Photo Marketing: What is it and How Does it Help Your Business?

We live in an age of sharing, social media, influencers and brand advocates. For tour and activity operators, these are great tools for word-of-mouth marketing. If your customers share photos and videos with their friends, family and other followers, they may inspire someone else to explore your offerings. 

While user generated content can be effective, maintaining control of the visual assets associated with your brand can be even more powerful. But how exactly do you play a role in what other people are posting and sharing? 

That’s where the use of a photo marketing platform comes in. 

What is photo marketing? 

In a broad sense, photo marketing is empowering your customers to share photos and videos of your business and brand. 

Generally, this content is created by the customers themselves, which is called user generated content. This can be an effective source for photo marketing. But in the tour and activity industry this can lead to several issues - such as poor image quality and even a worse customer experience.

Not only will your customers be limited by the types of images they take (i.e. mostly selfies), chances are they won’t be focused on maximizing the quality of the image. This is especially true if they’re focused on the experience they're having, which is what you want them to be doing. 

This can lead to images and videos that don’t align with your brand values, and fail to show the true beauty of the experience that you offer.

Even worse, if they’re focused on getting the best picture possible they’ll probably miss out on the adventure itself. After all, it's hard to enjoy what’s right in front of you when you’re too busy viewing it through a lens. 

Depending on your tour or activity there could also be risks associated with taking a picture, whether it be personal safety or the risk of damaging a device or dropping it where it can’t be retrieved. 

That’s why regaining control of your brand’s photo marketing is most effective when the images and video are provided by your tour or activity business. This is even more true when those images are given to your customers for free. 

What are the benefits of photo marketing? 

There are a number of benefits to providing your customers with images and videos as part of their experience. 

To get the most out of your offering, your customers truly have to experience the tour or activity. They can’t be distracted by their phones and cameras. By letting your customers know that you’ll capture their memories, they can truly focus on the experience itself. 

Not to mention, when you give your customers a photo of them enjoying your tour or activity, you’re adding further value to the package they purchased from you. 

By providing a souvenir of your customers' experience with you, you are reminding them of the great time they had. This could lead to return visits. Combine this with a well thought out remarketing strategy for sending images to past customers and you could further drive repeat bookings by reengaging past customers with photos after the fact. 

Word of mouth marketing is one of the most valuable forms of marketing. That’s because this form of marketing is seen as an honest and authentic endorsement of your business, which can attract more customers. 

It may also help you reach new markets that you hadn’t otherwise invested in reaching out to. When your customers have great photos and videos to share with their friends, family and followers, they help you market your business. 

Sending photos to your past customers is a great lead in for asking them to leave an online review of your business. It also helps re-energize them about their experience, which typically leads to more high quality online reviews of your business.

After a customer has finished their adventure and gone home, they often forget the brand they had the experience with. This is especially true in saturated markets where every brand has a similar name. 

Sending photos after their experience gives you the opportunity to remind them of your brand so that you can be sure they're giving potential customers the right information. 

Want to learn how you can do that with the Fotaflo photo marketing platform? Book a demo today.