When you work for yourself, you become a big part of your own personal brand. If you want to put yourself and your business in the best possible light, you may need good photography. Research shows that consumers and potential clients expect images to look excellent, and your competition probably already knows this. Here are a few reasons to consider hiring a photographer for your contracting business.

Brand Your Business
When you first start a contracting business, you might be running it all by yourself for a while. For many contractors, faces and names are a big part of their branding. Take a look in the mirror and ask yourself what about you makes clients want to hire you to work on their projects. If you use your own image on your website, you want to present yourself in a way that conveys commitment, professionalism, and other important qualities. A professional photographer can take pictures of you in various poses that you can use on your logo or other aspects of your brand.

Take Your Online Presence to a Higher Level
No one enjoys browsing a website with choppy design and terrible images. Similarly, if you plan to market by social media, you’ll need to add a high-quality image to catch the eye and persuade people to click. As a business owner, your online presence tells people stories about the way your business works. Marketing experts say that images are one of the best ways to convey a feeling to potential customers. If the image is too dark or obviously taken hastily on your phone, they may conclude that you are too quick to cut corners. Professional photography for your website and social media shows that you care about how things look, which is an important part of construction success.

Present a Professional Portfolio
It’s common for prospective clients to ask for a portfolio of images and details about similar projects you’ve completed in the past. You may want to keep one on your website so that customers can browse through it at their leisure. Since this is a point where people are usually getting ready to make a choice, professionalism is important. On the last day of the project, hiring a photographer to create pictures of the finished result is a great idea. You’ll have dazzling photos of your project from multiple angles, making every aspect look its best for posterity.

Keep Up With Competitors
Hiring a photographer is an investment. Sometimes it costs thousands of dollars or even more, depending on what you are asking for. It may make it difficult to justify the investment until you think about your competition. In most cases, contracting businesses have a handful of competitors in the area. In the early years, you’ll be working hard to present a professional persona that sets you apart from the rest. Professional photography can turn a website that looks amateurish to professional.

Save Time and Hassle
In the days where every job takes much of the week and the business only has you, there simply isn’t enough time in the day to do everything. And yet, you do want to present a professional look to clients, subcontractors, and your eventual employees. You can certainly buy an expensive camera and spend your nights and weekends learning how to take pictures of projects, but that takes away from your other work and relaxation time. Hiring a professional photographer saves you time and the hassle of worrying about how to get the best images without having to devote weeks to it.

Part of running a contracting business involves figuring out how to put your best foot forward. Professional photography for your marketing and other parts of your website can help you present an ideal image from the very beginning. To learn more about the things you’ll need for a career in construction, visit CSLS today!