7 marketing tools that get the job done for non-designers

Photo credit: Mari Kanezaki.

How do you create visual-heavy content and assets without having the talent and training of a graphic designer? Simple! Use a selection of tools that simplify the process and with easy-to-use interfaces. The seven tools below accomplish this feat magnificently.

Illustrio

Illustrio contains a huge visual asset library of icons, photos, maps, and charts sourced from a variety of graphic design pros. Each item can be customized with your brand’s signature colors and text.

These graphic assets can be used on web pages, apps, blogs, and other print materials to add visual appeal. The result is that business professionals can add their personal touches to visuals that have been carefully created by professional artists.

Coolors

The ability to select and combine colors takes a lot of natural talent that not everyone has. Moreover, honing such ability and developing other required skills to effectively use colors in branding takes training and experience. This is where Coolors comes in.

This web-based tool allows users to explore and automatically generate color schemes that you can customize. Simply click on the option to create a color scheme, to create a color scheme and you’ll be presented with a set of five colors that work well with one another. If you don’t like the color scheme, just hit the space bar to get an entirely new set of colors. You can also lock a color that you like to make the next color scheme suggestion to be based on that color.

Templafy

Creating a consistent look and feel across all of your documents is extremely important. This is why successful companies rely on templates, visual asset libraries, and policies that ensure all written communication materials stick to their branding guidelines.

Trying to manage all of this while your organization scales can be more than a little tricky. Templafy is a cloud-based solution that automates this. It provides a simple interface where templates can be created and updated, and where logos and other visual assets can be uploaded or deleted.

When a change is made, users who are working with older files are informed. The administration side of the tool allows for effective asset control. There’s even a way to track how often each visual is used.

Venngage

There’s a good reason you can’t scroll down your news feed without seeing at least one infographic. Smart marketing professionals know that infographics are powerful. More than any other form of content, they effectively earn likes, comments, shares, and, most importantly, links. The challenge is figuring out how to create a good one without having the talent or professional design training.

Venngage is a free tool that users can use to generate great infographics, as well as posters, reports, and other visuals. All you have to do is select the layout, then drag and drop the widgets that you want to include. Add your data, and you are ready to go.

LucidPress

Sometimes, it’s best to have a simple all-in-one solution for creating visual content for web, social, mobile, and print applications. This is where LucidPress shines. The tool is entirely web-based, which means there’s nothing to download.

Users can create websites, digital magazines, newsletters, posters, flyers, and more. All it takes is a few minutes to figure out the simple drag-and-drop interface. What’s even better is it integrates Google Docs, YouTube, and a variety of other apps. Once you’ve created what you need, you can download it in a variety of file formats which you can print, share on social, or embed on your company website.

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