Beautiful and on-brand imagery is so important in making a brand come together, especially in the online world. When your customers buy from you, they are buying into what your brand stands for, not just your product or service, so it is super important your imagery conveys exactly what you want your brand to say!
If you’ve just had your logo designed, color palette chosen, and your fonts are ready to go, you’re probably ready to start putting some visuals and graphics together.
But where do you start?
Keywords
First I suggest including a list of keywords in your brand guide that represents your brand.
Keywords can include some of the following ideas and themes:
Emotion of your brand: playful, joy, pensiveness, peaceful, harmonious, graceful, muted etc…
Style of your brand: clean, bright, modern, colorful, muted, delicate, expressive etc..
Now you should have some idea of the style of photography you are looking for.
Audience
If you’ve done your homework you should know who your ideal audience is. Always look at the images through your target audiences eyes.
If your ideal customer is a woman in her 40’s, don’t use an image of a skinny model in her 20’s.
People love a good story so use imagery that tells a story to capture the attention of your audience. Draw them in and use the imagery to support what you’re trying to say and enhance your message.
Emotions
People make decisions based on emotions. If you’re able to make that connection, they’re more likely to trust and buy from you.
Find images that show or convey some type of emotion, and one that feels real and human. That’s where authenticity and originality come in.
Make sure the images portray the feelings you want your brand to portray.
Where to find stock images
It is very easy to find photos online, but in many cases you’re not allowed to just grab and image and use it especially if it’s for promoting your business, as this would require a commercial license.
This is where stock photos come in.
There are a lot of stock photo sites that offer free images or images that you can buy.
If you’re going for the free stock photo approach just remember that these images are used by a lot of people all over the world and the chances are the images you use are also used by thousands of other people.
When you buy your images the chances of other people also using that image drop significantly.
1. Hire someone to take custom stock photos for your brand
Having your own custom brand photography is a huge asset. It will not only help you stand out, but it will save you lots of time not having to look for photos.
It will also enable you to request your very own color palette, any items that you may want displayed, and a variety of combinations such as flat lays, mock ups, or lifestyle shots. They’ll be exclusive to you!
→ Learn about my custom stock photography services here!
2. Purchase a premium bundle of stock images
There are many photographers that sell bundles of stock images within a certain theme and color palette so that everything matches.
Once you find a photographer and bundle of images that suit your brand, you will have a set of cohesive images that all work well together for displaying nicely across your entire website.
This is often much more affordable than hiring a photographer, and you’re still getting a cohesive set of high-quality images.
There is of course also a chance that someone else will be using the same photo bundle as you, but I wouldn’t worry about this too much as it’s pretty rare.
When you work them in with your brand (logo, colors, fonts) then it shouldn’t be too obvious that the images are the same.
→ Head over here to see a selection of stock photo bundles I have for individual sale.
3. Sign up for a stock photography membership
There are lots of female photographers who run their own stock photo memberships that are meant for women business owners and are often in the same style or theme.
This can be an advantage since they often have thousands of photos in a variety of subjects that are all cohesive and not a mix match of different styles or photographers, although some now have contributing photographers.
There is also the chance others may use the same images as you who are in the same membership, but again it is rare since there are thousands of photos to choose from and usually not a massive amount of members since it’s a paid platform and run by a small business.
Study the different stock photography memberships that exist and find one that fits your style.
Are you going for clean and bright, rustic and hygge, spiritual & holistic, or chic entrepreneur space?
This is probably the most affordable option of all, you’ll be getting unique and professional images for a small monthly fee, and have unlimited access and downloads to thousands of images!
This is perfect if you need a constant supply of images not just for your website, but also social media and everywhere else you need images for your business needs.
