Without pictures, who can see your business?

Many’s the time I’ve “expressed an opinion” (ok, I moaned a bit) that too many businesses hide behind stock imagery. It’s on their website, their brochures, in fact everything their clients and prospective clients see.

Of course they don’t mean to hide, per se, they just don’t seem to twig that if their entire visual façade is made of anonymous pictures of anonymous people, then no one can truly “see” their business. Perhaps worse are the pictures of anonymous trees, fields, waterfalls and all the other business clichés. Businesses are made of people working for that business, not models working for a studio.

However, and this is a rare treat so make the most of it, I’m not going to bang on yet again about the perils of stock imagery. If you haven’t worked out what the associated problems are by now, perhaps business isn’t your forte and you should be looking to get a desk job somewhere that keeps you in coffee and donuts and doesn’t tax your brain too severely.

Real person in real office SHOCK!

What I do want to reinforce today though is that if you are running a business, or thinking of setting one up, your business plan will have to include a certain marketing budget, otherwise no one will know your business exists. And if you’ve managed to set aside a marketing budget, you should include a certain budget for imagery within that. Don’t panic though. As I’ve said in previous posts, the joy of images is that if you commission them and set yourself up with a sensible deal, you can use the same images for web, print, e-newsletter and all the rest without having to pay a separate fee each time. Of course you need to make sure you know what you want to use the pictures for before you start, and agree it with the photographer, but there’s no reason for this to be a complicated or scary process. If it’s looking that way, maybe you should contact me and I’ll explain how my simple pricing structure works (see how I slipped that little sales plug in so subtly?)

It does seem quite common though for businesses to say they haven’t a budget for photography, but if they’re marketing themselves then they need images of one sort or another.

For the vast majority of businesses, imagery isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity. But unlike most business necessities, it shouldn’t (if done properly) be a cost to the business. Just last week I was in conversation with a client who told me how impressed his prospective clients were that the people they saw in the sales presentations photos (taken by Yours Truly) were the same people they met on the office tour. This client believes its people are a major part of what sets them apart from their competitors, and by showing them off they win huge contracts.

So when looking at your budget for photography, perhaps it would be easier to calculate a budget for failure for not setting aside a sensible budget for corporate imagery. How much can your company afford to lose by skimping on the one thing everyone sees before they even decide to buy from you?

Time to look at your business plan again…