Every Rolex has a story. It has been the luxury watch tagline since 1905. Until now, the company is a dominant player in the market. Why do you think so? It’s because Rolex succeeds in creating professional marketing materials with zero design. For over a hundred years, they only used watches in their ads. Their elegance was captured through creative minimalist background and contrast. And they stayed with such a zero-design making them remembered as a luxury timepiece.
The Different Types of Marketing Materials
Marketing materials are all forms of media that promote products and services. They can either be in digital or printed format. Businesses rely heavily on printed marketing materials in the past. But now, the internet gives rise to digital marketing, making prints almost no longer an option.
Below is a list of the different types of marketing materials:
- Blog Posts are informational websites or online journals that answer people’s searches.
- Brand stories are company bios in the video. They commonly tell the origin of the company, what they do, and what’s their goals.
- Branded Content is a post commissioned and sponsored by a brand. It may be an ad or influencer post.
- Case Studies are success stories of a company. It conveys the challenge of a client and how a company solved the problem.
- Corporate Brochures are 2-fold or 3-fold short copies of company information and showcase their products and services.
- Digital Reports presents data from multiple platforms to highlight the performance of a marketing strategy.
- eBooks are long-form content, educating readers, and showing the field of expertise of the writer.
- Emails, which are also called electronic messages, are similar to letters. They may contain either an ad, image, or text content about a marketing campaign.
- Infographics use graphic representations of data and information. They can be a stand-alone content or a part of a blog post.
- Landing pages are a standalone web page specifically created for a marketing campaign.
- Magazines are periodicals giving updates on industry events and trends.
- Newsletters are electronic reports on business activities and developments.
- Pillar Pages link clusters of related pages in a website through an in-depth discussion of a topic. It’s also called the website’s power page.
- Product Catalogs can be identified as book-length brochures. They contain a list of products that a company offers and a list of its benefits and features.
- Proposals & Presentations are marketing offers to convince a client to do business with the company.
- White Papers position the company as an authority on a particular They are authoritative guides or reports relating to complex technical issues.
The Best Graphic Design Apps
With this long list of marketing materials, there’s a challenge for companies to create compelling designs for each kind. The good news is there are a lot of graphic design apps that help create professional marketing materials with zero design. Among the best graphic design apps are:
- Adobe Illustrator is a graphic design app centered around vectors. They are a geometric system of lines and points. Users can pull or push the lines to create a shape. They can also move the points around to create a drawing. A beginner can design layouts like magic. Adobe Illustrator is a logo design creator great for designing logos or one-piece prints.
- Burst is a stock photo platform for commercial use created by Shopify. The Creative Commons Zero License regulates the free use of photos. Burst houses around 47 collections of royalty-free images based on current life categories. It also has a featured collection of new photos. This graphic design app is great for social media and marketing websites. When creating ads or blogs, there’s a need to add visuals relevant to the content. A large gallery of stock photo collections like Burst is a handy inspiration. A global community of professional photographers shot Their photos.
- Canva uses a drag-and-drop format as a graphic design app. It was founded in 2012 by three colleagues who want to create an online tool for school yearbooks. The Canva app is an excellent option for beginners who want to learn graphic design. The tool is easy to use with tons of great backgrounds, colors, elements, filters, and fonts. You can also upload new music, photos, and videos or use pre-uploaded items. For those who don’t want a customized graphic design, Canva houses a collection of templates for different marketing materials.
- fontfabric is a type of foundry platform that houses high-quality calligraphy, lettering, and typefaces. Svet Simov founded it in 20008. Simov’s home country is Bulgaria, the home of the Cyrillic alphabet. It’s the 6th most widely adopted typeface globally. This graphic design app uses a simple and straightforward UX. It’s easy to browse the 57 font families within fontfabric. They are all free to use in commercial projects and marketing materials. fontfabric has been used by high-profile brands such as CNET, Hyundai, Lipton, Nestle, and Nike.
- Infogram gives the power for companies to share data in visual forms. This graphic design app offers an intuitive WYSIWYG editor. It converts data into infographics. They also have templates for infographics, interactive maps, and online reports that users can edit and save.
- Photoshop is a graphic design app for editing and retouching images and photos. So far, it’s considered the best all-in-one graphic design app. You can use Photoshop on a desktop, iPad, and laptop. The app was created by brothers John and Thomas Knoll in 1987. It was sold to Adobe Systems in 1988. Users can compose and edit Photoshop images using colors, font, multi-layering, shapes, and sizes.
The digital world has made marketing great. With many graphic design apps, it’s now easier to create professional marketing materials with zero design.