Do your digital marketing campaigns need some extra support?
If so, look no further than branding tools.
From logo creation to graphic design and content writing, there are endless software tools you can use to create a consistent brand identity.
That’s why we put together the following list of 14 tools for branding every marketer must have in 2023.
Each tool on our list is designed for ease of use for scrappy DIY marketers like you.
But before we go through each of them, let’s quickly review what branding tools are.
What Are Branding Tools?
Branding tools are apps, platforms, and software you can use to create a strong and consistent brand identity across your marketing channels.
Your goal with branding? Using visual cues and aligned messaging to captivate your audience and plant a seed that helps you remain memorable.
Branding tools can help you:
- Design email, social media, and blogging campaigns
- Produce written and visual content assets
- Create brand elements, such as logos, graphics, and color palettes
- Plan, schedule, and publish content
- Define and employ branding and messaging guidelines
- And so much more
Put simply, a solid collection of branding tools can help you take care of your marketing efforts while helping you remain on-brand and build trust with your ideal audience.
With that in mind, let’s review those tools we promised!
Content Marketing Tools
Use the following tools to plan, write, edit, schedule, and publish your content marketing campaigns.
1. Copy.ai
When it comes to AI for content creation, look no further than Copy.ai, an AI-powered copywriter that can help you beat writer’s block, generate headline ideas, and write product descriptions.
You can also use it to create emails, blog posts, and social media copy — but keep in mind this is a tool, not a human writer. To make the most of it, use it to stimulate your creative writing juices, but don’t rely on it to write authoritative, plagiarism-free content.
2. Simplified AI Writer
Another AI writing tool worth looking into is Simplified AI Writer, which refers to itself as a “copywriting assistant.” While its reviews on G2 aren’t quite as high as Copy.ai’s, it does include some nifty features Copy.ai doesn’t offer.
With Simplified AI Writer, you can choose your output language and tone, generate forms, and scan your copy for plagiarism. It also offers editing features, such as a grammar checker, tone checker, and style editor.
3. Google Docs
Our favorite tool for drafting blog content and marketing copy is Google Docs.
Not only is Google Docs free to use, but it also saves everything you’re working on in real-time. That means no more obsessively clicking “ctrl + s” or “command + s” to save your work (so long MS Word!) in case of a system crash.
If your system crashes while you’re in the middle of a draft, rest assured you’ll be able to pick up where you left off when your tech is back up again.
You can also share your content with other team members, invite them to collaborate with you on a doc, and suggest edits.
4. Writer
If you don’t have the budget to hire an editor, we can’t stress the importance of using reliable AI editing tools like Writer.
Beyond scanning your content for grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors, Writer also gives suggestions to help you better tailor your copy for online readers.
For instance, it may recommend replacing two-word terms with contractions to add a conversational tone to your writing. It also flags any language that could breach inclusivity ethics.
You can also use Writer to check your content for plagiarism, clarity, and readability and set up branded style guides and templates.
5. Grammarly
Another AI editing tool worth using is Grammarly. While Writer covers most of your editing bases, it’s best practice to edit your work using two-three tools.
Why?
There are times when tool A catches errors that tool B doesn’t, and vice-versa. Sometimes this happens due to WiFi connection issues, plugin issues, bugs, or a variation in editing features and updates.
If you’d like to add a third AI editing tool to the mix, check out the Hemingway App, which is prized for its readability features and suggestions.
6. StoryChief
Tired of planning content using spreadsheets and sticky notes?
Visualize and plan your email, social media, blogging, and event campaigns using a content calendar tool like StoryChief.
StoryChief is an all-in-one content scheduler that helps you organize your entire marketing process and auto-publish across all channels.
Since it’s a robust tool, it’s worth noting that it comes at a steeper price of $220+ per month. However, if you do the math, the cost of StoryChief might be cheaper than using a collection of individual content tools.
To see if this is true for your business, choose your favorite email, social media, blogging, and event marketing tools. Then, look into the cost of each, tally them up, and compare that figure against $220.
7. Wordable
If you’ve been blogging for a while, then you know that staging your content can be one of the most time-consuming steps.
You work hard to format everything perfectly in Google Docs, only to have to reformat again later when it’s time to upload the piece to WordPress. That’s hours of frustration spent on meaningless, redundant tasks, such as copying and pasting text, manually uploading images, and cleaning HTML.
That’s why Wordable was created.
Wordable will automatically retain and format each HTML element for you so that you can export your content in seconds.
You can publish your content from Google Docs to WordPress, Medium, HubSpot, or all three in one click and completely streamline your team’s publishing workflow. This one’s a goodie!
With Wordable, you can also:
- Add a status on individual pieces, so your content team knows when something’s ready to export
- See what’s been exported and by whom
- Edit and optimize images
- Create preferences and automate publishing — set it once and forget it!
It’s an invaluable tool for bloggers.
8. Planable
Planable is a social media management platform and scheduling tool you can use to plan, schedule, and auto-publish content across all of your social media profiles.
With Planable, you can schedule:
- Instagram Posts, Stories, and Reels (new)
- Facebook Posts
- Tweets
- Google My Business Posts
- YouTube Videos
- TikTok Posts
- LinkedIn Posts
Our favorite thing about Planable is how intuitive the interface is. Everything looks and works the way you’d expect it to — you simply click “compose” and start creating.
Collaboration is also a breeze. Simply tag clients and team members in the comments to review your content. From there, they can ask questions, suggest edits, or quickly hit the approval checkmark.
You can also create custom filters to help you differentiate and organize your posts by month, approval stage, content theme, and any other tags you’d like.
9. Moosend
Moosend is an email marketing automation software solution known for its all-in-one user interface.
With Moosend, you can automate repetitive email marketing tasks, segment and auto-publish campaigns, and create beautiful email marketing content with a generous number of customizable templates.
You can also create personalized digital experiences for your customers and get access to important insights. And bonus! Moosend is one of the most affordable email marketing tools, with monthly plans starting as low as $9.
Reviewers also rave about Moosend’s customer support team and the fact that the tool offers unlimited emails on its most basic plan — a rarity in the email marketing software world.
Customizable Templates
Save time with the following tools, which offer customizable templates.
10. Freepik
If you use a design tool like Adobe Illustrator to create assets, having a library of templates to choose from can be an invaluable way to streamline your workflow.
With Freepik, you can access customizable social media post templates, Story templates, event templates, business card templates, and more.
11. Social Curator
Social Curator is a social media planner that provides access to thousands of customizable caption templates and professional photos. It gives your Instagram story sets, daily actions to take on social media, and a monthly social media marketing action plan.
You’ll also have access to a draft editor, where you can pair captions with images as well as create, schedule, and auto-post social media content.
DIY Design and Photo Editing Tools
No time to wait for a designer or photographer? Use the following DIY design and photo editing tools instead.
12. Canva
Need to create visual content? Canva is your new best friend.
With its drag-and-drop interface, a robust library of visual templates, and custom design tools, you can create just about any kind of visual asset you need.
Here are some examples of the assets you can create in Canva:
- Presentations
- Logos
- Documents
- Whiteboards
- Videos
- Social media videos
- Social media graphics
- Digital posters
- Print products
- Email newsletters
The free version of Canva has a lot to offer, but when it comes to branding, go with the Pro version. With Canva Pro, you can create or upload a “Brand Kit,” complete with your logos, colors, and fonts. This makes it super easy to create on-brand assets every time.
Canva also recently released some pretty cool AI features, like its “magic resize” function, which allows users to automatically resize their designs to fit different dimensions. They also added a text-to-image converter that can generate AI art in a variety of styles in seconds.
13. Picsart
Every marketer needs a good photo editor under their belt, and Picsart makes editing super easy.
With its AI-powered image editing tools, you can speed up the post-processing stage and download your edited images in various sizes and formats.
As far as photo editing goes, with Picsart, you can:
- Change the background — we love this feature!
- Add annotations and stickers
- Automatically enhance an image with the AI enhance feature
- Apply trending filters and effects
- Turn your imagination into reality with the text-to-image AI Image Generator
From there, you can download your image in the sizes you need or pop them into an editable template to create additional assets, such as sales presentations, email newsletters, or social media campaigns.
14. Adobe Lightroom
If you shoot or process professional photos or videos with a DSLR for your campaigns, you’ll want Adobe Lightroom in your arsenal.
With Adobe Lightroom, you can edit your professional images using the included presets or create your own custom presets according to your style guide.
If you have a large collection of images to process, there are several methods you can use to batch-edit, including:
- Copying and pasting edits from one image to another
- Applying custom edits from one photo or video to a batch
- Applying presets in the Library module
- Applying presets during import
- Applying changes to a batch of images as you import them
Note: While there’s a small learning curve with Adobe Lightroom, it’s a lot simpler and quicker to use than its cousin, Adobe Photoshop.
15. Colorcinch
Colorcinch is an easy-to-use photo editor that’s a must-have for creatives out there. You can create stunning artworks and graphics for your social media, blogs, and sites with just a few clicks.
With Colorcinch, you can:
- turn any photo into a sketch, drawing, cartoon, and more
- crop, resize, compress, remove & change background of images
- play around with hundreds of AI-powered photo effects and filters
- apply artistic masks and overlays
- transform colors of your images with its easy-to-use photo color changer
Colorcinch offers a wide selection of tools to customize and beautify your photos!
Wrap up
Are you ready to create successful marketing campaigns and build a strong brand identity?
Use branding tools to create a powerful, consistent brand image and deliver aligned messaging across all of your marketing channels.
Dig a little deeper to learn more about the tools we shared today and uncover which solutions might be best for your specific business.
That’s it for now, marketers.
To your success!
PS: Want to skip the tools and outsource your content marketing to the pros instead? We’re here for you. Schedule a consultation to learn more about how LaunchSpace can help. From blog posts to eBooks to email marketing and beyond — we’ve got you covered.
