What are marketing tools? 

Business owners need to remain competitive to stand out and build a brand. It’s no secret that marketing is a crucial element of running a successful business. Like a lot of things, marketing and technology go hand in hand. 

Nowadays, a lot of those lengthy marketing activities are automated. There is a long list of marketing tools that can make your efforts much smoother and quicker. If you can master the art of telling people who you are and why they should take an interest, you’re on the right track. Marketing tools can help you make better decisions and optimize your strategy. 

While you may not want to implement 10 marketing tools at the same time, you can pick and choose the tools that work for your business. Maximize your digital marketing efforts and streamline your business. In this article, we talk about how marketing tools can help you and the top tools to use. 

Skip ahead to:

• What is a marketing tool? 
• Why are digital marketing tools important?
• 10 marketing tools every business needs

What is a marketing tool? 

Marketing tools and techniques help you to promote your services, optimize your content strategy, generate leads, boost sales, and increase brand awareness. A marketing tool is something you can use to promote your products or services. Most businesses use various marketing tools to boost their sales. 

You could use a combination of social media management, direct mail, and advertising tools to market your business. There isn’t necessarily a one-size-fits-all approach to which marketing tools your business needs. Your business goals also influence the tools you use. For instance, some marketing tools are ideal for growing sales, while others are better at collecting potential customer information. 

The best way to find the right marketing tools for you is to break down your marketing objectives. Once you understand the various categories of marketing tools, you can start to narrow down what you need. That way, you can find a tool that supports your specific marketing objective and streamline your marketing activities. 

Why are digital marketing tools important? 

If you’re still on the fence as to why digital marketing tools are important, here are some standout marketing statistics: 

• Only 61% of marketers actually believe they have an effective marketing strategy
• Just 22% of businesses are satisfied with their conversion rates 
• 81% of marketers are concerned about privacy issues when using third-party data 

Despite having huge marketing departments and expert marketers, many businesses still struggle to create an effective marketing plan with good conversion rates. The reason that digital marketing tools are important is that they can make a lot of tasks easier and more impactful. By using data and insights, you can gain the knowledge to create a more effective marketing strategy.  

In today’s society, many companies depend on technology and digital marketing tools to support their marketing strategy and grow their business. This is because technology allows you to focus your time on what matters. You no longer have to spend hours on lengthy administrative tasks. 

On top of this, if you don’t make use of digital marketing tools, you could easily fall behind the competition. When your competitor is making full use of every tool available to grow their business, they are spending the right amount of energy and time on marketing to make the biggest impact. Marketing software can help do some heavy lifting so you can focus on growing your business. 

10 marketing tools every business needs 

Within the world of marketing tools, there are several different types to help you achieve certain goals. Trying different marketing tools to find the right one for you can be a lengthy process. Fortunately, you don’t have to waste your time trialling different tools. We list our top choices for the best online marketing tools so you can narrow down your choice. 

1. Social media marketing 

You may notice that social media pops up a couple of times on this list. That’s because it’s a pretty big area when it comes to marketing tools. So, we’re going to break it down into marketing and management. For this section, we’re focusing on marketing tools you can use to create content and grow your brand on social media. While there is definitely some crossover with all-in-one tools, some standalone software is ideal for social media marketing. 

• Biteable – an easy to use tool to create informative and engaging videos for social media. The tool has video templates, music and footage. This is for businesses that want to create high-quality videos without needing expensive video and sound equipment. There is a free and paid version. 

• Missinglttr – if you are short on time to create content then this tool can help. Missinglttr takes your blog content and turns it into a year’s worth of social media content and then drip-feeds it over the year. 

• Mention – this is a social media listening tool to help with monitoring and engagement. You can look out for mentions of your products, brand, and competitors in real-time. You can also reply to mentions within the tool. 

• AdEspresso – a user-friendly social media marketing tool; it supports Facebook Ads, Instagram, and Google Ad campaigns. It can help transform the way you approach digital advertising to test, create, and monitor ads. 

2. Search engine optimization (SEO) 

SEO stands for search engine optimization. It’s the process you go through to improve the quality of your content so that you rank high organically in search engine results pages. It’s about increasing both the quality and quantity of your website traffic by optimizing your content, social media and website for SEO. There are several tools that help you to optimize your content and give you insight into the type of tactics you can implement to boost your search results. 

• SEMrush – this is an all-in-one marketing tool that offers a ton of functionality. You can access tools and reports on SEO, keyword research, competitor research, PPC, SMM, content marketing, and marketing insights. 

• Moz – you can manage various parts of your SEO campaign using Moz. They offer free tools like Keyword Explorer, Domain Analysis, and MozBar. On top of this, you can pay for Moz Pro which includes SEO tools for link building, optimization, site audits, and more. 

• Ubersuggest – a free online tool to help you generate keywords to improve your marketing strategy. You can use this when you’re writing blog posts, copywriting, and social media ads. 

3. Email marketing tools

Email marketing is a valuable way to nurture prospects, engage with your existing customers, and market your business. An email marketing strategy is essential for any business. But there’s no reason it should take up a ton of time. Automation tools and email campaign software means that you can nurture leads and update customers in a simple and effective way.  

• MailChimp – this is one of the top email marketing providers in the world. You can create and design a branded email within the tool. The comprehensive email marketing platform offers a ton of functionality with free and paid versions. 

• ActiveCampaign – the CRM and email marketing platform allows you to send newsletters, emails, design campaigns, and engage with customers easily. With a good user experience, it’s easy to use and starts from just $9/month. 

4. Content creation 

Content and visuals are important in marketing. Fortunately, there’s a lot of tools that help you to create professional and high-quality content. From images and videos to blog posts and podcasts, there’s a tool that helps to speed up the process and make a bigger impact. Depending on your marketing goals, one tool may work better for you than another. 

• Canva – free graphic design tool for creating social media graphics, branded images, Instagram Stories, LinkedIn images, and more. 

• Adobe Spark – the suite includes three mobile or web apps: Adobe Spark Post, Spark Video, and Spark Image. Marketers can create images, graphics, videos, and web pages using the themes provided. You will likely be surprised at how great the content can look when you first start using the Adobe Spark suite. 

• Animoto – the free video maker allows you to create your own videos with a large library of stock images, videos, and music. You can make social media videos using a simple drag and drop process. 

5. Customer relationship management (CRM) 

A customer relationship management tool can help to manage the interactions between your business and potential customers. Many CRM tools have built-in marketing features so that everything is all in one place. This type of marketing tool benefits both your sales and marketing teams and allows for smooth communication and interaction between the departments. 

• Hubspot – the free CRM platform gives you access to a real-time view of your sales funnel, tracks sales interactions, and monitors relationships. It gives you insight into what marketing and sales activities are working and what you need to improve. 

• Salesmate – the cloud-based CRM platform is ideal for small to midsize businesses. It includes features like contact management, sales management, and email marketing. 

6. Social media management 

Now, we’re back to social media tools. There’s a lot involved with creating great social media content, engaging your target audience, and managing your profiles. That’s why you find a lot of different types of tools to help with social media marketing and management. These marketing tools focus on the management side of social media like scheduling, posting, and using analytics to your advantage. 

• Buffer – originally Buffer was a scheduling tool for Twitter, now it supports all major social media platforms. You can manage your scheduling, post from within the tool, track your content’s performance, and automatically shorten links.

• Hootsuite – another big player in the social media management world. With Hootsuite, you can manage multiple social media accounts in one dashboard. It’s also a good tool for team collaboration and planning your content calendar. 

• Crowdfire – similar to Hootsuite, Crowdfire is another social media management platform that allows you to schedule content and manage multiple social media accounts in one place. It’s a good choice for small businesses. 

7. Lead generation and management 

Lead generation tools can help to generate more leads for your business. Driving new leads to your business is tough. These tools can help to take the hassle out of getting new leads. The software is designed to assist you in capturing leads and automates the process. That way, you can focus on developing marketing campaigns rather than manually entering data. 

• Unbounce – this is an interesting drag and drop tool that helps you build high-converting landing pages. You can easily build responsive pages with a specific call to action to generate more leads. 

• OptinMonster – the lead generation software and conversion optimization tool that allows you to create and run targeted campaigns to generate leads. You can share leads and group subscribers by interest for marketing automation. 

8. Reporting, insights, and analytics 

Another important area of marketing is tracking metrics. By monitoring and analyzing your marketing efforts, you can see what needs improving. Marketing tools that offer reports, insights, and analytics are hugely valuable. They allow you to make data-driven decisions. 

• Google Analytics – the web analytics service provides you insight into your website to determine the success or failure of your campaigns. You can track a ton of data points like the number of website visitors and page views. 

• Databox – this tool pulls data from multiple sources into one dashboard. Connect your data and easily track performance, share reports, and discover insights. 

9. Team communication and project management 

Team communication and project management are key parts of an effective marketing department. When you know who is doing what and the upcoming tasks, you can make sure that nothing gets lost along the way. 

• ContentCal – a content marketing platform that allows you to plan, create, publish, and analyze content from one location. A bonus feature is that it has built-in approval systems so you can see the workflow and streamline the process. 

• Slack – communicate with your team faster. Slack works by using dedicated channels within the app to bring the right people and information together in one spot. 

• Trello – the project management tool organizes projects in an easy-to-use way. It uses cards and lists to organize work and make it simple to understand. 

10. Digital asset storage and management 

In marketing, you’re often creating a lot of different assets. You have videos, images, infographics, podcasts, and more. Certain marketing tools can help to store and manage your digital assets so that when you go to use them, you know exactly where they are.

• MediaValet – helps marketing and creative teams to manage, collaborate and share digital assets. The cloud-based software secures and organizes digital content. 

• Filecamp – another cloud-based digital asset management software is Filecamp. It’s aimed at marketing professionals to optimize digital asset management and organize content. 

In summary 

Whether you want to generate more leads, create stunning social media graphics, or monitor your brand engagement, there’s a marketing tool that can help make the process smoother. There are tools and software for every budget and business, depending on your goals. By using tools that elevate your marketing efforts and streamline your operations, you can spend more time on activities that have a greater impact on your overall business.