Why Invest In Professional Headshots For Your Business?

If you keep an eye on your Google Analytics Reporting (which as a side note, you probably should be) – you might have noticed that your ‘Meet the Team’ page is usually right at the top of your most visited pages – often second only to the homepage.

Quite shocking, right?

If you don’t have a ‘Meet the Team’ page or equivalent, it might be a good idea to create one.

At first glance, you might attribute this surge of traffic to people looking for career opportunities. And you know what? To a degree, you’re probably correct.

We’re sure that once upon a time, you trawled through potential employer’s websites looking for the person that may or may not be the one who hires you. However, there’s another very big reason why this page gets a lot of traffic.

PEOPLE DON’T LIKE TO BUY FROM BUSINESSES; THEY BUY FROM PEOPLE

As a business owner, marketing leader or sales professional – your entire career is built on the strength of your professional network. You wouldn’t be where you are today without identifying yourself with the right people and leveraging this to grow your businesses together.

Be honest now, how uncomfortable does it make you feel purchasing goods or services from a company that doesn’t appear to have any valid method of contact or humans to be held accountable? You know the ones, when the website is so carefully engineered to avoid any direct contact – taking you round in circles through FAQ pages instead of providing a simple phone number.

A clean, tidy, up-to-date and easy to find ‘Meet the Team’ page removes so many hurdles for both parties. With the Inbound Marketing Methodology, potential customers do their own research and often know exactly what they want before even speaking with your sales team.

IT IMPROVES EFFICIENCY

How many times do you get approached by potential customers who were clearly meant for someone else at your company?

How many hours do you think your company spends referring them to other employees because they weren’t sure who to speak to?

As much as your business is a single entity, it’s made up of individuals. Your client base shouldn’t have a better relationship with your receptionist than your Account Managers. Although equally, you shouldn’t pin an entire business relationship on one person. We’re sure you’re aware what can happen then…

REMEMBER TO KEEP IT UPDATED

The biggest problem for many businesses is keeping the Meet the Team page updated. All businesses have a level of staff turnover. Granted, some much worse than others. As soon as someone leaves or needs replacing, it’s easy to get into the mindset of “we’ll wait until we have a few more new members of staff and do it all at once.”

Months roll by and all of a sudden, the entire page is out of date.

It’s safe to assume that although many businesses suffer from staff turnover – it tends to be the junior employees that come and go more frequently than more senior members of staff.

YOU DON’T NEED PHOTOS OF EVERYONE

A solution that will keep this page relevant is to keep it exclusive to the members of staff that are directly client facing. This would include all directors, key account management and sales staff - the members of staff that need to build a rapport with clients whilst growing their professional network and credibility.

This makes an annual professional headshot refresh so much more achievable and also a lot more relevant. Sure, we have professional photos of the entire Intergage team but we have the advantage of an in-house photographer!

We’ve still used this methodology to some degree by displaying the key directors at the top of the page. We then have professional headshots of the rest of the team to create complete brand consistency online.

QUESTIONS TO ANSWER

• Do we have a Meet the Team page?
• Is the Meet the Team page up-to-date?
• Does the business suffer from frequent staff turnover?
• Are we able to keep the page updated for every member of staff?
• Are we able to maintain the page for just key senior employees?

FINAL THOUGHTS

If you have very low staff turnover and are prepared to invest in professional headshots for every member of staff then go for it. Professional headshot photographers often charge per hour or per member of staff – the latter often significantly more cost effective for 20+ members of staff. It doesn’t take twice as long to photograph 30 members of staff than 15.

If you can’t afford to get professional headshots of each and every assistant fresh out of university – we would suggest reserving it exclusively for senior and client facing members of staff. We know it’s hard to abandon that 15 year old photo when you were still fresh faced, but we can’t stress how important it is to give your professional image an annual refresh.

Our in-house resources are always there to be shared. Get your company booked in for a professional headshot photoshoot by contacting us here.