I just got some new headshots done for my work (by Toronto’s wonderful Donna Santos) and it had me want to send you some thoughts on how photos impact your marketing.

It’s much more than you think.

We live in a day and age where less and less people want to buy from faceless corporations – we want to buy from other people. We want to know who we’re dealing with.

And yet, I go to so many website of businesses and can’t find any photos of any of the people involved. And it has the business feel so anonymous and sterile.

Worse yet, I go to some sites and the photos they have of themselves are terrible. Their website is talking about ‘radiant health, energy and vitality’ and their photos are grainy, black and white and they look super unhealthy in them.

Or sometimes the photo is ten years old and then you meet them in person and it’s a bit of a shock. It’s a terrible way to start of a relationship, with the feeling that you were tricked and lied to.

Often people will discover you online before they ever meet you in person. Maybe it’s through google or social media or a friend recommending your website but, being real, they will then make a snap judgment of your very quickly based on what they see. It’s entirely unfair. And it’s how it is.

And here’s my question to you: do the photos you use on your website (or you and your business, not just waterfalls and nature shots) capture the essence of the result you’re offering people?

If your work is ultimately about helping people create more freedom – does your headshot and the photos of you look free? If it’s about inner peace – does your headshot radiate inner peace? Is your work about helping people kick ass in life? If so, your headshot better scream ‘kick ass’.

It’s worth working with a professional you trust on this. Ask around. Look at the work of the photographer until you see someone whose work inspires you.

• REASON #1 – Get more clients: It’s amazing to me how something so simple as a series of really wonderful photos that capture the essence of you and your business can have such an impact. But it can. A picture is worth a thousand words and if the photos of your business (i.e. yourself, employees, your office or bakery) can capture the heart of your platform – people instantly ‘get you’. They feel you. And because of that they trust you more and open up. They’re drawn in because they think, ‘this looks like the kind of person who could help me. I like them already.’

• REASON #2 – Feel more attractive: There’s something wonderful about getting new photos that can have you actually feel more attractive to yourself and more confident. It’s like getting a new dress, a haircut, a new shirt you really love and it has you stand taller inside yourself. And feeling attractive to yourself is one of the most client attracting qualities you can have.

• RESAON #3 – It inspires you to freshen up other things: When you freshen up one aspect of your business, it can get you on a roll. After getting my headshots done, I put them all over my website and felt so excited to have current, up to date photos (my last ones were three years old). And then I noticed the old photo of me in my website banner. ‘I should update that too’ I thought. Which had a new and different looking banner with a wooden backdrop get created. And then I thought, ‘Man, I really hate the cover of my ‘Way of the Radical Business ebook’ – Maybe I could use some of the new banner as a cover for that (which is in process now). And then once I did that, I looked at my homepage and thought, ‘I’d love to freshen up this homepage too’. And then I thought, ‘hrmm. I should really redo that homepage video at some point.’ And what feels wonderful is that I’m not doing it because I have to or that I ‘should’. I’m doing it because I’m inspired to. And that feels good. It’s like spring cleaning – once you get going, it’s hard to stop.

• Your Headshot: This is the obvious one and the most important.

• Your Staff: People will love your business even more as they get to know about the staff who they interact with regularly. It humanizes the business and has people be a lot more forgiving and accomodating.

• Your Events: Do you host social events? Workshops? Do speaking gigs? Etc. Get those photographed! They’re great to share on social media where you can tag folks and show everyone what they missed.

• Your office or store: Do you have an office space, cafe, restaurant etc? Why not take pictures of it so that people know what they’re coming to or where they’re speaking to you from if you work over the phone.

• You at work: Do you work our in nature? In cafes on your laptop? In an office space? Give massages? Getting photos of you in action can communicate to much about what you do.

• in the banner on your website (like the new one you see above created by Edmonton’s Kim Tanasichuk)

• on the homepage of your site: personally, I love being able to see who I’m dealing with straight away. I love the feeling of being welcomed into their website by the smiling face of the website owner. It’s like being greeted warmly by the owner at a local restaurant or cafe.

• on your bio page: so important! People want to know who you are. What you look like and your vibe is a big, big part of that. And you can have more than one photo of yourself on that page to help them get to know different facets of you.

• on your products: if you have info products, consider having your photo on the cover of it – or at least the back cover of it so they remember who they bought it from.

• on your business card (for reasons I go into in this blog post)

I invite you to look at your website and social media presence and ask yourself where you could freshen up your photos.

Consider trading services with a photographer you love. It’s worth it.