Why Investing in Adobe Creative Cloud is Important for Your Small Business

Why Investing in Adobe Creative Cloud is Important: From building awareness to telling stories that help create an emotional connection with your audience, visual content plays an essential role in the life of any organization. That’s particularly important if you are a small business owner, as the responsibility of finding the right tools for creating such content falls to you. In the case of mid-size to large organizations, getting an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription is often the ideal solution, but does this make as much sense for small businesses?

That’s what we’re about to find out!

Why Choose Adobe CC over Free Alternatives?

Costs represent one of the main concerns of small business owners, so you will
inevitably ask why you should even consider Adobe CC when there are so many free alternatives to each Adobe app. The monthly subscription for a single desktop app is US $29.99 for small businesses. If, on the other hand, you want to use all mobile and desktop apps, you’ll have to pay US $69.99, which isn’t exactly a negligible amount.

Much like in social media, being consistent when creating a marketing campaign is essential. The way the Adobe CC apps integrate with one another is exactly what makes this software package worth buying. Since it’s fairly easy to export assets from one app and import them into another for further, dedicated adjustments, Adobe CC enables small business owners to achieve more with less. Not to mention that Adobe CC plans come with free asset storage and access to millions of royalty-free photos, illustrations and videos. The added peace of mind provided by the storage in the cloud is priceless to many of us.

Last but not least, these creative solutions for small business are well documented by Adobe themselves, but also on learning platforms such as Lynda.com, blogs and forums. An additional benefit is that by certifications that could translate into additional weight for your small business. So long as your small team has a technology savvy person with creative inclinations, you should not think twice before investing in Adobe CC. Your only concern afterwards will be to use the set of apps and services to the fullest, as to have a positive return on investment.

Stay Ahead of Your Competitors with Adobe CC

Differentiation strategies involve all the actions that you take to make your small business stand out from the crowd.  It can start with the first business card that you hand out at a local conference, and go as far as a video commercial running on national television during a racing event. Bear in mind that differentiation shouldn’t occur only in relation to your competitors, but also to your actual and future employees. Therefore, you need to make sure that every visual element that’s part of your brand identity suggests expertise and professionalism.

How Adobe CC Apps Propel Your Small Business

Photoshop CC, the renowned yet sometimes controversial photo manipulation software, remains the flagship of Adobe, but the other apps can also provide immense value to small businesses. Let’s take a look at some of them and what they can help you do!

Adobe Illustrator, which turned 30 this year, is a vector graphics editor that can come in handy when creating business cards, brochures, logos, eBooks, both in print and digital form. Some of these can be placed on your website, distributed as gated content behind web forms, so as to gather leads, while others can make compelling sales materials to be shared with potential customers or business partners at industry-specific events.

Adobe Premiere Pro CC acts like a shortcut between a video that’s rough around the edges and a professional one featuring effects and transitions.  that’s ready to be uploaded to YouTube, Facebook, or broadcast on television.

Adobe After Effects goes beyond the video production and editing capabilities of Premiere Pro, and will help you to add cinematic visual effects. Since it’s equally appreciated by YouTube creators and Hollywood professionals, there’s no doubt that it will find a place in your small business’ digital tool set.

Adobe Dreamweaver will help you turn your most breathtaking ideas into modern, responsive websites that create interactive experiences for your visitors. Add to that the assets created in Photoshop, Illustrator and Acrobat Pro, along with some enticing copy, and you’ll have no problem converting visitors into leads and leads into customers.

Also part of the Creative Cloud suite, Acrobat Pro will enable you to convert, digitally sign and send documents from and to desktop PCs, smartphones and tablets with great ease. If it’s your ultimate purpose to leave your customers breathless from how fast you’re replying with signed contracts and invoices, this might be the solution for you.

Calling Adobe Creative Cloud the Swiss Army knife of small businesses looking to shape, create and perfect a brand identity wouldn’t be far fetched. Each app included in the suite can provide you with the professional level output that will set you apart from the competition, and you will soon discover that the monthly subscription is unnoticeable, compared to the impression that you’ll leave on your potential customers and employees.

Author
Alexandru Chiuarlu

Alexandru Chiuariu is a geek standing at the crossroads of technology and marketing. His areas of expertise include copywriting, social media marketing and management, email marketing, as well as content marketing and strategy.

Disclosure: I am an independent ClickFunnels Affiliate, not an employee. I receive referral payments from ClickFunnels. The opinions expressed here are my own and are not official statements of ClickFunnels or its parent company, Etison LLC.