Including some movement in your photos is a fast way to make connections with your audience. It’s all about using marketing psychology in photography.
Think you know what fires up your buyers’ neurons?
Surprise – you probably don’t know what fires up your own. As suspected, we are not entirely rational.
Not much of buyer behaviour is common sense. We’re all really bad at even knowing what lights up our own brains!
Here’s a snippet of what we do know.
Our brains process visuals quickly
About 90% of the information our brains receive is through sight. We process visuals more quickly than any of our other senses.
How can this help you create more attention-grabbing photographs?
You should try to include -⠀
- movement⠀
- mirroring⠀
How to add movement for marketing psychology in photography
It’s because our brains are alert to noticing movement. Essentially, it’s a survival instinct.
Our brains favour tracking movement, so we can assess if it’s a threat. When something moves, we’re wired to notice it.
You can create a sense of movement in photographs using leading lines that point towards what you want the viewer to see.⠀
The path does it in this photo.⠀
Takeaway #1: use leading lines create a sense of movement
Leading lines do exactly what the phrase suggests.
They lead the gaze of the viewer to the point of interest in the photo.
This path provides easy leading lines to direct the viewer’s gaze.
Take #2: motion blur creates movement for marketing psychology in photography
You can also edit photos post-production to include motion blur.
This is one of the easiest edits to create in Photoshop. It only takes a few minutes.
All you need to do is create two layers – one with your person in motion and one with your “background”. Then add the motion blur effect to the person.
You can choose how strong you want the motion effect to be.
Marketing psychology in photography: what’s mirroring in photos?
Now we’re going to think about mirror neurons.
The mirror neurons in our brains get busy when we see someone else do something.
Mirror neurons let us live other people’s emotions.
They’re help us get immersed in a film. Our mirror neurons fire up as though the action is happening to us.
Mirror neurons are also really important socially. Mirroring is how we learn by imitating others. They’re presumably also why we yawn when someone else does, and why laughter is contagious.⠀
Takeaway #3: how to use mirroring in photographs
In photographs, smart marketers use mirroring to show what they want viewers to do.
This photo should fire viewers’ mirror neurons to encourage slowing down and relaxing.
Activate your buyers’ mirror neurons by suggesting what you’d like them to do …
and relax.
Like these marketing psychology tips on photography?
Read more about marketing psychology here.
Want to learn more about psychology-led marketing?
Here’s a great book to inspire your interest.
This bestseller, by Nobel-prize winning economist Daniel Kahneman, is often considered the masterpiece on how we make decisions. Fascinating.
You must be logged in to post a comment.