Marketing encompasses a wide swath of territory. Businesses have been studying it and trying to improve it ever since the first farmer tried to claim his fruits and vegetables were better than the ones his neighbor had across the road. The technology has changed dramatically since then but the basic idea – my stuff is better than his stuff – hasn’t changed one iota.
The technology has changed though and you need to keep up if you don’t want to get run over. If you don’t have a company website or if you’re not using social media to market your products or company, you need to. Forbes has published studies which confirm that 87% of potential customers trust a company more if they have a social media presence than if they don’t. Moreover, those customers are 77% more likely to buy from the company if the founder uses social media themselves.
However, you don’t need flash-in-the-pan followers on social media. News channels have long known that it’s better to gain social media followers slowly who will stay with you than to gain them overnight and lose them again just as quickly. Solid followers translate into solid sales.
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Getting Your Message Across Without Words
Img source: jaheadshots.com
Visual content is king online. For example, look at the cover art on these books of historical fiction. Without reading a single word of them you can tell what time period a particular book is set in. You can get a sense of whether or not it’s a romance, an adventure on the high seas, or complex “whodunnit.”
You can see all of those things and many more in a split second, just from looking at the cover, before you pick it or look through it. Furthermore, it’s all but certain the authors didn’t create the cover art themselves. Most writers can’t draw. Instead, they have to hire someone to do it for them. Artists will charge the writers between $300-$700 for good cover art, maybe more.
The visual content you use online, on your website and your social media accounts is no different. You’ll have to hire someone to do it for you.
Headshots Capture People’s Attention
Business cards are a powerful case in point. Business cards have always been a powerful marketing tool. When the printing process became cheap enough, businesses started adding pictures – headshots – to their cards and the results were phenomenal. People are visually oriented and a human face on a card will attract their attention faster and more certainly than any amount of text or fancy fonts. It will also hold their attention for longer than that same card would without a picture.
You can use the same dynamic on your website and social media accounts. Put professionally done pictures of you and your staff online and people will be drawn to your company even if they don’t know why.
Professionals Are Worth What You Pay Them
Img source: jaheadshots.com
Writers are willing to pay professional cover artists to create an engaging and attractive cover for their book in order to increase sales. You should be willing to pay professional photographers for the same reason. When you visit JA Headshots you’ll see example after example of what a professional headshot can, and should, look like.
They have completely outfitted studios with high-end cameras and professional lighting, touch-ups, and backgrounds. The difference between what they deliver, and a photo snapped with your smartphone is instantly obvious to anyone who sees them.
Help The Photographer
You can’t do the photographer’s job but you should be willing to help them. There are several things you can do to ensure the pictures you get back from them are the absolute ones possible, pictures that improve your online marketing.
● Sleep
Puffy eyes and sagging cheeks from too little sleep are hard to hide from the camera lens. Professional photographers can do a lot with lighting and angles, posing you this way and that, but they can’t cover everything.
Make sure you get at least eight hours sleep the night before your studio session with the photographer.
Img source: vreeland.com
● Posture
Good posture projects confidence, ability, and enthusiasm. When you stand up straight you’re telling people you’re a leader who can be trusted, a company that is reliable. Stand up straight and meet the camera’s gaze head-on.
● Updates
Don’t let your headshots age more than a year or two before getting new ones. The world is changing all the time and people expect to see new material on your social media accounts on a regular basis. Give them what they want and they’ll give you what you want – more sales.
When you help the photographer, you’ll get amazing headshots and improve your marketing.
