Advertising, Marketing & PR

Pictures, Photographers and Image Galleries

There are three main ways to obtain the right images for your needs:

• Take pictures yourself
• Employ a photographer
• Use an image bank

Pictures can make or break your advertising

Finding or obtaining the right images for your website, brochures, flyers, menus and other promotional material is essential.  People respond to images in a way they don’t respond to text – at a much more instinctive and trusting level - and you can ‘say’ things with pictures that would sound cheesy or unconvincing in words. 

Regardless of how you obtain your pictures, make sure you always keep the following in mind:

• Poor quality pictures, or obviously amateurish ones, convey a very down-market and budget impression of your business
• Show your premises off in its best light, both inside and outside – this is where a professional photographer really comes into his or her own
• Use lots of pictures – using just a few makes people think you’ve something to hide
• Use exterior as well as interior shots – these give customers confidence about the type of place you’re in, so they know what they are letting themselves in for
• Include your target audience in your pictures - use pictures of the kinds of people and party-types your business attracts best
• Include pictures of yourself/your staff – customers like to know who they’re dealing with and are reassured by professional and friendly looking staff
• Include quality pictures of your nearby location – showing the nearby things to see and do, and the attractiveness of your location, area and region can be the thing that tips customers into buying from you
• Use pictures that are obviously up-to-date (include the date in the alt text at websites) – prospective customers will lose confidence very quickly if they think pictures are old, because it implies that the current state of your premises/business is too shabby to show…

How to get the pictures you need

There are a number of ways to source the pictures you need for your advertising, marketing and promotional materials:

Take pictures yourself, or get family, friends or staff to do it for you

This can be a realistic option.  With today’s digital cameras, there is nothing to stop you snapping hundreds of pictures so you can whittle down to the really good ones.  You also have the advantage of being able to snap at any time of the day or night and in any weather and lighting condition.  

However, unless you’re quite talented yourself, you’re unlikely to get that really ‘polished’ and quality finish a professional photographer can achieve.  One very good option, therefore, is to employ a photographer for the key shots – the most important pictures of your interior, exterior, typical customers and of your products and services – and then use your own photographs to provide more detail at web pages and in flyers, etc.

Employ a photographer

Clearly this costs money, but professional, quality shots make a huge difference to the impression and image of your business.  Employing a photographer once every two to three years to produce your key pictures is a sound investment that will provide you with really quality images that form the basis of your marketing.

There are ways to control the cost; the key to getting great images at an affordable price is to find the right photographer and, most importantly, to provide a clear brief.  Click here for more about finding, vetting and hiring photographers

Use an image bank

Whilst this is a last resort option for the images of your own business, it is a very suitable and low cost way to source pictures of your surrounding location and the ‘iconic’ things to see and do near you.  Try these:

•  http://www.northeastengland.co.uk/page/tourism/imagegallery.cfm this is the image gallery of One NorthEast, the regional development agency.  Tourism businesses who are registered with the Tourism Northeast network can obtain permission to use images for business purposes, such as websites and literature.
• www.ngi.com – this is the website for the NewcastleGateshead Initiative.  They are currently working on producing an image gallery of images for tourism businesses to use.  In the interim email Shelley.Johnson@ngi.org.uk for more information.  
• Your local newspaper website will have image galleries of photographs that can be purchased for use.
• Stock websites (image banks) such as www.clipart.com/en and http://www.shutterstock.com/ have millions of photographs, images and illustrations that can be purchased individually or used on a subscription basis.  Subscriptions are usually day, monthly or annual for either limited or unlimited downloads of royalty-free images.  This can make the photographs very cheap indeed – one reputable site charges approximately £80 for a one year subscription to unlimited downloads from over eight million images.