*Updated 6/21/2024
If you’re a marketer in today’s digital age, you probably know that sometimes it pays to think outside the box.
Sometimes experimenting with something new and exciting is just the boost that your brand needs to attract new customers and stand out in an oversaturated marketplace.
AI is one of those new and exciting trends that has been rising in popularity the last few years, and for good reasons. AI, and AI art generators in particular, are getting more sophisticated and the art they produce can be quite stunning!
Midjourney is one of the most popular AI art generators out there, so, as a marketer, why not use Midjourney to generate stunning new visuals and give your marketing efforts a breath of fresh air?
If that sounds like an exciting opportunity for you, then we’ve got you covered. This blog is going to give you 5 actionable ways you can start using Midjourney for your marketing efforts today.
What is Midjourney and How Does it Work?
Midjourney is a generative AI program and service developed and hosted by San Francisco-based independent research lab, Midjourney Inc.
It’s been out since July of 2022 and, like DALL-E 2 and other AI image generators, it works by generating images from text prompts. It’s equipped with natural language detectors that “understand” what you’re asking of it and, using its vast dataset of images, learning patterns, styles, and features from various art genres and styles, generates an entirely new image based on your ask.
It’s an extremely sophisticated piece of technology and the images it can conjure up are quite impressive.
How to Sign Up for Midjourney
There’s a bit of a process to sign up, but we’ll walk you through it:
- First, you’ve got to sign up for a Discord account (a popular messaging platform). Just click that link and follow the directions shown on screen.
- Once you’re all signed up on Discord, click over to the Midjourney website, and click Join the Beta, which will open up an invite to join the Midjourney Discord server/channel.
- Click on Accept Invite, accept their terms of service, and you’re in!
- The Midjourney bot will then prompt you to choose one of their 4 subscription plans. They range from $10/month with the Basic Plan, all the way to $120/month for the Mega Plan. Each plan gives you a certain amount of GPU time and max concurrent jobs, so check out their prices and features to see which works best for you.
Remember, Midjourney can only be accessed through the Discord channel, so when you’re ready to start creating AI art, all you have to do is open up Discord, click the Midjourney Bot, type /imagine, and start creating!
It can be common to be a little lost at first once you start your Midjourney journey, but Discord makes it a bit easier. You can learn how to better use the Midjourney bot by joining one of the newcomer rooms, like the newbie channel, where you’ll be joined with plenty of others who are both learning and can help guide you through the process.
Top 10 Ways for Marketers to Use Midjourney
Once you get the hang of using Midjourney, here are 5 of our favorite ways to take advantage of its cutting-edge visuals for your next marketing campaign.
1. Captivating Ads
An advertisement on social media or in an email is no good unless it can quickly capture your target audience’s attention.
How better to do that than some captivating ads that stop your target from scrolling and entice them to stop and take a moment to read what you’ve got? Using Midjourney, you can create some very cool ads either by creating stunning backgrounds for your products, sending them to an exotic location, and more.
Got an event or promotion coming up? Skip the boring flyer and use Midjourney to help you create something truly worthwhile that your consumers will just have to stop and read about.
Be aware though that it’s unlikely that Midjourney will be able to generate a perfect image that’s on brand and aligned with your messaging on its first try.
It’s a good idea to have your graphic designers look over and edit anything that Midjourney generates for you.
2. Visuals for Campaigns, Blogs, and Websites
If you’re running a social media or email campaign, you already know that you’re going to be competing with a lot of other images, videos, and visuals from your competitors.
Why not use your visuals to stand head and shoulders above your competition?
Whether it’s images for your website, such as awesome product photos, impressive visuals for a blog post or article, or just snazzy-looking employee backgrounds for your About Us page, Midjourney can help you jazz them up and keep your website looking fresh.
If you’re just starting out or perhaps you don’t have a creative team to back you up with, it’s pretty good at coming up with logos too.
Type in as detailed of a prompt as you can to get a starting point, port the results into Photoshop, and adjust text, colors, and whatever else you need from there.
It does help to have a good graphic designer on your team for this, however, so if you’re reading this on our website and you’re in need of some creative talent, then, ahem … you’re in the right place. Just click here to check out our branding and logo services.
3. Creating Concepts
Depending on what kind of product or services your company offers, you may have to start with an idea or a concept long before you have a tangible thing that exists for anyone to look at, touch, or test out.
Midjourney is a great way to get an initial idea of what a product concept might look like completed. It can work for many kinds of products but could be especially useful for clothing, sports equipment, furniture, video games, packaging and label design and more.
Simply describe your product or packaging to Midjourney, add an existing image for it to compare if you have it, and the AI can churn out some very cool concept art to give you and your team a starting point.
This can also work for fleshing out illustration concepts. If a company wants to create an animated video, it often needs to first determine its illustration style and develop character styles to animate.
Using Midjourney to run through various prompts is a way to quickly test illustration styles and character designs. You end up with a mood board of usable styles and concepts, which an illustrator can then take to create the final assets.
It’s a definite time-saver that can speed up your process.
4. Editing Images
If you already have the images you need and are looking for simple edits, Midjourney can save you time with that as well.
Easily change aspect ratios of your images or stylize them by asking Midjourney to take your existing image or photo and turn it into a pencil drawing, a watercolor, a comic book-style graphic, or more to create a more interesting image or one that aligns better with your brand and messaging.
It’s really up to you and your imagination.
With Midjourney v5, you can also easily upscale your images, saving you and your designers some valuable time.
Speaking of designers, don’t forget to have them give some fine-tuning edits so they can smooth out anything that is created with Midjourney.
5. Inspiring Your Team
We spoke a bit about how you can use Midjourney for inspiration with concept art, but it’s a great tool for drawing up some inspiration, period.
Even the best graphic designers on your team run into a creative brick wall from time to time. We’re only human. Having access to a tool like Midjourney AI is a great way to get those creative juices flowing again on a hard, creatively draining day.
Whether your project is in the ideation phase or you’re just looking for different alternatives or styles to what you already have, Midjourney is useful to bounce ideas off of or get a starting point on those days when ideas are running low.
6. Custom Collateral Design
“Whoa, where did that come from? That’s awesome!”
If your brand sells merchandise or gives out branded swag to either clients or employees, then the above quote is something you definitely want to hear! And having striking, surreal, AI-generated imagery on your collateral is a way to get there.
Fire up Midjourney to create custom designs for products like T-shirts, mugs, koozies, posters, and more. Having unique and eye-catching artwork can give you the means for exclusive, limited-editions items that your customers will love, as well as memorable gifts that will keep partners, clients, and employees talking about you for days.
Midjourney-designed artwork can not only enhance your brand’s merchandise offering but also creates a sense of exclusivity and value around your products that can help you boost customer engagement!
7. Engaging Social Media Posts
If you want to grab attention on a platform as full of distractions as social media is, you’ve got to have the right kind of visuals.
Luckily, Midjourney is perfect for creating the kind of surreal, striking, and “have-to-look” visuals that stop the scroll and get viewers to take a second look.
Whether you need engaging posts for Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn, Midjourney can help you create posts to highlight your latest product launches, showcase behind-the-scenes content, or even just share company updates in a unique and more visually engaging way.
These eye-catching visuals will help keep your social media presence fresh, interesting, and driving the kind of engagement your brand is looking for!
8. UX Design
A tool that can create art is naturally one that is great at fueling creativity in UX design!
By using Midjourney, UX designers can quickly generate and explore all kinds of new design concepts, allowing them to see what works and what doesn’t in just minutes.
UX teams can use Midjourney to visualize user interfaces in unique styles and create the kind of components that meet user needs. This makes it fantastic for rapidly prototyping different design iterations.
Whether your UX team is working on wireframes, mockups, or imagery, Midjourney provides an accessible and convenient way to experiment with layouts, color schemes, and other interactive elements!
9. User-Generated Content Campaigns
Looking for other ways to boost engagement on social media or email campaigns?
Why not invite your audience to get in on the fun by generating and sharing some amazing and captivating Midjourney-created content?
Inviting your audience to use Midjourney to create things like eye-catching templates, borders, or edited photos and graphics is a great way to drive some serious engagement and get social media talking about your brand. Encourage participants to share their creations using a specific branded hashtag and then feature their best work on your brand’s website and social media pages.
Not getting the engagement you want? Offering a reward for the most creative submissions can boost the likelihood of brave participants giving it a shot!
Whatever kind of user-generated content you’re after, just be sure to provide some ground rules for participants and perhaps some tips on how to write the best Midjourney prompts to get the results they’re looking for.
10. Infographics
If you’re looking to add more value to your website, then you can’t go wrong with informative infographics!
And Midjourney is an excellent tool for creating the kind of surreal, eye-catching, and “have-to-look” infographics you need to grab your audience’s attention, quickly convey the message you want to convey, and do so in a way they’re much more likely to remember later.
Offer your infographics as standalone images or downloadables in areas of your website like blogs, articles, or resource sections, or as captivating visuals and lead magnets for your social media pages.
Using scroll-stopping infographics in your marketing strategies is a great way to boost your content’s reach, add SEO value to your website, and make complex information more digestible and appealing to a wider audience!
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Unleash Your Creative Potential
So, if you’re looking for something to shake up your marketing and brand visuals, as you can see, there are plenty of ways to use Midjourney to open up a whole new world of possibilities.
And if you’re in need of a creative team to help you shake up your marketing strategies, then Designity is ready to help you shake.
Our Creative Directors are ready to learn about your company, hear your strategies, and take the creative burden off of your shoulder.
Backed up by the top 3% of US-based creative talent, we can get your creative marketing projects done and, using AI and other cutting-edge technology, help you create the eye-catching visuals that will amplify your brand and draw customers into your marketing funnel.
Why not book a demo call today to see how Designity’s tech-enabled Creative as a Service platform can help your brand unleash your creative potential and help you crush your marketing goals?
How do you use AI for your marketing efforts?
