Why Not Make it Amazing?

Maybe your products aren’t pretty like Pottery Barn’s, retro like Restoration Hardware’s or delicious like Dean & DeLuca’s, but that doesn’t mean your photography has to be boring.

Eye-flow studies show that when customers browse catalogs, they look at the pictures first. If an image captures their interest, they then go through a well-documented decision-tree process. Get the picture right, and you’re in the game to score a sale. Get it wrong, and the customer turns the page.

The secret to effective B-to-B photography is to focus on the benefits. Benefit-driven inset photos, along with the main product shots, are effective ways to draw attention to a product and quickly tell its story. Here are three techniques that accentuate those positives:

1. The In-Action Shot
The in-action shot shows your product in use. But the goal is to draw attention to a chief benefit of using the product, not an attractive face from your pick-n-pack operation.

Goodway Technologies (www.Goodway.com) is a B-to-B catalog marketer of heating, ventilating and air-conditioning (HVAC) cleaning products. For some of its equipment, Goodway shows a chief benefit of portability: maintenance professionals can strap sprayers on their backs and climb into tight spaces to clean HVAC systems.

To capture images for its catalog, Goodway maintains contact with local customers and sets up on-location photo shoots to document the equipment in action. A professional photographer captures these images but faces many challenges; namely, the spaces are often low-ceiling, poorly lit basements, while the customers — models, if you will — don’t have time for extensive lighting tests.

So the result is a shot that smacks of verisimilitude. This is real. These in-action shots complement Goodway’s controlled studio images where each product is showcased, and the two types of photos combine to support Goodway’s brand as a producer of top-of-the-line HVAC equipment that's field-tested for proven results.

Goodway’s use of the storyboard technique — a sequence of two or more shots that tell a story — allows two simple inset photos to put its selling points front and center.

2. Before & After Shots
Showing before-and-after photos is effective for products that clean or organize a workspace or equipment — i.e., products that have demonstrative visual results. You show an image of the item before your product was used, and then an image from the same angle to highlight the contrast after its application. Infomercial producers have mastered this technique.

Goodway uses this approach to show the effectiveness of its liquid descaler cleaning solution. It shows an image of filthy, scaly equipment, and then an image of the same equipment, which is now sparkling clean after using the Goodway cleaning system. To dramatize the difference, Goodway splices the two images together. When you see this before-and-after shot, you want your maintenance guy to use Goodway products.

3. That’s Amazing!
The “That’s Amazing!” shot lets catalogers show off just how amazing their products really are. BankSupplies of Belleville, Mich., uses this technique to market items for banks and other companies that handle large amounts of cash and coins. Many of its products are commodities: coin rollers, deposit bags and caging supplies. When photographing its heavy-duty, tamper-evident coin bags, the cataloger could’ve easily laid the product on a table and snapped an image. After all, it’s just a bag. Or is it?

Ah, but this innocuous plastic bag can hold 50 pounds of coins! Sure, you can just say that in copy, but showing it in conjunction with a headline is much more effective. BankSupplies photographed the bag bulging with 50 pounds of pennies, but not ripping or spilling a single cent. It’s not a gorgeous photo, but it’s an effective image that sells to the audience.

You can’t create drama with every product. But by lacing benefit-driven images throughout your catalog, you create a promotional piece that causes customers to pause and look at your pictures, which is the first step to making a sale.

George Hague is senior marketing strategist at J. Schmid & Assoc. Inc. You can reach him at (913) 236-8988 or at GeorgeH@jschmid.com.