Part 2
Run marketing without help from developers and designers with no-code tools!
Technology does not stand still. In experts’ view, no-code and low-code are the future of software development. By 2024, Gartner predicts that no-code low-code development will make up over 65% of application development activities.
No-code tools are especially valuable for startups and smaller businesses. You are a business owner and have limited resources and marketing budget? Or maybe you’re marketing professional who seeks free and easy-to-use tools in order to run marketing quickly and with better performance? You are able to become a “one-man band”.
What can you do yourself right now? You can access many visual tools to create a digital presence and build an efficient marketing funnel.
For marketing purposes, no need to wait for design or IT help. With the easy-to-use builders and templates, you will be able to create a professional-looking landing page / website, custom design, promotional video, forms and marketing materials.
Do you know that switching between tasks can take up to 40% of your productive time? CRMs, various automation platforms and bots will help you automate marketing operations and workflow in order to drive traffic and generate leads. And for many of tasks – on a free basis. Just save money and enjoy your work!
BRIEF OVERVIEW OF SOME POPULAR NO-CODE MARKETING TOOLS
Workflow Automation Platforms
Zapier, Integromat – point-and-click integration platforms that will help you automate repetitive tasks by connecting various apps. When it comes to Zapier, it lets you automate your work across over 5,000 apps. For example, you can connect your Gmail and Google spreadsheets so that new email contacts are automatically entered into a spreadsheet file. Or you can stitch your Gmail / Facebook with Mailchimp. As a result, new Gmail / Facebook contacts will immediately go to Mailchimp, which will automatically send out welcome letters. Additionally, you can adjust a chain of automated emails (welcome letter / reminders / notifications) to your prospects that will be sent at predetermined time intervals. Automate your workflow and have more time for what matters most!
Web Analytics Tools
Google Analytics, Hotjar – these tools provide important statistics on a website, allow you to track website traffic, analyze marketing campaigns, site usability, and user behavior. Features such as click maps, heat maps and session recordings provide really valuable insights from which you can analyze marketing content, adjust digital tools and channels.
Hotjar – free plan offers limited number of features to collect user behavior analytics. But at the same time, Hotjar provides free survey and feedback widget that you can install on your site. It will help you get feedback data from your customers in order to make better marketing decisions.
Forms and Quizzes Builders
You can find helpful tools for creating digital marketing forms such as polls, surveys, quizzes and feedback forms.
You can use free Google Forms tool that makes it easy to collect contact information and other data from your leads, create surveys and quizzes. You will be able to export results, view and analyze responses in real time.
Hotjar app will let you embed a survey and feedback widget on your website. This digital tool will help you generate feedback polls and surveys. You can start with a free plan.
With Typeform, you can schedule appointments, collect applications and feedback data from your customers. Zapier will help you connect the form with your accounting system. (For example, you can connect Typeform with Trello – free project management platform).
Website and Landing Pages Builders
I'll write about some popular platforms I've worked with.
Tilda – you don’t need any coding skills to create a website/landing page/blog on the basis of a website builder. I adore drag-and-drop building platform Tilda which is very intuitive and user-friendly. You can make a custom webpage since the platform leaves room for individual creativity. It offers a variety of useful features and impressive design templates together with tutorials and fast customer support. You will easily create a landing page with a modern and stylish design without any special tech skills.
The Wix app seems to provide the same features but it will become a real challenge to understand how it works since it does not offer an intuitive user interface. And unfortunately, it will take time to receive feedback from support team.
HubSpot has the advantage of being an all-in-one marketing software that can assist you in driving traffic and converting leads into customers. Among other things, it has a tool for creating basic landing pages.
Graphic Design Platforms
No-code graphic design platform is a great tool to create design without having design skills. You don’t even need to have Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator skills.
Canva is probably one of the most popular and best free graphic development tools in the market today, with advanced features and an easy-to-use interface. This drag-and-drop editor offers over 250,000 free templates which can be easily customized. You will be able to easily create design layouts for landing pages, social media posts, and even marketing materials adapted for printing, such as business cards, presentations, flyers and infographics.
Crello provides impressive design templates but just a few free features.
With Adobe Express you can easily create social graphics, short videos, flyers, banners and web pages. You can use it for free but with some restrictions.
Chatbot Builders
Use no-code chatbot builders to train your bot and customize conversations according to your business needs. For example, you can access free online builders for creating chatbots for social media and messengers. They will process orders, accept payments, and more. You can integrate chatbots with your web analytics tools, email and CRM platforms to make your sales, marketing, and lead generation processes more efficient. It may be helpful to try out a few different platforms to see which one works best for you. Small overview of popular apps:
MobileMonkey – create chatbots for Facebook, Instagram, SMS, and websites. You will be able to send newsletters, run polls, and more. It’s the most popular free chatbot builder that is great for marketing purposes. Use one of its pre-designed templates or customize it to create your own chatbot.
Chatfuel – create chatbots for Facebook Messenger and Telegram. It offers a variety of templates and features to help you build your own chatbot.
ManyChat – create chatbots for Facebook Messenger and other messaging platforms.
Hubspot – an all-in-one marketing automation tool that allows you to automate conversations on your website, among other things.
No-code App Builder
Bubble – app builder that lets you create apps without coding. You can build your own SaaS platform, marketplace, CRM and even social media site with this no-code tool.
Advertising Video Maker
Lumen5 – social video marketing tool that turns text into social video content. You can choose your video format, add visualization, audio, and even voiceover. You can start with a free plan but in this case, you will have limited features.
Canva – free and easy-to-use video ad maker that allows you to create and customize animated images and videos based on the templates. You can add external video shorts to the template, as well as to customize it with your own images, text and music.
Adobe Express – a free app that lets you make social media graphics, short promotional videos, and video stories. Here you will find a wide range of templates and design tools.
AI video platforms and Video Bots
The AI video platforms are especially great for e-commerce, online stores, catalogs and SMM. You can create video podcasts, personalized email newsletters and promotional videos for your website. Based on them, you can create video bots and automate videos.
Use Synthesia and Movio to create talking head video with no cameras - not necessarily your head😊 Spokesperson videos are much more engaging. You can choose one of the public avatars and voices in dozens of different languages. You can also order your custom avatar (e.g. yours or your employee). And if you have global aspirations for your business, this tool is definitely what you need. Thinking of starting a podcast? You will be able to create video podcasts even if you are not in good shape😊. All you need is to write a script.
Synthesia – AI video maker that helps you turn easily text into spokesperson. You can make a talking head video with no cameras or actors. Artificial intelligence will create videos from plain text in more than 120 languages. You will be able to customize and edit video template, choose different avatars and voices, and share videos across social channels. You can choose one of the 65 stock avatars to act as presenters, and one of the 200 voices. There is a free option and paid subscription. MOVIO – offers similar features. You can start with a free plan.
Magisto – AI (artificial intelligence) based video creation and editing platform that allows you to create videos using your own photos and videos. Free option will give you access to some of the basic video creation features.
Colossyan Creator – AI video maker that allows you to turn text into spokesperson without any training skills. Simply type in your text and have a video ready in more than 70 languages. It provides subscriptions plans, but you can create a couple of videos even for free.
Work and Project Management Tools
Trello
Trello is a free visual collaborative tool and task management app that allows you and your team to manage any type of project, workflow, or task tracking. It follows the Kanban system, which is a popular and easy-to-use methodology whereby you use whiteboard cards and lists to organize complex tasks into a workflow. Trello lets users visually organize all their tasks. Cards are easily moved with the mouse from one list to another - like stickers on a regular board. Moreover, this tool is designed for real-time collaboration between team members and multiple projects. You will be able to schedule deadlines for team members and track the implementation of tasks. This is one of the simplest task management tools out there.
CRM and marketing automation platform
HubSpot – all-in-one CRM and marketing automation platform that helps you promote and sell online. Basically, this is an ecosystem for cross functional teams to work together. HubSpot is designed for use by marketing professionals, not developers, programmers and IT staff. It provides various useful tools like social media marketing, content management, search engine optimization, and web analytics. At the most basic level, it combines CRM, CMS, social media publishing and monitoring, email marketing, landing page builder and full analytics package. The platform makes it simple to create and analyze ad campaigns, update website, publish articles or blog posts. You can easily integrate blogs, websites, emails, calls-to-actions, workflows and manage your marketing activity from Hubspot account. It can do a great job of coordinating all of your marketing efforts without much cost savings for you. That said, there are many other dedicated marketing apps, including Salesforce CRM that offers similar tools.
Email Marketing Platforms
With email marketing platforms, you will be able to easily create email personalized campaigns. You don’t need a designer to create a newsletter layout. Specialized software provides dozens of email design templates that can help you get started. All you need is to customize a template. You will be able to build automated chains of personalized letters, i.e. marketing funnels which will be sent out at predetermined time intervals.
One of the most popular platforms is MailChimp. But I don’t recommend this software if you’re limited in a budget. There is no email or live chat support available for free plan. Besides, MailChimp has strict policies regarding cold outreach. Luckily, there are dozens of other dedicated emailing platforms.
For large corporate businesses, HubSpot Marketing Hub with various marketing features will be a good choice. In addition, I recommend subscribing to their blog which is great for digital marketing purposes.
Zapier automation tool will help you integrate the email platforms with other apps. For example, it can send new contacts to your Mailchimp (e.g. from your website, Gmail, Google sheets, and messengers).
Social Media Management Tools
Social media management and posting tools enable users to manage and schedule posts on multiple social media platforms. You will be able to track and analyze your social media presence, and engage with your followers. You can see all of your posts, posts by your team members, and even posts by your customers in one place. You can also schedule posts, track comments and reactions, and more. The features and pricing vary among the tools, so it's better to make some research and comparison to find the best fit for your needs. You can try some of such tools like:
HubSpot, Hootsuite, Buffer
In this article, I shared digital marketing tools you should experiment with and try. This is a brief overview of some no-code platforms available on the market right now that will help you achieve your marketing purposes. Most of them are tools that I have either worked with or tested myself. You can find many more on the interweb. Everything depends on your goals and objectives))
(!) In one of my future articles, I will write about AI tools. You will be able to create videos, write texts and select keywords using Artificial Intelligence apps.