Adverts & picture design
Advert Design, AI Ad Images And Picture Design For Small Businesses
Most small business adverts fail in the first half-second: a stock photo everyone has seen before, a headline that says nothing, and a logo stretched out of shape. Good adverts are not expensive — they are just specific. One offer, one real image, one obvious next step.
In short
BMR Digital designs social media and Google adverts, AI-generated ad imagery finished by hand, and full picture design and photo editing for UK small businesses. You get correctly sized files for every placement, advert copy written to match, and your own photos tidied to advertising standard — all at a fixed quote with two rounds of changes included.
What we design
Everything a small business needs to advertise online, plus the photo work that makes the adverts worth looking at in the first place:
Social media adverts
Feed, story and reel graphics for Facebook and Instagram campaigns. Designed around one offer and one action, sized correctly per placement so nothing important is cropped, and built to stop the scroll without looking like an AI fever dream.
Google display ads
The standard banner size sets for Google Display campaigns, kept readable at small sizes and on-brand across every dimension. Fewer words, bigger type, and your actual branding rather than a generic template.
AI-generated ad imagery
Concept scenes and backgrounds generated with AI tools, then corrected by hand — brand colours matched, your real logo applied properly, anatomical and product oddities fixed. You get original imagery without a photoshoot budget, and none of the tell-tale weirdness.
Picture design and photo editing
The Pimp My Photos side of the business: background removal and swaps, object and wire removal, colour and exposure correction, sharpening, scratch and mark repair, and resizing for web, print and marketplaces. Phone photos turned into images you can actually advertise with.
Promotional graphics
Offer graphics, seasonal promos, price-drop posts and announcement images for your socials and website — consistent with your logo, colours and fonts so your feed looks like one business, not five.
Advert copywriting
Short, specific ad copy written to go with the image: the offer in plain words, a reason to act now, and one obvious next step. No invented claims, no fake urgency, nothing your business cannot back up.
AI imagery — used properly
AI image tools are genuinely useful now. They can build a concept scene — a clean workshop, a showroom backdrop, a lifestyle setting — in minutes instead of a half-day photoshoot. For a small business that means original advert imagery without the photography budget.
But raw AI output is rarely good enough to run. Hands come out wrong, text comes out garbled, products warp, and everything has the same over-polished look that people have learned to scroll past. So every AI image we use is finished by hand: details corrected, colours matched to your brand, your real logo placed properly, and the composition adjusted so the advert works at the size it will actually be seen.
Where your own photos can do the job, we use those instead — a real picture of your work beats a generated scene for trust every time. AI is for the concepts you cannot photograph; your photos are for the proof. Most campaigns end up using both.
Facebook and Instagram advert images — feed, story and reel sizes
Google display advert sets in the standard banner sizes
AI-generated concept imagery, finished and corrected by hand
Photo editing — background removal, object removal, colour correction
Product and service images tidied for websites and listings
Before-and-after and promotional graphics using your real photos
Advert copy written to match — headline, body and call to action
Web-ready JPG, PNG and WebP files, correctly sized and compressed
Picture design: making your photos good enough to sell with
This is the side of the business that runs alongside Pimp My Photos. The most common problem we see is a business with good work and bad photos — taken on a phone, in poor light, with a skip lorry in the background. Those photos lose work, because customers judge the job by the picture.
Photo editing fixes most of it. Backgrounds removed or replaced, so the van, the room or the product is the focus. Distracting objects, wires and passers-by removed. Colour and exposure corrected so the image looks like the job actually looked. Soft images sharpened as far as they will honestly go, and everything resized correctly for the website, the advert or the marketplace listing it is heading for.
The honest limits matter here: a blurred photo can be improved but not made sharp, and we will tell you that up front rather than take the money and hand back a smudge. Where a photo cannot be saved, we will say so and suggest the fastest way to get a better one — often just a note on how to retake it on your phone.
What makes an advert actually work
One offer. Not a collage of everything you do — one reason to act, in words a customer would use. "Free MOT retest within 10 days" beats "quality automotive services" every single time.
A real image. Your work, your premises, your product — or an AI concept that is honest about what it shows. No stock photos of somebody else's business, no invented five-star graphics, no claims you cannot back up. Ad platforms reject misleading creative, and customers punish it faster than the platforms do.
And one obvious next step. Call, message, book, visit — pick one and make it the most readable thing on the advert. An advert with three different calls to action gets none of them.
How the job runs
Tell us what you are advertising, who it is aimed at and where it will run — Facebook, Instagram, Google, your website, or all of them. Send your logo and any photos you want used, or describe the concept if it is an AI job. If you have no wording, we write it.
You get a first draft to react to, then two rounds of changes: layout and message first, detail and polish second. Final files land sized correctly for every placement agreed — feed, story, display set, website header — and the job closes at the price quoted at the start.
Single adverts usually turn round in a few days; full campaign sets a little longer. If you are up against a campaign start date, say so at the start and we will tell you honestly whether it fits.
Adverts work harder when everything else matches
An advert sends people somewhere — and what they find there decides whether the money was well spent. So advert design sits alongside logo design, leaflet and print design, digital and photo design, video creation, website design and local SEO — so the ad, the search result and the landing page all look like the same business and make the same offer.
You can see the sort of businesses this work sits alongside on our our work page, including the Pimp My Photos design studio, and wider service prices on the pricing page.
Advert design by platform: what changes and why
Facebook and Instagram. People are scrolling, not searching, so the image has to earn attention before the words get read. That means one strong subject, high contrast, very little text on the image itself, and the offer carried in the headline and first line of the post. Story and reel sizes are tall, so key content is kept away from the top and bottom where the platform buttons sit.
Google display ads. These appear in small boxes on websites people are reading for something else. Tiny sizes punish detail, so type gets bigger, messages get shorter and the logo is kept readable at the smallest banner. A set is designed so each size works on its own rather than shrinking one design until it breaks.
Google Business Profile images. Not adverts in the paid sense, but the photos and offer posts on your profile are often the first thing a local customer sees. Clear, honest images of real work and premises help far more than polished graphics here, so this is usually photo editing rather than design.
LinkedIn. A more business-minded audience that responds to clear, credible offers. Designs stay cleaner and less promotional, and the copy leans towards the problem solved rather than a discount.
Common advert mistakes we fix
Too much text. An advert covered in words becomes a leaflet squeezed into a phone screen, and nobody reads it. We cut it back to the offer, the proof and the action.
A blurry or stretched logo. It quietly tells people the business is careless. We rebuild or source a clean version so it sits sharply on every size — and if your logo needs more than a tidy-up, that is where logo design comes in.
Stock photos that everybody else uses. Customers recognise them, and they say nothing about your work. A tidied real photo or a properly finished AI concept almost always does better.
Sending clicks to the homepage. An advert about one offer should land on a page about that offer. If there is no suitable page, we will tell you before the campaign spends money, because the ad is only half of the job.
FAQs
What is AI ad design, and is it any good?
AI tools generate the base image — a scene, a background, a concept — and then a human finishes it: correcting details, matching your brand colours, adding your real logo and checking nothing looks off. Used well it cuts the cost and time of concept imagery massively. Used badly it produces the generic, slightly-wrong-looking ads you scroll past every day. We use it as a starting point, never as the finished article.
Can you use my own photos in adverts?
Yes, and we recommend it. Real photos of your work, your van, your premises or your product consistently outperform stock imagery, because people can tell the difference. We tidy them up first — straightening, colour correction, background clean-up, object removal — so they are good enough to advertise with.
What advert sizes do you design?
Facebook and Instagram feed, story and reel sizes, Google display ad sets, Google Business Profile images, LinkedIn ad formats, plus banners and artwork for any other platform you use. Each size is designed to fit, not just cropped from one master and hoped for the best.
How much does advert design cost?
A fixed quote, quoted before work starts. A single advert image is one price; a full set of ad sizes for a campaign is quoted as a bundle. There is no monthly retainer and no hourly meter running.
Do you write the advert wording too?
Yes. Tell us the offer, who it is aimed at and where it will run, and we will write the headline and body copy. Ad text is kept short and specific — one offer, one reason to act, one clear next step.
Can you edit or repair photos I already have?
Yes — that is the picture design side. Background removal and replacement, object and wire removal, colour and exposure correction, sharpening soft images, removing scratches and marks, resizing for web and print, and turning phone photos into usable marketing images.
Will AI images get my adverts rejected?
Not for being AI — the platforms care about content, not how the image was made. What gets ads rejected is misleading claims, before-and-after imagery in restricted categories, and third-party brands or logos in the artwork. We keep everything clear of all three: only your brand, only claims your business can back up, only images you have the rights to use.
How many changes are included?
First draft, then two rounds of changes — layout and message first, detail and polish second. Anything beyond that is quoted openly before it happens rather than appearing on an invoice.
Do you run the adverts or just design them?
The core job is design, copy and correctly sized files. If you want help with setup — choosing placements, matching the landing page and checking the ad follows platform rules — ask at the quote stage and it will be priced separately and openly.
Which advert sizes do I actually need?
For most small businesses on Facebook and Instagram, a square or 4:5 feed image plus a 9:16 story version covers nearly every placement. Google display campaigns need a small set of standard banner sizes. We will recommend the minimum set for where you are advertising rather than selling you sizes you will never use.
Can you design adverts for a business outside Scotland?
Yes. Advert design is done remotely for businesses across the UK. You send the brief, logo and photos by email, and drafts and final files come back the same way.
Tell us what you need to advertise.
Send the offer, the platform and any photos. We'll come back with a fixed price and a first draft.