Sifting through thousands of available tools is a hit and — more often than not — a miss proposition, but we’ve got you covered with 31 do-it-yourself marketing tools that are perfect for helping you create remarkable campaign experiences.
It can be overwhelming even deciding which new tools to start trying out to see if they’re helpful, so to jump-start your marketing efforts in 2020 we’ve gathered a varied selection of innovative and helpful tools that can significantly enhance your marketing efforts.
These tools come from a varying array of categories useful to digital marketers, from artificial intelligence (AI) content analysis bots and data manipulation utilities to video and image manipulation — a smorgasbord of helpful software that is unified in that each tool can provide immediate improvements to your marketing campaigns.
Some tools are free and many offer free trials to test out and see how they mesh with the way you like to work and your particular needs.
“Giving people legitimate value before asking them to pay can be a really useful strategy for any company wanting widespread adoption.” — Melanie Perkins @MelanieCanva Share on XFrom Visual Tools To Data Discovery Utilities
The software, tools, and online image creation apps most-used by Instagram influencers have been outlined in a recent survey of more than 1,200 influencers on the platform, with results showing that just 10 percent use the once-ubiquitous Photoshop, nearly 30 percent now use Lightroom, and some 4.8 percent regularly work with Canva, according to the study.
Even as far back as when I operated a 300-baud bulletin board system in the 1980s, it was difficult to keep up with the astounding number of new software tools developers programmed. It was then when my love of categorizing things took off, and I broke my sizable online freeware and shareware tool offerings into dozens of specific categories. For this list, however, we’ve stuck with three basic categories for marketers.
Let’s jump right in and start examining our collection of 31 tools to ramp up your content marketing experiences.
Data & Information Analysis Tools
These data and information analysis tools let you visualize and work with data in new and insightful ways, along with exploring the power and limits of search engine optimization (SEO), and with the record levels of data marketers have access to today, assistance in making sense of those terabytes of information can come as a welcome relief.
Keylime Toolbox — Marketers struggling to find search queries that are normally hidden from discovery in Google Analytics as “not provided” can uncover this helpful information using Keylime Toolbox, which also offers a number of SEO-related data reports useful to digital marketers.
Vennli — A content intelligence platform, Vennli lets marketers dig in to customer data and pull out a wide range of insightful content to explore the world through a client or customer’s eyes, using real-time data gathering and a slew of visualization options.
SEODataViz — Generate topic ideas for both relevant content creation and SEO keywording efforts with SEODataViz, a tool that helps marketers visualize information and break it down into manageable segments, among others features.
Talk to Transformer — How well do today’s neural networks perform when it comes to type-ahead and content prediction? With the Talk to Transformer artificial intelligence (AI) content completion bot, marketers can explore a wide range of activities from translation to question research.
“When done thoughtfully, data visualizations have the power to change perspectives, far more quickly than a spreadsheet or bullet points on a slide.” — Alexis Hall @Alexis5484 Share on XImage & Video Manipulation Tools
The digital marketing world of 2020 is undoubtedly more visually-focused and experiential than ever before, and the tools and utilities to create images and video that stand out and which make people take notice are a valuable asset in your marketing tool-kit. We recently explored this trend in “What B2B Marketers Need to Know About Experiential Content.”
BuzzSumo YouTube Analyzer — A new YouTube video analysis tool from popular content research platform BuzzSumo, offering a variety of video performance data for the world’s most popular video platform.
Kapwing — Kapwing’s platform gives marketers tools to create images, videos, and GIFs, with specialty resizing video features for popular social network formats, and more.
Rocketium — Offering both video and still image manipulation at scale through an API, Rocketium’s tools also bring text and images to video content, and the ability to turn blog posts into motion-rich formats.
Tubebuddy — This YouTube-oriented browser extension-based tool lets marketers dig deep into video keyword research, build bulk cards, annotations, descriptions and thumbnails, along with a variety of video management features.
Plotaverse — The suite of tools from Plotaverse features motion and animation art creation along with digital sharing and numerous other video and image features to bring your visuals to life.
Easil — A do-it-yourself design tool for individuals and teams, Easil focuses on drag-and-drop ease-of-use for brand marketers, with features that allow you to implement brand restrictions to keep visual content uniform, along with resizing, automatic complementary color recommendations, brand kits, and plenty of templates.
Pixlr — Pixlr brings AI-powered smarts to make professional online photo editing easier through smarter tools, and includes a large collection of image-related digital assets.
Fotor — I’ve used Fotor for years to quickly build image collages, and with over 300 million users this online photo and design tool brings with it an array of handy design tools with easy social platform formatted output.
Canva — Since arriving on the Web graphic-design scene in 2012, Canva has seen its numerous creative tools adopted by more professionals every year, with company valuations hitting $2.5 billion in 2019, and the Australia-based firm also made our list of “5 Top B2B Brands Mastering Facebook Engagement,” with its easy to use online design tools running the gamut from icons to infographics.
Visme — Visme’s tools focus on the creation of professional presentations and infographics in a design environment that seeks to turn boring data into visually engaging stories.
Easelly — Offering one of the most straightforward interfaces for turning text-based content into visually pleasing infographics, Easelly has templates for timelines, comparisons, reports, and processes.
Streamyard — Bringing a full-fledged live-streaming studio of tools into a browser is a tall task, and StreamYard has met the challenge allowing screen-sharing, broadcast branding, direct sharing to popular social platforms, video interviews, plus a slew of built-in options for making and growing audience connections.
EzGIF — EzGIF’s tool specializes in making, resizing, cropping, and optimizing animated GIF images, with features to turn video into GIFs, add text, apply filters, and split existing GIFs into separate new images, among numerous other functions.
ClipScribe — Today’sB2B marketers face audiences that increasingly interact with consumers who have their sound muted, and ClipScribe offers a variety of social media video captioning options in multiple formats, plus countdowns, blog export and headline design features, along with branding options.
Snapseed — An Android and iOS app from Google-owned Nik Software, Snapseed offers a wide variety of photo enhancement and digital filtering features that can help DIY marketers bring their content to life.
VSCO Cam — VSCO Cam’s Android and iOS app lets users work with an impressive array of photo filter and editing functions.
FaceTune — One of the more popular apps for editing portraits and selfies, FaceTune brings hundreds of selfie-oriented filters, from a firm that also offers its Swish video tools.
PicsArt — PicsArt allows marketers to create collages, edit images, and draw using layers with an easy-to-use app that is also backed by an active social community.
A Color Story — A Color Story allows marketers to add newfound levels of color to images and videos with its powerful editing and enhancing app.
Typorama — Typorama offers a swift and handy app for quickly building typographic designs from plain old text and photos.
InShot — InShot’s popular app is tailored to making it easier to edit video and add music, along with a variety of other video-specific tool features.
Splice — Splice’s app allows marketers to harness the power of mobile devices to edit video on-the-go, an emerging technology that is finally coming of age.
“Images, video and even interactive content are a big part of the shift towards creating more engaging experiences that go beyond informing B2B buyers about solutions, but connecting with them on an emotional level.” @LeeOdden Share on XAdditional Useful Tools For DIY B2B Marketers
Clever programmers are always coming up with fascinating new problem-solving methods, often creating tools than don’t fit squarely into just one category. From social media management to tools for finding out the questions people are asking, we have this type of tool in the following group of helpful do-it-yourself marketing tools.
SparkToro — SparkToro, currently in beta-testing stage, offers a helpful array of audience intelligence tools and accompanying resources that allow marketers to easily track and reach the most relevant audiences.
Sendible — Sendible brings brand amplification and social media management together in a set of collaborative tools from scheduling to advanced reporting.
Drift Chat — Reaching customers when you and your customers are both on the move is the specialty of live chat app Drift Chat, allowing advanced features such as mobile device video recording and team collaboration.
Audioburst Studio — Podcasts are booming for marketers B2B and B2C alike, and Audioburst Studio allows marketers to improve user engagement through real-time audio playlists and content, from creation through launch.
Focalmark — Focalmark’s hashtag analysis tools offer a ranked look at the reach and authenticity of Instagram hashtags, among other hashtag insights.
Unfold — As a bonus 32nd tool, Unfold’s Instagram Stories-specific app is aimed at building engaging messaging using a variety of unified filters and effects.
“How can you be the best answer for your audience if you don’t understand what questions they’re asking or what problems they’re trying to solve?” — Lane R. Ellis @lanerellis Share on XBe A Marketing Magician With The Tools You Use
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While the tools we use to produce the content and digital assets we share online in our marketing efforts are certainly important, don’t lose sight of the fact that even the ideal utility can still be used to make truly poor experiences if not used smartly.
The experience, creativity, and insight of the person using any tool is key to creating top output, and it’s when a savvy individual is using the perfect tool that true marketing magic happens.
While by no means complete, we hope this list helps you discover new tools and ultimately leads to creating more engaging B2B marketing efforts.
Finally, here are additional articles we’ve published covering even more helpful tools for B2B content marketers:
- 10 Smart Question Research Tools for B2B Marketers
- How B2B Marketers Can Make the Most of Interactive Content Tools
- The Content Marketer’s Toolbox: 3 ‘Real-Life’ Tools for Gaining Insight, Inspiration, & Amplification
- 7 Efficiency-Boosting Martech Tools & Platform Features B2B Marketers Need to Consider
