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ALEX BUGG

Alex Bugg works for Web Marketing Clinic, a family-run digital agency, which specialises in medical aesthetics. The business builds websites and delivers marketing campaigns for doctors, nurses, dentists, distributors and brands. Contact her at: alex@webmarketingclinic.co.uk or follow her on Instagram: @webmarketingclinic

“Will stock photos hurt my clinic marketing?”

If I had a pound for every clinic website or Instagram feed using that same tired photo of a woman touching her face, I’d be sipping cocktails in the Maldives by now. You know the one I mean.

Stock photography absolutely has its place in clinic marketing, but if you’re serious about building a brand patients can trust, it’s time to step away from the photo library and invest in your own images.

STOCK LOOKS SAFE… BUT SO DOES EVERYONE ELSE

Stock imagery is designed to be clean, polished, and anonymous. Which is exactly the problem.

It might look tidy, but your patients have probably seen those same shots used by half a dozen other local clinics, or even in ads for completely different industries.

Imagine you’re shopping around online, looking for a trustworthy aesthetic clinic in your town. You click on three different websites, and they all use the same glossy image of a model with perfect, airbrushed skin, or the half-and-half shot of a woman going from wrinkled to smoother.

It even pops up on the high street in windows!

At best, it feels repetitive. At worst, it makes you question who’s authentic.

And that’s where the danger lies. Stock photos don’t reflect your clinic, your patients, or your results. They can even set unrealistic expectations, showing flawless young models that bear no relation to the typical concerns of your patient base. Patients today are savvy – they’re more l ikely to be captured by the brand that looks “real.”

PHOTOGRAPHY IS PART OF YOUR BRAND, NOT JUST DECORATION

Your brand is more than your logo and colour palette. It’s the feeling patients get when they see you online. Imagery plays a huge part in this.

Shots of your actual clinic, your real team, and your own patients (with consent, of course) tell a story that no stock model can. Think of your photos as an extension of your consultation room. Do they look warm, professional, and trustworthy? Or do they look like they were grabbed in five minutes from page one of iStock?

One of the most common things patients say after booking is, “I felt like I already knew you.” That doesn’t happen when they’ve seen the same anonymous model staring wistfully into the middle distance. It happens when they see your smile, your reception space and your team in action.

Original photography builds familiarity. Familiarity builds trust. And trust is what gets someone to choose you over the clinic next door.

WHAT TO EXPECT

Yes, professional brand photography is an investment. Great photographers with industry know-how are worth their weight in gold. Plus, your content is reusable across your whole marketing ecosystem:

• Website hero images – textures that make your site stand out

• Social media posts and stories – backgrounds, before and afters, biographies!

• Google Business Profile – often neglected but vital for SEO

• Printed brochures and pull-up banners – something to read in the waiting room

• Press or award entries – PR won’t look at stock!

One shoot can give you an album of content to drip out all year long. Compare that with stock photos, which date quickly and are often spotted by patients as “generic”. You don’t need a week-long production to make this work, either. My clients like to make an event of the shoot, get hair and makeup in, sort models, and organise a wardrobe change or two. You should book a day with a professional photographer, get a pre-production call and make plans for:

• Exterior and interior shots of your clinic (patients love knowing what to expect)

• Team portraits, relaxed and smiling

• Treatment-in-action shots with a model or consenting patient – book your friends in to model treatments and reward them!

• Detail shots – skincare on a shelf, hands preparing treatment, little brand touches that make your clinic unique. You surely spent enough on your interior... Show it off!

The more information you can give your photographer beforehand, the better. From that one session, you’ll have dozens of high-quality images you can rotate across channels. That’s six to twelve months of content sorted.

MAKE A STATEMENT

Stock photos are a stop-gap. Bold, bespoke brand photography is a statement. It shows patients that you value your clinic, your team, and your image. And in a crowded market, that authenticity might be the difference between someone scrolling past and someone booking in.