Episode 219: Using Styled Stock Images to Sell More Easily with Shay Cochrane

We share about brand strategy here on the podcast pretty often, but in today’s special episode we’re talking about the importance of brand imagery and the impact it can have on how your brand is perceived online. Shay Cochrane of Social Squares joins us to discuss the barriers that small businesses face with online presence and how they can overcome those barriers with styled stock imagery. As a commercial photographer and product stylist, Shay’s clients spanned the globe (brands like Sugarfina, Pure Fiji, Truffle bags and Simplified Planner to name a few). But powerhouse female entrepreneurs like Marie Forleo, Jenna Kutcher and thousands of others know and love her for her Social Squares Membership where she puts her years of work as a commercial stylist and photographer into a monthly styled stock subscription that supplies elevated stock images + digital marketing education for female-owned online brands. She has been married for 15 years to her fellow entrepreneur husband Graham Cochrane and they call sunny Tampa, Florida home along with their two daughters. How Imagery Impacts Your Online Brand Have you ever found a brand or been given a recommendation for a brand and head over the their website or Instagram only to be let down by the quality of their images? It often shows a lack of professionalism on their part and pushes you to question their trustworthiness. Bottom line, first impressions matter. Nowadays, first impressions happen online and your brand imagery impacts with that first impression. In the eyes of a potential customer, the value of your product or service is only as good as the images you use to promote it. By not taking care of our online presence, you could be losing money. When you do prioritize brand imagery, you’re setting your brand up for success. Barriers that Small Businesses Overcome Online In many small businesses, there are barriers that they need to overcome online to succeed. A few of these include: * Small business owners will launch something but have no way of driving traffic to their site.* Not showing up consistently online on your platforms.* Not showing up uniquely online with your imagery. That’s where brands like Social Squares can help you overcome these barriers. It all starts with the missing link for lead generation in driving traffic to your site. If you have some sort of content for your lead generation, you will likely need imagery for it. Your imagery will support your lead generation plan. Additionally, in a good marketing strategy, you’ll have consistency in the content you’re pushing out. Ways You Can Use Stock Imagery When you’re looking at how imagery is used in your brand and if stock imagery from a brand like Social Squares is right for you, let’s look at how you’re posting on social media. Imagine that you only post on one platform, like Instagram, three times a day, five days a week, that’s around 64 images per month. Then look at platforms like Pinterest, for every piece of content that you’re driving traffic to, you need to be creating 10-30 fresh pins for that piece of content. What does that look like for you if you’re doing one piece of content per week or even three pieces of content per week? Social Squares Curated Catalog Now that we’ve established what impact your imagery can have on your brand and how many images you could potentially need in your marketing, let’s take a look at how you’ll source those.