Marketing Tip: Use real photography

Whether on your corporate brochure, promotional flyers or on your annual reports, the imagery you use is vitally important. It’s one of the first things a user will see when picking up a brochure often long before you read any text.

It stimulates trust in your company. It attracts potential customers. And it showcases your goods or services in a positive way.

But when choosing imagery to use, many businesses take the lazy route. That of stock imagery…

The advantages of using stock images

There are some advantages to stock imagery, of course. It’s cheaper than a photoshoot for one. You can download an image from a stock library such as Shutterstock or Adobe Stock within seconds. There are even plenty of free websites supplying stock images, such as Unsplash, Pexels and Pixabay.

And stock images are ideal for showing how an actual image will look on a page, or as part of a mockup.

But…

There are also a huge number of disadvantages of using stock photography.

The disadvantages of using stock photography

Number one of which is… A stock image is not representative of you or your business. It doesn’t show your people, your office or maybe even scenery from your country. This means it will not engender any of the trust you’re looking to build between yourself and your customer. There won’t be that emotional connection.

What you’ll get instead is a cliched image, which has probably been seen on hundreds of other websites and printed marketing materials a million times before. Worse, your competitor may have used the same image in their own marketing.

Of course, if you’re business involves selling products, real photography is a must to make you stand out from every other company using the same catalogue images.

Why use real photography in print marketing?

If you think consumers won’t recognise a stock photograph, then think again. We’ve become immune to the effects of posed for images. The cheesy grins fool us no more.

Instead, we look for realistic photography from our businesses. For images of them or their products in action. So, when creating printed or online marketing materials it pays to invest in professional photography. Employ the services of a professional photographer to get ‘real-life’ images you can use everywhere.

Stand out from your competitors and represent your brand more accurately with lifestyle shots.

Another advantage, of course, is that you own all the copyright to the images. You can manipulate them how you want, use them in whichever way you want, and your competitors won’t be able to.

While the competition is promoting an obviously fake version of their company, you can be happy that you’re showing a side of yours that is real.

So, make your designer’s job easier and invest in some great photography. It could make all the difference.

Kall Kwik St James’s provide printing services to businesses in London

If you’ve hired a professional photographer to capture real-life shots and need help using them in your marketing communications, Kall Kwik St James’s can help. Whether you need help with graphic design or getting the most from your printing our team of experts can help. From high-quality leaflets and brochures to large format banners we’ll help you to be seen. To see how we can help, give us a call on (020) 7930 1976 or fill in our contact form.