The images you use on ALL of the marketing for your veterinary practice should perfectly match your brand.
Images are important. The images on your website are important, the images on your blog posts are important, and the images on your marketing materials are important. The images you choose should be a reflection of your brand and help to shape the impression your clients and future clients take away about your veterinary business. But finding the right images can be difficult, expensive and very, very time-consuming!!
Every week I publish at least two, sometimes four Vetanswers blog posts and I realised very early on that there was no way I could afford to pay for an image every time I wanted to publish a new post. As an online business however I didn’t want to steal images or infringe on any copyright – that can be both unethical AND expensive. So over the years, I’ve found a number of websites that offer FREE stock images and generally with a little bit of creativity I can find the perfect one. So I thought it might be helpful to share my favourite free stock photo websites. They all allow you to download images with a range of resolutions including very high res but you should also double-check what the license is for each image.
None of these websites requires you to sign in and if you still can’t find the perfect free stock images, they also have links to paid stock photo websites.
1. FREEIMAGES
This is probably my first stop. There aren’t that many specific veterinary photos but there are lots and lots of animal photos. Some are fairly basic but there are also some beautiful images.
Click here to visit FREEIMAGES
2. Pixabay
Again Pixabay doesn’t have many veterinary-specific images (except for some weird, grumpy looking, plasticine vet!) but they have some gorgeous animal images.
Click here to visit Pixabay
3. Pexels
This is a relatively new website for me but so far I’ve found some lovely images.
Click here to visit Pexels
4. Unsplash
Again this is a relatively new website for me and the photos are more on the ‘arty’ side but there’s quite a range of almost every animal you could imagine here.
Click here to visit Unsplash
Sometimes I also make them up as I go.
Sometimes no matter how hard I look, I can’t find the right image to fit the blog post I’m publishing and that’s where Canva comes in. Canva is an easy-to-use, online tool that helps you create all sorts of designs and documents. I’ll often use images I already have and either crop them, change the colours, add them together, or add some text or other effects as required and Canva makes it incredibly easy to quickly achieve all of these things. But it’s also a topic for a whole other blog post!
What about you?
Which are your favourite free stock photo websites? Add them into the Comments section below and I can keep growing our list.