photos can be used across various platforms, on all printed and online materials, tying these different communication channels together and providing a consistent message to customers. In turn, this ensures your business is visible in your industry, and promotes a reliable, professional image of your company. This cohesive branding is particularly important for chain businesses operating across numerous locations.
Ikea
We can look at IKEA, the world’s largest furniture retailer, as an example of a business whose commercial photography helps to instil a sense of consistency and cohesion. Just a quick look at their website and their Instagram page, and it is clear they are using commercial photos as a powerful marketing tool. The company’s Scandi influences are clearly evident across their image library, presenting a cohesive image of IKEA as a happy, relaxed, contemporary company. Their lifestyle images convey modern, simple, comfy-looking rooms that the consumer can easily imagine themselves in. This theme continues in their album of commercial headshots, which shows their spokespeople in relaxed, informal poses. The consistent style of the photos, whether the content is a product or a person, helps reinforce IKEA’s core values and continually enhance brand awareness.
Building trust and credibility
Good commercial photography is a useful tool for developing a credible reputation and building trust with your audience. Working with a commercial photographer demonstrates your commitment to a professional appearance and helps communicate the value of your products or services to your target customers. Furthermore, by investing in a series of professional commercial photographs for your website, advertising or sales literature, you are portraying your business as a trustworthy outfit which can be relied upon to provide an efficient service.
Firstly, this builds awareness of your brand within the marketplace and enhance your corporate image. And secondly, since people buy from brands they trust, commercial photography can also help increase sales by converting potential buyers into returning customers.
On the other hand, poor quality, amateur imagery can have the reverse effect on a company’s reputation, thus damaging your audience’s perception of you and the products or services you provide.
Miller and Carter
Let’s look at the Miller and Carter Restaurant Group, who we were recently commissioned by to create a series of PR images for their new restaurant in Exeter. We produced a series of commercial images suitable for both print and social content. They portray the new eatery as a respected, dependable establishment where excellent levels of service can be expected. Potential diners will be exposed to these images through various marketing channels and will subconsciously develop an awareness of Miller and Carter as a top eatery.
We hope this has highlighted the benefits that commercial photography can bring in terms of raising brand awareness. It is a powerful tool that can help represent your business in a clear, imaginative, consistent and professional manner – all the things that potential customers are looking for. To find out more about the photography services we offer, take a look on our website here. And if you’ve got any questions about how photography can help your business, feel free to contact us – we’d love to share our creative vision and passion for photography with you.