design tools & Stock photos
When it comes to running your business, one of the many tasks you may find yourself doing is designing marketing materials. These could be flyers, coupons, digital ads, website images, menus, newsletters or signs to hang around your business. Believe it or not, you don’t need to spend thousands of dollars on design software to make any of those items mentioned above.
With a little time and a small amount of creativity you can make almost any marketing material you need using some of the websites listed below. We’re also including links to sites where you’ll find FREE stock images which is always nice for a business owner on a budget!
Do you have a favorite tool or website you use for designing marketing materials? Let us know!
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Design Websites & Stock Photos
If you or one of your employees has even a small amount of creativity you’d be surprised how easy it can be to create basic marketing materials. And using the free stock photo websites listed below, you can really ramp up your marketing with quality images for your website, social media posts or print materials.
*Disclosure: We will only recommend products we have used or would use ourselves. This page may contain affiliate links that could provide us a small commission. Read full disclamer here.
Canva
Canva offers free design templates for website graphics, social media posts, flyers, brochures, signs and just about any other marketing element you may need. Their paid version offers more choices but the free option works great for many small business owners.
PicMonkey
When you need a high quality online photo editor, you can’t find many better than PicMonkey. They go way beyond just filters or cropping. With their tools you can adjust colors, remove backgrounds and create templates or choose from the thousands of templates they offer. Check out their free trial to see what they can do for you.
Visme
The content you can create with Visme goes way beyond website graphics or banners. You can design infographics, data visualizations, presentations, social media posts and short videos. Their free version has limited storage but gives you a chance to test drive them before committing to one of their paid plans.
Pixlr
Pixlr is another useful online photo editor tool that allows you to remove backgrounds and even objects within a photo. Start your design from scratch or use one of their templates for inspiration. Many of their tools are free to use, but if the premium version interests you, check out their free trial.
Unsplash
Unsplash offers complete free stock images and they are all searchable by keyword or type of image. The images offered there are free-to-use anywhere, for any purpose.
Pexels
Pexels is similar to Unsplash, offering completely free-to-use images on just about any topic imaginable. When you need to find the perfect image, it’s good to have a few free stock images sources to use in your search.