Is it still OK to talk about the new year? Are you keeping your great 2018 vision alive? Or, are you still to action your plans? So what can you do to get back on track?
First! Revisit your business or marketing plan, ensuring it’ll makes sense when you present it to people. Next! Sweat over those web pages; discussing not just the features, but explaining the benefits of your products and services. Craft them with precision so they naturally guide your prospects to the ultimate conclusion; part with their money, popping it into your bank account. Now you’re ready, right?
Hold on a sec though! You’ve left out an important part – getting a set of images that support your refined business direction. That’s not uncommon. Oftentimes, images get left to the last because businesses use them to reinforce the text story they’ve developed. Without the text, many business owners find it difficult to convey their story. Their text is often a ‘brain-dump’ of how they logically conceive their service offering. Images supporting text is fine – but it’s better to have text supporting images because humans are hard-wired to react to visual stimuli above all senses, save for pain. In fact, more than 25% of the human brain is geared to handle visual input from the mark I eyeball.
With today’s attention span for web sites decreasing – Microsoft’s 2015 research puts it at a mere 6 to 8 seconds, or shorter than a goldfish’s – visual media is the way to capture attention quickly, giving a ‘feeling’ of what you do and so working on the viewer’s emotional connection to you and your brand. How important is that emotional connection? Seth Godin the guru of online marketing has stated: “People do not buy goods & services. They buy relations, stories, and magic.” Building your story with images then, is the key to getting a ‘yes’ on buying decisions – with text performing the role of logical reinforcement of that decision. In the research paper “A Tale of the Two Chickens”, which looks at the decision-making process of participants based on images and text, it concluded that, generally, people deceive themselves into thinking that their decisions are logical but actually are often emotionally driven. Essentially, we rationalise our purchasing decisions AFTER we have emotionally made our choice of what to buy.
So how can you get your images to support your 2018 plans and increase your profits? If your operations are about service and relationships with customers, then get photographs of your customer facing people onto your website. Get them smiling at the camera; make them look approachable, knowledgeable and professional. When prospects look at your website they will decide that these are people they could work with and hopefully start a relationship.
You can show some of the work you do too. A session I organised last year for a garage gave the owners images of their staff carrying out MoTs, fixing brakes and carrying out other car maintenance. Along with images of socket sets and tyre fitting equipment, there were enough images for this Dartford based business to have unique imagery for special offers on car services, tyre fitting, air conditioning top-ups and much more. Along with profile shots of their staff, the company has a library of images that will last for the foreseeable future. The emotional pull for customers is they see the people from the company’s website or social media pages working in the business – real people carrying out high quality work, at a local business. It’s a similar story for a client that is a Dartford based nursery. Pictures of its resources, space and little children at play helps parents picture their children in that setting.
If your web pages or social media profiles could use a set of images, unique to your operations and people, then call me up or
email me to see how Bresser Photography can help build your image library and along with it, your profits.
