Visual Collaboration
Do you have a product or service that you need to share with the world? How are you going to do that? Well, in this video, I'm going to share with you seven marketing and sales tools that I think you should be using right now, so let's dive in.
Hello, everyone, Scott Friesen, here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done, and enjoy less stress, and the first tool that we're looking at here is Miro.
Now, Miro is known as an online whiteboard or brainstorming tool, but when it comes to marketing and getting that information out to your clients or your prospective customers, you need to be as clear as you possibly can, so I've been using Miro more and more often to communicate and also work with my clients.
So for example, I was designing a workshop not too long ago and I shared this with the client so that we could work through how the different components and the different areas of that workshop were going to play out.
Miro makes it so easy just to drag and push things around and also create relationships between certain things that you have listed here within your projects. Another good example here is a current website redesign that I'm involved with at the moment, and again, it just makes it that much easier to lay out not only my thoughts, but convey these thoughts with others.
Miro makes it extremely easy
For you to share your information with others, whether you want them to collaborate with you or maybe you just want to send them the link so that they can access and see what you're speaking of.
And speaking of sales, you can use Miro to create a full product roadmap or a user story map, or a variety of other templates which come included with Miro, so this can be a great way to share your ideas and communicate and collaborate with others.
Digital Flipbooks
Now, if you really want to impress your audience, don't just send them a PDF, why not send them a FlippingBook instead? FlippingBook allows you to upload any existing PDF and make it that much better.
Let me show you what I'm talking about. So here's a finished result here. Instead of sending a PDF, which is going to have 28 pages with it, and you know no one's going to be scrolling through 28 pages, why not send them something a little more dynamic and something that actually looks and feels a bit more like a traditional brochure? What I love about FlippingBook is that you'll notice
that we have dynamic images on the screen. Yes, you can have .gifs for example here, you can have links anywhere on the page, you can even embed video. So for example, if I want to play Gail's story here, all I need to do is hit this play button
and now I can go directly to this particular video. So it's an incredibly dynamic experience for those who receive it. Here's another example here, which is a product catalog, which again, instead of just sending them something like a long list or an inventory style website, why not wow them with your products? You can even allow them to click on things, expand the view, and see the other options that are available to them.
On the left hand side, you have a full table of content so they don't have to sift through everything, they can go directly to the area that they're looking for. Over here within my FlippingBook account, I've actually just recently uploaded my own PDF.
Now this is a traditional PDF that I created a few weeks ago, but it looks so much better here within FlippingBook. This is just a tease of a new PDF that I'm putting together, but doesn't this look a lot more enticing? It even highlights the things that I can click on when I'm entering in this particular document.
Not only does FlippingBook make your PDFs look amazing, but you can share them with just a single link. That's right, no more attaching a big, bulky PDF to your emails.
On top of that, everything within a FlippingBook document is absolutely trackable so if you want to see how many people have viewed it, how many people have clicked on something, how many pages, how many time they have spent within the FlippingBook itself, you've got all that information here.
Try doing that with your traditional PDF. Yeah, you have no clue how often it's been shared or how often someone is actually clicking or accessing that information. You get all of these details right here within FlippingBook.
If you'd like to learn more and start using it for yourself, be sure to check the link in the description below.
Free Stock Photos
Now, of course, no matter what type of content that you are creating, whether it's for a email newsletter, whether it's for social media, you're going to need some amazing images, but preferably on the cheap. Well, that's where Pexels come into play. Yes, P-E-X-E-L-S.
This continues to be my go-to for finding the majority of the images that I either include on my website or sometimes right here within my video. So you can type in absolutely anything that you want, it's remembering some of my previous searches here.
So here I've taken a look at digital marketing photos and everything here within the Pexel site is of high quality and absolutely free for you to use. So let's say I actually like the way this is looking, but I want something maybe just slightly different.
One of the things that I love about Pexels is that if I scroll down below, it gives me a lot of other options that are related to this particular picture. If I scroll almost all the way down to the bottom, you can see I can also search by certain tags as well. So if I'm looking specifically for an Apple iPad, I can go directly to that result.
Maybe I do want two people sort of looking at technology, well, I can look at some of these suggestions down below and here it's going to give me a suggestions of other people who are grouped together, maybe even these same two actors here that are in this particular picture, so a lot of great choices here.
When you click on any of the graphics, you'll also have the ability to download it in a variety of different formats.
Maybe you don't need something this large, but you can do something either as a custom size or as one of the other defaults, so quick and easy, a great place to find content for your next promotion.
Infographic Maker
Now, if you'd like to combine some great graphics and animations with your data,
then you're probably looking to rate an infographic, and for that purpose, we're taking a look at Venngage. Venngage is all about creating things in short order,
but things that are actually interactive and things that people can click on and do so much more with. Now, there's a large collection of different templates that you can choose from, so, no, you don't have to start from scratch, you can something right here and input or change some of the data.
For example, I started with this basic template, but I've removed a few things here on the right hand side because I'd like to add a map of some detailed data. Now, everything is click and drag and drop,
so it's very, very simple to edit, but what sets Venngage apart from many infographic design software is all of the engaging widgets you have access to here on the left hand side.
So for example, maybe I want to include a map of the US here, and I'm just going to resize it so it's going to fit in this space. Now, you can see that some of the states are shaded differently here. Well, what I can do is I can select Edit Map and I've got access to all that data.
So maybe I can copy and paste something within a spreadsheet that I already have so I can tell what my viewers are actually looking at.
But it actually gets better than this 'cause not only can I adjust all of the settings
and the colors, but when I go to publish it, let me just show you a quick preview. It's more than just colors, it's actually going to be interactive.
So when we see this map here, as I drag my cursor over top of each state, not only does the color change, but it tells me the actual number represented for that state.
`And you can do this with almost anything within Venngage, so if you'd like to really spruce up what you are sharing, especially if you're dealing with data and figures, Venngage may be the solution for you.
Graphic Design
Of course, when it comes to promoting and marketing your products or services,
you don't want to forget social media and a great place to produce your social media content is Canva, even if you just use their free account. Now of course, Canva has a variety of different things that we can produce and convert, but the great thing when it comes to social media is that it has the defaults built right in so if you're creating an Instagram post or a Facebook post for example, you don't have to worry about the specific dimensions, let Canva worry about that as you can create your content.
For example, I recently created a variety of Instagram posts right here within Canva to promote my reset productivity masterclass. All I did was take an existing template that I thought would work well and then simply changed some of the text.
So in this case, it encouraged people to click through and scroll to the right, so that they could learn more about the program, they could learn more about this particular course.
The only thing that I changed were some of the colors so that this blue matched my Simpletivity blue, and then of course, the text so I could outline what they would learn and what I was trying to convey in this message. So whether you're just looking for inspiration or you need to produce your own digital content,
be sure to add Canva to your digital toolbox.
Form Builder
Now, when it comes to marketing and communicating with all of your clients and potential clients, you want to be collect information, so you're going to need a form,
whether that's on your website or maybe just a standalone landing page, and for that, I recommend Jotform. Why Jotform? Well, Jotform is not only one of the most flexible and easiest to use, but Jotform has so many amazing widgets and addons
and integrations that you can add to any of your forms. So for example here, I've created a student registration form where I can customize all of these fields, but on top of that, I can add payments directly to this form so I don't have to send them somewhere else, I don't have to wait for their email and then send them an invoice,
I can actually add that directly to the form. But Jotform also can create some pretty fantastic and pretty amazing-looking forms at the same time. Let me preview this form for just a moment to show you what I mean.
I mean, you're used to some traditional forms, right? And probably most of your clients are, but why not wow them with something like this, where they they can hit the start button, where they can enter in their name, let's enter in a dummy email address and hit submit, and then maybe wow them with a big thank you? Something that guides them along the process and also makes it a little more intriguing when it comes to your product, your service, or your brand.
JotForm has a variety of different tools to help you and your business, including tables and an ability to create your own mobile app. So if you'd like to learn more, be sure to click the link in the description down below.
Email Marketing
Last but certainly not least, when it comes to marketing, you absolutely need an email marketing solution. Now for many years, I was a Mailchimp user and you're probably familiar with Mailchimp, at least with that name, but in the past year, I have found something so much better, so much simpler, and also more cost-effective.
So I am now using MailerLite and I recommend it to you as well, especially if you're just getting into email marketing or if you are tired of some of the limitations of what you're currently using.
Mot only does MailerLite have a very simple interface here that really anyone can use, but really the form builder is what is so powerful here. I can create as many either embedded forms or popup forms as I like, so I can capture more email addresses and then be able to reach out and communicate with those who are interested in my products or my services.
If you'd like to see my full review of MailerLite, you can click the link in the description down below. So if you're ready to wow your audience with your marketing materials, be sure to check out some of the tools mentioned in today's video.
Thank you so much for watching and remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.
