Improving your marketing results with photography

When finessing the marketing plan for the new year, many forget to factor in photography. This can be a costly error. Cherry Beesley, professional photographer at Simply C Photography, explains why no marketing plan (or budget) is complete without considering your photography requirements:

I love collaborating with businesses to create the images they need to meet their business objectives. Whether that be images for social media, websites, publicity shots, brochures or advertisements. For any photographer to give a business real value and deliver the images required, we need background information and a deeper understanding of the key messages, usage and overall goals. And that’s where a strong brief comes in.

So whether you’re a business owner looking after your marketing whilst running the business, or you have a dedicated full-time marketing team, here are some tips on how to effectively brief a photographer to ensure you get the images you need to meet your marketing and wider business objectives.

Explain the context and background info: Your chosen photographer may not be familiar with your brand. Take the time to provide an introduction to your company – and explain the project you have in mind and your objectives. Most photographers will do our own research but hearing about it from you provides valuable insight and emphasis into what you need from your photography.

Who are you reaching out to? Are you trying to inspire action from your core clients, or reach beyond them to a new audience? What’s the profile of your target audience? How old are they, where do they live, what should they feel and understand from the images? This will help your photographer to feed into the process and suggest shots or image treatments that will support our objectives.

Tell me exactly what you want to achieve: What is the message you want to share? What needs explaining? What do you want the recipient to do? Whether you want to show off your new store, or support your new sales drive, this kind of information can help your photographer to think about the story they can convey through your images.

When do you need delivery by and what’s the spec? If you’re using the images for an outdoor advertising campaign they will need to be very large high resolution files. For social media or web, much less so. For websites the dimensions of the images required will be different to those used for ads and brochures. Make sure you specify this in advance as it will affect the composition and editing of the images.

It’s always good to get portrait and landscape headshots for example to give full flexibility. Plus, early notification of deadlines will allow your chosen photographer to fit you into the their schedule, and ensure you are not just happy with the images, but you have them in plenty of time.

Planning the shoot: Look at your schedule and plan when you can get access to the required people, products and/or locations. Also, think about the time of day and even season that will work best for the shoot, so this can be factored into the schedule too.

Expert advice: Once you have an understanding of your requirements, don’t be afraid to pick up the phone, because photographers are generally very happy to talk through ideas and plans with clients. Plus, you can gain valuable insight from their input to shape and improve your plans, and ensure you get the best return on your investment in photography.

Need professional photography that puts your marketing efforts on the next level? Call Cherry Beesley on 07775851827 or visit http://www.simplycphotography.co.uk/