The importance of photography in digital marketing
Photography has been around for centuries, luckily it no longer requires a long winded and professional camera set up to snap a pic; thanks to smart phones which have become integral to our everyday lives.
But what has this got to do with digital marketing?
Imagery in digital marketing
The birth of digital marketing around 30 years ago has meant we are influenced online more than ever before. Move aside newspapers and leaflets, social media platforms such as Instagram, are becoming an increasingly effective way to raise your brand profile. Thus highlighting the importance of images and how they go hand in hand with digital marketing.
So this is where nailing your photography comes in. A precise, clear image will give a customer a quick delivery of what product you are selling. People don’t want to be bombarded with text after just landing on your page, remember you have only around 3 seconds to engage that first-time user.
This means give them a smack in the face. No not literally, but we want to grab the user’s attention. We want to show them the exact product they are interested in and how it can be used in everyday life, this is called visual context. Once we’ve caught the consumer’s eye, further detail then can be provided.
The facts on imagery in digital marketing
- Articles with relevant images average 94% more total views than articles without images.
- A press release with photos gets nearly 15% more online views than a text-only press release.
- 60% of consumers who use online search say they prefer to contact a business whose listing includes an image.
- Nearly 70% of e-commerce website shoppers say the product image is very important when making their purchase decision
See also: 5 mind blowing marketing statistics
With over 800 million monthly users and over 200 million daily users, not getting to grips with this growing platform could be detrimental to your company. If those numbers don’t do enough to tempt you, these will:
- E-Marketer estimates that Instagram will bring in $6.84 billion in global ad revenue in 2018
- 59% of Instagram users are under the age of 30
It’s safe to say it’s worth a shot.
How to utilise Instagram
Hashtags: With one or two google searches you can find the current trending hashtags in your field. Whether it be travel, fashion or food, add them to the end of a post and now whenever somebody searches that hashtag your image will pop up. It’s a bit like a title tag for your image.
Stories: Stories have become a new trend on Instagram after Snapchat’s popularity with them soared last year. A story is a 5 second clip – still image or video – that stays on your profile for 24 hours, and then it goes into your archive – which only you can see. You can add filters, stickers and emoji’s which you can hide hashtags behind.
Create good content: Of course, good content will ultimately make people engage with your brand each day by liking and commenting. So, snap something worth talking about.
To top it all off, Instagram is a free platform, so it would be silly not to really.
See also: Improve your Twitter following in 8 easy steps
What skills do I need?
Unfortunately, there is a lot more to photography than clicking a button. But by no means are we still cramping in a dark room, desperately trying to find whether our shot is in focus.
Here are 3 key aspects:
- Creative imagination – I know, a rather obvious one but still. A creative imagination is key to getting an eye-catching shot for your product. Use the idea of, if you were a customer visiting a website or a social media account, what would you be interested in. Think outside the box.
- Lighting is needed to showcase your product properly. Nobody wants to see a dark picture hiding certain features of your product, it distorts the colour and may lead to false advertisement and to be honest it just looks unprofessional.
- Editing has come a long way and becoming comfortable on editing suites is a must. Adobe Creative Cloud, Sony’s Final cut pro and even Apple all have an endless amount of tricks to enhance your images and videos.
How to kick-start your career
Travelling the world taking photos for ads is a dream job no doubt, and it’s not impossible.
Do you endlessly observe what time of day your picture gets the most engagement and who your target audience are? Do you thrive on getting that perfect shot and spend hours perfecting the edit? Well these are all fundamental skills of an all-rounder digital marketing professional. With the right courses in digital marketing you can expand this base into a promising career path.
With today’s saturated market in photography for digital marketing, employers are screaming out for these kinds of skills. Yet if you’re already digital media savvy then having another skill in your weaponry can only add to the reasons why they should hire you.
Still, you may just have experience of taking pictures of your cat, but everyone starts somewhere. Add this to your existing knowledge of digital marketing and it will massively help in forwarding your career. Who doesn’t want to be the know it all.
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