I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the importance of your brand versus your work. What do I mean by that? When a potential client views your website are they paying more attention to your work or your brand? Why is the answer to this important? Because you need to know what to invest your time and money in so you can better market yourself. So what’s the answer? Is your brand or work more important to a client? I think the answer is both.

“A potential client needs to see the quality of your work matches the quality of your brand.”

Let’s look at two situations:

1. Your work is AWESOME, but your brand is so so. A potential client is browsing your site. You’re a wedding photographer. She sees and loves the amazing work you’ve done from Instagram and hops onto your site via her phone to get more info. Immediately red flags go up as your mobile site is not mobile friendly. She gives you the benefit of the doubt (because she loves your work!) and gets on her computer to view your site. She feels conflicted because you have a logo that looks looks dated, your brand colors are super bright and don’t match the aesthetic of your work, and some of the buttons in your menu don’t work. She’s overwhelmed with information and not sure where to look. She can’t take you seriously. She leaves.
2. Your brand is awesome, but you are just starting out. You are just starting out as a wedding photographer after a few years of doing family photos. You know having a great brand is important to attract the right client so you spend thousands of dollars on an awesome brand and website. You don’t have too many weddings to showcase right now so you use a few styled shoots as well as your portrait portfolio to blend in with everything else. After a google search an ideal client finds your site (your SEO is spot on because you paid for that too!). She immediately is in awe at the beauty of your brand. The layout is super user friendly, the colors are beautiful, and your work is….not quite what she thought it would be based on your beautiful brand.  She notices you’re marketing yourself as a wedding photographer, but maybe have three weddings to show along with some random family pictures. She doesn’t truly believe you’re an experienced wedding photographer and doesn’t want to risk being one of your first weddings so she moves on to the next site.

Oh friends is one of those situations you?! I feel like both happen a lot. In situation #1 the user just couldn’t take the nonprofessional looking brand. The work was stunning, but she just couldn’t find credibility in the brand. In situation #2 the user’s expectations of what the work should look like didn’t match the quality of the brand she found so she moved on.

“Let me note that we all start off somewhere and obviously we all have limited portfolios at first, BUT we need to know when to launch by having the right amount and quality of work.”

I hope this can encourage those of you out there in either situation! If you feel the quality of your brand doesn’t match your beautiful work I’d love to help. Contact me here or visit the shop for some awesome premade website templates and brands.