How to Make Digital Marketing Design Affordable

Trying to fit a lot of digital design into your tight marketing budget? Discover some simple ways to boost your digital marketing strategy and keep producing quality content, without breaking the bank.

Design for digital marketing needs can sometimes be costly. But at the same time, it’s unimaginable to risk having an inconsistent brand image to be able to save money. In the long run, by doing so, you’d risk losing more than you saved.

Still, there are tools and marketing tactics that can be worth trying without putting too much on the line. We compiled a list of them, splitting them into two categories: design alternatives and actionable tips.

Design alternatives

There is no doubt that a design studio, marketing agency or in-house designer can do an amazing job at taking care of all marketing assets, visuals and enforcing your brand identity in every element. But, they also cost more, and for a small business or young startup, these costs rarely fit the budget.

Here are some other ideas that might help you produce an affordable digital marketing design.

DIY design platforms

I wouldn’t know how many times Canva has saved me in a last-minute need to create a banner for an email marketing campaign or an Instagram story. This freemium DIY design tool and many others like it (Crello, Snappa, Visme, PicMonkey, etc.) can be a great marketing tool if you have some elementary knowledge of graphic design and can work your way through customizing a large number of templates.

They also have the exact sizes and formats for anything, from a social media post to a pitch deck or presentation slides. It doesn’t have to be hard to produce the right sizes and do long research for updates in dimensions.

Of course, the designs you produce won’t be as good as something a designer would make, but unpaid social media marketing, email banners, or visuals for your blog posts can be more forgiving than, let’s say, a logo and brand identity.

On-demand design subscription

A great affordable way to boost your online marketing with great design is to hire an on-demand graphic service, such as ours at ManyPixels.

For a flat monthly rate, you can assign as many designs as you need, with a turnover time of 1-2 working days, depending on the complexity of your project.

And the array of services offered is pretty wide: from simple social media posts, all the way to professional web designers working on your landing page or website.

There are a few good on-demand graphic design providers online, and their products or services are fairly similar. To check what ManyPixels can offer, check out our scope of service.

Design contests

Throwing a design competition is a fun way to save money while also recognizing up-and-coming designers. For examp[e, on a website like 99 Designs, you can hire hundreds of designers to create your brand identity for a fee. They pay a fee to the platform, and you are responsible for awarding the prize to the winner.

Royalty-free illustrations and photos

Another thing that can help you save on design and marketing services is to use free illustrations and photos. For example, you can use royalty-free visuals for content marketing and social media from platforms like Unsplash or Pexels. Of course, giving credits to the photographers is advisable. At the same time, you can use the ManyPixels’ free illustrations gallery for customizable vector illustrations. There are more than 2000 illustrations in multiple styles.

Actionable tips

Sometimes, you don’t even need a new graphic design to have a successful campaign or impress your target audience. Some simple tricks will help you repurpose the design you already have or set up a base for something you can create yourself.

Design drafts and blueprints

When you are still in the process of building your brand or have an agency or designer hired, a good thing to do is assign design drafts that you can later repurpose or reuse.

For example, custom backgrounds for social media posts, one or two color visuals that you can later add text to for email banners, and illustrations or icon packs that can be the go-to elements that you can add to customize a template with a symbol that represents your brand.

By having multiple elements that you can mix and match, and perhaps a custom font, you have all the needed ingredients to create a unique branded visual yourself.

Repurpose existing designs

There is a big chance that you have existing designs that you have used as a blog cover or social media post that have the possibility of being reused. Working versions of digital assets, or ones with little details in the text, can be useful for this purpose.

Show social ads to multiple audiences

In social media marketing, people often do A/B testing with different visuals. However, you can also test the same visuals on multiple audiences or even retarget an old social campaign to a new, fine-tuned target audience.

So, before asking for a new look on your set of visuals, test the waters with different groups of recipients. Perhaps the design isn’t the problem.

Use templates with your custom brand colors

We previously mentioned templates on Canva, Crello, and similar platforms. The free elements and templates are indeed limited, and you will probably see them being used everywhere.

However, it is easy to customize them with your brand colors. If you don’t know the exact shades and colors, you can use tools like image color picker or pine tools. You can also use your brand colors to customize call-to-action buttons on DIY landing page makers.

Use Google my Business and Google ads

When it comes to marketing on search engines, Google my Business is an amazing and free platform that rarely requires digital design. You can post pictures of your brick and mortar premises if you have them or of your products and services.

At the same time, Google ads aren’t free. Still, you can post only catchy calls to action and descriptions about what you are advertising, and no visual addition is needed.