Don't ready, FIRE, aim...
Don’t invest in visual assets and figure it out later.
You might end up with a huge pile of nothing in the end.
I spoke with a colleague the other day about her visual assets.
She recently invested in a wide variety of photography sessions to create a portfolio of images that can be used to promote her speaking and consulting business.
Lifestyle portraits. Headshots. Tons of other promotional images. She said she was pretty happy with the way the photos looked.
Cool.
But…
When I asked what she planned to do with all of these photos, she said that the team had no idea because they really didn’t fit into her marketing and promotional strategy.
Ah, the rub.
It’s one that many of my clients have experienced in the past.
They get dazzled by a photographer’s portfolio and, without any strategy or clear objectives in place, hire them to create the photos, assuming it will all work out well in the end.
And then it doesn’t work out in the end.
They simply end up with a pile of flattering photos that have no place to put them because they’re not a fit within their current marketing and promotional strategy.
Why?
They didn’t create a strategy FIRST.
As a result, they end up with a bunch of square pegs (the images) that they’re looking to jam into round holes (visual asset needs).
Much like investing in any aspect of your business, creating an image content portfolio is an investment of time and money.
As such, it’s important to be intentional and create a strategy that identifies the need for specific types of photos captured so that you can smoothly implement these images into your existing online presence.
How?
You start with the 300-foot view:
Where are you with your business?
Where do you want to be?
What are the gaps in between that need to be filled?
Specifically, how do you help solve your clients’ problems? On a stage? In a boardroom? On a screen? Through a book? Online course? A combination of these options? All of them and more?
Whatever your answer, the key is to create images that reflect how you serve your people in order to give them a sense of what working with you looks like. It helps familiarize them with your brand of magic that could ultimately be the solution to what’s holding them back.
And it gets them one step closer to trusting that you’re the one to help them.
But wait, there’s more…
In addition to creating a strategy around capturing high-quality images that illustrate the process of how you solve client problems, therein lies a second layer of strategy that needs attention:
Creating plug-and-play, visual assets.
What do I mean by this?
When your design team puts together your marketing assets - website, online content, pdf’s, etc. - they need a portfolio of image assets that exhibits a healthy dose of visual variety from shot-to-shot in order to create unique and dynamic content.
In some photos, you’re placed on the left side of the screen. In others, you’re centered or on the right.
Some images are wide shots, while others are extreme close-ups.
Some visuals are created from a high vantage point, while others are captured from the floor, with the camera looking up at you.
Rather than trying to force a beautiful, but ill composed, shot into a marketing asset that requires you to be placed on one side of the photo, your team now has images that can be leveraged, as-is, no added photo editing, directly into the project.
This saves your team a ton of time on the back end attempting to make something work. It also inspires them to get even more creative with so much visual variety at their disposal.
But wait, there’s more… :)
The next part of the strategy involves you…
…specifically, your personality.
As an expert, you’re in the business of building relationships. That’s why it’s important to keep in mind during your strategy session the aspects of your personality that you want to shine in front of your audience.
These two questions can help pinpoint the answer to this challenge:
What 3 words exemplify how you want to be perceived by your audience?
What 5 words illustrate aspects of your personality that you want to share with your audience?
Use the answers to these questions as your North Star regarding the layers of emotional sentiment that you want to convey across your entire image content portfolio.
Incorporating a sense of who you are as a person will have a 2-prong, positive effect:
It will qualify OUT those that don’t resonate with your personality and approach, while simultaneously qualifying IN those who dig who you are, how you present yourself, and how you can help them.
Either way, that’s exactly what you want as the last thing you need is spending time with people who are a bad fit.
So, when it comes to creating a portfolio of image assets, avoid the ready, FIRE, aim approach. It only leads to more problems it solves.
It’s great that you want to create an arsenal of photos, no doubt, but be strategic and purposeful before you ever set foot in front of a camera.
This approach will yield a much more valuable harvest of visual assets that can be leveraged across every touchpoint of your online presence.
And it will ensure that you’re not stuck with a folder of images on your desktop that is simply collecting dust, never to see the light of day.
If you’re curious to learn more about how I strategize before photo sessions with my clients, set up a time to chat with me and let’s see how I can help you.