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Photos Can Be Your Best Selling Tool


October 25, 2022

Are you taking enough photos of your work? We talk to a surprising number of painting contractors who don’t have photos of their most recent jobs. This is a missed opportunity! Here’s why photos can be your best selling tool.

1. Homeowners make emotional decisions

It’s true – the vast majority of humans make emotional decisions and then seek to justify them with facts and logic. A picture can evoke many emotions. Seeing a breathtaking photo of the beautiful work you’ve done is a great way to influence a potential customer. They see that and say to themselves, “Wow! That’s beautiful – I want something like that.”

Even if it’s not the type of job they are looking for, just seeing your beautiful work and the really cool jobs you’ve done over and over again will evoke an emotion that convinces them that you are a true craftsman. They want great work done on their house and they are going to want you to do it.

Rib Eye Steak

A good comparison for this is pictures of food. Whether you like fancy food or comfort food you have almost definitely seen a picture of a specific dish and thought that you wanted to eat that as soon as you could. Homeowners can experience the same thing when seeing pictures of your work.

So make sure you’ve got photos of all your best work and of those jobs that were a little beyond what you typically do.

2. Homeowners want to see proof that you’ve done the job they are looking to get done

For the smaller percentage of homeowners who are more logic or fact focused, they want to see pictures that show that you’ve successfully delivered on the type of job they have. That’s also true for those emotional decision makers who are now looking for facts to justify their emotional decision that you will delight them with your work.

If your bread and butter work is residential repaints, make sure you have a lot of pictures of residential repaints. That’s true for whatever specialty you may have. You’ll also want variety and comprehensiveness. Make sure you’ve got many pictures of all the different rooms in a home.

It’s also important to remember, in most cases whether it’s through your website or social media, your prospective customer is going to see these photos before you even get a chance to talk to them. Make sure you’ve got pictures of all potential jobs.

With that in mind, here are some to-dos:

  • Make a list of all the types of work you do and the photos you need to show your work. Focus on the details and be specific – rooms, specialties, exterior, etc.
  • Next, make sure you have at least five photos of everything you put on the list.
  • If you are missing some, make sure you start capturing photos of those specific things in upcoming jobs. Create a plan to ensure this happens.
  • Take photos after you complete every job. Make it part of your closing process. Catch up on the photos you need. Take pictures of especially interesting elements. And don’t overcomplicate it – your phone can take pictures that will work great on your website and/or on social media.
  • Make sure you’ve got updated photos on your website. As you get in the habit of taking photos, make sure you post those photos on your website or send them to your website provider to post. You don’t have to post every photo of every job, but be sure to post at least three to five.
  • Post a steady stream of photos on your social media channels. I will always say that you are better off focusing on one channel than spreading yourself too thin. If you can post daily on Facebook and Instagram it would be ideal. The good news is that through your business account you can schedule out posts. If you can’t do that, try to post at least two to three times a week on one of those platforms.

A picture is worth a thousand words. That’s absolutely true when it comes to communicating the value you provide and the great work that you do. Use that to your advantage and leverage photos to bring in your target customers.

We can help you use your best photos to attract new customers through your website and Google Business Profile. If you’d like to know more, please contact us today at 919-424-6121 or schedule a meeting for a day and time that is convenient for you.