It’s not enough to drive traffic to your website and then convert them. Many of your website visitors may not be ready to buy, and that’s where lead nurturing comes in. Email marketing is a great way to nurture contacts toward a purchasing decision.
83 Marketing Tools and Software for Every Business & Budget
As a marketer myself, I often wish I had a better sense of all of the tools available to me — and what sets each of them apart — so I can make more informed decisions on how to create and optimize content.
Luckily, I have the privilege of working on a team of 150+ other marketers who specialize in different functions than I do. And because of that, I was able to curate this list of the top tools every marketer should know about and use.
Types of Marketing Tools
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Tools
You and your sales team want to sell your product or service — not fight with messy spreadsheets, cluttered inboxes, or clunky tools that slow you down. That’s why using a Customer Relationship Management System — also known as a CRM — is essential. Not only will it help your sales team manage relationships, but a CRM will also give you a place to deliver those leads you generated to your sales team.
Featured CRM Tool:
Other CRM Tools:
Online Advertising Tools
If your team is making investments into PPC ad campaigns on platforms like Google, Bing, Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn, it’s probably a bit of a hassle to manage all the different ad campaigns you’re running across each different network. Besides just managing them, you then have to try and report on the results of all of them. What a struggle. Luckily, there’s tools for that.
Featured Online Advertising Tool:
AdStage takes the hassle out reporting on all of the PPC campaigns you’re running and puts it all in one place. AdStage helps you automate, create, and manage your campaigns across all of the major PPC platforms, then allows you to report on your results. With visual features and powerful automation tools, AdStage is a must for PPC experts and newbies alike.
Other Online Advertising Tools:
Social Media Tools
Social media managers know the pain of posting that perfect social media post only to have a follower find a typo a minute later and call you out. For marketers, using a social media tool to schedule all of your posts (so you catch those typos beforehand) is a must. But it also helps to get the right analytics from your social posts, especially on channels where it can be hard to get that information.
Featured Social Media Tool:
NapoleonCat is way more than just a scheduling tool; the platform offers a whole stack of features for social media managers. Thanks to the unified Inbox, you will release lots of time that your team normally dedicates to switching between accounts to answer questions on social media. Thanks to many collaboration-focused features, NapoleonCat untangles workflows for even the busiest teams. Its other features include automated moderation, reporting, and social media analytics.
Other Social Media Tools:
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tools
Featured SEO Tool:
Marketers need tools to plan which keywords to rank for and making sure the content they create actually meets their goal once created. Ryte is the ideal tool marketers can use to make sure their SEO efforts are having a real impact on their marketing strategy.
Other SEO Tools:
Content Creation and Design Tools
In the world of content creation, there are admittedly tons of different tools you could use to create various types of content. Whether it’s social images, logos, blog posts, or ebooks — the options and tools are endless.
That said, a newcomer among the Adobe Suite of tools is winning the hearts of many marketers, including this one, for its ease of use to create stunning webpages, awesome videos, and eye-catching graphics. The best part? It’s completely free and impossibly easy.
Featured Content Creation Resource:
You can completely avoid the hassle of page layout, video editing knowledge, or a CMS and start creating content that looks remarkable immediately. For example, we use Spark Page at HubSpot to create some of our online guides and promote them with Spark Videos and Posts. You can too!
CRM (Customer Relationship Management)
3. HubSpot CRM
HubSpot CRM is among the top tools for marketing professionals for boosting sales activity and managing interactions with customers. It also lets you have a bird-eye view of your sales pipeline with its interactive visual dashboard.
4. Salesmate
Salesmate is among the leading CRM software that allows you to automate your sales process and build better relationships with your customers. It comes loaded with several advanced CRM features that enable you to drive sales and retain customers.
The software offers a simplified pipeline view to visualize, organize, and prioritize your deals with customers. It also has smart email features that you can use to track how customers are interacting with your emails.
Content Creation
5. Flipsnack
Flipsnack is a digital flipbook maker that allows you to create different types of interactive digital publications directly in the browser. You can do so by either uploading a PDF and turning it into a flipbook with a page-flipping effect, designing one from scratch in the Design Studio, or by editing a premade template.
Regardless of the chosen method, you can make sure your publications are interactive by adding elements such as shopping carts, social media buttons, slideshows, videos, maps, and more. Flipsnack offers solutions for any type of business, the education sector, and even for personal use.
Flipsnack also offers a Free plan and two Educational plans (Classroom – free and School – custom pricing). These prices are for monthly subscriptions and you can save 20% if you choose a yearly subscription.
6. Whatagraph
Whatagraph is a highly visual platform. It turns the performance numbers into a visual presentation, helping agency teams, their clients, and anyone not a marketing expert read and understand the data easily.
7. Creatopy
Creatopy is an intuitive ad design platform that helps you easily craft engaging ads that fit all your needs, including banners and other display ads, social media ads, and video ads. You can start from industry-specific templates and standard sizes or create your own custom designs. By taking advantage of the high-quality stock photo, video and audio libraries, you can truly bring your ads to life.
Due to its automation capabilities, Creatopy allows you to generate large volumes of ad variations with just a few clicks, eliminating repetitive tasks. In addition, the platform gives you the possibility to work in bulk, creating sets of ads that can be edited and downloaded simultaneously.
8. Pixpa
Pixpa is an all-in-one website building platform for creative professionals and small businesses. It is an ideal portfolio website builder for creatives like photographers, artists and designers, as well as businesses like architecture firms and branding agencies. It also offers a very comprehensive platform for small businesses to build and grow their online presence with tools like a built-in online store, blog, client galleries, SEO management and marketing tools etc.
The best thing about Pixpa is the fact that it is a no-code platform and requires no advanced technical knowledge. If you are in search of an inexpensive and accessible solution for creating a branded website or portfolio, Pixpa is exactly what you are looking for.
Graphic creation tools
Visuals are the cornerstone of social marketing and branding at-large. If you don’t have the budget for a designer or are running a DIY business, digital marketing tools such as Canva have become the go-to for producing eye-catching visuals.
19. Creatopy (formerly Bannersnack)
For example, the platform’s design sets and brand kits allow you to seamlessly work with fellow marketers and keep your brand creatives organized. This is particularly useful for agencies managing multiple clients or social accounts.
20. Visme
21. Venngage
Venngage is another graphic creator with an emphasis on infographics. With spreadsheet imports and hundreds of chart configurations, you can customize your infographics however you want. Customize any infographics based on your branding with tons of built-in graphics to choose from.
Sources:
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/marketing-tools
https://www.proofhub.com/articles/marketing-tools
https://sproutsocial.com/insights/digital-marketing-tools/
Marketing tools
For example, you can share blog posts on Trello before you publish them. This gives others on your team the opportunity to review the post, weigh in with their thoughts and make changes that could strengthen the piece before it goes live.
Marketing Tools: 5 Essential Ones to Make Your Life Easier
You can’t please everyone all of the time. However, as a marketer, it’s your job to try and use marketing tools to disprove this age old John Lydgate quote (if you’re curious, he was a poet), and get absolutely everyone interested in what you have to say.
Sure, you can’t sell your product to everyone, but the more who know about it, and like your brand, the more exposure you’ll get. In the longer term, this means more leads will trickle through and convert into precious sales.
Sounds tough? Well, for the most part, it is. Thankfully, there are hundreds, if not thousands of marketing tools to help you in every part of the process. From planning right through to display advertising tools, there is software designed specifically to make your life easier.
Ubersuggest
As a whole, this digital marketing tool is easy for beginners because the dashboard is simple to navigate so you can quickly find the data you want. You’ll start by entering a root keyword or domain that you want to research. You get up to three free searches per day on the free version and you can upgrade to a paid software as well.
As you work your way down you’ll see historical data that will show you how that keyword has trended over time. This is helpful for determining seasonal keywords or ones that are popular now but may die off over time.
Free Relationship Tools
38. Newsle
Got some thought leaders or industry influencers you want to keep up with? Sign into Newsle through Facebook or LinkedIn and it’ll track your Facebook friends, LinkedIn connections & email contacts and let you know when they’re in the news.
39. Rapportive
40. MentionMapp
Sources:
https://www.bannerflow.com/blog/5-essential-marketing-tools-make-life-easier/
https://neilpatel.com/blog/online-marketing-tools-start-business/
https://buffer.com/library/free-marketing-tools/
Marketing tools
At our company, we use Upfluence software on a daily basis to host campaigns for our clients and to identify and vet our own influencers. Before it would take us a whole week to gather enough information to launch a campaign. Now we can start multiple campaigns in 15 minutes. By leveraging this technology, we’ve been able to branch out into an agency: we manage influencer campaigns for Fortune 500 companies and major media agencies like OMD, HAVAS, and Publicis.
51 Digital Marketing Tools Trusted by the Experts
1. Mixpanel
It gives me a holistic view of how my marketing is performing in addition to Google Analytics. When I tag campaigns with UTMs, I can see the performance of it all the way through to purchase and retention.”
2. Hotjar
“One of my favorite digital marketing tools is Hotjar — it’s an analytics & feedback program that allows marketers to track user behavior on the site. The program helps you identify the information behind behavior by leveraging powerful tools like site heatmaps, screen recordings of your user and surveys/feedback polls. As a digital marketer, having a tool like this helps me measure the effectiveness of a website design while allowing me to build solutions that increase conversion of the site! I’ve been using it in our latest e-commerce launch of MSafe, a direct-to-consumer home safe brand.”
Type 5: Content Marketing Tools for SMBs
Content marketing tools help you develop and publish content. That includes all sorts of tools, from Photoshop to grammar-checking software . In this article, the content marketing tools we mentioned focused on building a website and designing basic graphics since those are two content marketing fundamentals every business needs. Once you have a website and a blog, you can build out your content from there.
Analytics tools are where digital marketing meets data science. Numbers and insights from analytics software will tell you if your marketing is working. You can also use this info to target new customer segments, fine-tune your messaging, and drive more traffic to your website.
Type 7: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tools
When was the last time you found what you were looking for on the 8th page of Google? The truth is, if your business is on page 8 or even page 2, people will have difficulty finding you. SEO is the art and science of improving your position in Google’s search results. Without SEO tools, it’s hard to know where your site ranks in relation to your competition and which keywords to target to improve that ranking.
When you were reading this list, did some tools jump out at you as “must-haves”? Did some make you scratch your head and think, “This sounds good, but do I really need it?” We can’t tell you exactly which tools are worth the money for your business, but we can give you a few key things to keep in mind while you’re tool shopping.
Scale
When you’re selecting tools, find the ones that work for a business of your size but still give you room to grow. This is where tiered pricing comes in handy. For example, MailChimp is free if you have fewer than 2,000 subscribers. By the time you’re ready to upgrade to a paid plan, your newsletter might be paying for itself.
Marketing skills
This business has the resources to hire a copywriter to build out their content. But they’re still going to be responsible for generating content briefs, an editorial calendar, and an overall strategy. These folks should also take free inbound marketing SEO classes like the ones offered by HubSpot Academy .
This business will get the most out of advanced tools. They should invest in the best tools they can afford (see the next section on budget & funding). That said, talent will still trump tools every time. This company should invest in fancy tools only after they’ve hired or trained for pro-level SEO and content marketing.
Budget & funding
But if you’re, say, a well-funded startup, and money is no object for you (must be nice), remember that tools have costs besides subscription fees. Overspending on tools you don’t need will cost you time and energy. A solid rule no matter what your budget is: don’t pay for tools you don’t really need.
Existing tools and overlap
It’s worth pointing out that many of these tools do the same things and you don’t always need a dedicated tool for each marketing function. For example, your project management platform might cover your content scheduling needs.
Marketing tools FAQ
What are marketing tools?
Marketing tools help businesses make more sales by supporting processes like lead generation and reward programs. These platforms range in type: some automate tasks, others analyze data and results, and others help you create marketing content.
What are the most common types of marketing tools?
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About the author
A content writer and editor, Alexa Collins has shaped stories across topics from B2B SaaS to real estate. She’s best known for her love of plants, and when she’s not watering them she’s throwing the frisbee for her dog Bear.
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Sources:
https://blog.useproof.com/digital-marketing-tools/
https://smallbiz.tools/small-business-marketing-tools/
https://www.shopify.co.uk/blog/marketing-tools