When launching your product to market it can be difficult to understand that while a retailer might agree to stock your product, you cannot sell the product for them. Traditional marketing and promotional plans for wholesalers included attractive and expensive point of sale displays to help ensure your product stands out on the shop floor.

When we put ourselves in the shoes of today’s retailer, what promotional material could we provide them with that would ensure our product is given prominence in store? The answer is simple and affordable. Product Photography.

Today’s Retail Marketing is Digital- Facilitate your Retailers

Almost all of your retail customers today will have an online presence. Along with that presence comes the demand for constant new content for social media and excellent product photography for their websites. Bricks and Motor stores increasingly use social media, emails, and website home pages to announce new products in store, create discussions on new brands, and to generally drive footfall to their store. Product Photography is the Virtual Point of Sale For Your Brand. You won’t ask a retailer to find space for it on their shop floor. By providing excellent ecommerce product photography you will encourage them to place it front and centre on each of their digital platforms (virtual shop floors).

Seeing is Buying

Seeing is buying- getting consumers to see your product is the first most important step in the buying process. By providing your retailers with innovative product photography, they are much more likely to showcase your product on their online platforms. Such placement “seeds” your product or brand in the mind of the end user, making actual in-store or online purchase much more likely. Some of your retailers may have a team of people to organise their online marketing, but think of your smaller retailer who does all of their digital marketing in their own time. By giving this smaller retailer excellent digital marketing content that is web-ready, you will help ensure that it is your product/brand that is placed on the consumer’s screen.

What to Provide?

Not all wholesalers will provide their retailers with product photography. But some will. Stay ahead of the competitor by creating a library for your retailers with most of the adjustment work done. Think about what would make your life easier if you had to do some digital marketing for your product. What would you like to see in that folder?

Here are some starting tips.

1. Ask! Speak with your best customers of varying sizes and ask them what kind of product photography they would like. And/or follow the following guidelines:
2. Web ready files- for example provide images to standard specs in (Jpeg, GIF, etc) and also e.g. Amazon specs, Mailchimp specs etc. All images pre-named.
3. Large print ready files for use in any print campaigns
4. Social Media ready files- Files ready to the size and file type specifications of Twitter, Instagram, Facebook etc.
5. Be Innovative- by providing your retailers with innovative product photography, you are much more likely to see your product appear online. For example, Home Page placement on their website creating brand awareness among consumers. If you want your product to be chosen for this week’s “New Stock” Facebook post, then you need to stand out from the crowd. For example, a 360° Spin which retailers can easily post in URL format to their facebook.

Time to Engage

With the move to both digital marketing and online sales, the photography you provide for your product is as important as your brand or packaging. Providing poor photography will certainly effect the perception of your brand and have an impact on sales. Marketing today is digital. To ensure you generate market awareness for your brand, you need to be seen online. To be seen online you need to provide your retailers with excellent product photography.

We shop with our eyes, and our eyes are on our screens. Engage us with your images please!

Karina Kelly heads up the Sales & Marketing function at www.360Crew.ie – Providing Innovative 360° Product Photography Services.