Photography: A Digital Marketing Strategy

More often than not, photography has been a long time favorite hobby for most of us. And it has been one of the most trending interests globally. With photography, you can do whatever you want within that scope of clicking your camera and taking photos out of it. And in digital marketing, this is one of the most widely known marketing strategies because it is powerful and it creates impact.

Let us run through the ways in which photography can help boost marketing and make everything just so easy.

Make sure you have well thought of themes.  This will create interest to your readers and online visitors and perhaps will also create buzz around your website. Themes should have similar context based on your product, your organization and what your advocacies to have consistency in your posts.

Use social media platforms such as Pinterest, Instagram or Tumblr. With the help of social media, your photos can go to greater heights because of the fast and viral features these platforms can do. Your photos can go viral, it also creates a share-to-many rule and all the credit goes out directly to you! Isn’t that amazing?

The Pinterest site with the tags 'house'

Let’s take for example Pinterest. This social media will allow your viewers to see photos they like, search them and pin them on their dashboards for everyone to see! The sharing feat will not only limit you to these sites, but also to networks including Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and many more. All you have to do is link your accounts and voila! You can even have an access to these social media platforms via your smartphones as mobile apps.

Display your products with in real life situations. Go beyond the usual basic product shoots that you do for your catalogs. Think of ways on how you can contextualize and apply your products in real life. Make viewers want them when they see them. Show off your products in a not so traditional way to make it more interesting and visually appealing.

Share your organization’s story. Photographs are powerful and when you use these to give prospects, customers and the public will have a sense of your firm’s history and physical location. You can also showcase photographs with your founder, how you started and what are the milestones the company have been into. Set a timeline for this to create a memory lane that your customers can see.

A view of Starbucks' Instagram account

Branding enhancement. For many companies, this means going beyond your traditional branding guidelines. This means rethinking of how you are going to appear in photographs and think about the backgrounds you will have. Also, you may include your employees, as they are one of the important factors, which made your company to a success. By this, it goes to show that you are thinking about your employees’ welfare and have a sense of care towards them.
Behind the scenes are also good. Photographs show who’s behind your brand and your organization. Showing a human face that will stand up as a representative is important. Either it be a senior executive, or a customer-facing employee, it is significant that your customers and the public will know and see this through your photographs.

Educating your viewers how to use your products. And by this, it means you can teach your customers on how to use your products in lieu of videos or as a supplement to other instructions. You can take photos of someone in the company demonstrating on how your products should go about. Sometimes, customers are also seen in the scene. Think beauty products or cooking, where customers can see the interim process.

Use your photos to show that you are participating. Of course, aside from your products, your customers and the public would also want to know if you are participating in some social awareness agenda. Or if you are an organization who care about such environmental and civic advocacies. Or if you are inclined to such issues as current events and news are concerned. The public wants to know how you would represent yourself to the public and photos are one of the fastest ways to show that image they want to see.

Invite customers to share product and brand related photos. This would not be effective if there is no interaction within your customers. You can ask your customers to post photos about your products being used and if they have been satisfied about them. In this way, these photos will indirectly promote you and your company through your customer’s satisfactions.

Here is a promotional video from IKEA PS 2014  about their Instagram Website

We, as humans, are visual beings, which means we get attracted to images and how they give an impact to us through photographs. As marketers, you have to ensure that your images (and your photography) are an integral part of your content offering. Photos help a lot to achieve your marketing objectives and extend readers’ engagement with your content.