So! You’re ready to start planning your business branding! Exciting times.

There are some things you should consider in the early stages, things like:

whether spending thousands of dollars on professional branding is really necessary at the stage of your business,
what to do to prepare for a photoshoot for your brand, and
how to make sure you get the absolute most out of your time, effort and money.

So no one is wasting time going back and forth unsure of what they want, need, or how to actually communicate with the right people, I’m going to give you my 3 main planning points so you can take the guesswork out of the entire process.

FIRSTLY,

What stage is your brand at?

Cool, okay. Nice one! Congrats on the new venture!
If I’m totally honest with you, professional branding probably isn’t required at such early stages, especially if you are still figuring out your vision, themes, emotion, mission, all the important foundations of a successful brand.
We’re lucky to live in the tech era where most phones can take decent photos, and cameras are also pretty easy to get a hold of. I’d recommend focusing on the building blocks, getting clear on your vision and once you start trading you can get an idea of your growth strategy.
HOWEVER, do read on as you may find the planning process to help you do a few of the bits yourself. And whenever you feel ready to outsource the gig, I’ll be here!
Awesome! So good that it’s been going well.
I think you’ll find the following information useful in the planning process, and at any stage feel free to reach out to me directly if you have any specific questions.
Take some time to get clear on what direction you want to take it all before you dive in, the last thing you want is to spend money and it not be payoff one way or another.
Weeeew! That’s amazing!
The storytelling side of brand photography can be the tricky part - cause that’s what we’re doing essentially, telling your audience a story.
If you’re already established, the info below may not be as useful to you, as I imagine you’ve already established a lot of the key planning bits and have a clear idea of who your ideal clients are.
If you like, click here to see my standard branding packages. These can be customised to suit what you need (cause lets be real, every business is unique and one package won’t suit all)

PART 1

If you haven’t already, for the love of all good things, do a client avatar. Like, yesterday.

This is a pretty common practice among small businesses now, to make sure you know e x a c t l y who your target client/audience is, what is moving through their minds, what their feelings could be, why what your brand offers is what they need, etc. etc.

Start by:

Drawing a person (and name them)

Write a heading on the left that says ‘away from’

White a heading on the right that says ‘towards’

And then, write down things that motivate them in both ways. For example, what are they moving away from? If you are a massage therapist, then your client avatar will be heavily motivated to move away from pain, discomfort, stress. Where you can, ask why again. Ask why like 5 times until you can’t ask why any further.

Your answers should end up being like “they want to move away from stress of overworking and not prioritising their body”, “they don’t know it consciously, but they need loving touch and connection from a routine of isolation”

Once you have about 8 on each side, you should have a pretty clear idea of the kind of person you’re marketing your brand to.

The other thing I’d like you to do here, is consider what you actually need from your brand photos.

Are you a brand that operates on social media only and photos are 9/10 of communicating?

Are you building a website and need to focus mainly on landscape header images?

Do you need printed materials?

How many photos do you actually need? For a website with 5 pages, will 20 images do? If you post once a day on social media, 20 images won’t get you through a full month without having to repeat them or use other photos/graphics to stretch it out.

Do you need a short professional film on your landing page to grab your clients’ attention the second they stumble upon you? A succinct, but effective way of communicating your brand in a brief moment?

PART 2

Mission, vision, graphic design & colour scheme.

You’ve got your client avatar, now we’re looking directly on why you’re doing what you do.

If you look over your mission and vision for what you do as a brand, you should be able to extract some emotions from them. How do you want to make the people you work with feel?

Are you nurturing people, therefore planning to communicate gentle, supportive, calm and centred emotions through your brand story?

Are you a powerful, driven and successful coach, and only want to attract the kind of people who go all in every time? If so, then you obviously want to communicate that power, boldness, focus and steadfastness through your brand.

Then we bring in graphic design.

If you already have your brand kit established, that’ll make this bit easy breezy as there’s no work involved.

A brand kit is in essence fonts, colour palette, logos, and the files for them.

Why is this important? Planning your brand photoshoot around your brand kit means the photos will complement the colours and themes you already have in place.

Brand coherency, my friends.

If you don’t have these in place? No stress:

I have a great contact for a graphic designer (spoiler alert, she did all of my graphic design).

Otherwise, Pinterest may be your best friend.

Start by:

Create a branding Pinterest board

Add photos of all kinds - they don’t have to be pose specific, you can add literally anything that gives you the brand feelings you uncovered earlier.

Consider adding potential colours, potential fonts that feel like a good representation

It doesn’t have to be refined first up - just add as you get that feeling and you can go back and remove things later as you marinade on it.

At the end of this process, you want to have whittled your colour scheme to 4-6 colours that complement each other together, and some key themes to draw on for the rest of your planning. All the better if you’ve discovered some fonts you like too.

PART 3

Preparation for shoot day

So we’ve got your avatar and your colours and themes, now we’re onto the actual planning part.

First: Location.

Does your brand have a physical premises?
If yes, do you want your photos taken there? With that space offer enough in diversity for your photos, will it capture the feelings you’re aiming to evoke from your audience? Is it clean and well presented?
If no, what sort of location/s will create that feeling you’re communicating? What location fits the brand and what it offers?

Second: Shot list.

Do you want to be in the photos?
If yes, it’s important to get clear on what that looks like. Are you the thing you’re selling? Do you want the focus to be on you (but not your face)?
If no, what are you planning to have in the photos to communicate your brand? How do you want it styled? There can be heaps of room for creativity here.

My suggestion for your shot list would be to have a look at some of your competitors: what do you like about what they’ve done? What don’t you like? Make some notes on this to refer to.

Third: Outfits & Props.

If you’re going to be in the photos, my general recommendation for outfit planning is as follows -
One outfit that represents you when you’re working, what you’d wear when you meet potential clients or when you’re actually working with them
One outfit that includes a combination of your brand colours, doesn’t have to be all of them but 2-3 is good
One outfit that you feel most accurately represents you as the brand owner, most of the time it’s a personal expression but for some it’s important to stay on brand.
As an example, a client of mine has a black dress that is her dress. It makes her feel powerful when she wears it, helps her tap into the kind of Queen of the world energy she wants her clients to embody.
Props - have a good think about this one as they’re a pretty important part of the photos haha.
What do you routinely use when you do your thing? Can you find a creative way to use them in photos?
Can they be represented in other ways? E.g, if you’re a herbalist, can you use fresh or dried herbs that you often use with your clients?
Are there other props that are a bit left of field but could still tell the story? The storytelling part comes out here - maybe you’re a photographer, but your favourite pair of boots are a testament to your values, mission and what you do.

I’d recommend writing all of this down somewhere so you can refer to it (and send it to your photographer).

Some final considerations

You should have a lot more clarity on what you’re creating after following that process, but I have found most branding shoots, while planned to some extent, tend to unfold naturally and intuitively.

An idea comes, and usually once it’s followed, other photo ideas will flow from there.

If you pass on your planning to your photographer and they are keen & understand their role, you should have a blast creating together!

I know you’re probably wondering, “why is Liv giving all of this information away for free when I can use her planning method and then go with another photographer?”

Well, sweet! If you found another photographer who you feel is going to help you craft your brand the way you want it, bully for you.

We photographers are artists, not everyone has the creative style, eye and process that works for everyone.

I used to believe the planning process was what gave an edge, then I realised I want people to have cool photos for their brand and that’s so much easier to achieve when you have clarity on how to do that.