We all understand the need for visual content in our marketing, but don't necessarily have the budget or resources to make it happen amidst various image copyright rules floating around the internet.
With all of these challenges ahead for marketers in an ever-increasingly visual web, it's not hard to see why 55,000 people downloaded our set of 75 free stock photos last month.
But while those free stock photos were popular -- they weren't exactly perfect. Admittedly, they lacked diversity and more business-style shots. That's why we're pleased to share 160 completely new, completely free, business-themed stock photos that you can download and use today -- without any payment or any image credit required. Although, inbound links are always welcome. ;)
Now, we don't want you to download these stock photos and have them rot in a random place on your hard drive -- we'd love for you to actually use them. So to help you get inspired to put these free stock photos to use, check out our six places you can feature these stock photos in your marketing campaigns below.
6 Places to Use Your 160 Free Stock Photos
The 160 free stock photos come bucketed in six categories. Let's walk through an example from each category by sharing six of the many places you could employ these free photos.
1) Web Page Image
According to Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab, 46.1% of people say a website's design is the number one criterion for discerning the credibility of the company. Rather than presenting a stale website or spending a large portion of your budget on an image purchase, try selecting one of our business-themed photos to show off your business. The photo below comes from our photo category of "Employees Working."
2) Pinterest Board Image
Data from Marketing Land shows that Pinterest images with less than 10% background receive 2-4 times more pins than images with a heavy background. A variety of images in the group have light backgrounds in order to maximize the probability of your success when using them. The photo shown as the featured image on the pinboard below is an example photo from our collection of "Meeting" photos.
3) Facebook Post Image
According to Dan Zarrella, photos on Facebook get more likes, comments, and shares than text, video, and links do. We constantly try to employ visuals over plain text or link updates on our own Facebook, but as our social media manager Brittany Leaning can attest to, it's not easy! She spends hours creating visual content, so these 160 free photos help increase in her productivity. The photo below comes from the category of "Miscellaneous" photos. In other words, here are some more business-esque photos that could work in most scenarios.
4) Landing Page Promotional Image
Our data shows that companies see a 55% increase in leads when increasing their number of landing pages from 10 to 15. But how do you create effective landing pages without engaging visuals? With a little bit of customization, you can take your landing page conversion rate up a notch. The example below uses a photo from the "Printers/Fax/Phone" collection of photos to provide a human touch to a software trial.
5) Email Campaign Image
According to the "Science of Email Marketing," 65% of readers prefer emails that contain mostly images. While we don't recommend cluttering your email campaigns with photos, images can certainly help entice readers to click. In the example below, one of the photos from our "Mobile/Laptop" collection of photos is used to pimp out a blog post in an email to subscribers.
6) SlideShare Background Image
According to the company, SlideShare receives 60 million monthly visitors and 130 million pageviews, and is amongst the most visited 200 websites in the world. And it's value in marketing and visual content creation continues to rise. But every SlideShare you create requires images. While you can have text-based slides, you need a variety of images to stand as backgrounds or convey your message. The image is selected from the "Office Supplies" collection of photos, and fits seamlessly in the SlideShare presentation below.
While these examples illustrate six ways you can use these free stock photos, they are by no means the limit. We encourage you to check out these 160 free photos for yourself! And if you use these photos in your marketing, feel free to comment below on how you used them! :)