As a marketer, your role is not limited to attracting customers into the funnel. You have to guide them to sales.
But The human attention span is 9 seconds – shorter than a goldfish. This means you have limited time to grab your audience’s attention.
That’s where content designing comes in. You must design engaging and easy to consume content so your customers don’t scroll away. Design tools help you with that.
A good design tool will assist you in creating a professional looking design even if you don’t have the skills. We’ve compiled an extensive list of design tools that will help you create eye-catching designs for your customers – even if you’re not a trained designer.
Best Content Creation and Content Design Tools for Marketers
Designing is not everybody’s cup of tea – it’s hard. But that shouldn’t stop you from attracting your target customers. The visual content creation tools in the list below will assist you in creating engaging visuals for your brand. Pick the one that suits you the most.
Canva
Canva is one of the best content-creation tools out there. Anybody can be a designer with Canva. Although it can’t replace talented designers, it can equip you with all the necessary tools and templates to create amazing designs for your product.
Top Features
- Color palettes in Canva let you build a brand color theme in minutes. Just pick one or two colors and it suggests the perfect color palette for you. If you don’t want to create a theme from scratch, Canva has multiple pre-made palettes for you.
- Canva comes with pre-build templates for Instagram posts, banners, greeting cards, book covers, posters, and stories. All you need to do is customize the design with your personal elements and you’re done. You can also use the design as it is with Canva pro.
- Photo filters in Canva let you edit your photographs within the app. It means no more switching between multiple tools for content creation and photo editing.
- Canva pro comes with a calendar that lets you schedule social media posts. It’s pretty convenient for social media marketers and they don’t have to use multiple tools for posting content each day.
Pricing:
- Canva: Free
- Canva Pro: $74.95
G2 rating: 4.7 / 5
Figma
With the recent emergence of AI content creation tools, Figma rises as one of the most popular AI design tools. It lets you design amazing digital experiences through mockups and prototypes.
Top Features:
- The mockup feature in Figma gives content marketers an idea of what the final design is going to look like. It reduces the back-and-forth editing between designers and marketers. With mockups, both of you can agree on one idea and take it forward from there. It reduces the room for error.
- The prototype feature in Figma lets designers test user experience without actually creating the final design. Designers can use prototypes to present their ideas to the stakeholders without going through the hassle of designing a page
- Figma lets you create custom fonts and icons. Once you create a unique font and icon for yourself, maintain brand consistency across all online platforms.
- Figma has a shared inbox where you can add your teammates and collaborate on the designs. You can also create and manage a task list within the platform.
Pricing:
- Starter: Free
- Professional: $12/editor/month
- Organization: $45/editor/month
G2 rating: 4.7 / 5
Visme
Visme is a Canva alternative for designing websites and social media content. It comes with an intuitive drag-and-drop feature that lets you create designs out of pre-made templates.
Top Features:
- Visme has a simple, easy-to-use interface that allows anybody – from a non-designer background – to create stunning visuals and professional-looking designs.
- Visme provides several customizable templates for different types of visual content including social media posts, presentations, infographics, and more. Get inspired by the pre-made templates or customize them with your personal elements to create engaging designs.
- Content analytics tools in Visme allow designers to track the performance of their designs. The analytics provides data on views, unique visits, and visit time so the designer knows how the audience is perceiving their content.
- Visme allows real-time collaboration and feedback for designers which makes it easy for them to work with team members on various projects at a time.
Pricing:
- Basic: Free
- Professional: $15
- Business: $29
G2 rating: 4.5 / 5
Fotor Photo Editor
Fotor is one of the free design tools in the market that allows designers to multitask on the platform. With features like a collage maker and customizable templates, it provides designers the flexibility to create content for multiple platforms.
Top Features:
- The advanced editing tools inside Fotor like color correction, crop, rotate, and resize allows designers to enhance and manipulate their images. Fotor provides several filters and effects that can make images more appealing.
- Fotor provides multiple templates to designers that they can use to create flyers, social media posts, and banners. These templates are customizable to meet the specific needs of the designers.
- The Batch Processing feature in Fotor allows designers to edit multiple photos at once. They can resize, rename and apply visual effects simultaneously which significantly reduces the edit time.
- Fotor comes with in-app cloud storage that allows designers to access their photos from anywhere. It’s pretty convenient as they can create and store their designs in one place.
Pricing: Free
G2 rating: 4.3 / 5
Marq
Marq is one of the most powerful content design tools out there. It has all the important features like templates and storage with additional features such as integration with other design tools.
Top Features:
- Marq has an intuitive drag-and-drop feature that allows designers to arrange images, graphics, vectors, and even text. It helps designers create professional-looking designs without creating everything from scratch.
- The software has templates for different designs like brochures, business cards, posters, newsletters, and more. All templates are customizable so even marketers with no design background can create engaging graphics.
- Marq allows multiple teams to collaborate on the software. Designers can work on a graphic while marketers or editors provide real-time feedback. It reduces the constant back and forth between them and saves time.
- Marq integrates with tools like Google Drive, Dropbox, and Adobe Creative Cloud which makes it easy for designers to import and export files. The Adobe integration allows designers to use assets from their library in the Creative Cloud in Marq.
Pricing:
- Basic: Free
- Pro: $3/user
- Team: $12/user
- Business: Custom Plan
G2 rating: 4.4 / 5
Drawtify
Drawtify is a customizable, drag-and-drop design tool that helps non-designers and marketers create eye-catching graphics within minutes. Use it to create Instagram posts, banners, business cards, and much more.
Top Features:
- Drawtify has its own background remover within the platform. It reduces the time taken to create a customized graphic as you don’t have to switch apps to create designs for your product.
- Drawtify has its own motion graphics editor that lets you transform still images into storytelling motion graphics. It has up to 27 basic movement instructions like ‘blink’, ‘rotate’, ‘fade in’, ‘move along the path’, and much more to easily make your images move.
- Drawtify has advanced typography tools to create unique artistic typesetting. Node filters and blending modes within the app let you transform your words and create impactful imagery.
Pricing:
- Basic: Free
- Pro: $59.99
VistaCreate
VistaCreate is a one-stop graphic design and visual content creation tool that enables users and designers to create high-quality graphics, videos, and animations for social media, websites, marketing campaigns, and more.
Top features:
- With 100k+ professionally designed templates in its library. Users can get access to vast templates for ads, banners, flyers, posters, logos, and other types of visuals. Later users can easily customize them according to their needs.
- VistaCreate’s drag-and-drop interface makes designing easier and more intuitive, even for beginners. Users can add text, images, shapes, icons, and animations to their designs, and adjust the colors, fonts, and other design elements with a few clicks.
- Within its branding kit, users can create and store their brand assets, such as logos, color schemes, fonts, and graphics. This feature allows users to maintain consistency across all their designs and build a strong brand identity.
- Its collaboration enables users to invite team members, clients, or collaborators to edit, review, and approve their designs. Users can share designs via email, or link, and get feedback and suggestions from others in real time.
VistaCreate also provides access to millions of royalty-free stock images, videos, and music tracks to enhance the quality and visual appeal of designs — with zero worries about copyright issues.
Pricing:
- Starter plan: Free
- Pro plan: $10/mo
G2 rating: 4.5 / 5
Adobe Creative Cloud Express
Adobe combines the Creative Cloud Express with its other suite of creative applications and services Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere Pro, and more. It makes it an all-rounder designing solution for its users.
Top features:
- With Adobe Creative Cloud Express, users can access the Adobe Stock royalty-free photo collection* with millions of trending and seasonal images.
- It allows users to create layouts by dragging and dropping UI elements into a visual design editor. Hence, intuitive features are at your fingertips.
- Adobe Creative Cloud Express offers templates and data visualization capabilities for the creation of infographics and more.
- It provides a built-in library of assets, including social media graphics, stories, and thumbnails, as well as posters, flyers, business cards, logos, etc. Users can also upload personal assets to be used in designs.
Pricing:
- Free plan: $0
- Premium plan: $99.99/year
G2 rating: 4.5 / 5
Venngage
Venngage is a smart designing tool that allows users to easily create and customize a variety of visual content, including infographics, posters, social media graphics, reports, presentations, and more.
Top features:
- Inside Venngage, you can choose your pre-made template or make your own in a matter of minutes. By simply inputting data and content, the tool will automatically generate a design that’s visually appealing and on-brand.
- It also offers interactive maps that highlight specific regions and adds custom icons or markers. This is a great feature for creating engaging location-based content, such as travel guides or event maps.
- Its Infographic Widgets feature enables users to add dynamic and interactive elements to their infographics. These include progress bars, countdowns, and timelines, which can help to illustrate data in a more engaging and memorable way.
- With Venngage, users can share their designs with a team or can invite them for real-time feedback or alterations.
Pricing:
- Free plan:$0
- Premium plan: $16/mo
- Business plan: $39/mo
- Enterprise plan: $499 for 10+ seats
G2 rating: 4.7 / 5
Prezi
Prezi is a cloud-based presentation software that allows users to create dynamic and engaging presentations. It is an alternative to traditional slide-based presentations and is particularly popular in educational and business settings.
Top features:
- With Prezi, users can make creative and professional presentations across their hybrid workplace or even can share with tier customers or clients.
- Unlike traditional slide-based presentations, Prezi allows users to create a non-linear structure that can be zoomed in and out of. This means that users can move from one point to another in a non-linear way, making it easier to illustrate complex relationships between ideas.
- With it, you can simply create moving and zooming presentations that let you show added context and make any topic feel more dynamic without running and clicking through slides.
- Prezi also provides analytics, which enables users to track how their presentations are being viewed, shared, and engaged with. This feature is particularly useful for businesses and educators who want to measure the effectiveness of their presentations.
- It allows users to collaborate on presentations with team members in real-time, which makes it easy to work on projects together from different locations.
Pricing:
- Standard plan: $7/mo
- Plus plan: $12/mo
- Premium plan: $16/mo
- Team plan: Topic of discussion with their internal team
G2 rating: 4.2 / 5
Adobe Indesign
Adobe InDesign is a desktop publishing software application that allows users to create professional documents, such as books, brochures, magazines, and posters. It is one of the best content design tools out there!
Top feature:
- Adobe InDesign offers a range of tools for customizing the layout of documents, including various templates, grids, and guides. Users can adjust the size, position, and spacing of individual elements, and they can use the software’s alignment and distribution tools to quickly arrange multiple objects.
- With InDesign, users can choose from a wide range of fonts, adjust the spacing and size of letters, and apply various styles to text such as bold, italic, or underline. It also offers advanced features such as paragraph and character styles, which allow users to quickly apply consistent formatting across a document.
- InDesign has features that allow users to create interactive digital documents, such as ebooks or online magazines. Users can add hyperlinks, animations, and multimedia elements to their designs, making them more engaging and interactive.
- Integration with other Adobe software, as it’s part of the Adobe Creative Cloud suite of software applications, it integrates seamlessly with other programs such as Photoshop and Illustrator — lets users easily import graphics and other elements from those programs into their InDesign projects.
Pricing:
- Free plan: $0
- Paid plan: $20.99/mo
G2 rating: 4.6 out of 5
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is a smart editing tool for photos that helps professional photographers and hobbyists manage, organize, edit, and share their digital images.
Top features:
- Lightroom comes with advanced editing tools that let you adjust the brightness, contrast, exposure, saturation, and other image parameters. It offers a range of brushes and filters that allow you to make precise adjustments to specific areas of your image.
- Its most significant feature is its non-destructive editing capability. This means that the software never alters the original image file. Instead, it creates a virtual copy of the original file that you can edit as much as you want. This feature ensures that you can always go back to the original image if you want to.
- Sharing is made easy with Lightroom, it has a built-in sharing tool that allows you to share your images on social media, web galleries, or other platforms. You can also create a slideshow of your images or create a photo book.
- Users can operate from anywhere, and pick up where they left off on the mobile, desktop, or the web the projects will sync automatically according to the latest edits.
Pricing:
- Free plan: $0
- Paid plan: $9.99/mo
G2 rating: 4.6 / 5
GIMP
GIMP is an open-source and cross-platform image editor. With its tons of customization options and third-party plugins, users are provided with sophisticated tools to get their job done.
Top features:
- With GIMP, users can manipulate images, which means they can simply create a new design from the original one — only imagination is limited.
- It supports a wide range of file formats, including JPEG, PNG, GIF, and TIFF, making it easy to work with images from different sources.
- GIMP supports scripting and plug-ins, making it possible to automate tasks and add new features to the software. This feature can be especially useful for designers and developers looking to integrate GIMP into their workflows.
- It integrates with many programming languages including Scheme, Python, Perl, and more. This makes it more flexible than other photo-designing solutions.
Pricing: Free
G2 rating: 4.3 / 5
Pick the Best Content Creation Tool for your Brand
All these tools are equipped with customizable templates, and drag and drop features. This means you can create professional looking designs for your content marketing campaigns without any design skills – in no time.
Just like design tools we compile different tech stacks for marketers. Contensify aims to equip you with the right tools to run successful campaigns efficiently.
Still, if you want our in-house experts to handle your marketing affairs, get in touch with Contensify today.
