If you don’t already have high resolution photos of your recent work, team, and equipment; we recommend you carve out $500-$1,000 for the year to get 50-100 professional photos taken.
Taking thorough and high-quality documentation of your work through professional photography and maybe even video will always work to your advantage in marketing, sales, and recruitment.
This is because consumers want to SEE plenty of evidence that you deliver quality service before they’re willing to trust your company to provide the solution to their needs.
And prospective talent wants to SEE plenty of evidence that they will have a favorable experience working at your company.
Here are several ways your business can leverage photos to build trust among potential clients and talent.
Website
Your website often makes the biggest impression on potential customers and talent, so it should always host recent photos depicting your work and your team.
These photos can be used on several different pages on your website including your home page, portfolio pages, service pages, your about page, and much more. When in doubt, you should sprinkle an ORIGINAL photo or two on every page on your website.
We emphasize original photos for a couple reasons:
People can spot stock photos a mile away, and it’s becoming a turn-off because it shows a lack of authenticity during this era where people crave authenticity.
Search engines like Google and Bing can also spot stock photos as well as photos lifted from other companies, and will penalize sites for using them. That’s right, using unoriginal photos on your website can damage your SEO.
Speaking of Google, that’s another place where you can add photos.
Google Business Listing
If you use original photos on your website and properly label them, your photos will automatically show up in the Google Images search results for relevant search terms.
This can be beneficial, especially when potential customers or employees Google search your business.
In addition to that freebie, you can add photos to your Google Business Listing. This is the tile, showing your company’s contact information and reviews, that appears when people search your company.
By adding photos of your work, team, and facility to your Google Business Listing, you can provide people with a fuller view of your company and services – which helps build trust among potential customers or talent.
Another way to build trust with potential customers is through showing them case studies that include photos of your work!
Case Studies
If your company provides commercial, B2B, or high-ticket residential services, then you need to be armed with case studies.
Case studies are documents (print or digital) that provide a deeper look into how you addressed a client’s problem with your service as a solution. They are often used as both marketing and sales materials.
The process of highlighting the problem and solution through the lens of your services is often done anecdotally in sales, but a written case study takes it a step further by describing in greater detail the client, their issue, and the process by which your company solved it.
Photos add a great layer of context, evidence, and texture to a case study, especially if your team was able to document the “before and after” and everything in between.
On your company’s next big job or two, spend a few dollars to have a photographer document the entire process from start to finish, so you can write a case study about it.
Email Marketing
The type of email marketing campaigns your company implements will depend on the type of business you’re in, but your campaigns will always benefit from original photos.
For example, a floor covering installation might use before and after photos of their recent work in an email campaign designed to nurture leads into wins.
Or, a residential turf maintenance company might use before and after photos of multi-step weed control treatments in an email marketing campaign designed to upsell clients on their spray services.
Print Collateral
Just like email marketing, all types of print marketing collateral (be it postcards, brochures, door hangers, etc.) can benefit from original photos of your company’s work.
For example: A residential exterior painting company who wants to increase market share in the neighborhood of one of their most profitable customers might run a postcard campaign with a photo of that customer’s house on the postcards.
Imagine how many people would double-take at the advertisement when they see that “the Stevenson’s” house is on the postcard.
Online Ads
Ads on social media or search engines can be used to get potential customers and to recruit talent.
Just like the other forms of advertisement (email and print), online ads can benefit from having original photos of your work and team.
Before and after photos can be a great way to spark interest and build trust among potential customers, and photos of your team or facility can be used to generate early buy-in from a potential hire.
We’d like to reiterate – today’s consumer can sniff out a stock photo from a mile away, so try not to use them in what will often be your first impression with a potential customer or employee.
Social Media
Though social media is not known for generating high returns, it is still good practice to keep it updated with an occasional post in case a potential customer or employee searches your company’s accounts.
The social media posts should share a mix of the photos that should be on your website – photos of your recent work as well as photos of your team and facility.
Due to the informal nature of social media, your company can use photos taken from a smartphone in posts, especially if they’re photos of your team at your facility or in the field.