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Stock Images and SEO
The front door of almost every business is their website and business listings, so companies are investing in improvement of on-page SEO, content and ads to generate traffic. Even with these investments getting more audiences to the front door, conversion pages aren’t working as well as they should. A symptom of this is the customer acquisition cost when it takes a lot of traffic to make one new customer. Often even careful design and copy don’t address bounce rates.
Stop scrolling through the same images your competitor’s use.
SEO and conversion pages are being compromised often without anyone even realizing it. The problem is the perfect looking images peppered around a website, the stock photography. These images look professional but the truth is audiences know those images are not directly related to the products and services they are positioned with. Everybody can see the photograph is not real.
A competitor can buy licensing of the same photographs, sometimes literally having the same photographs on their websites.
Let's call it for what it is. Stock photography is convenient. It’s really, really convenient, especially if you are a web or ad designer finishing a project in a hurry. Because photography is neglected as a part of a marketing or advertising strategy outside of large companies, the lack of images doesn’t get noticed until the projects are well underway.
There is the myth that stock photography is cheaper. It certainly seems cheaper. But audiences don’t believe a brand promise when a brand’s authenticity doesn’t translate to what they see. Inauthenticity breaks website messaging and conversion pages. What is the cost of losing a prospect because they can’t believe the messaging in front of them? A competitor can buy licensing of the same photographs, sometimes literally having the same photographs on their websites. This can be embarrassing at trade shows and other places where brands are literally side by side with each other.
A competitor can buy licensing of the same photographs you’ve purchased.
The primary reason custom photography costs more than stock is because many marketing departments are not looking at the total cost of stock photography over the course of the year, they’re focused on the cost for a single project. A strategically planned photoshoot over the course of a single day can often make enough images to last a small to medium sized company an entire year, often at a discount over a year’s worth of stock licensing, and with the added benefit of being original art, truthfully representing what the customer needs to see to believe.
authentic portraits
have nearly
35 percent
higher conversions
over stock images
Internet-based research lab Marketing Experiments ran a real photo vs. stock photo A/B test on a client’s website, using an actual portrait of the client, and a top performing stock photo. The authentic portrait saw nearly 35 percent higher conversions over the stock image. Audiences don’t trust the messaging when the photography is obviously fake.
Real photographs of a company's product or services perform better simply because they are real. Because they are on the website, business listing or catalogue we know visitors are already interested in what is offered. Photographs that are a true depiction establish the trust required to convert a customer.
Custom photography taken for Rohde Construction. (See Rohde logo on helmet)
It is not always bad to use stock photographs. If a company needs a photograph of a mountain or desert, there is likely not the time or resources to photograph one. But often the images a company needs most can be sourced in their own buildings with their real employees, products and services.
Companies should avoid the tempting convenience of stock photos. Budgeting a little more time for fresh, original, interesting visuals makes a website and social media more authentic with better results. A promise customers need to believe is stronger when they believe the images alongside it.