If you have ever served in the role of a marketing professional, you know just how important it can be to manage all of the complex work that comes along with driving engagement, creating relevant content, and managing outreach.

Keeping tabs on each of these issues, plus more, is the job of any good revenue engineer focused on lead management and enhancing marketing automation processes. From the tools and platforms used, the people on your team, and the results that matter, there is much to track.

While each and every tool will have a different workflow, of course, there still exists one vital tool that I want to cover in this post that could radically improve the quality and outcome of your marketing efforts. And that is an image license agreement template.

As far as legal aspects of a marketing workflow are concerned, this template can be one of the most important. In the following article, How To Use An Image License Agreement Template Wisely, we share valuable insight to the use and importance of this document from District Hardware.

What Is An Image License Agreement Template And Why It’s Important For Digital Marketing?

The image license rules put forth by any given website must be followed in order to browse legally. Fortunately, search engines are typically quite helpful in filtering out potentially problematic content.

If you’re not careful, however, you can find yourself on the wrong side of the law. Litigators for corporations and other trademark holders will not hesitate to file suit if you break the rules of their image license terms.

Image licensing is the process of obtaining a digital license to use images on your website, app, or social media. The rules of image licensing vary from platform to platform.

A license for an image can often be purchased at the time the image is needed as well. In some cases, you may be able to purchase an image license or an image library license all at once.

An image license agreement template is a standardized legal document that you can use to protect yourself, your business, or others in the case of image misappropriation. A typical image license agreement template will include:

In short, an image license agreement template is an effective way to simplify the current state of image licensing, make the rights and responsibilities of all parties involved clear, and reduce the chances of an image rights violation.

For digital marketers, this means that an image license can be to your advantage when you engage in typical activities such as:

The ability to boost customer surveillance awareness of your brand through digital marketing campaigns is only valuable to the extent that consumers have access to advertising and published content available through yours.

As image licensing rules can vary from platform to platform based on their unique license management tools and requirements, it’s important to take the time to understand every platform or third-party content holders rules, as these can vary significantly.

One of the biggest problems that can arise as a result of misusing images online is misrepresentation. For example, you may have a picture of a famous person on your website without realizing how much someone like that can mean to your bottom line. This means that rather than being able to make money from your product or service, you could end up losing money.

On the other hand, if you have an image of an event that people care about, you may be able to create more buzz around it. This can be a great way to position yourself as a topic of discussion or industry leader.

As you can see, the impact of misusing content under a license agreement can have far-reaching implications to a business. Therefore, every marketer, revenue engineer, lead management professional, and business owner needs to be educated on the exact use of image licensing agreements.

Image licensing can be an area that can be confusing if you’re not already familiar with the specific rules and regulations of how images can be used at the time of publication. The best way to effectively know how to properly use images and avoid legal repercussions, you must engage in good faith usage. Good faith means using images wisely, according to their intended use.

The best way to do this is to pay for images that you need. To save money doing so, you can use a licensing agreement that may give you access to some images for free.

Licenses typically include certain guidelines around how images can be used, so it’s important to read the terms carefully to make sure that you’re being considerate of the rights of others.

Let’s take a look at a case study to show how an organization was able to use image licensing to their benefit:

Case Study 1

The American Football League (AFL) grew out of the need to give football fans a alternative league to the National Football League (NFL) in 1960. From 1960 until merging with the NFL in 1970, the AFL operated through a league of eight teams.

In the late 1950s when the league began, there wasn’t a lot of media coverage of American football. However, after the AFL became a part of the NFL, the league started drawing a lot more attention and it became more popular than ever.

Several well-received CFL games are now available for viewing on Cable TV thanks to the acquisition of the CFL’s image rights from the previous Canadian Football League (CFL) organization.

The merger was heavily publicized at the time, which is one of the reasons why it was able to build up such a large brand presence.

Case Study 2

The story of the NFL and AFL merger is a great example of how the responsible use of images can be to the benefit of a business. But what happens when you misuse images and end up being tagged for it?

If you don’t get permission before using someone’s image rights, you could end up getting into serious trouble. Here’s an example of using someone else’s image in print:

If you want your business to be secure and your liabilities to be low, you need to use images and protect your own. That means you need to hire professional photographers to take your pictures, and be diligent in avoiding using resources without proper permission.

Here are few examples of how to do this according to Julie Riven of Plain Picture (in her article, Image Use Correlating to Image Pricing):

Just as with any other type of legal documentation, it’s necessary to include multiple provisions to ensure the image license is cover all bases. For example:

• Make It Specific.
• Incorporate Legal Terminology.
• Check the Rules and Regulations of Where Your Image Will Be Found.

Takeaway

For marketing professionals who focus on lead management and enhancing marketing automation, it can be easy to overlook the legal aspects behind images in their content.

And while imposing the use of an image license agreement template for your leads, your attention to detail over these legal documents for your business will help it thrive by safeguarding your interest.

For more information on image licensing, you can visit Wikipedia.