Importance of on the job photos: Use visual marketing to grow your business

Why is visual marketing important?

Potential customers are now discovering your business online and can look at your website/social media profiles under a microscope. Just by looking at your profile and your photos, someone can instantly form an opinion on if they would hire you for a job, so it’s important to get your visual marketing right.

It’s not just photos and videos that are important; your overall online visibility is, and this includes showcasing positive reviews from previous customers to reinforce your great reputation.

In this article, we’ll look at some visual marketing examples and how you can make the most of your visual marketing to make your business as successful online as it can be.

Letting your customers do the work for you

Taking photos of your work is a great opportunity for you to get exposure from not only your followers but your customer’s circle. They are more likely to share a post if the photos are good, and your business will then get exposure from more audiences for free!

Customers may decide to take their own photos and videos to share on their profiles, and this is a great opportunity to showcase your business. It’s known as user-generated content and essentially means that others are doing the visual marketing legwork for you by sharing their authentic praise on the work you have done for them.

If you are lucky enough to have your work shared and re-shared multiple times, this is absolutely great for business. Humans are herd animals and will likely ‘jump on the bandwagon’ to share your work too. This is known as social proof and essentially means that everyone speaking about your business in a positive way will mean you’re more likely to be hired for more work.

Benefits of visual marketing photos

The benefits of visual marketing photos include:

• Showing potential customers that you do a brilliant job.
• The shareability effect. When everyone is sharing photos of your work via user-generated content, there’s no doubt that you must be great to hire.
• Your ‘on-the-job’ photos are irrefutable evidence that you’re a serious, focused, professional, well-prepared company and exactly the right team to get the job done on time, to budget and according to spec.

The next question is, what’s the best way to take visual marketing pictures?

The best approach for taking visual marketing photos

It’s quite simple: nothing will sell your photos (and your business), like the summer sun. As all estate agents know, if you want to sell a home to a buyer, you’re best to do it in the summer.

And that principle also applies here.

Sure, your photos may feature the work you’ve done indoors, but the natural light bursting through on the photos gives the images a boost.

As well as good lighting, the photos must be of high-quality and taken on a phone camera with a high-definition lens (or similar). Make sure you’re zoomed out and that the area is clean and tidy.

In the 10 seconds it takes the human mind to take a view on something, will your new prospective customers see your on-the-job photos and go, ‘wow’?

The wow factor is what you need.

The best place for any tradesperson to show off their work

No brainer, on Checkatrade.

A nice feature every Checkatrade tradesperson gets on their Checkatrade profile is the photo albums. They give every member the chance to showcase their quality work to potential customers.

There’s literally no better way to sell yourself than to let your awesome handy work do the talking!

How Checkatrade photo albums work

Checkatrade members have total control over their photo albums. They’re super easy to upload pictures to, edit pictures and sort your albums while on the move.

Here’s what you can do to manage your photo album when you’re a Checkatrade member:

• Organise albums into any order that you like – many members sort their albums into the services/typical jobs they complete
• Drag-and-drop albums and images
• Easily upload multiple images at once, whether you’re on your smartphone using our Checkatrade Trade App, or on a computer/laptop
• Delete multiple images or albums in one go
• Rotate your images once they’re uploaded – so if you’ve taken a photo landscape rather than portrait, you can flip it around

Our Checkatrade photo upload and albums have been improved recently, thanks to tech developments we’ve made as a business, improving speed and reliance.

New and improved Checkatrade photo album feature

Make sure to check out our walkthrough video of our photo albums.

On the point of organising your Checkatrade photo albums – if you’re a builder, for example, you may have different albums for different jobs, like conversions, extensions and driveways. Each album will show off your quality work and inspire homeowners to work with you on their next project.

If you manage to pass our checks, how do you access and manage the albums?

If you pass our checks, you’ll be given your own member’s area. This is the place where you can manage your entire profile and membership level.

In your membership area you can head to ‘Photos’ and start creating albums and adding your photos.

If you’ve uploaded photos to a website or social media, you’ll have no problems doing the same for your Checkatrade profile.

There are some upload guidelines that we well worth reading, but it’s simple enough to do!

To find out more about getting the most out of your Checkatrade profile, check out this blog full of top tips:

Time to take your visual marketing to the next level

To take your business to the next level and showcase your work, then becoming a Checkatrade member can definitely help.

Checkatrade is one of the most well-known signs of quality in the industry* and once you’re a member (if you make it through our comprehensive checks), you will be trusted by homeowners and start winning more work.

8 out of 10 people would choose a tradesperson we’ve checked over one we haven’t.**. People trust the Checkatrade tick, don’t miss out on work because you’re not a member.

Your useful checklist for taking great visual marketing photos

Ok, so, rounding things off, here’s a helpful breakdown of why taking on-the-job photos is vital for ramping up interest in your business even more:

• It lets people know you’re a very high-quality company to hire.
• It’s visual proof that all the user-generated content your customers have made and shared is absolutely true. Your work is sublime: look at your pics.
• Make sure you take photos that are neat, organised, give a good impression to others that you leave the job looking tidy and clean; and…
• Make sure to take as many photos as you can when the sun outside is radiating, making your work and on-the-job photos gleam even more.

FAQs

What is visual content marketing?

Visual content marketing is just a sophisticated way of saying that when you’re on the job with your team, take photos and videos of your work so that you can share it with the world. Make sure the images are of high quality so that you can really showcase your work. The better the photos, the more likely people are to reshare.

To find out more about how to take advantage of Instagram to grow your business, read our article.

What is visual image marketing?

This is the same thing as visual content marketing. It’s a case of you taking great snaps of you and your team at work but going more Instagram (i.e. picture-heavy) than going words-heavy, which is something you might opt to do on your company’s Facebook or on your website.

How can I repurpose user-generated content?

When someone takes a photo of your work and shares it, it’s always good to comment/reply to the post and then reshare on your profile. This will show that you’re highly engaged and proud of your work.

*Deep Blue Thinking 2021 Trade Perception Survey
** Deep Blue Thinking 2021 Trade Perception Survey