Hey everybody, my name is Joe Burnich with bigwestmarketing.com. We empower small businesses to take it to the next level using internet marketing. In this short video, what we’re going to do is we’re going to talk about how to take good photos for your website. This something that is not talked about very often and there’s several little elements you need to consider that can really, number one, double your conversions; and number two, help you rank higher on Google, higher on the search engines for SEO reasons, okay. We’re going to talk about that. Let’s get started right now.
Okay, so before I jump into the how to stuff, let me tell you how this is so important. Because when I had my cleaning business back in 2009, I had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t know how to run a business. I didn’t know how to do marketing. I didn’t understand anything, okay? All I knew is that I needed to get a nice looking website, needed to put out some advertising and I needed to do good work in order to get good referrals and reviews and all that kind of stuff. But I had somebody approach me that was giving me advice, and he had been in business for 25, 30 years, and gave me some advice. And this gentleman said, “I think you should market yourself like a realtor.” Okay, realtors put their face on their business cards. Here, let me grab this.
Here’s all of our business cards sitting in our front desk here. I have all my employees put their faces on their business cards and then I do the same obviously. There’s Jake. A lot of you guys probably have talked to Jake. Here’s Leah, our manager. You know Lauren, she does the web design. Of course, Wendy does the SEO and then we’ve got a more coming for our other employees.
But the point is, I was told to put my face on everything with my marketing, my Valpak ads, my website, my business cards, flyers, anything. Always put a good smiling picture of my face just like a realtor does. I took that advice. I even did it on my book here. It’s funny, this picture, actually my wife at the time, my ex wife, she actually took this picture of me standing up against a white wall in the morning before I went out to do some work and I just threw on a shirt. I think I had sweat pants on or shorts or something down below here, so very simple photo taken with a digital camera, not a high-end digital camera. This was before smart phones were amazing.
This picture right here served me for years, okay. And I even had one of my competitors, and I’m going to get into competition in just a little bit here. One of my competitors actually approached me while I was bowling one day and said, “Hey, Joe Burnich,” and shook my hand. And he’s like, “My name is blah blah blah. I also am in the cleaning business here and in my local area.” And he’s like, “I just see your face everywhere, so I thought I’d come up and say hi.” That’s one of my competitors coming in and saying hi. I had no idea who he was, but he knew exactly who I was. That’s powerful. Now your competitors are on edge because they know you’re doing something right, okay. And we’ll get into that in a minute.
But what really got me inspired to make this video is I wanted to show you my old website. Here’s my old website. It’s the current website. If you’re watching this the same day that I make this. Here’s the current website. And of course, I have a picture of myself. And I did this cheesy little picture here because I have a ton of YouTube videos that came out right when I did this website, and I wanted to match the branding because I was wearing this hat, white t-shirt, kind of scruffed up. And so not the best looking guy in the world, but I wanted to make sure that my picture was on there.
On our About Us page, I make sure that I had a decent… This one is okay, I had a photographer do this. It’s too corporate though. These are real corporate, not as fun as I would like them to be. And so for the new website I went and hired a new photographer, okay. This is the new website that’s not quite live yet, but it will be probably when you watch this video. And I had the photographer take this picture here and I haven’t put the other pictures on yet, but I’ll show them to you here shortly. You can see the magic that a really good photographer can do to somebody who’s just not so great looking.
Now the first thing I want to talk about when it comes to getting photos taken for your website is, number one, you’re going to have to have some courage here, okay? Most people will not put a picture of themselves on their own website. They just, for whatever reason, are scared to do it and I’ve heard everything. I’ve heard it’s because of race. I’ve heard it’s because I’m too old and young people won’t hire me if they see an old face on a website or I’m a certain race and so this other race won’t hire me if I… You know what, my thing is I’ve talked to so many people and I’ve got one client that’s in his eighties, puts his picture on his website, works amazing, okay. I know several people that are minorities of different races that put their faces all over their website and it works okay.
If you’re worried about the whole race thing, I mean, do you really want to be going out and doing work for racist people anyway? Do you really want to be in the home of a racist person that’s going to judge you on the color of your skin? I don’t think so. I don’t think you should. I know so many people that are successful, that are doing well by putting their face on there and I don’t care what race they are. I don’t care how old they are. None of that matters as much as you think it does and it may actually be an advantage to you because then you can filter out the racist people that you don’t want to do work for anyway. Okay, hope that makes sense.
You don’t want to do a bait and switch. You don’t want to say, “Hey,” make them think that you’re one race and then show up and you’re another race. Do you really want to play that bait and switch-type game? I don’t think you do. It’s not good for any long-term success, put it that way.
Now, let’s talk about personalization. Why put a picture on your website to begin with? Why is that so powerful? Well, let’s look at the Google ranking factors. I’ve used this little graphic for several different videos to show what Google actually wants. We got this from the last SEO conference we went to in Denver, the LocalU Conference it’s called. And you can see that personalization, right here, is about 6% of a ranking factor, so not huge. But one more thing you can do to rank on Google is to get personalized pictures of people. Personalization means pictures of people, not your equipment, not your van. All that stuff’s important as well. But on the homepage and on the About Us page especially, you want to have personalized pictures of people, okay?
And if you’ve got a crew of people and you’re more than a one-man show, you want all those people on there. Like I was showing you before on my website, I make sure that on the About Us, everybody’s on here and this page gets over a thousand hits a month, just this page. The website gets about three to 4,000. This page gets a third of those, okay. People are going through and looking at this. I have people comment on my dog Taylor all the time. And so I know that they’re reading through this. If people are going to be working with you, they want to know who you are as a person, not just as a brand and not just as a company, okay. It’s very important for SEO. It’s very important for conversions. People are way more likely to call you if they see a smiling picture on your website.
Now that brings me to the next point, point number two, is the power of a smile, okay? We’ve already talked about you got to have courage to go out and do this. Number one, get some pictures taken, put them on your website. And then number two, the power of a smile, okay. What I mean by that is if for some reason most male business owners think they need to have some stern look. You don’t need to, guys. You don’t need to. You’re most likely in the service business, you’re selling to females. Females will open up to you and have more trust for you if you smile, a cheesy smile. Feels weird, feels cheesy to a lot of people. The smile, a genuine smile, will make you $100,000 next year and you think that’s an exaggeration? Test it. Test it. I’ve had clients give me these testimonials saying that this advice has worked, okay.
Now, what did I do for my last one? Before I told you I had my ex wife took the picture here for this book, in the website and all that stuff, and you can do that, okay. But what I really recommend, especially if you have issues smiling, is to hire a photographer. But be careful who you hire because you want this photographer to be able to open you up and get you to smile. Take a look at this little clip here. This is last week.
You do a lot of expression on you face [crosstalk 00:09:50].
See, Pamela here, who’s amazing, brought me in. She said, “What’s your favorite music?” Okay, and so we made a little playlist and she cranked up the music in her little studio there with all the professional lights and backgrounds and all this stuff. And she had me kind of grooving and dancing if you see there. And it just loosened me up and it got me to kind of smile. And she was making jokes and she just had that personality that got me to open up and smile and have fun. And if you can get into that situation where you’re relaxed, having fun, then all of a sudden these pictures aren’t some big scary thing. I’m going to click off here.
Okay, so now let’s look at the pictures that she actually took. Look at me now, just average-looking dude, she made me look amazing. Look at this. And yeah, she used Photoshop and all that kind of stuff. Look at these pictures. These are amazing. She made me look absolutely amazing. Look at this picture down here. This is what I’m going to use to promote my book, The Service Business Money Machine, my marketing book. My girlfriend looked at this and was like, “Oh my God, babe, you look hot.” She doesn’t say that normally. I mean she made my eyes sparkle, she made my skin… Took all the junk out of my skin. I don’t know exactly how she did it, but she made my muscles look big. I mean, she just made me look like a really good looking guy and I’m just not. I’m just not that good looking.
Let’s come back to me here. Here’s the real me. Here is the professional photographer that took a picture of me. This is what she did to me. This is the magic she did. Photographers can even use Photoshop to make your smile brighter, make your teeth whiter, fill in teeth that you may be missing, et cetera. It’s really worth it and it’s a one-time cost to go out and find a professional photographer that gets you relaxed and smiles. Find that photographer. Spend the $150, spend the $200. You can use these pictures for the next 10 years. It’s a small investment to get a huge ROI. Like I said, $100,000 a year, you can increase your bottom line by taking good photos. I’m telling you guys, this stuff works.
Now, the third thing I want to talk about is the competitive advantage. Now, the people that are watching this video, I would say one to 5% are going to actually take to heart what I’m saying and they’re going to actually go out, hire a professional photographer. They’re going to get that one awesome picture and they’re going to use it on their website. They’re going to use it on their business card and their flyers and brochures and whatever else they’re doing as far as marketing is concerned, and they’re going to get this massive success, okay.
The rest of you guys are not going to do it, and then you’re going to go back to grumbling and wondering why your website’s not getting more people, more calls. Why are you putting all these business cards out and they’re not working as well as you think they should? You’re going to continue to grumble, but those people that really listened to me, take this to heart, are going to have success. Now think about that. Your competition, even if they’re watching this video, are probably not going to take action. And if you do, then you’re going to be head and shoulders.
Let’s say there’s 20 competitors in your city. Go around and look how many people are actually doing this? Do you want that competitive advantage? Do you want people to look at your website and be like, “I’m going to choose this person over these three guys.” And they might not even know why, may not even formulate it in their head why they’re choosing you over the competition.
Let me ask you a question. Do you want to be better than the competition? Do you want to prove to people that you are the best in your town, okay? Do you want customers to come to you easily? Get professional pictures taken, smile and put them on everything that you have, your business cards, your websites, your flyers, everything, okay.
That’s all I got. That’s my little rant for today. I hope this helped. Let me know if you have any questions. Shoot me an email. Look me up on bigwestmarketing.com. We can book a 30-minute session if you want to get into the marketing and the web design and the SEO and the rankings, all that good stuff. That’s what we do for people, but I’d love to talk to you. Once again, my name is Joe Burnich with bigwestmarketing.com and I will talk to you soon.
