A practical eBook for the owner who knows they need a few good tools to run their marketing, but is tired of being sold a different one every week. The job here is to give you a short, sensible toolkit and the rules for keeping it that way.
Members ebook·7 chapters· 35 minute read
Chapter 5
Social, Design and Content Tools
The category most owners overspend on, and the small set of tools that's actually enough for almost any small business.
Social, design and content tools are the part of the marketing toolkit where the most money gets spent on things the business never quite uses. The video editor with the monthly subscription that gets opened twice a year. The social scheduler with twelve channels connected and three of them dormant. The design tool nobody on the team can use, paid for in case someone needs it.
The honest truth is that most small businesses need a very small set of tools in this category. One way to design simple visuals. One way to schedule the few channels you actually post to. One way to write things down. That's enough for years. The temptation to add more is constant and the value of resisting it is high.
This chapter sets out the small set that's enough, the questions to ask before adding to it and the rule for cancelling things you stopped using.
The full chapter names the design, scheduling and content tools that work for almost every small business, and gives you a one-page test for whether a tool is earning its keep.
Design tools
Canva is the right answer for almost every small business. It's cheap on the paid plan, very capable, and most people on a small team can pick it up in an afternoon. It does posts, ads, simple videos, brochures, presentations and printable materials. Unless you have a specific need that Canva doesn't cover - a serious illustration habit, a design-led brand that needs proper typography control - it's enough.
If you do need more, the next step is usually Adobe Express or Figma. Adobe is what professional designers use; Figma is increasingly popular for anything that ends up on a screen. Both have a learning curve. Don't pay for them unless someone in the business will use them weekly. The biggest waste in this category is paying for serious design tools that sit unused.
Social scheduling tools
Most small businesses don't actually need a scheduling tool. They post on one or two channels a few times a week, and posting directly from the channel works fine. If that describes you, save the money and use the channels' own native posting.
If you're posting on three or more channels regularly, or if more than one person is posting and you need approval before things go out, a scheduler earns its keep. Buffer is a sensible default. Later is good for businesses that lean on Instagram. Hootsuite is overpriced for a small business unless you have a specific need it covers. Pick one. Use it for a quarter. If you're not using it weekly, cancel it.
Content and writing tools
For writing, the simple answer is whatever you already have - Google Docs, Microsoft Word, Notion, Apple Notes. The tool isn't the problem. The discipline of actually writing is. If you'd write more in Notion than in Word, use Notion. If the opposite is true, use Word. Don't add a fourth tool to a stack that already has three.
AI assistants - covered in detail in AI for Small Business Growth - are a serious part of the writing toolkit now. ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini, on the paid plan, replaces a long list of small writing tools and ideas tools that used to be separate products. If you're paying for a headline generator, a tagline tool and a hook generator, you're paying for things the assistant does as a free side-effect.
The honest social, design and content set
Canva for design, on the paid plan if you use it weekly
Native posting on one or two channels, or Buffer if you genuinely need three or more
Whatever writing tool you already use - don't add a new one
One AI assistant on the paid plan
A free trial for anything else, with a calendar reminder to cancel if unused
Video tools
For most small businesses, the right video tool is the camera on your phone and the basic editor that comes with it. iMovie on iPhone or the built-in editor on Android is enough for the kind of short, real videos that work for a small business audience. CapCut is a sensible free upgrade if you want a few more options.
Don't pay for serious video editing software unless you've made and posted at least twenty short videos with the simple tools first. The cost of a video editor that you don't yet have the habit to use is high. The cost of using a simpler tool while you build the habit is nothing.
The rule for cancelling
Once a quarter, open the list of subscriptions you pay for and ask one question of each: 'Did I open this in the last month?' If the answer is no twice in a row, cancel it. You can always come back. Most owners who cancel a tool they weren't using don't notice it's gone. The few who do notice can re-subscribe in five minutes.
What to do this week
Open the bank statement or card statement for the last three months. List every software subscription. Total it up. Then go through and tick the ones you opened in the last month. Cancel any that you can't tick. The saving funds the rest of the toolkit.
Recurring principle for this chapter: use low-cost channels intelligently. For more on what to put on social, look back at the Content Strategy eBook. For the next step on the parts of the toolkit that keep the lights on, look ahead to the chapter on analytics, payments and admin tools.
The rest of this chapter walks through the practical steps, the templates and the checklists you need to put it into action. It includes worked examples, copy frameworks and the small decisions that make the difference between a plan that sits in a drive and one that gets used.
Inside you'll find a step-by-step playbook, a downloadable template, a checklist you can run this week and a short list of common mistakes to avoid before you start.
The full action plan, broken into weekly steps.
Ready-to-use scripts, templates and checklists.
Worked examples for different sized businesses.
Common mistakes and how to avoid them.
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