What really grabs people’s attention in marketing materials? It’s the use of visuals! Simply put, content that features visuals attracts a greater number of social shares than content that’s starved of them.
Case in point: A study that looked at Facebook posts determined that 87% of those that garner the most attention from people have pictures. I’m telling you that, these days, you can’t possibly go without using visuals in your marketing.
In most cases, companies will hire agencies to create tailor-made graphics that support their needs. However, if you’re thinking of going the DIY route, here are 8 affordable web tools that will add the power of visuals to your content marketing.
Visme
There’s a good reason that they call Visme the Swiss Army Knife of visual content. You’re empowered to create numerous types of visual content without having to know a single bit about coding. Popular uses for this tool include HTML5 infographics and an alternative to PowerPoint.
One brand that used Visme successfully was Novartis. Novartis used this web tool for its animated slideshow on Asunra, a drug that promises to reduce a patient’s level of labile plasma iron.
Visual.ly
Visual.ly is a web tool that you can use to come up with some stunning infographics. At the same time, it’s also a wonderful community to which you can submit your own infographics to marketers, entrepreneurs and designers. Another good thing about this web tool is that it’s free: You’re allowed to present your own visuals or someone else’s (so long as you give them due credit).
Design-Seeds
Here’s a web tool that works on a really unique concept: Each and every day, the site’s editor publishes two amazing images along with their respective color palettes. This web tool is free to use, which makes it all the more attractive.
Discover an image’s HEX value by simply hovering your cursor over a swatch. This also makes it super-easy to determine which colors go well with each other, making your visual-picking life all the more efficient.
Google Web Fonts
If you want to include some catchy aesthetics to your marketing campaigns or projects, then rely on Google Web Fonts. This web tool features a whopping 640-plus unique font families that you can utilize however you wish.
Simply incorporate a fast CSS or HTML to your site, and presto: The newly chosen font will be sourced from Google the next time that your site loads. Again…we’re talking about a free service here, which just sweetens the deal!
WhatTheFont
Funny pun aside, WhatTheFont empowers you to do so much more with your marketing projects. The next time that you see a font that you really are attracted to anywhere on the Internet, simply take a screenshot of it…and feed it to this web tool. WhatTheFont will gladly inform you of the font’s specific name and go the extra mile by telling you where you can find it for your marketing needs! Talk about convenient.
Quotes Cover
This web tool is for all those marketers who already have a thing for stunning typography and want to go an extra step by converting it into images that you can share on social media. Quotes Cover features a plethora of inspiring quotes that can efficiently be converted into Google Plus covers, Twitter headers and so much more.
Its editor tool provides a myriad of choices for drop shadows and color schemes.
PicJumbo
PicJumbo’s absolutely straightforward: If you’re looking for free commercial pictures for your marketing, then look no further than this site! The brainchild of a designer, PicJumbo features high-quality and diverse images that you can get your hands on in two distinct ways.
You can go the free option, which limits your choice to solely the images that you see on the site. If you pay $6 a month, you’ll have unpublished photos sent right to your inbox.
Awesome Screenshot
Awesome Screenshot is really an extension for your Chrome, Firefox and Safari browsers. It permits you to shoot any part or region of any page on the Internet and get creative with how you do it! You can blur out sensitive details, annotate the images, and then save, copy or print as you see fit.
Like many of these amazing web tools, Awesome Screenshot is free as well, so you obtain a convenient tool by simply adding this extension to your browser.
Conclusion
If you’re not using vibrant and attractive visuals in your marketing, you’re losing out. People are visual creatures, so it’s in your best interest to load up your content with things like animation and infographics. You’re in luck, too, because all of these web tools are either free or extremely affordable, which makes them all opportunities that you simply can’t pass up.
Today, more than ever, your leads and customers want to be drawn in by something dazzling to look at. Visuals are just the answer for what your marketing campaign has been looking for.