Thoughts

The Importance of Imagery in Social Media Marketing

Over 95 million pictures are uploaded to Instagram alone on a daily basis. With this in mind, it’s important that luxury brands can adopt a clear social media strategy on image-based platforms like Instagram in order to stand out from the noise.

Pictures can convey a massive amount of information quickly with a great visual appeal.  Therefore much of the art of modern internet marketing, particularly for luxury brands, is to marry visuals with words in an effective way.  

Here are three points to note in this context:

1. The right pictures will attract the right audience online

When thinking of the type of images used by luxury brands, we immediately think of the eye-catching, sleek and sometimes dramatic photography we see in magazines and on social.  While this type of imagery is still important in order to drive brand awareness, it’s essential that photography and imagery across all platforms reflect the products or service sold. There is no shortage of research pointing to the fact that the vast majority of people research luxury brands online before making a purchase decision.

2. Work closely with influencers to ensure that the images they show are right for you

We’re well aware of how important influencer marketing is for many brands. Successful influencer marketing is generally a collaborative effort, which means that the brand has to respect the fact that the influencer knows their community but that, at the same time, the influencer has to be able to work within the brand’s strategic framework and aesthetic in order for the relationship to be worthwhile for the brand.  

Here we see a post featuring Creed Fragrances, a client of Verb Brands. This image by @hollyannascarsella is very on-brand for both the brand and the influencer as it showcases the iconic Mayfair boutique whilst keeping within Holly’s signature style.

Most influencers will be perfectly happy to work in this framework and it is the brand’s responsibility to ensure that their needs and wants are effectively communicated. The influencer is likely to see a dramatic increase in engagement if the imagery reflects their own style and tone of voice whilst still being on-brand to the campaign.

3. Coherence is important

Product photography aims to capture the product in all its glory and detail and is certainly important, however it is, fundamentally, sales photography.  It’s what a customer looks at when they’re making a final choice between item A and item B.

Social media marketing photography is all about telling stories, usually about the lifestyle connect with a particular product or about the heritage of the brand.  

That means that the product in question does not need to be front and centre in the photograph the way it would be for product photography.  It is usually far more important that the product be seen as part of a coherent whole, indeed in some images, you might choose to show only part of a product or even not actually show the product at all but emphasise its absence.

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