One of the best ways to make your dental ads stand out is by adding images. To be effective, the images must be high-quality and consistent with your practice’s brand. If not, you could make a poor first impression, attract the wrong patients, and push away the patients who would be right for you.
Because images are protected by strong intellectual property laws, you need to make sure you have the right to use the images you want. Too many people have gotten into trouble by pulling images from a Google image search, only to learn the hard way that those images aren't free to use.
If you’re a member of Dental Profit Academy, be sure to visit our social media image database. There you’ll find a complete library of images we created just for you!
If you’re looking for additional images or aren’t yet a member of Dental Profit Academy, here are four more places to find high-quality images for your practice.
Free Stock Photo Websites
Free stock photo websites, such as Unsplash.com, Pixabay.com, and Pexels.com, have come a long way. Years ago, most free stock photos available were poor quality or boring.
Today, many talented photographers upload a sampling of high-quality images to free stock photo websites.
Facebook Ads Manager even integrates directly with a database of high-quality stock photos you can use for free. We find many amazing images that way when running split testing Facebook ads for our practice and with campaigns we manage for other practices.
While the free stock photos have come a long way, your selection may be limited. Also, with many people searching for free stock photos, the higher-quality images tend to appear on many websites, which may make your practice come across as less unique.
That said, free stock photo websites or even Facebook Ad Manager’s image database can be a useful option for many practices, especially when split testing multiple images for a Facebook ad campaign.
Paid Stock Photo Websites
Paid stock photo websites, such as ShutterStock.com and DepositPhotos.com operate similarly to free stock photo websites in that they provide a database of images you can search and download. One noticeable distinction, of course, is you must pay a small fee to use images, typically $1 or less per image.
While some people question why anyone would pay for stock images with so many free options available, paid stock photo websites do offer many advantages over free ones.
Paid stock photo websites tend to have a much larger selection. The images are also more consistently high quality and high resolution. With so many people searching for free images, a larger database, and more consistent quality, the likelihood of a paid-for image appearing on other websites is lower.
The larger selection of high-quality images makes it much quicker to find images. In our experience, you can find a quality image on a paid website in a matter of a few searches. Sometimes it takes several minutes or longer to find the right image on a free stock photo website.
Your time is valuable. Thus, the minimal outlay in cash might be vastly outweighed by the time it saves you.
Hiring a Local Photographer
Hiring a local photographer often requires a much larger investment of money than stock photos. That said, you generally get many unique, high-quality images you can use over and over again.
You might get hundreds of unique images of real team members, your practice, your community, and more from just one session with a local photographer.
Want to show off your gourmet coffee and tea section? A local photographer can make it happen. Want to get a group of images that perfectly capture your culture? No stock photo website can compete with a local photographer.
Local photographers will expertly frame images to show you, your team, and your practice in the best light. They can even professionally touch up images you intend to use as part of a media kit or branding package.
Having your own database of unique, high-quality images can also save you a lot of time searching for stock photos in the future.
Using Your Phone to Take Pictures for Your Dental Ads
Cell phone camera technology has come a long way in a short period of time. In fact, the cameras on newer cell phones are often better than professional cameras from a decade ago.
If you’re looking for high-quality, unique photos for dental ads and don’t have the time or budget to hire a local photographer, you might have a great solution right in your pocket.
Cell phone images generally give a more real-world look and feel to your pictures because you usually won’t get the level of framing, lighting, and editing you would with a local photographer. But sometimes that’s the look you want. You can take images of happy patients. You can record video testimonials. You can even snap day-to-day images that show you, your team, and your patients having fun. These everyday images are great for giving people a glimpse into your true practice culture.
Where Do You Find Images for Your Practice?
Your images will often be the first thing people notice when they see your social media posts or ads. If it doesn’t convey the visual message you want, you could be doing your practice more harm than good.
If you want more help designing amazing dental ads, plus access to the custom database of images my team and I created, check out Dental Profit Academy. Also be sure to join my free Dental Marketing and Profits Facebook Group where thousands of dentists and I help each other build better practices.
You can also join my next Dental Facebook Bootcamp to learn how to use Facebook to bring in 30 or more new patients per month on autopilot - all while spending less than $500 on ads.
This article originally appeared on DeliveringWow.com.