The saying ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ has been attributed to everyone from Napoleon to Albert Einstein. Perhaps no-one really knows who said it first because it’s been repeated so often that everyone’s lost track. It doesn’t really matter who coined the phrase, what matters is, it’s true.

Don’t get me wrong, we love words here at Construction Marketing Experts. We carefully curate the right words to tell compelling stories and create content that engages with our clients’ customers, telling the unique stories of their brands, their products and their USPs. But there’s a lot of content out there, and your content doesn’t just need to be good; it needs to be seen. That’s where strong images come in.

With a striking image, the eye is drawn to the page, whether your target audience is flicking through a magazine, scrolling through their social media channels or ploughing through their inbox. The content on your website might be on point, but if the images visitors see as they browse are drab or generic, who is going to hang around to read your words of wisdom?

Without images, good content struggles to be seen. With good photography, it screams ‘look at me!’ and its value is amplified, along with its reach.

So, what makes a good image for marketing?

You may think you have all the images you need for your marketing campaign, but do you? Really? Are you using personnel shots that were taken three haircuts and four prime ministers ago? Or worse, cropped from holiday snaps on your phone? Are you taking project shots with your iPhone? Or relying on generic stock shots?

If any of these scenarios apply to your company, you’re not alone. And, in fact, there is a place for informal shots captured in the moment on your phone and for good stock shots (as long as they are paid for or royalty-free). But, if you want to stand out from the crowd and support brand values of quality and professionalism, you need to be prepared to communicate that quality and professionalism at every touch point and across every channel with high quality, professional photography.

Good photography should be well-composed and properly focused. It gives you the opportunity to create a distinctive house style for your business, with branding where appropriate and a style that matches your existing marketing assets and your company culture. It gives you print-quality, high-definition images to use across multiple marketing channels, as many times as you like, bringing synergy and cohesion to your marketing activity and building added value into your spend.

The value of photography is more than the cost

Uniqueness is hard to achieve in any sector, and the construction industry is no different. With a focused and strategic approach to marketing, however it can be achieved with three core disciplines: branding, content and images.

An investment in photography enables branding and content to work harder. It may seem like a nice-to-have, but it’s actually a cornerstone of successful integrated campaigns. We recommend at least one photoshoot per quarter, with retouching and unlimited use included in the commission. We ensure the photographer is fully briefed, whether they are booked by us or by our client, to ensure every shoot delivers maximum value to use across all marketing tactics.

Next time you pick up a brochure, browse a competitor’s website or spend half an hour on LinkedIn, take note of the images; the ones that encourage you to stop and read, and those that you breeze on past. If you’ve been reluctant to see that the value of photography is more than the cost, a look at the competitors who are using images well might just convince you.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, isn’t it time to invest in good images?