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Why lifestyle photography is so important for your brand

The nature of branded content is changing. Customers no longer want a hard sell. Instead, they’re looking for brands that focus on telling a story with their products. They want to engage with a brand that reflects their desires and aspirations and ultimately feel a part of something bigger. This is especially true in the world of cycling and adventure sports where companies often forge close relationships with their customers. 

Professional lifestyle photography is a great way to communicate with your customers. It’s about more than just showcasing products. The goal is to put yourself in the minds of your clients, focus on the aspects of adventure pursuits that are most important to them, and then focus on the details you want to emphasise. 

Your prospective customers want images that speak to the values and essence of your brand. This means your pictures should show your audience that you do something different from everyone else. 

Many cycling and outdoor brands make their own visual content in house. For some brands this can work if they have a keen amateur photographer in the team. And while having some images are better than none when it comes to selling your product you wouldn’t create written product content with spelling mistakes so there is no need for poor quality photographs to let the side down after all their hard work. 

Poorly thought through images send prospective customers the wrong message and do little to build a brands reputation. Sometimes, low-quality photos can be more of a hindrance than having no photos at all. 

Lifestyle photography is essential because it shows your products and services in a relatable situation. Customers see beautiful images which help them imagine experiencing something similar. At the same time, you deliver key brand messages – something you can’t easily do when you take the in-house approach. 

Why Use Breakaway For Lifestyle Brand Photography?

We Assist With Social Sharing 

Social media platforms like Instagram and Pinterest have grown enormously over recent years. 

People wake up, turn their alarm off and flick through Instagram, well at least we do. If you have the right sort of lifestyle photography it is more than likely your followers will share your posts to a friend who will in turn share to another friend and so on. They want to see relatable posts that include the things they love, whilst at the same time there is no harm in dangling a carrot in front of them showing the sort of life they’d love to lead or the things they’d love to do etc. 

So if you are serious about your social media presence (which we think you should be) then curating a feed of high quality shareable images should be high on your list of priorities. 

The purpose is to share images and visuals that are so compelling and inspiring that your followers instinctively send them to their friends. Quality photography can amplify the reach of your brand in crowded and competitive online communities. 

We Tell Your Customers What You Are About

Brand specific lifestyle photography is vital for another reason: In a fast paced world where people’s time is at a premium utilising the phrase ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ can do wonders for your business. 

While writing inspirational, light-hearted, or matter-of-fact prose is always an option when it comes to describing a product or your brand, whenever you go down this route you rely on the reader having the time and commitment to go from start to finish in order to get the message, which often they won’t. If you’ve got to the end of this sentence then you’ll know what I mean!

When you utilise the power of relevant brand photography you make it so much easier for your customers. Images can be understood instantly allowing your customers to immediately get a sense for what type of cycling or adventure brand you are. 

Suppose, for instance, you’re a bicycle company that makes e-mountain bikes. You need brand photography that provides prospective customers with details about the type of company you are, so they can work out if their riding style suits the bikes you make or vice versa. 

Many brands in this area will focus on the idea of riders enjoying more mountain for less effort whilst crucially having fun. They show riders churning up singletrack, mud spraying out from the back wheel as they make their way around berms before pedalling up unimaginably steep gradients ready for more fun when the trail points downhill again. 

Other firms focus on the products themselves. Their goal is to show the quality of their products. In this case bikes standing up to the rigours of off road riding, the quality of the frame and most importantly conveying the power and mechanics of the motor.

Which route you choose to go down depends on your primary brand objectives. If you want to develop a kind of ‘tribe’ or ‘community spirit’ for your brand then your photography will take a very different approach from a brand focused on individual pursuits. 

We Increase Engagement through Lifestyle Photography

As an adventure or outdoor brand you should always be looking for ways to increase engagement. In many cases the adventure brand business model depends entirely on people taking initiative to head into the great outdoors and try something new.

Brands should therefore use photography to increase engagement and inspire action. 

Data from Hubspot suggest’s that visual content is far more engaging than text-based marketing. For example:

  • Engagement with Facebook posts that contain images is 2.3 times higher than without
  • Tweets that contain images get 150% more retweets than those that don’t
  • Facebook posts that included pictures comprised more than 87 percent of all engagements
  • 65 per cent of marketers agree that rich media, including photos, is essential for communicating a brand story

Images, therefore, aren’t something that you can leave to chance. If you are planning a marketing push, it is essential to use the services of a professional lifestyle photographer who can capture the essence of your brand. 

We Improve Brand Consistency

When you take a DIY approach to lifestyle brand photography you inevitably end up with inconsistencies. For instance, uploading pictures of a dirty bicycle workshop can undermine your efforts to make your brand appear stylish and refined. Or even a different style of edit on a photograph can leave your customers feeling a bit confused. 

By contrast professional lifestyle photography will show your product in a way that reflects your overall brand story. You provide the brief and we get on with it. 

Here at Breakaway we offer professional lifestyle photography for adventure, outdoor and cycling brands. We can tell your brand story and create a unique response in your customers. 

We allow you to differentiate yourself from your competitors and communicate in a style that is true to your values and brand identity. Our photography captures the spirit of your brand and transforms it into highly marketable content. 

We’ve travelled to many exciting places and locations in pursuit of our lifestyle photography work. Our in-house team knows a vast amount about sites and backdrops for different products and can help you choose where best to go. 

Get in touch with us today and take your brand lifestyle photography to the next level.

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A digital agency specialising in adventurous brands.

Ask us anything. From basic questions to complex queries about your approach to strategy, research, content and design. Dan is always happy to chat.+44 7739 967 031

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