If you’ve ever tried to handle your own marketing as a small-to-medium business and suddenly felt like you’ve opened a can of worms, you’re not alone. While we’re used to the plethora of marketing tools, techniques and tactics, it’s completely reasonable that you aren’t.

As well as a seemingly overwhelming selection of platforms and products, is the overwhelming price of them! And we hear you, it’s a lot!

But one of the big benefits of working with a consultancy, like ours, is that we’ve tested the best of the best, and we’ve subscribed so you don’t have to.

marketing tools we subscribe to for our clients

Do you really want to get me started on all of our subscriptions? Well, maybe, but I’m warning you, there are a lot! So instead of listing them all, here’re our GOAT paid-for marketing tools that we use pretty constantly!

Canva Pro

Here’s our big shout-out to Canva – we love you guys! I’m always recommending Canva to clients – it’s a fast-developing, easy to use design tool and they have packed it out with nearly everything. 

Don’t get me wrong it’s not replacing Adobe Creative Cloud and other heavy-weight tools… at least not just yet! But for your day-to-day design tasks it’s fantastic. 

Adobe Creative Cloud 

Canva is good – but we can’t live without our Adobe Creative Cloud – and neither should you. 

If the design is extremely important, if it’s going to be printed, if it’s the cornerstone of your business/brand – then have a professional use something as professional as Adobe Creative Cloud.

Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop, Lightroom, Premiere, Acrobat, and that’s not even an extensive list. But these are pro tools, and you probably want a university degree in them or 10+ years experience using them to be able to do it right!

Lucky for you the Unicorns are pros, eh? 

So if you need a logo, a brand, artwork for any print purpose, then we’d likely be doing that in Adobe for you.

Figma

Oh we LOVE Figma… Figma is a really clever design tool that bridges the gap between design and development for digital creativity. It’s packed with clever features that have us repeating ‘why wasn’t that always a thing?!’

If we design a website or app for you, we’ll be doing it in Figma, because then when it comes to developing having a Figma design to hand makes the process much easier. And if you want pixel perfect – trust me you do – then you want Figma! 

Typeform

Typeform forms hit different – to use a phrase the Gen Z will approve of. I remember Typeform’s early days, right at the start in 2012 (which should help you figure out I’m not actually a member of Gen Z – no cap) and they were boldly different, with a really slick user experience. They knocked the other form platforms out of the water. I was desperate to get a job with them – their HQ being in Barcelona also had something to do with that!

And they haven’t disappointed since, either. They’ve made huge strides in conversion, rich data, and their integrations are exceptional. And they’re doing some really clever things with AI now too. 

So if we’re doing anything form-esque for our clients, it’s usually on Typeform.

Hootsuite

We’ve tried so many social scheduling tools over the years, but we keep coming back to Hootsuite. I’ll be honest here, I don’t have phenominal things to say about Hootsuite – except for the fact that it actually works. And I can’t say that of any of the others we’ve used… 

That’s not to slight Hootsuite, it’s a great platform, it helps us schedule social posts in quickly for clients (honestly this takes an AGE without one of these scheduling platforms) and it’s easy to use. But it’s ££££££££££. Aren’t you glad we subscribe so you don’t have to? 

Claude AI

So we’ve dabbled in AI for a while here and there – so many of the tools mentioned above have been integrating AI features for a while now. But when it comes to having our own little AI helper at Unicorn Marketing we knew we wanted to make an ethical choice and to use it wisely. 

And it’s still a learning curve for us. But we’re finding ways to use it to benefit our clients and advance our marketing. We’ve just begun offering AI marketing services which will benefit clients in a wide variety of ways. 

Before you start worrying we’re generating all our client content by popping a lazy prompt together, check out our ‘How we’re using AI – hint, it’s not the way you’d guess’ blog here. 

Google Drive

We’re Google-people. Google Drive is super helpful for marketers. It’s our filing system, our storage, our one single truth for all documents (that sounds inflated, but it’s really not!). 

Each client gets their own space on our Google Drive, and they can have access too – so whenever you can’t remember where that dark-version logo is, or that leaflet design you needed to re-print – it’ll all be there on Unicorn’s Google Drive! 

marketing tools our clients pay for

Now unfortunately, we can’t cover it all, there may be circumstances that mean a marketing tool needs to be paid for by the client. But there are usually really good reasons for this.

Email marketing platforms, for example. Once you get over a certain number of audience members or need specific functionality, these tools typically come with a subscription. And for data control, email marketing platforms are best kept separate and paid for by the client. 

Our favourite email marketing platforms range from the complex CRMs like Hubspot, to our B2B go-to Brevo, and our B2C go-to of Mailchimp. But we have used (and still do use) a huge selection of email marketing platforms based on each clients’ individual requirements. 

are we the right fit for your business?

It’s true, we suit a particular type of business best; we sit somewhere at the intersection of agency and in-house. So if your business has these requirements then it might be time to call Unicorn Marketing:

• You have the time to help us understand your business and audience
• You don’t have time for your own marketing (in part or in full)
• But you also don’t have the budget to hire a full team in-house
• And you don’t have the budget for all these fun marketing tools either
• Maybe you’ve tried agencies but had mixed results
• You do want to see better results from your marketing
• You’re not sure where to start but you know there’s growth potential
• Your business deserves better marketing

contact us to find out what we could do for your business

we’re using AI deliberately

At Unicorn, we’ve been integrating AI into how we work across many areas of our work. Not to replace thinking and our own creativity, but to enhance it. You might worry that marketers are using AI to churn out content, and I’m sure some are doing so, but we’re trying our best to use it in a smart way to make the content we do produce even better.

Here’s a genuine look at what that actually means in practice.

we’ve come a long way!

Wow, haven’t we come a long way since the ‘pope in a puffer jacket’? Here’s the very first thing that we, as a business, generated using AI back in March 2023.

This was just for fun and immediately informed our choices to leave AI alone for the time being, ha ha! This was supposed to be a unicorn in a puffer jacket… enough said!

But these days, AI has thankfully developed in to something useful as long as you’re willing to put the required time and expertise into it.

claude is a unicorn, sort of…

We chose to subscribe to Claude as our main AI solution for various reasons, one of which is ethical; it’s built on Anthropic’s constitutional AI model. 

We don’t just open it up and ask it to “write us a blog post.” Instead, we’ve invested real time in building specialised projects, prompts, and been very intentional about how it understands the way we work and what our clients need. This allows us to work with Claude as a knowledgeable collaborator, rather than a content vending machine. Think of it less like using a calculator and more like briefing a colleague who happens to have read everything ever published in your client’s industry.

For idea generation and creative inspiration, Claude is genuinely useful. When we’re in early-stage thinking on a campaign, or trying to crack a brief that isn’t quite clicking, we use it to rapidly explore directions, challenge assumptions, and get outside our own heads. I’ll be honest (please don’t come for me, robots!) it rarely gives us the idea — but it regularly gives us inspiration that sparks the right one.

translating the technical, without losing the plot

One of the most valuable things we do with AI is help bridge the gap between our clients and their audiences.

A lot of the businesses we work with are operating in technical or specialist sectors. They know their stuff inside out, but sometimes that’s precisely the problem. When you’re deep in the detail of your own product or service, it’s genuinely hard to step back and communicate it in a way that lands for someone who isn’t an expert.

We use Claude to help us digest complex technical information: product specs, industry documentation, service detail, and reshape it into messaging that’s clear, accurate and compelling to the target audience. The expertise stays intact. The technical jargon (mostly) doesn’t.

checking our work, researching audiences, and generally keeping us honest

AI has also become a useful quality layer in our process. We use it to sense-check copy, identify gaps in an argument, and flag anything that might not land the way we intended. It’s not a replacement for a skilled editor, but it’s a very useful second pair of eyes.

On the research side, we use AI to help us build a richer picture of target audiences: what they care about, what language they use, what content they’re likely to engage with. That feeds directly into sharper, more considered strategy, and ultimately, more effective work for our clients.

beyond the words: 3D, video, and content at scale.

Our use of AI isn’t limited to text. We’re also using it to generate 3D templates and assets for design projects — giving us a faster route to high-quality visual concepts that would previously have required significantly more resource to produce.

For video content, we’re using AI-generated voiceovers. Not as a permanent replacement for human talent where that’s the right choice, but as a practical, cost-effective option for clients who need polished video output without a full production budget.

And for clients embarking on larger content projects (think website copy amounting to 20,000 words or more!) we’re using AI to generate structured first drafts at scale, giving them a solid, organised starting point that our team then refines and elevates. It’s the difference between starting with a blank page and starting with something you can actually work with.

what this means for our clients

Better work. Faster turnaround. And budgets that go further.

That’s the straightforward version. The slightly longer version is that by integrating AI thoughtfully into our workflows, we’re able to spend more of our time, and our clients’ budget, on the things that actually require human expertise: strategy, relationships, creative judgement, and the kind of nuanced understanding of a brand that no prompt can shortcut.

We’re not using AI to do less. We’re using it to do more of what matters.

could AI help your marketing too?

If you’re a small or medium-sized business who has tried AI marketing and not seen decent results, it’s likely because AI marketing needs to come via an AI marketer. Someone who knows how to get the most out of it, and has a solid understanding of marketing strategy to do so. Don’t settle for AI slop, your business deserves better!

So if you’re wondering whether there’s a smarter, more efficient way to approach your marketing and communications, we’d love to have that conversation with you!

Whether it’s developing a content strategy, producing a campaign, sorting out your brand, or just figuring out where to start: we bring the experience, the thinking, and yes, the tools  (AI included) to make it happen.

…by the way, yes AI wrote most of this for us!

Why not pop your name down for a free 30-minute consultation to find out more about how we work with businesses just like yours?

We’re Unicorn Marketing, a team of five experienced consultants based in Ely, Cambridgeshire. Co-founded by Jen McLaine and Laura Caulton, our team also includes consultants Alex, Rosie and Ari. Between us we bring decades of digital marketing experience to the table and we’re a team of marketers who love what they do.

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When we first dreamed up Unicorn Marketing back in November 2018 over a G&T and a workplace moan session, we knew we could build something really special.

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