Visuals play a crucial role in how you portray your personal brand to your customers and clients. It’s important to remember that customers shop with their eyes and will often make decisions based on their first impression of someone. More often than not, most people will do a preliminary online search before making a purchasing decision, or a simple decision to call one service provider over another.

Personal branding involves influencing the way potential customers see you and view your products or services, which is why personal branding photography can have such a massive impact. Professional photos are an asset and will serve you for years to come. Here are a few of the ways that you would benefit from taking professional personal branding photos.

• Use them throughout your website. Businesses that feature professional photos of real people inspire more trust than those that use stock photos. Real photos also help tell your business story more authentically. At the very least, you should always have a current professional headshot on your website so that potential customers know who they are doing business with.
• Create a killer bio for events. Speaking at an upcoming event? Make sure that you have a professional headshot and branding photos on hand to send along with your bio.
• Place them in your email campaigns. Take your email blasts to the next level by including your photos in them. Including just one or two compelling photos gives your emails that visual content that encourages your viewers to actually want to read what you have to say.
• Include them on your landing pages. If you rely on landing pages to help you generate sales, adding personal branding photography to them can boost your results. Don’t lose potential clients once they get to your landing page. Entice them with your photos.
• Use them for your social media posts. Your professional photos give you an advantage on social media. What makes viewers stop scrolling? You can bet that your photos are a big part of it. Professional well-lit photos highlighting you and your brand will definitely help you get noticed.
• Make your email signature memorable. Not everybody remembers a name but almost everyone can recall a face. Adding a photo to your email signature can make it more memorable.
• Add them to your printed marketing materials. If you print your marketing materials on a regular basis, a photo can be used to make your brochures and business cards stand out. You can also use different photos for different marketing purposes. For example, you might want to use a headshot on your business cards and a lifestyle personal branding photo on a brochure highlighting your services.
• Send them with your press releases. If you usually send out press releases or are planning to in the coming year, professional photos will help your submission stand out.
• Save time. When you’re approached by a publisher, you want to have a professional photo that you approve of on hand. When you rely on publications to take your photos, you need to rely on their photographers. This is your personal brand and you should have the final say in whom takes your photos. You also save time in the sense that you don’t need to take additional time out of your day for the photos because you’ll already have them at your disposal.

Remember to refresh your photos often so that your personal brand is also reflected accurately. Having a variety of photos on hand will give you the flexibility to pick and choose whenever you need to add a photo for your next social media post, speaking engagement, or marketing campaign. Put yourself out there so that your target audience can get to know, like, and ultimately trust you.