5 Reasons You Need Headshots in Cheyenne

“Why does a home building company need headshots?” my husband asked last night. I was talking with him about my upcoming day, which was going to be full of headshots for a contractor group here in Cheyenne. In fact, I’ve taken headshots in Cheyenne for the two biggest contractor groups in town over the last couple months. 

Why does any company need headshots of its employees? Why do you need to put your face on your website in a place like Cheyenne, where most people might already know you? It’s a good question, so I thought I’d share my answers with you all. 

There are 5 big reasons why you and your company need business headshots in Cheyenne, or anywhere, for that matter. 

1. Visual content is more effective and powerful than text. 

On average, people remember only about 10% of information three days after hearing it. Adding a picture can increase recall to 65%. Moreover, consumers are much more likely to favor ads that emphasize photography over ads that emphasize text. 

A headshot is a simple way to add relevant, company specific imagery to your website. Real photos of you build trust, especially in a place like Cheyenne, Laramie or Fort Collins. Someone out there will likely recognize you or one of your employees if you use real photos, building trust for your customer base.

2. Customers shop with their eyes, and first impressions are everything.

A modern looking website tells a customer you are competent, professional, and in touch with new developments in technology. In this day and age of virtual *everything,* anyone can make a great website using a template on the market. Customers are looking for something more. They are looking for personal connection. 

Add your headshot to your business card, and the person you gave that card to will remember how friendly and professional you were in person each time they look at it. Send an email with your headshot on your email signature, and you build trust and credibility with each interaction. Very often, it’s YOU that people buy, especially in service, sales, real estate or law businesses. 

And make sure your headshots are current. Nothing tells a client that you’ve given up on keeping up with current market trends like a dated, big-hair, over-photoshopped photo that looks like a glamour shot from 1994. 

3. Stock is stale and performs badly. 

Real photos get better results than stock photos. Real photos on business websites are proven to inspire more trust in customers than stock photos. Relevancy is important in converting people from ‘lookers’ to ‘buyers.’ One study by Marketing Experiments showed that visitors were 35% more likely to sign up for a service when a recognizable image of the company’s founder was used rather than a stock photo of a model pretending to be a sales person. 

Stock photos can water down your brand. Read this article on CXL for a story of how one model became the “college-aged girl” face of a multitude of competing brands. If you found a cheap stock image online to represent a concept, chances are pretty good your competitor found the same one or a very similar one. Photos of random “corporate people in conference room” just tell your customer that you are lazy and impersonal. 

In his book, Fanocracy, David Meerman Scott writes, “In a digital world where our lives are increasingly cluttered and superficial, we’re missing something tremendously powerful: genuine human connection. People are going to be most invested in that which creates a sense of intimacy, warmth, and shared meaning in a world that would otherwise relegate them to a statistic.” David writes more about stock versus real photos in two articles on his blog: Who the hell ARE these people? and Photographs of Real People Work Better Than Inane Stock Photos. 

Real images communicate relevant value to your customer, and relevance is the key to converting people to buy. People want to know how they fit into your story, and your company’s story is told more authentically with real images of real people. 

Headshots are the simplest way to communicate who you are as a company.

4. Conversion is key. Quality is paramount. 

It’s like an old-fashioned revival – you want people who come to the tent by the river to become converts. People who find you on the web or in ads need to be converted from potential customers to actual buyers. Real, relevant photos of you and your employees do this more quickly and more effectively than anything else you will put on your website. 

But ‘real’ still needs to communicate quality and professionalism. Don’t go into your next staff meeting and snap photos with your phone of each other in bad light against yellow walls. Hire a professional to take flattering photos that match the level of quality your brand provides to its customers. 

5. Don’t stop at headshots. 

Take your company’s story a step further and show real employees interacting with customers or working as they typically do day to day. On-the-job working photos tell your potential customers what to expect when they work with your business. They build trust and increase the likelihood that someone will reach out to hire you.