Like most eCommerce business owners, you understand the importance of having high-quality, visually-appealing photographs of your products on your website. The one disadvantage eCommerce stores have in comparison to brick-and-mortar stores is that customers have a harder time feeling confident in their purchases. Quality product images serve as an assurance to potential customers that they're getting the product they want. Luckily, a one-time investment in quality product images doesn't have to have a one-time return. Product images can be repurposed for a number of other advertising methods. In this guide, we'll show you 4 unique places you can use your product images to get the most bang for your buck.

Taking Quality Product Images

Before you can consider using product images for multiple purposes, you have to have a large collection of high-quality product images to work with. This is one area you don't want to overlook. When you consider the fact that you'll be using your product images across multiple advertising streams, it makes sense to hire a professional to photograph your products. Here are some tips for building your collection of product images:

1. Have photographs of each product from multiple angles.

2. Be sure to take photographs in every offered color.

3. Take photographs of your products in use as well as on their own.

It's easy to see how you can build up a large supply of product images very quickly. Once you've cultivated a collection of beautiful product images, you can begin to incorporate them into various advertising mediums. 

#1: SMS Marketing

SMS Marketing stands for "Short Message Service Marketing." It's the practice of sending users targeted text messages to promote your eCommerce business, and it has an open rate of 98%. When you do it correctly, SMS Marketing is a great way to promote your brand and remind customers about your business.

Adding pictures to SMS marketing—a practice known as "Multimedia Message Service" (MMS) marketing—has distinct advantages over basic SMS marketing. Beautiful product images entice your customers. As a result, they tend to be more engaged with the same marketing message than they would have been without the pictures.

#2: Pop-Ups

Pop-ups are a useful way to direct your customers' attention to the most important information first. Pop-ups generally boast a 2% click-through rate and pop-up opt-in forms tend to increase the number of people who sign up for emails from your business.

Integrating gorgeous imagery into your pop-ups is a great way to re-engage customers with your content and entice them to make a purchase. One great way to entice people to click on pop-ups is to offer a sale or a specific piece of content if they sign up for your newsletter. With Klaviyo, you can have the requisite sale or downloadable PDF emailed to them immediately following sign-up. 

#3: Email Flows

Any good eCommerce sales funnel includes email marketing as a way to massage leads and build brand awareness. Of course, no one has time to send emails to each individual customer who comes onto their website. That's why applications like Klaviyo allow you to build email flows ahead of time based on how users interact with your website. Some popular email flows include:

• First Time Buyer Flows: These typically thank customers for purchasing your product, tell them a little bit about your brand, and entice them to try some of the other products you sell. 
• Abandoned Cart Flows: These flows are triggered when a customer adds items to their cart but doesn't check out. They encourage customers to complete their purchase. 
• Customer Win-Back Flows: These flows go out to customers who have purchased from you before but haven't purchased in a while. 

Your email flows should include images that support your content. Since your emails often involve selling or promoting your products, this makes product images a key aspect of designing your email flows. You can even create footers at the bottoms of all of your emails showcasing your most popular products with embedded links to those products. This builds an implied call-to-action into your emails separate from your basic email content.

#4: Social Media Marketing

Instagram. Facebook. Pinterest. These are the channels your customers are already using on a daily basis. Statistics show that 79% of the population currently uses social media in one form or another. When you know that your customers are already there, it makes sense to advertise your business through those streams as well.

Using the right images for your brand is a critical part of social media marketing. You want customers scrolling through their social media account on their phone to be attracted enough to your product to pause and read what you have to say about it. The product images that you've already invested in are a great way to do this.

• Facebook: Take care with your profile picture and cover photo as these are often the first impressions customers get of your company.
• Instagram: Make sure you use the same filter for all of your Instagram images. This gives your social media page a cohesive, branded feel to it. When customers see any of your images, they'll make the association to your brand.
• Pinterest: Don't neglect Pinterest as a social media marketing platform. Unlike other social media platforms, users on Pinterest are typically looking for content, not looking to socialize. This makes these customers much more likely to click through to content on your website.
• Twitter: Tools like Bitly can shorten your URL, leaving you more space for content and hashtags.

Here at Glow, we're dedicated to helping you make the most of your eCommerce marketing efforts. We encourage beautiful, professional-looking product images on your website because they make your site look gorgeous and engaging. But more than that, your product images have the potential to enhance the appearances of all your marketing materials. This gives your brand a consistent, recognizable appearance regardless of how your customers are interacting with it.

For more information about how Glow can help you build customer loyalty, contact us today.