Professional images show a level of quality and detail you just can’t get with your old flip phone camera. Websites in particular benefit from high-quality, professional images, especially since today’s consumer is more visually oriented. People are naturally drawn in by visuals such as photos and graphics. Prospects want to be able to imagine themselves using the things they’re interested in buying, so naturally, images depicting the use or application of a product or service is instrumental in pushing them towards making the purchase.
Product images that demonstrate scale, multiple perspectives, colors, and quality can easily persuade would-be buyers to click the ‘add to shopping cart’ button.
Why?
Because images are actionable. They illustrate function and benefits, and often without many accompanying words. In marketing, this may take the form of an infographic or case study, or a screenshot of a website a marketing agency created. These things demonstrate the scope and potential of the firm’s work to prospective clients, giving them the mental image of how their own website or infographic might turn out.
The emotional impact of professional images in sales and marketing
Take ecommerce stores, for example. If you went to an online store and checked out their products only to find images that were stretched, blurry, and clearly outdated, wouldn’t that make you skeptical or distrusting of the business?
And if they mentioned a particular product coming in a range of colors and designs but only displayed a single image, wouldn’t that annoy you?
Ultimately, images reassure customers about what they will be getting; but they also reassure them that they’re doing business with a reputable company. If ‘proof of the pudding is in the eating’ then prospects require quality, actionable images to understand the benefits of making a particular purchase.
Effective marketing appeals to a lead’s emotions, rather than their sense of reason. Your choice of image composition or effects can be used to trigger certain emotions, such as motivation, sympathy, happiness, or regret.
Colors also contribute to the mood of an image, and all of those variables together make for a strong buying influencer.
When a prospective customer connects with an image of your product or service, you’ve brought them deeper into the sales funnel. By that point, you’ve made them emotionally invested in the idea of owning or subscribing to what you’re selling.
Images and the guided customer tour through the sales funnel
Buyers need the guided tour, and quality (professionally done) images take prospects by the hand and provide that convenience.
The old saying goes, “show, don’t tell” and that’s exactly what high-quality graphics and images will do: they will show the buyer why they need to make that purchase in a way words can’t.
If you have professional images, they will:
- Feature powerful composition and adequate lighting (highlights and shadows).
- Captivate with interesting subject matter or tell a story.
- Be imaginatively done, possibly capturing something never seen before or thought of.
- Create a 360-degree view of a product or service to answer a lead’s questions.
Mediocre images tend to signal that a site is outdated, cheap, or worse, untrustworthy. People easily equate websites with no images, or low-quality images, with shady businesses—stores too risky to do business with.
What high-quality images say about your company
Good, quality images have a lot to say about the company that uses them. Most important: you’re a professional that cares about the image of your company. To your potential buyer, you know what you’re doing. You’re someone they can trust and do business with.
Closing the sale with images
In marketing, the simplest promotion is also the most basic function of an image: to show the product. By providing an image, you’re making it easy for the customer to know what you’re selling. There are many ways your professional images can be used to entice buyers to make the purchase—ways of using imagery to close each sale.
Tell a story
Photos and graphics can both be used to tell a story. Capturing a buyer’s interest or emotions with imagery that tells a story is a surefire way to gain their attention, and can make the purchase much easier once they can picture themselves using or wearing your product.
Illustrating action
Source: Bot Roda, Illustrator
Images can also be used to convey action, which can be similar to showing contextual use. Illustrating how something can be used or showing it in action, such as a car being driven down a highway or a baseball bat being used to hit a homerun, makes it clear what a product’s function is. It also provides a very basic ‘how to’ for potential buyers.
Aligning products with brand
A professional can edit images to properly reflect the company they’re being used for. Even the style of an image might be used to highlight their values to better speak to their ideal customers.
It’s important to understand the power of professionally taken/edited images. They can mean the difference between convincing a customer to make the purchase and losing their interest and business altogether. You should be doing everything in your power to make the decision process easy for your buyers. Giving them the information to make an informed buying decision with only an image means your copy has to do less work.
As more people become visually oriented, professional images really make a difference. Online businesses and ecommerce stores that want to sell a service or product can’t afford to miss out on sales because of image quality (or a lack of images entirely). They give your products and site a unique presence to help them stand out better.
The future of visual marketing
With the advent and popularity of smartphones, and the diverse supply of digital cameras on the market, almost anyone can play photographer. Expectations have become lax as individuals become increasingly receptive of more spontaneous, instant photos. Image editing software apps and free-to-use services provide the means for amateurs to create brilliantly simplistic images that intrigue and inspire.
We are still very much visually inclined as consumers; however, the standards by which we judge those images will continue to change as technology and software enters the mainstream.
All successful marketing campaigns need visuals that produce results, and our agency knows how to implement professional images into an integrative marketing strategy. Contact EZMarketing to embrace the story your images could be sharing with leads.
