How Low-Code and No-Code Tools Are Changing Marketing

Software adoption is no longer just a nice-to-have — it’s a must-have.

Nearly every business today bands together various software tools to help their business function properly and successfully. Teams need tools to help automate workflows, harvest valuable data, and become more efficient in a fast-paced market.

But traditional software development is generally very costly and slow. It can take months to create the tools teams need.

The need for fast and cost-effective applications has led to a rise in low-code and no-code development platforms. The increasing popularity of these platforms is changing the landscape of marketing — for the better.

Below we’ll cover how low-code and no-code tools are enabling businesses to shift from traditional to agile marketing.

Love Them or Hate Them, Low-code and No-code Tools Are Here to Stay

As low-code and no-code tools grow in popularity, they become increasingly divisive. While many non-developers love these tools, most developers scoff at their claims and capabilities.

No matter where you stand in this debate, data shows that these tools aren’t going away any time soon. According to data from Forrester,  low-code/no-code industry spending is expected to increase to approximately $22 billion by 2022.  

A recent report by Gartner also states that low-code tools will make up 65 percent of all app development by 2024. Now, more and more developers are starting to jump on the low-code bandwagon, with 80 percent saying it freed up time for them to focus on high-priority tasks.

What does this mean? Low-code/no-code tools, which were seemingly just a trend a few years ago, have been adopted rapidly across multiple industries.

Since marketers were among the first adopters, there are plenty of tools that marketing teams have come to rely on. For example, Buffer helps automate social media posts across multiple channels. Canva provides any marketer a fast and easy wayto create visual content. AndClickUp is a highly customizable tool that helps marketing teams manage projects.

These are just a few examples of low-code and no-code tools that increase efficiency and productivity and save marketers time. Below let’s take a closer look at these benefits.  

Benefits of Low-code and No-code Tools for Marketing Teams

An obvious upside of utilizing low-code and no-code tools is that they’re less expensive than going the traditional development route.  However, there are other benefits that offer insight into why more and more businesses are investing in these tools  — and why it’s worth considering for your own marketing team. Let’s take a look.

1. They help marketers quickly innovate without eating up IT resources.

Keeping up with a fast-paced and ever-changing market is challenging, no matter what your industry is.

Low-code and no-code tools can help by allowing marketing teams to piece together applications without tapping into IT resources.

Since low- and no-code tools have a significantly smaller learning curve than traditional dev tools, marketing and other non-development teams can source, learn, and customize these tools to fit their needs.

Most of these tools are highly customizable and easy to integrate together. That means teams can update their workflows, remove or replace one tool for another, and essentially grow their tech stack as they grow as a team.

By doing so, IT won’t have to face the mounting burden of constantly installing, integrating, and updating traditional dev and enterprise tools that could just as easily be created, maintained, and customized using low-code options.  

Read more about how and why the lines between Marketing and IT are blurring. 

2. They simplify workflows while providing a better experience.

All marketing teams have created workflows at some point to manage projects and stay aligned with the objectives of their companies.

Historically, teams take the enterprise-level tools at their disposal and find ways to create workflows that fit the tool, rather than their team’s needs.

This has downsides.

For instance, consider the importance of developing a content strategy for marketing. This is increasingly recognized as a valuable practice, but not as readily adopted. Why? One reason is that the usual tools marketing teams have to create and publish content eats up a lot of time.

Switching to a low-code or no-code content management system that employs a fresher content architecture quickly simplifies the idea-to-deployment process. That would mean more content automation, fast turnarounds for updates thanks to easy front-end editing, and even better scalability features.

Just imagine needing to create a new opt-in page for a marketing playbook designed to drive high-quality leads. Instead of creating wireframes then waiting on a developer to create the page, your team could simply wireframe, test, tweak, and launch the new page without a developer. That could reduce the timeline from weeks to days.

Some platforms, like GoDaddy Website Builder, include templates populated with professional text and images created for hundreds of specific industries. This content can work as-is for some clients or, for others, let them see the direction their content needs to take.

3. They help automate nearly everything for better productivity.

Have you ever said, “If I only had two of me, I could finally [fill in stress relieving action here]”?

Yeah, I say that at least once a week. And while it would be nice to snap our fingers and have clones of ourselves wrapping up marketing tasks so we can get back to life, that’s not going to happen.

That’s why most of us in marketing have become obsessed with finding waystoincrease our productivity and automate more and more aspects of our work life.

No-code and low-code tools have answered the call of tired marketers everywhere.

Take Slack, for example. Slack recently launched its Workflow Builder to give avid users a chance to streamline and automate or recurring activities. (Lifesaver, by the way.)

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Or Zapier, which allows you to build fully custom automations for nearly everything in your work and life.

Both are prime examples of no-code tools that help marketers automate tasks and make life that much easier. The less stress and strain you’re under, the better you’ll be able to achieve high-priority tasks.

That’s no small thing.

Burnout is real and companies that invest in workplace mental health, including by implementing better processes, all saw positive ROI in doing so. While we don’t claim that low-code tools directly impact mental health, they can help marketers be more productive and reduce job-related stress as a result.

Low-code and No-code: A Change for the Better

Low-code and no-code tools are not a replacement for traditional development or enterprise apps — but they are an important addition to any company’s tech stack. These tools offer many benefits, to marketers in particular. They enable marketers to solve problems faster and with more flexibility right when it’s needed.

These tools have changed marketing — and will continue to do so — for the better.