THE BENEFITS OF LIFESTYLE PRODUCT PHOTOGRAPHY
Lifestyle product photography, or in-context photography, involves a styled or curated scene that promotes a specific lifestyle. The aim is to create a connection with your customers by allowing them to imagine what their life would look like using it. This typically presents your products in an environment where it’s expected to be used, or displayed in a creative manner, just like you see in magazines, websites, or social media.
Photos on white make up about 70% of all product photography out there, so it’s easy to get buried in all the noise. Lifestyle product shoots let you break away from the monotony so you can really stand out.
Product-only photography still does a great job of showcasing your products, and there are a lot of ways to do that creatively. Just check out our article here to learn more.
Connect with Your Audience
Lifestyle product photography is innately more interesting that product-only photography, which is its key advantage. It’s highly conceptual and definitely allows for more creativity.
It reinforces your design language, working alongside your logo, webpage, and overall aesthetic. These go hand in hand in expressing your brand’s character, conveying the emotions you want to stir in your customers so you can ultimately generate high conversions.
High quality, well-conceptualized lifestyle photography increases engagement and inspires action. In fact, they’re essential for communicating your brand story.
Reading text, no matter how well written it is, takes time. The impact of visual content is instantaneous. That’s why photos on Facebook make up more than 87 percent of all engagement—more than double posts with just text—and 150% more retweets on Twitter.
You’re Not Just Selling Products—You’re Selling a Lifestyle
Hence the term! Lifestyle photography taps into your customers’ imaginations and shows them how your product fits into their lives. And the people who make up your market will determine how you portray you’re selling. Whether it’s classic or is trendy, minimalist or maximalist, your design language will reflect this.
Ask yourself what would resonate most with your audience and create your desired mood or vibe from there. Choosing the right background, props, or even location all combine to create your visual storytelling.
You can take it a step further by having someone model your product. This gives buyers an idea as to how the product should be used, and also lets them see themselves enjoying the lifestyle you want to portray. Models and props also give your products a sense of scale. You can see how a dress fits, how long a necklace is, or even how big or small a piece of furniture looks.
Avoid the Hard Sell
Customers are looking for a story, one that reflects their values and aspirations. This means getting real specific as to who you are as a brand and as a company. And your photographs should reflect that.
There’s a fine line between curation and staged. Go for aspirational but authentic. People are wary of the hard sell, and it’s always better to show them how great your product is, rather than just tell them.
There’s simply no shortage of amazing, high quality lifestyle photography out there. And one sure way to stay relevant and competitive is to bring in a professional. They’ll have the knowledge and experience to help you conceptualize your shoot in creative ways so you can differentiate yourself from your competition.
If your e-commerce business is just starting out, you’re probably tempted to DIY your product photography. And while it’s entirely possible to render good results this way, there are a few things you need to consider.
Though it may seem obvious that having some images are better than none at all, putting out badly taken photographs will hurt your business. Your images reflect your brand, which means poor quality photos project poor quality products.
Our advice is that you don’t leave your images to chance. If you’re hesitant to spend on a professional lifestyle product photographer, try to think of it in these terms: given the amount of profit you’re looking to make, how much are you willing to invest to hit those numbers?
For example, if a brand is looking to make P100,000, it would conceivably spend anywhere between 10-40% of that for marketing. What you’re willing to spend also speaks to how important it is to you.
If you DIY your lifestyle photography, you open yourself up to an end result that could do more harm than good. Your branding needs to be consistent, and any shift in how you present your products—whether it’s how it’s shot, edited, or styled—can confuse potential buyers. We talk more about in this in our article on product photography mistakes you should avoid.
If you’re thinking about having lifestyle product photography, hit the button below to drop us a line! We’re here to help.