How can you obtain great pictures for your marketing materials?

One of the issues that inevitably crops up when you are creating marketing materials for your organisation is the use of pictures. Naturally, you will always want to use high-quality images, but where can you go to get them, and how can you use your budget in the best way?

Here’s a summary of the three main options:

Royalty-free’ stock images

This is generally the least-expensive type of picture available from image libraries. When you buy the picture you agree to a royalty-free licence that enables you to use it in many different applications, as many times as you like. The down-side is that you do not have exclusive rights to the picture, so others may buy and use the same image.:

Some royalty-free images can cost relatively little. For example, a picture suitable for use on a website (ie of sufficient quality for the screen but not good enough for print) can cost as little as £50. So for a small part of your overall budget you can source excellent professional photography.

Rights-managed’ stock images

Unlike with royalty-free images, under a rights-managed licence you can choose the amount of exclusivity you require, for example protection from anyone else in your sector using the picture for an agreed period.

The cost will also depend on the way you use the picture, in terms of the print quantity, the size of the picture, its position in a publication and whether it is being used internationally or just in the UK. So the cost can vary greatly, from about £100 to many thousands if you buy exclusive rights to use the picture in multiple places as part of a big campaign.

Commissioned photography

The main advantage of commissioning your own photography is that you will have pictures that are unique and perfect for your marketing materials.

Commissioning your own photo shoot can cost anything from around £500 to £1,500 a day. However, it is possible to generate multiple images in a day’s shoot. So the cost per picture may well be less than buying several pictures from image libraries.

Remember too that you can obtain exclusive rights from the photographer for every commissioned picture. They can then be used again in future marketing initiatives from your own in-house image library and used to accompany future press releases and so on.

Lots of choice

Perhaps the main point to make in summary is that there are many choices when finding pictures for your marketing campaigns. Even if your budget is small, it is possible to obtain professional pictures. The trick is to decide on the right balance between the suitability of a picture in regards to attracting your target audience, cost, repeatability and exclusivity. A design company should be able to advise you and put forward suitable proposals for your situation.

© Titman Firth 2006