What is personal branding?
Any WHY should you be utilising it in your marketing strategy?
Birmingham Personal Branding Photographer
As we move through the 21st Century, there has been somewhat of a paradigm shift in consumer behaviour and indeed how effective marketing is constructed!
From the days of glitz and glamour, and indeed embracing rather nefarious advertising and marketing tactics, consumers have become very good at seeing through the bullshit, and wanting to see the truth. Add to this a lack of personal connection with online transactions and a truly global market, creating a way to authentically and openly connect to your perfect customers has never been more important.
There are so many interesting ways to embrace technology to help with communicating with your audience, from podcasts to live video, written copy to animation, but it’s important to remember that each and every time a customer ‘touches’ the brand, it leaves an impression…so an iPhone photo really will not cut it!
Whilst not every business or indeed transaction is centred around the person behind the business, you can rest well assured that if your business is service-related, if YOU are the business, how your audience sees you, and whether they can connect with you makes a huge difference to business success.
Business headshot photographs are of course incredibly important to give that initial connection for a client, from the meet the team page giving ownership to the business, to standing out and being ‘on-brand’ in a businesses LinkedIn profiles. People do business with people – and showing quality images of your team, not only allows a customer to connect but shows the value you place in the body behind your business.
Whilst business headshots are vital for marketing and online presentation – if your business is service-based or indeed you need to give your customers and opportunity to connect to YOU and the business, Personal Branding is something to consider!
What is personal branding photography?
Whilst quality headshot photography is great, it’s when you need to create images that have more depth, meaning and indeed a wider usage that personal branding comes to the forefront.
As a personal branding photographer I have two primary aims from each shoot:
- Create images that reflect the person accurately and authentically – matching the business ethos, colours and style
- Create a body of images that can be used by that person for six to twelve months without feeling like they’re repeating their images.
The main purpose of a good personal brand shoot is simple – to empower ownership of your presentation, and enable your customers to truly connect with you.
What goes into a Personal Branding Photography session?
As a photographer, the start of a personal branding session is all about discovery.
I need to know you, know what you do and why understand how you are with your customers and discover the type of people you need to communicate with.
Some discussions are straightforward; if you already have a focussed marketing strategy and understand who your target customer is, we can build the shoot to suit this, however, this is often not the case.
That’s where we dive deeper into things, and the branding session is much more of a marketing plan and guidance than merely creating portraits.
From colours to clothes, to locations, to creating scenes to show you “in action” and of course bringing out your genuine and authentic character is all part of the process, and it’s often creating multiple ‘looks’ to build a deeper portfolio of images you can use in a targetted way over the coming months.
Why I love Personal Branding Photography!
OMG – I needed some photos for my social media and website – to be honest I kept putting it off, although I like being centre of attention – having a photo taken – Scary !!!
Stuart was so lovely and professional, he really got to understand me, my personality, my business and my clients The whole experience was amazing, Stuart found the perfect location and even advised in clothing and colours too I have now got a bank of images I can use anywhere.
Professional, individual and I look really good too !!!
In this digital world we live in people can do business with people they have never met, so the more you can make your media personable to you the better. As we all know people buy from people 100% recommendation You will be amazed at his talent and experience too Thank you Stuart
This is now the third different photographer that I have used for Minerva Growth.
Oh My God, talk about saving the best till last!
Blown away with the results of what was the quickest and easiest photo shot ever!
I was speechless when I received the images, which is very rare and I now have a huge bank of images that I will be able to use for many different uses over the coming months.
The quality of each image is exceptional and it’s hard to pick a favourite.
The Power of Personal Branding Photographs
As highlighted by Sue Green of RixGreen above – “in this digital world we live in people can do business with people they have never met, so the more you can make your media personable to you the better”!
So true – personal branding photographs connect you to your audience. Show who you are, and break the ice!
Providing you with a body of images, you can vary your presentation and show the investment you have made into your company imagery – and also keep catching your viewers attention by showing up with something new – each time being authentic and genuine!
There is so much value to how you can use your images, from updating your website and printed promotional materials, to bringing a new look to your online profiles, to building a brand that people will connect with and using within your lead magnets.
Great images last the test of time and will be ever green!
When to book a Personal Branding shoot?
A personal branding photography session with Emotive Eye can fit into a website relaunch, a new product launch, the launch of a new business or indeed when you’re ready to take your media communications to the next level.
Want to find out more and discuss what we can do together? Book a call today!
