As an SMB, you know how important it is to stand out from the competition and leveraging new advancements in technology is a great way to get that edge. A great area you can get a large bang for your buck is working on and refining the design of your marketing efforts, giving them an impactful jolt through the utilization of various SaaS tools.

While there are plenty of marketing tools out there, all with their own inherent strengths and weaknesses, we've put together a list of 5 tools that you may have missed but definitely deserve a look.

Canva for Graphic Design

Many SMBs either don’t have a dedicated Graphics team or don’t have one large enough to handle the capacity needed to really help sell your products and/or services. Enter Canva, an easy-to-use graphic design platform that comes with plenty of pre-made templates that you can use for a large chunk of your marketing mix.

The templates available includes social media posts, banner ads, email headers, and so much more. In addition, you can edit and modify as needed and multiple users can collaborate on projects at any given time. It’s free to check out, so there’s nothing really stopping you from having a look.

‍

Piktochart for Infographics

When faced with more complex or multi-faceted concepts, analysis, or procedures, sometimes it’s beneficial to boil that information down into a more succinct, visual picture that conveys the essential parts of your communication. You knew where we were going with this one - Infographics.

You can’t go too far on social media without running into an infographic for one thing or another, but their utility reaches beyond that, including presentations, websites, events, internal communications, and more. The one drawback of infographics is the time required to put them together and that’s where Piktochart comes into play. 

Piktochart allows for the easy creation and distribution of infographics and has a smattering of templates, user-friendly customization, and great visualization tools.

‍

Samba Script Manager for JavaScript Pop-ups & Product Widgets

Combining personalization, accessibility, and powerful scripting opportunities, Samba’s Script Manager offers not only industry-leading marketing automation & optimization possibilities for your pop-ups and product widgets, but opens the door for flexible, enhanced functionality and designs via the integration of JavaScript.

We could talk a while about the benefits of AI-powered automation on its own, but when you combine that with JavaScript, your marketing efforts can truly shine. Picture an exit-intent pop-up that automatically appears when a user is about to leave your site and once signed up, they’ll receive a completely personalized welcome campaign, complete with emails, offers, etc.

‍

KWFinder for Advanced Keyword Analysis  

While your visuals are a huge part of your marketing efforts, your texts can have as much, if not more of an impact in terms of getting people to act, generating an emotional response, or conveying important information. But it’s not just about the flashiness of what you choose to write, but also the underlying efficacy of those words when it comes to SEO.

As an SMB, you may already be familiar with various SEO principles, including keyword optimization, and associated tools to help optimize how you work with them. One such tool, KWFinder, is a great means of discovering keywords that will help you generate traffic, view the long-term popularity of keywords, and see what your competitors are working with, all in an easy-to-use interface.

‍

Smile for Loyalty Programs 

Loyalty programs are great at keeping your long-term customers happy and satisfied, while giving your newer customers something to latch onto. From accumulating points from purchases to special VIP offers, the various aspects of loyalty programs are proven to increase overall customer satisfaction and  revenue, while helping keep your business top-of-mind.

Smile.io gives you an elegant, flexible means of building a beautiful, intuitive loyalty program that truly complements your business, complete with custom branding and formatting. Best of all, it can be easily added to some of the most popular e-commerce platforms, including Shopify Plus and Big Commerce.

‍

RELATED ARTICLES

• Enhance your Pop-ups & Product Widgets with JavaScript
• Samba News - June 2019

‍