I’m starting to get a bit worried.
As you might imagine, I look at a lot of plumbing websites.
I’m seeing the same engineers over and over and over again on so many websites.
I’m concerned.
They certainly look happy in the photos, but they must be working like dogs.
These engineers in particular, seem to be grafting for hundreds if not thousands of plumbing companies across the UK and around the world.
You might recognise them…
Now, I’m no HR expert, but I assume that this much work might not be legal or at least not a healthy work / life balance.
I’m joking of course… well kind of.
If you didn’t know already, these photos of plumbers are what are known as ‘stock’ images.
They include actors dressed up as plumbers (I’m sure they didn’t fool you).
That means that for a small amount of money (and minimum effort) your web designer can purchase these images and add them to your website.
Yes, it’s easy.
But believe me, this convenience (for them) comes at a HUGE cost to you.
Here are 3 reasons why using stock images is seriously impacting your ability to attract new customers from the web via your website.
1. It’s damaging your ability to build trust
You’ve heard the phrase people buy from people. It’s true.
As Dr. Robert Cialdini described in his bestselling book, Influence. There are 6 principles of persuasion which are the foundation of why people subconsciously make a decision to act or not.
Arguably 4 of those 6 principles can be represented with the choice of photos you include on your website.
4 Persuasive Reasons For ‘Real’ Photos
- Commitment/consistency – By adding real photos of you and your team, you’ll be showing people that you are a real company who is prepared to be held to account as such.
- Social proof – Showing examples of your work, your engineers and ultimately your customers will help to demonstrate that other people have trusted your company, therefore they can too.
- Authority – Real photos of you, your team, your vans and your premises looking neat, tidy and professional portrays instant credibility and confidence that you are a ‘real plumber’ and a trustworthy business.
- Likability – People buy from people they like. Simply having photos in which you are smiling and looking friendly creates an approachability which is kind of magnetic when it comes to attracting new customers.
2. It’s damaging your ability to build trust… some more
If the last point was talking about the positive ways in which the right photos can help you to build trust, then this one is about the ways in which stock images damage trust.
At best it’s lazy, but at worst it’s deceptive.
By using actors, you’re trying to convince your potential customers that your business is something that it isn’t.
It’s no different to a restaurant using photos of someone else’s food.
Or someone else’s restaurant for that matter.
If you’re prepared to deceive people here, what else are you trying to hide from them?
3. No one else is doing it.
As you may already know, I’m a huge practitioner of 80/20 in business.
In short, this means that 80% of the success in the plumbing industry is achieved by just 20% of the businesses involved.
It also means that the ‘80%’ are getting poor to average results, therefore must be ‘wrong’.
And most people use stock images.
So even if you don’t know what to do, then just do something different.
Whenever I talk to plumbers and their engineers about getting real photos, they squirm in front of my very eyes.
They don’t want to be on the internet smiling away in photos. How uncool is that? What will the lads down the pub say if this ever gets out?
If you’re serious about growing your plumbing business, there’s a massive opportunity to get ahead of the rest of the pack.
FREE Review of your plumbing website and marketing
Getting a plumbing website designed and built is a fairly straightforward process.
But getting that website to consistently and predictably bring in new customers month after month isn’t so easy.
If you’ve ever given it a go yourself, you’ll no doubt have experienced the difficulty. Getting anything working takes investments of money and time to figure out what works and what doesn’t
Thankfully, you have the opportunity to take an incredible shortcut.
We work exclusively with fast growing plumbing companies so we’ve already done the hard work.
You’ll get a ‘no holds barred, take no prisoners’ full review of your website and marketing to find out each of the things that are currently growing or slowing your business right now.
Reviews take time to prepare for and host so we can only do a small number each month.
