332 | The Real Reason Your Brand Photos Aren't Working + How to Fix It

If you have brand photos that you barely use, the problem is not the photos. The problem is that the session wasn't planned around your marketing system. And that's a fixable problem. Welcome back to Marketing Strategy Academy Podcast, where we help female entrepreneurs go from marketing overwhelm to an easy streamlined strategy and system that includes Pinterest and repurposing content to grow their businesses when they have very little time.

I'm your host, Jen Vasquez. Let's jump right into it. That's not a photography problem, that's a planning problem. And it starts long before anybody even picks up a camera.

By the way, if you're at that point where you know your visuals aren't working for you and you want to fix that, I'd love to chat. I do brand photography sessions specifically designed around your marketing, not just pretty pictures. The Discovery Call link is in the description, and I do work all over the United States. What most people get wrong.

Most people approach a brand photography session like this. Pick some outfits, choose a location, show up, get pretty pictures, and then go home with a gallery that feels beautiful, but somehow never actually quite fits the content that they're trying to create. The photos are nice, but they're not doing any marketing work for you. That's the sweet spot because the session was planned around aesthetics and not really strategy or marketing strategy.

What brand photography is actually for. Brand photography has one job inside your marketing system to make showing up easier and more consistent. That's it. That means your photo should be ready to drop into a Pinterest pin across multiple topics and boards, your email newsletter header every single week.

Your website hero and service pages, your about page, your social content for the month, launch graphics, freebies, podcast artwork, etc. One well-planned session should give you content for three to six months across all of those places. If your photos aren't doing that for you, the session wasn't planned with your marketing in mind. I'm not blaming your photographer at all, but I do think that it's really important that you choose to work with a photographer that specializes in brand photography because that's what we do day in and day out.

And if your photographer, like me, is a marketing strategist, all the better. How to plan a session around your marketing? This is how I approach every single session. And it starts with a marketing conversation, not an outfit conversation, although that's always part of the conversation.

Step one, map your content needs. What platforms are you active on? What ratio of images do you need? Have you looked for a specific image as a real cover that you just don't have?

Do you need vertical images for Pinterest and stories? Do you need horizontal images for website banners and email headers? If 60% of your images end up in a format that doesn't work for Pinterest, you just cut your Pinterest content potentially in half before the session even starts. Step two, play around with your offer.

What are you selling in the next three to six months? What launches do you have? Your photos should support the energy of what you're selling. Cozy and connected, focused for a community offer, polished for a high-ticket service, bright and energetic for a launch.

Step three, build a shot list by content category. Think in categories, not in poses as an example. Working images, you in your element, doing what you actually do. That could be for me working on my laptop or talking into a microphone, right?

Lifestyle images, your personality, your environment, what makes you you. And that can also connect with maybe having your kids to the beginning or the end of a photo shoot to show you working from home. Connection images on a video call, in a coaching session, at a coffee shop with your laptop. Detailed images.

This one is one that is always forgotten. Your tools of your trade, if you're a hairstylist, your brushes or your curling irons, if you're a makeup artist, your makeup or maybe your rollerbag as you're walking to your next appointment. Your tools, your props, your space. So if you are someone that has a physical space, you absolutely want photos in that space for sure.

It tells people what to expect before they even come to your office. It makes them feel like they know you a little bit more. Blank space images. Shots with intentional negative space.

So this is really true. One of my clients is a therapist, but she has a YouTube channel. And so we do a bunch of images where she's she's on one side and all this white space is over here. So she can put words over here and be able to really, like I said, use it for marketing.

Shots with intentional negative space is where you can overlap text. You can overlap text for Pinterest pins if you leave the top blank and you have a portrait size and you leave the top blank and then you have the bottom, and that way you can go ahead and put words up there. That could be for uh a real cover photo. And really, it helps you for using them for your blogs or speaking engagements or presentation if you're doing live presentations.

A shot list built around those categories is what gives you a library instead of just a gallery. You want a library of custom images that are totally you. Brand photography and Pinterest, the direct connection. Pinterest is a visual search engine, and visuals that stop the scroll will get the clicks.

Period. An iPhone photo can also work on Pinterest, but a well-lit, well-composed brand photo with space for keyword-rich text overlay is going to perform better almost every single time. And when you have a full library of custom images for you and your business from a planned session, you can create pins consistently without ever running out of visuals. No more scrambling for something to post, no more reaching for a random selfie because you need content right now, today.

You have a library and you use it, you repurpose it, and it keeps working while you're living your life. How often should you get a brand photo session? This is a question I get a lot. And the honest answer is less often than you think.

Other brand photographers might really be upset with me for saying this. But if you plan well, you're gonna get great photos. Most of my clients do one to two brand sessions per year on average. Now, I do have clients who are either on YouTube or they're very active on Instagram or they do a lot of blogs or whatever.

That's why I have my content sessions that are for the whole year. So every three months you get new photos. One of my clients did that three years ago and she's still using them. One of my clients loved it so much she books it every year.

So whatever works for you. But one session every six months, planned from a marketing, a strategic marketing intention, will give you more than enough content to run your marketing without scrambling. Seasonal sessions also help too. Spring content has a different feel from fall, obviously, right?

But here's the key: it only works if the session is planned around your marketing. And when you get seasonal content, you can use that seasonal content for years. So seasonal content can be your hands on a laptop keyboard with a Christmas tree in the background, right? That's unique, that's different, that's like holidays, but working.

More sessions don't fix a planning problem at all. And the planning piece of my brand sessions are the most important. I can take pictures, photographs till the cows come home. But if we plan out a session and we know what shots we're getting and you have multiple different wardrobes, you're gonna get content for days.

What actually changes? When clients go through a well-planned brand session, something shifts in how they show up online. This is the truth. Not just because the images are beautiful, although of course they're gonna be, but because they finally have visuals that can feel like them and actually fit what they're creating.

The confidence level that people get after a brand session, they show up on fire online. Sitting down to write a pen or a post gets faster and easier, if I'm being honest. Choosing an image for the email header takes 30 seconds instead of 20 minutes of scrolling through a gallery that doesn't quite work, or trying to use stock images that aren't quite you. The visual problem gets solved.

And when the problem is solved, the whole workflow, the whole marketing workflow gets way lighter. Marketing that fits your life, not the other way around. That is the whole point. Brand photography isn't a nice to have when it's planned right, it's the engine behind your entire content workflow.

See you next week.