We live in an age where commercial photography for a single project comes with a hefty price tag of between $350 to $500. Of course, not many of us have that kind of money to invest. This is where the stock images websites come to the rescue. Their collection allows a marketer to save costs on a professional photographer while retaining the effectiveness of their marketing campaign. And when it comes to advertising on Facebook Instagram, stock photos are a blessing in disguise! With both platforms reigning in marketing, adding stock photos makes the work easy with a readily available collection. But picking out the right stock photos is the key to generate a revenue-boosting ad campaign. Here are five ways you can effectively use stock photos on Facebook and Instagram ads.
What Are Stock Photos?
Stock photos are collections of photographs, illustrations and vectors usually licensed for specific purposes. They are great for advertising, marketing, personal and promotional work. You can use them for commercial projects, websites, publishing, blogging, and more. Many websites offer free and high-quality images to be downloaded right away, including Pexels, which is one of the best resources for stock images. Others charge a small fee so you can easily buy stock photos with image licenses and use them for publications and commercial use.
How to Use Stock Photos on Facebook and Instagram Ads?
Because Facebook and Instagram are so far-reaching, every kind of audience is present on these platforms. Brands can easily customize their Ads according to their target audience. More and more brands are becoming familiar with the powerful marketing potential of these platforms. In fact, according to a recent study, over 130 million Instagram accounts take an interest in brands’ advertisements posts appearing on their feed or stories. How do you, as a marketer, make sure your Ad receives engagement? How do you choose the right, unique, and attractive stock images? The following brands apply specific tactics related to stock images that are sure to drive traffic. So the next time you browse through stock photo websites to run a successful marketing campaign, you should know the drill.
MIND PICKINGS
Upload only high quality images
Use a color scheme to up your game!
Try to find unique pictures to stand out!
Adapt your stock photo choices to your audience.
1. Follow Apple’s FootSteps to Upload Only High-Quality Images
If you know the ins and outs of Instagram and Facebook Ad targeting, you must realize that brands who use low-quality images in their Ads lose interest and trust in their brand image.
In fact, 67% of users look for quality in an image of the advertisement before making the purchase decision.
1080 x 1080 pixels is the minimum recommended image resolution for a Facebook and an Instagram Ad to do well.
The image quality has a lot to do with the perception the customers will make about your product.
In our example, see how intelligently Apple has chosen a photo that has a single subject (snake here) in focus with everything else blurred out. This helps create quality connections with consumers.
Thankfully, both free and premium stock photos available make sourcing professional-grade images easy.
2. Nike’s Smart Use of Colors
Instagram’s user interface color scheme is plain white, while that of Facebook is blue and white.
If you choose a stock photo with whites and light blues dominating, it holds a high risk of going unnoticed. Choose an image with contrasting colors to both Instagram And Facebook feeds.
You have a maximum of two seconds before a user scrolls down to a more attractive advertisement. Make sure you choose an image that is highly contrasting and catches the eye.
See how wisely Nike has played with orange shades of the morning in the above Ad, standing clear against the white theme of Facebook.
3. EatSprig’s Selection of Unique Images
Because stock photos are so easily accessible, some brands don’t bother to search for unique treasures from them.
This is the reason why we see the same cheesy stock photos on every other website.
See how this brand, Eatsprig, uses a stock photo of blueberries with a rarity in it.
To avoid using overused images, you may upload your image in question to the ‘Google Search by Image’ option. Google lists down all images that are either same or slightly different used elsewhere.
Also, use other than the usual terms to search for an image inside a stock photo website.
For example, we used Pexel to find image results for ‘Orange Fruit’ using variation in search queries.
This is the collection of images it presented for a simple entry of ‘Orange Fruit.’ We were not surprised by the results.
To use images in your commercial projects that make them noticeable, they must be new in the viewers’ eyes.
So we tried searching for ‘Fruits in Plastic’ and see how much of a difference this little trick made in refining the results.
This image is ideal for commercial use because:
- It is simple.
- Other websites do not extensively use it for the same topic.
- The subject is placed in the center and has all the focus directed towards it because nothing else causes the clutter in the background.
- The blank black space around oranges allows text to be easily written and read.
4. Salesforce Use Engaging Video Ads That Convert
Browse through Facebook and Instagram brands, and you will find the majority using video clips as a medium to advertise. And why not?
Videos have the power to change the minds of 84% of users in favor of the brand. This is because they help people understand the product and its services better.
Premade stock videos eliminate the need to buy expensive gears to record videos for commercials. It is how well you edit them that determines their performance.
You may not always need videos to get your message across. Plenty of brands use stock images like Salesforce did in our example here. They edited this image with moving text, making the ad twice as engaging as it would be with the image alone.
5. Zara Features its Target Audience in it Ads
Zara focuses mainly on young females as its target audience, reflecting on its every Facebook and Instagram Ad posts.
It does a great job by using images of young models in its campaigns. Consumers connect to an ad when it shows how the product will look like on a person exactly of their age (in this case, in their 20s).
Stock images are available for a versatile range of audiences. Even if you have a pet-related brand, you will find many stock photos to be used in your ads.
Wrap Up
There are endless free and premium stock photos collection out there. Websites spoil users for choices with new content uploaded daily.
It is all up to the marketers how they choose the best ones from a plethora of options.
We hope you found this post helpful.
Best of luck!