Best Practices for Prompting AI Image Generators to Create Stunning Marketing Assets
AI image generation is a game-changer for small businesses looking to elevate their digital marketing without breaking the bank. Platforms like DALL-E, MidJourney, and now ChatGPT can produce unique, professional-grade visuals that fit seamlessly into ads, social media posts, or website designs. But just like crafting a compelling ad copy, getting great results starts with writing the perfect prompt.
Here’s a quick guide to prompting AI for image generation and how you can use these visuals to supercharge your marketing efforts.
Best Practices for AI Image Prompts
1. Be Clear and Specific
AI thrives on clarity. Specify what you want, including colors, objects, styles, and even emotions. Think of your prompt as giving directions to a creative partner.
Example: Instead of “a cup of coffee,” try “a steaming cup of coffee on a wooden table, with soft morning light coming through a window, minimalist style.”
2. Define the Style
Want a modern vibe, a vintage aesthetic, or something playful? Spell it out! Reference artistic styles, photography techniques, or design trends.
Example: “Flat design illustration of a small café storefront, warm tones, inviting atmosphere, with hanging flower pots.”
3. Include Context or Purpose
Tell the AI how the image will be used. An ad banner might need a clean, spacious look, while social media content can be more vibrant and engaging.
Example: “A clean product shot of a surfboard leaning against a palm tree, with white space on the right for text overlay, high contrast for ad design.”
4. Iterate and Refine
Your first prompt might not yield perfection. Use what the AI generates as a baseline. Adjust the details in your prompt to refine the result, adding or removing elements until it aligns with your vision.
Using AI-Generated Images in Marketing
1. Eye-Catching Ad Visuals
AI-generated images can help create scroll-stopping visuals for platforms like Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest. Use vibrant, dynamic images that resonate with your audience.
Example: Create a series of images showcasing your product in aspirational settings (e.g., a cozy mug on a rainy day for a coffee shop).
2. Branded Social Media Content
Keep your brand consistent by generating visuals that match your tone and style. AI can easily create variations of a theme to keep your feed cohesive while avoiding repetitive imagery.
Example: Design a set of stylized backgrounds for motivational quotes, featuring your brand colors and subtle patterns.
3. Website Design Elements
Use AI to generate custom backgrounds, banners, or icons to give your website a unique flair without relying on generic stock imagery.
Example: For a yoga studio, generate a soft pastel background with flowing, abstract shapes that evoke calmness
Using MidJourney:
MidJourney is a powerful AI-driven image generation tool that can elevate a digital marketing agency’s creative capabilities. Its ability to produce high-quality, visually stunning assets in various styles makes it a valuable addition to an agency’s toolkit. Here’s a breakdown of its strengths and weaknesses, and how it fits into a digital marketing strategy:
Strengths of Using MidJourney
1. Unmatched Creativity and Customization
MidJourney excels at generating unique, artistic visuals that stand out from traditional stock imagery. This is ideal for creating eye-catching ad creatives, social media content, and branding elements tailored to a client’s aesthetic.
2. Cost-Effective Visual Production
Custom photography, illustrations, and stock can get expensive. For small businesses, MidJourney offers a budget-friendly alternative for producing a variety of custom assets, although it should not fully replace hiring real artists.
3. Fast Turnaround
With MidJourney, agencies can produce visuals quickly, making it an excellent tool for last-minute campaigns or agile marketing strategies where timelines are tight. Say you have 24 hours to create a campaign; Midjourney can supplement asset generation quickly to cover the bases.
4. Versatile Style Range
MidJourney allows users to explore a vast range of styles, from photorealistic renderings to illustrations and abstract art, giving creative teams more flexibility to match visuals to specific campaign goals and ideate on what the end product could look like.
Weaknesses and Challenges
1. Not Ideal for Text-Heavy Designs
While MidJourney is highly customizable, it can struggle with generating exact details or layouts, particularly if you need text or highly specific objects in your visuals.
Challenge: Incorporating product packaging, text, or logos into imagery will likely not come out perfectly, requiring additional editing.
Solution: Use MidJourney for initial concepts and refine outputs with tools like Canva or Adobe Creative Suite to overlay text and refine the composition.
2. Dependence on Prompt Quality
The tool’s results are only as good as the prompts you provide. This can create a learning curve for teams unfamiliar with crafting detailed and specific instructions.
Solution: Train creative staff on prompt engineering to optimize the tool’s output.
3. Style Consistency Challenges
It can sometimes be difficult to replicate a consistent visual style across multiple assets, especially for ongoing campaigns.
Solution: Use MidJourney for ideation and supplemental visuals, while maintaining brand consistency with manual design oversight and then hiring artists to create an asset gallery.
Tips for Small Business Success
MidJourney is best used as:
A Creative Idea Generator: Kickstart brainstorming sessions by exploring different visual styles and concepts.
Supplemental Content Creator: Provide unique backgrounds, textures, or supplemental elements for digital ads, social posts, or websites.
Rapid Visual Mockup Tool: Quickly generate mockups when conceptualizing a campaign
Integration Tip: Combine MidJourney with a human touch—use it for its strengths in ideation and visual production, then refine outputs with your team’s expertise to maintain brand integrity and polish.
and remember:
Stay Consistent: Use prompts that align with your brand identity, so every visual feels like part of the same story.
Test and Analyze: Run A/B tests with different AI-generated visuals in your ads to see which resonates best with your audience.
With AI-powered image generation, the possibilities are endless. You can use them to generate supplemental textures, backgrounds, illustrations, and imaginative scenes in order to achieve custom visuals that captivate your audience and grow your brand—all without needing a design degree. This isn’t to say you should rely 100% on AI to create your marketing assets, but it’s a great tool that can be creatively used to supplement, ideate, and add more depth to your designs. With that all being said, go ahead and take a dive yourself and happy prompting!
