5 products that help marketers get more done, with less

If you’re in marketing, unless you work for a big brand or a very well-funded startup, odds are you’re having to do it all. That’s no easy task, when you consider how many marketing specialties there are right now.

Graphic design, video, data analysis, copywriting, SEO, PPC, social media…the list goes on.

Now, we’re seeing budgets tighten. And in some cases (unfortunately) teams are becoming smaller. If you had to do more with less before, now you really have to.

Two years ago, I was a one-woman marketing team with a budget of… whatever I could get away with charging on the company credit card.

Now, I lead a team of five, but that includes some product management, so we’re still pretty lean. We still get a whole lot done!

Here’s some products and services that have helped me and my team run campaigns on tight budgets. Maybe they can help you too.

Snappa

Tl;dr - Professional looking ads and social media collateral without a designer

Snappa is my go to for graphic design when you can’t afford a designer. If your team doesn’t have a full-time graphic designer, you can always hire a freelancer. But hiring freelancers takes time (and money). And sometimes you just want that creative done, so you can run your campaign.

Snappa has templates for all kinds of projects like these – profile pictures and cover photos for social media, Facebook ad creative, etc. You can customize the templates with your own photos and swap out icons and colors. Awesome for non-designers.

While Snappa might not meet the branding requirements of more sophisticated marketing teams, it definitely gets the job done.

What I use it for: Creative for Facebook ads; CTAs for on site offers like webinar downloads; creative for organic social posts and pages

P.S. I used it to make the graphic for the header of this article.

Price: Free - $30/month

Looka (formerly LogoJoy)

Tl;dr - AI powered logos and branding

Looka is an AI powered logo and brand identity designer. You give it your brand name, then select a color palette and a few icons. In under a minute, it gives you tens to hundreds of logo options.

You can either use it to generate your entire brand identity or use it as a starting point for a professional (human) designer.

What I use it for: Branding for new product lines or experiments

Price: $20 for full copyright and high res logo files

Lemonlight

Tl;dr – A passable video strategy for $1500/month

 Lemonlight is a service, not a product. Their team produces very high-quality videos – both live action and animated – at a very reasonable price point.

What I like best about them is that their process for delivering videos is totally dialed in. From the strategy to the script to the shoot to the editing, everything runs very smoothly. Process is the key to their success, and I have to believe it’s the only reason they can deliver the quality that they do at such a reasonable price point.

$1500/month gets you 6 videos per year. Not a small investment, but I’ve been quoted $20K for a single video, so it’s all relative.

Some things to keep in mind:

• If video is core to your strategy – that is, you want to do a lot of video and do it fast, Lemonlight is probably not for you. Turn-around times are anywhere from 4-8 weeks.
• It’s also not a great option for long form video (over 2 minutes).

What I use it for: Customer facing video, 30 seconds to 2 minutes, animated and live action

Price: $1500/month for 6 videos in a year (a la carte pricing also available)

PowToon

Tl;dr – Not all videos need to be professionally produced, PowToon is for everything else

People want videos for everything! But professional videos are a big investment, and that’s not appropriate for all purposes. So you might find yourself saying no to video requests a lot.

PowToon provides a cost effective albeit lower quality video alternative. It’s basically an off the shelf video builder. They have lots of stock animations and characters, and you can customize some things, like the text. Their UI is pretty easy to use, so you can self-teach. I used it for an internal video recently – it took about an hour to put together a 2 minute “edit,” which got a few laughs.

What I use it for: Internal use only videos

Price: Free - $197/month

Upwork:

Tl;dr – All the freelance help you’ll need (if you’re a good project manager!)

You can find freelancers for just about anything on UpWork. It’s a really cost-effective way of getting things done for teams that don’t have all marketing specialties in house.

However, it does require a bit of management bandwidth. You’ll be a lot more successful (and save yourself money on the revisions) if you specify exactly what you need for a given project. It might seem like micromanaging, but in my experience, freelancers prefer when you set expectations clearly.

Also keep in mind:

The quality of work varies from freelancer to freelancer, so you have to figure out how to identify the best talent on the platform. To save you some trouble, here’s two people I recommend:

• For graphic design, Jessica Williams
• For copywriting, Brian Brinker

What I use it for: SEO copywriting, graphic design, web development and translations

Price: $35-$75/hour for skilled talent

Would love to hear from other marketing managers on this – What has helped you achieve great results when you’re bootstrapping it?

Or, if you sell a product that you think can help marketers on tight budgets – mention it in the comments.