Building a strong personal brand that resonates with your dream clients is the best way to set your design business apart. A great needle mover for designers is weaving professional brand photography into your marketing materials to help enhance your visibility and credibility.
In today’s episode, we’re diving deep into how brand photography can play a pivotal role in connecting with your dream clients with Avalon Mohns of Avalon Mohns Photography. As a brand and portrait photographer she shares insights into how using high-quality, authentic photography can help ensure your dream clients see you as the go-to expert in your field.
Why building a personal brand is the best designer marketing strategy
A personal brand is an impactful differentiator because it provides a human connection with the types of clients you value most. Your brand is the best way to give people a reason to choose you over everybody else. It shows people not only how you get them from point A to point B to resolve their design challenges but also that you get them — period.
What is a personal brand?
Personal brand is what you as a designer do differently to show your dream client how you can meet their specific needs better than anyone else. Reflecting on what makes you different, your design approach/process and your personality provide the characteristics needed to create a personal brand you can continue to reinforce across all customer touch points.
Brand photography that shows who you are
Brand photography is far more intentional than basic photography, appealing to your ideal client through brand appropriate locations, outfits, mood, and aesthetics. The goal is to bring your ideal client into your world in a very meaningful and intimate way and vice versa. They aren’t just headshots, or showing you posed at a desk in front of bolts of designer fabric. Instead, they show clients what they want to see while remaining authentic to who you are as a brand.
Identifying your dream client
You need to identify the type of work you love and the clients who will allow you to get there. Consider things like ideal ages or stages of life, certain lifestyles, what makes a person easier to work with, wealth, values, and sense of style to help create your ideal client in your mind.
Use that ideal profile to find people on Instagram and follow them to learn what they want, the language they use, possible problems they share, where they hang out on the weekends and with whom, how they seem to be spending their money, their interests in luxury or casual trends, etc. You can then style a carefully curated personal brand image that will resonate with them.
Reaching out to dream clients
When you find someone on Instagram you feel meets your ideal client profile, try starting up a conversation with them by commenting on their posts. There’s always opportunity to reach out and engage with people on Instagram and tell them you’d love to chat with them about what they’re doing. Those conversations allow you to ask questions to find ways to offer advice.
It might not lead to a project at that moment. However, as you become more acquainted, when a project does come up, they’ll think of you. You can also ask if there’s anything coming up you can help them work through.
Creating brand photography mood boards
Your ideal client research inspires your shoot locations, what you wear, how you pose and the types of props you might include to reflect their lifestyle and interests. The idea is to create connections by projecting a certain mood or vibe, very much like the mood boards you create for your designs. Ask yourself:
- Do you want to include your brand colours in your outfits or in backgrounds?
- Where do your ideal clients have coffee or a glass of wine?
- Would they respond to edgy locations like a fire escape, or something more refined like a bench in a rose garden?
- What images resonate with them more, a manicured hand holding a glass of prosecco or a Chanel purse, something sportier like a tennis racket or something more laid back like a coffee mug?
Every detail creates a mood board that comes together easily using free apps like Canva or Pinterest. You can refer to your mood boards whenever you create brand collateral to ensure your brand remains consistent.
Choosing the right location
Your mood board is the jumping off point for your location. You might have a location in mind based on what you’ve learned about your clients in your research, or you can find inspiration searching locations on Google Maps/Google Maps views.
Be sure to budget to shoot at a variety of locations so you aren’t always posting the same images. You want to create a day-in-the-life feel to your brand photos with a certain lifestyle in mind.
Having a shoot list
You need to create a list of images, so your photographer understands the different formats you’ll need for different media and platforms, as well as the variety of compositions. The application determines how the shots are composed so they suit their purpose such as:
- Instagram ads and stories
- E-mail signature
- Presentations
- Business cards
- Blog/guest posts
- Media kits, publications, press submissions
- Facebook posts, headers, and ads
- Brochures
- E-newsletter header
- Mood boards
- E-book or case studies
- Thank you cards/postcards
- Office art
- Pinterest graphics
Your list ensures you make the most of your time with your photographer who will know exactly how to compose the photos and create an archive of images that work no matter what.
The importance of “detail” shots
If you only have images of your face, your marketing tends to feel too one sided and lacks creativity. Detail shots can be used to reflect the interests of your clients or hint at the purpose of your content They are close photos that use props that tell a story quickly such as a tight headshot focused on the mic for a podcast header or a close-up of your hands holding colour swatches for your website process page.
Detail shots consider the use of the image and then reflect that purpose in the photo composition. They are also taken for text backgrounds without worries of covering your face and come in handy to break up copy-intense pages.
Brand photography gives you an edge because the photos are taken looking through the lens from your ideal client’s point of view. These images give you the chance to capture their attention right away to make real connections and create lasting impressions.
Episode highlights
Here’s some of the highlights from this episode:
- 14:13: Why building a personal brand is the best designer marketing strategy
- 16:07: What is a personal brand?
- 18:15: Brand photography that shows who you are
- 21:33: Identifying your dream client
- 27:13: Reaching out to dream clients
- 31:16: Creating brand photography mood boards
- 34:00 Choosing the right location and having a shoot list in mind
- 43:22: The importance of “detail” shots
You can use branded copy to help drive your brand message home. Set up a consultation with me today to get started.
Leave a Reply