Do you use stock photography in your online and offline marketing? Say yes—you are not alone.

Home pages, landing pages, blog posts, social media posts—you’ve likely seen and perhaps used your share of headset hotties and handshaking businessmen. This article shows you 14 of the worst images not to use, and why.

Not All Stock Images Are Created Equal

Stock imagery, when used appropriately, can help differentiate your asset management firm, personalize your brand, and tell the right story to your target personas. The largest stock houses, like Adobe Stock, iStock and Shutterstock, have thousands of terrific and on-point images, videos, GIFs, and illustrations, both created by humans and by AI. Royalty free sites like Pixabay and Pexels can also be great sources.

However, overused and generic visual imagery can telegraph a firm’s laziness and lack of credibility. After all, how many words is an image worth? Probably more than 1,000.

Using generic stock imagery can undermine your credibility. Staged boardrooms, targets, and skylines are what they are, which in not real, and interchangeable. When your site looks like every other asset manager website, you lose one of the few owned channels where you control your story.

Stock images can also incur legal risks. You don’t want a call from a high-powered law firm claiming copyright infringement for one obscure photo you mistakenly pulled from Google, at no cost, but was in fact copyrighted. That one so-called free image could wind up costing you thousands of dollars in legal and infringement fees.

The following 14 images and ideas to avoid apply just as much to asset managers, financial advisors, RIAs and investment managers, as to any business.

Don’t Use These Images in Financial Services

Please don’t use the following (or similar) overexposed stock images on your website, social media, pitch books, email marketing, and other marketing materials:

1. The handshake

You’ve probably seen multiple variations of the handshake shot: the businessman or woman in a suit handshake, the multi-generational handshake, and the ethnic diversity handshake are among the shakiest of stock photos.

2. The bullseye

Do you help clients reach their targets? Are you always on target? You may have seen this stock photo before. Don’t use it in your marketing.

3.  The running guy in a suit

The running businessman image must have a briefcase to clinch the cliché. What is the running guy running to…or from?

4. Ariane, the overexposed stock image model

You’ve seen her everywhere. She’s an attractive, smiling young woman with Asian features. She’s on websites, social media sites, magazines, billboards in the United States, Australia, Europe, and perhaps the moon. She has her own Instagram and Facebook accounts as “Ariane, the Overexposed Stock Image Model.” She’s an attractive woman, to be sure, but with her image everywhere, the chances that she could represent your brand with distinction are minimal. Too many samples to choose from, here’s one.

5. The smiling headset woman

You probably know this woman, too. She’s the happy, helpful call center rep who’s always available to answer your questions. That’s right, she’s standing by, waiting for your call.

6. The whiteboard thinking guy

Not everyone has a transparent glass wall to write brainstorming ideas on. Nor do they have a spotless conference room with a  diverse mix of employees. Does your firm?

7. The happy retirees sailing into the sunset

Where do they make these people? In the model factory, perhaps.

8. The generic graph

Arrows up! But if you’ve talked to your compliance officers, they’ll note that you can’t promise all will go up all the time. Better to show an actual graphs with real results.

9. The umbrella not in a storm

You know the one: rows of identical black umbrellas with a single umbrella in another color. Instead of signaling innovation, it can make your firm look uniform and generic.

10. The puzzle pieces

Are you the missing piece in a client’s portfolio? So are the hundreds of other firms using the exact same multi-colored jigsaw photo. If everyone is “the missing piece,” no one is.

11. The anonymous marathon runners

Strategy as endurance race, performance as forward motion, clients “on a journey”—we get it. The problem is that prospects can’t tell whether they’re looking at an asset manager, a sneaker brand, or a fitness app.

12. The city skyline at night

Apparently, every investment thesis in the United States is powered by one of three skylines: New York, Chicago, or San Francisco. If your “differentiated” strategy looks like a tourism ad, perhaps prospects will treat it that way.

13. The diverse team huddled around a computer

Five perfectly lit professionals, gathered around and looking at the same glowing screen. No one’s workspace looks like this, and your prospects know it.

14. The seedling in cupped hands

Growth, sustainability, stewardship—this poor sprout has to do it all. It’s been used so often that it now means “no original ideas here.”

Better Images for Better Clarity

The same way that vague, non-transparent words and jargon blur what makes your message distinct, generic imagery can negatively impact what makes your story worth remembering. If you are pruning empty phrases from your copy, you should also be cutting non‑distinct visuals from your website and other marketing materials as well.

A disciplined visual strategy built on distinctive imagery and clear goals can support your sales efforts by making your story concrete and memorable.

The End.

Schedule a complimentary strategy session with Dan Sondhelm, CEO of Sondhelm Partners, to learn how a content and digital marketing strategy based on authentic imagery that helps tell your story can improve your marketing efforts.

Frank Serebrin is the Content Marketing Director for Sondhelm Partners. He leads strategic and creative content and marketing services for our asset management and wealth management clients.

Credits: All images are royalty-free courtesy of Pixabay and Pexels. Thanks to: 1) Pixabay: Honest_Graphic. 2) Pixabay: Deedster. 3)  Pexels: Jack Sparrow.  4) Shutterstock 5) Pixabay: Geralt, 6) Pixabay: StartupStock Photos. 7) iStock: Creative Credit. 8) iStock: Creative Credit. 9) Stockcake.10) Pixabay: piro4d. 11) Pixabay: wal_172619.12)  Pixabay; KaiPilger. 13)  Pexels: erwinbosman. 14)  Pixabay: GoranH.