Midjourney Prompts: How to Write Them, With 18 Marketing Examples for V8.2

Midjourney prompts are the text instructions you type in the Imagine bar on midjourney.com or in Discord to generate an image or a video. Midjourney's own prompt basics guide gives the core rule: short, clear phrases beat long lists of instructions. This guide applies it to marketing visuals, with every version and parameter checked in the official documentation in October 2026. If you also use Google's model, compare with our Nano Banana prompts, which favor full sentences instead.

Which Midjourney version should you use in 2026?

Midjourney releases new models regularly and keeps older ones available through the --v parameter or the settings panel. The versions you will meet:

Source: Midjourney's Version documentation, checked October 2026. For marketing work, stay on the default V8.2 unless you need a feature only an older version offers, such as Draft Mode in V7.

How do you structure a Midjourney prompt?

Midjourney's documentation lists seven areas to describe when a detail matters to you. Use them as a checklist, not as a template to fill in every time:

1. Subject: who or what (person, animal, character, place, object), with a precise number ("three cups" rather than "cups").
2. Medium: photo, painting, flat illustration, 3D render, watercolor, line drawing.
3. Environment: where the scene takes place (studio, office, beach, kitchen).
4. Lighting: soft daylight, studio light, golden hour, neon, overcast.
5. Color: vibrant, muted, pastel, monochrome, or your brand colors.
6. Mood: calm, playful, premium, energetic.
7. Composition: close-up, wide shot, top view, empty space on one side for a headline.

Three rules from the official guide make the biggest difference. First, describe what you want rather than what you do not want: writing "no cake" can still produce a cake, so use the --no parameter to exclude elements. Second, choose precise words ("enormous" rather than "big"). Third, put parameters at the very end, after a space, without commas or periods. For text inside the image, write the words between double quotation marks, keep them short, and add a cue such as "with the words". This is the same discipline as prompt engineering for text models: one clear intent per prompt, then iterate.

Which Midjourney parameters matter most?

Parameters change how the image is generated. The full list is in the official parameter list; these are the ones marketers use daily:

The maximum aspect ratio is 14:1 (4:1 in HD), according to the version compatibility chart.

18 Midjourney prompts for marketing

Each prompt below works as is on V8.2. Replace the subject, colors and format with your own, then iterate from the best of the four images. For more ready-made prompts across text and image models, see our SEO and GEO prompt library and our selection of AI prompts.

Blog headers and article illustrations

1. Editorial flat illustration of a marketer reading a search results page on a laptop, soft blue and orange palette, clean shapes, generous empty space on the left --ar 16:9 --s 150. A header that leaves room for the title.
2. Isometric 3D illustration of a small city made of documents and charts linked by glowing lines, pastel colors, white background --ar 16:9. Works for articles about data, SEO or workflows.
3. Top-down photo of a wooden desk with an open notebook, a coffee cup and a smartphone showing a chart, soft morning window light, muted tones --ar 3:2 --raw. A neutral photo for productivity or business topics.
4. Minimal line illustration of a magnifying glass over a stack of books, single teal accent color, off-white background --ar 16:9 --s 50 --no text, letters. Low stylize keeps it sober and on-brand.

Social media visuals

5. Bright studio photo of three colorful sneakers floating against a pastel pink background, hard shadows, playful mood --ar 4:5. Instagram feed format.
6. Vertical close-up of hands holding a smartphone in a busy café, shallow depth of field, warm evening light, empty space at the top --ar 9:16 --raw. Room for a caption in a story or a short video cover.
7. Flat graphic poster with the words "Black Friday" in large white letters on a deep purple background, gold confetti --ar 1:1. Short text in double quotation marks renders best.
8. Overhead flat lay of autumn baking ingredients on a linen tablecloth, natural light, rustic and cozy mood --ar 4:5. Seasonal content for food or retail brands.

For the captions and formats that go with these visuals, see our social media content ideas.

Product visuals

9. Product photo of a matte black water bottle on a wet stone surface, studio lighting, dark green background, sharp details --ar 4:5 --raw. A mood shot for ads, not a replacement for the real packshot.
10. Skincare jar on a marble shelf with eucalyptus leaves, soft diffused light, beige pastel palette, minimalist composition --ar 1:1. Premium, calm mood.
11. Lifestyle photo of a hiking backpack on a mountain trail at golden hour, peaks in the background, cinematic wide shot --ar 16:9 --raw. A banner or a category page header.
12. Seamless pattern of small coffee beans and leaves, two-tone brown and cream --tile. Backgrounds, packaging mock-ups, email headers.

Banners and ads

13. Wide photo of a bright open-plan office with plants and large windows, empty space on the right third, airy mood --ar 3:1 --raw. A website hero or a LinkedIn banner.
14. Abstract background of soft gradient waves in blue and violet, smooth texture --ar 21:9 --no text, people, objects. A clean base for a headline added later in a design tool.
15. Flat vector illustration of a paper rocket taking off from a laptop screen, orange and navy palette --ar 16:9 --c 20. A little chaos gives four genuinely different options for an ad test.

Brand consistency and editing

16. Flat illustration of a customer support agent with a headset, friendly expression, simple background --ar 1:1 --sref [URL of an existing brand illustration]. Keeps a series of visuals in the same style.
17. Place this bottle on a striped beach towel in bright summer sunlight, keep the label unchanged, with your product photo attached through the Edit Model (or --edit followed by the image URL in Discord). The Edit Model accepts up to four reference images.
18. Hero image of a city skyline at blue hour, reflections on calm water, wide shot --ar 16:9 --p. Applies your Personalization profile, which V8.2 reads more accurately than earlier versions.

Midjourney is one tool among many: our comparisons of the best graphic design software and of AI content creation methods help you pick the right one for each format.

Can you use Midjourney images commercially?

Yes, with conditions set by the Midjourney Terms of Service (version effective May 27, 2026) and its help article on using images and videos commercially:

Plans cost $10 (Basic), $30 (Standard), $60 (Pro) and $120 (Mega) per month, with a 20% discount on annual billing (Midjourney plan comparison, checked October 2026). Ownership under the terms is not the same as copyright protection: in Part 2 of its report on copyright and AI (January 29, 2025), the US Copyright Office concluded that AI outputs are protected only where a human author has determined sufficient expressive elements, which excludes the mere provision of prompts. Laws differ by country, and Midjourney itself recommends consulting a lawyer. Never prompt a competitor's logo, a protected character or a real person's likeness for an ad.

What are the limits of Midjourney for marketing?

• Text: rendering works best with the Latin alphabet and short words; for longer copy, add it afterwards in a design tool.
• The --no parameter reads each word separately, so "--no modern clothing" is read as "no modern" and "no clothing", which can trigger moderation. Describe what you want instead.
• Stability: the terms warn that styles and algorithms change, so keep your prompts and seeds to recreate a series, and do not rely on one exact look over time.
• HD editing: inpainting and outpainting on HD images downscale the result to SD, which you can upscale again.
• Product truth: a generated image of your product is an illustration. On product pages and in ads, real photos remain the reference for what the customer receives.

How do you publish Midjourney images so they help SEO and AI visibility?

A generated image only helps your rankings once it is published correctly. Google's image SEO best practices apply to AI images exactly as to photos:

1. Descriptive file name: rename the download (for example black-friday-sneakers-banner.webp) instead of keeping the generated name.
2. Useful alt text: describe what the image shows in context, in one sentence. Our alt text definition explains the rules, and the free alt text checker finds missing ones on a page.
3. Light files: HD files are 2048 px wide; resize to the display size and convert to WebP or AVIF with the image compressor. See image optimization for the full checklist.
4. Placement next to relevant text: Google extracts the meaning of an image from the surrounding content, captions and titles.

AI assistants are increasingly multimodal, but they cite pages for their text: the image supports the article, and the article earns the citation. Our image SEO guide covers the rest, from image sitemaps to lazy loading.

Getting consistent results from Midjourney

Start with a short prompt that covers subject, medium, light and framing, add --ar for the format, then adjust --s, --raw and --sref until the result matches your brand. The best Midjourney prompts for marketing are short, specific and tied to one format, with parameters doing the technical work. Images make an article more attractive; the article itself is what ranks on Google and gets cited by ChatGPT or Gemini. To publish those articles at a steady pace, the Sorank article generator writes and publishes sourced, illustrated posts in autopilot, and Sorank also tracks whether AI assistants cite your brand.