7Creativity Tools for Inspired
Marketing
At the core of a great marketer
lies a truly creative being. When marketing becomes formulaic, it falls flat. When
it’s creatively tailored to meet the needs of the audience and express the
brand authentically, marketing can actually feel like art.
A marketer’s job is so constant,
however, that staying in the creative flow is a humungous challenge. That’s why
a lot of marketing feels so generic; it was either drafted by someone who isn’t
truly passionate about the field, or by a great professional who is simply
tapped out.
When you reach your next
“marketer’s block”, turn to these apps and services for inspiration. Each fills
a different need in creating a stellar marketing campaign, and each can infuse
new life into what would otherwise be a dull campaign. In other words, they
each could be your new best friend.
#1: A Global Network of Experts
Gathering credible quotes from
experts in your industry can be marketing gold. By using the honest statements
of professionals, you can manifest a deeper sense of credibility and expertise
in your industry. Finding these folks can be a headache, but sites like Media
Diplomat offer an immensely efficient and simple way to connect with the people
you need. Media Diplomat is a global database of experts from a myriad of
specialties, and journalists and marketers use it daily to nab the exact quotes
and info needed to write brilliant blogs, content marketing pieces, and
articles.
#2: Animated Videos You Can Make
Yourself
Infographics have been all the
rage for some time now, but what if you could make animated videos in a snap,
all by yourself? If this sounds like just what your marketing efforts need to
reach the masses, GoAnimate is a must. This fabulous tool is essentially a drag
and drop dynamo that produces high end videos that are do-it-yourself but look
totally professional. It’s affordable, intuitive, and super fun too.
#3: Go Beyond the Average Email
Email marketing is still a highly
effective means to reach your demographic, but let’s face it, it could use some
creative juices to jazz up the mundane. Movable Ink is a fabulous way to take
your email newsletters from boring to unforgettable. Movable Ink helps
marketers make email feel personal, and yet still reach the masses. The tool
makes the entire email setup process easy and intuitive, from email creation to
the analytics. This lets you spend more time conceiving snappy copy and
headlines, as opposed to endless hours setting up and analyzing results.
Content can be streamed in real-time into your blasts as well, making a stale
email a thing of the past.
#4: Visually Organize Your
Thoughts
Murally is a genius marketing tool
that helps you visualize the goals and ideas you have about each campaign. This
app helps you draw meaningful insights from your list of must-haves, and when
used with a team, can get you all on the same creative page. Murally speeds up
the creative process significantly by creating a visual map of ideas and needs,
which can spark creative solutions in a jiffy. So much better than an old
school white board.
#5: A Brilliant New Way to do A/B
Testing
Almost every marketer lives to
test their ideas against each other, finding the most successful method to sell
their goods and services. Tools like Convert make the process far more
entertaining and effective. Convert is an A/B testing application made
specifically for agencies and marketers. Its greatest gift is simplifying the
technical process so creativity is held as the shining star. Convert also
seamlessly integrates with Google Analytics, and it really is a godsend for
split testing and optimization.
#6: Let Your Fonts do All the
Talking
Typography in online and print
materials can make all the difference in the world to a successful campaign. If
you’re running low on inspiration for the text styles you’re using, check out
MyFonts. This site has a gorgeous selection of varied and eye-popping fonts
that can truly jazz up your marketing materials. You can even use it to help
define your corporate design.
#7: Collaborate in Style
Marketing efforts are often a
joint collaboration between marketing teams and clients. If your campaigns are
created by a team in any fashion, Notism is a
fantastic new tool to help you
meet your potential. Notism is platform that facilitates efficient and inspired
collaboration on design and video creations. It streamlines precise and
comprehensive feedback, lets teammates communicate via text or sketches and
artwork, and even allows for video timelines and communications within the
workflow. It has genius task management and is an overall magnificent tool to
get marketing teams on the same page.
Great marketing starts with great
ideas, and sometimes it takes a brilliant tool to help you generate your dream
campaign. Technology is all about making our lives easier, and for marketers,
sometimes that means streamlining the mundane tasks and giving you more time to
get imaginative. These tools are just a small sampling of the awesome suite of
options you have, but employing even just one of them can make the difference
in your marketing magic.
Are there other tools you can’t
live without in your marketing creative process? Please share them with us!
