It’s important to use photos that best represent the voice and values of your brand to build trust with customers. This becomes even more essential to keep in mind as you create your digital marketing campaigns.
Images are the first thing that will catch your reader’s eye and can affect your sales and customers. The quality and relevance of your photographs could mean the difference between visitors staying on your post or navigating back to the search engine.
So, how do you find the best photographs for your digital marketing campaign? Keep reading to check out these top tips.
Quality Over Quantity
It’s better to use one high-quality image in your content than several low-quality marketing photos. Before using an old camera to snap random photos, think about what you want to achieve from your campaign. Regardless of your business, you want the photos you use to attract prospects and more business.
If you aren’t sure you can snap the right photos, then you may want to use quality stock photos. Stock photography sites can be a great resource as they provide numerous photos you can use for your campaign.
Avoid Shortcuts
It can be quite tempting just to select several best photographs and download them. While this is common practice, avoid it.
In most cases, copyrighted images have watermarks but many may not. The act of swiping images is considered stealing. This is one reason Google recently changed their systems─ making it more challenging to view and download certain photos.
Sometimes, you may infringe image copyrights unknowingly, especially when using royalty-free images. To prevent this risk, use original photos you’ve shot in-house or purchase stock photos.
Image Appeal
Before using photos, choose those that best fit your brand’s voice, mood, and style. Whether you have a simple or complex message, you first want your photo to appeal to your audience at first glance. Your images should be eye-catching to lure them in, so they can see your offers.
To cater to viewers’ immediate needs and desires, use marketing photos that represent and relate to their emotions. You want the concept to be more about identifiable concrete sentiments or emotions.
When it comes to selecting an appealing image, your primary focus should be on inspiring the right feeling. The people you intend to connect with are on the other side of your screen, and the fastest way to gain their trust and interest is through their hearts.
Different image styles can successfully convey emotion, but lifestyle photos (images of people) are considered the most-effective. It’s much easier for humans to identify emotions in other people and see themselves in the scenes displayed.
Getting photos that represent “happiness” or “confidence” often work well. They may work better sometimes than those that only make a literal connection with your audience like “beautiful landscape” or “money.”
Let Images Breathe
Many people are familiar with the power of white spaces and how important they are to design. Clean, decluttered images with the right negative spaces typically attract more engagement than “busy” images.
Leaving space around an image attracts focus and provides balance. This can help a viewer better comprehend its purpose. It may also help you become more involved when creating your story around the image.
White spaces are also great for social media. The spaces make it easier to consume social media content when scrolling fast. Generally speaking, use photos that have been shot with the rule of thirds for social media campaigns.
Pick Photos That Are Realistic and Natural
There are best photos for marketing and there are those that people have grown tired of—the unrealistic and unnatural. Ask yourself “would I take legal advice from a law firm that uses playful images to market their business?”
People hate images that depict unrealistic scenarios. Cheesy photos, when used for digital marketing, can make your potential customers roll their eyes and even disregard your content.
Get yourself pictures that show situations likely to occur in real life. If you’ve never seen it in real life, then you likely shouldn’t use it for your digital marketing campaign.
Be Unique
Originality is key to strong branding, and photos are no exception. Research the competition! See what other businesses in your niche are doing. Take note of their designs and create something different that stands out visually.
Optimize Your Image File Sizes
Apart from tweaking image dimensions, you also want to use the right-sized images for your marketing campaigns. There’s nothing more frustrating than a blog, social channel, or website that takes ages to load. Slow pages create a bad user experience and visitors are more likely to click away before it finishes loading.
Search engines, like Google, acknowledge that loading speed is vital for a better user experience. Sites that load faster are more likely to appear top in search results and thus get more traffic.
Also, you need to tweak your photos for mobile. Reducing the size of images, compressing, or switching photos from one format to another can help. For instance, Apple users can quickly convert HEIC to JPG. Remember, most users find JPG generally better for photographs.
Choose Color Strategically
Color is especially vital when you want people to take action. While how humans perceive different colors is dependent on their personal experience, most experts agree that color is important when portraying brand personality.
On a psychological level, different colors are perceived to bring out different connotations depending on how they are used. So, consider correlating the color of your photos with the emotion you expect to invoke.
Finding the Best Photographs Is a Top Digital Marketing Strategy
You now know that digital marketing photos go a long way in getting your content noticed. Also, GIFs and other visual images can help boost engagement with your audience when chosen strategically. Take a look at the above tips for selecting the best photographs for digital marketing campaigns that can be key to increasing conversions.
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