Best Advertising and Marketing Tools

Best Advertising Tools and Marketing Tools

Whether you’re new to marketing or an experienced pro, we’re here to help. Here are some of our favorite resources to help you get started on your marketing journey.

Marketing is hard. And, honestly, as soon as you start to get your head around it, everything changes. It’s almost impossible to keep up. But if you can at least learn about the tools available to you — and what makes each of them special — you’ll be able to make smarter decisions when crafting and optimizing content.

When you’re creating and sharing content, it can be hard to know just how successful your work is. I find this question particularly difficult because I often have to create and share content on my own, which can be frustrating when it feels like I’m doing everything wrong. Luckily, there are now tools that can help marketers like me decide what kind of content to make and how to get the best results from it.

Let’s get started! Here are the best tools and resources to launch your marketing journey. Picking out the right marketing tools for your business decision can be a daunting task. If you’re building your marketing strategy from scratch, figuring out which tools are best is even harder. It’s easy to drown in an ocean of options without knowing where to start. That’s why we created this list of 35+ essential tools to plan and execute on your marketing strategy at each funnel stage.

There are lots of software options to choose from. Using the right software will help you accomplish your business goals. Which tools do you need for each stage of the marketing funnel? What’s the best tool for your strategy, budget, and goals?

We know there are thousands of marketing tools out there. Figuring out which ones make the most sense for your business goals can be overwhelming, stressful, and time consuming. We recommend using the marketing tools below based on how they align with your strategy, budget, and goals.

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.

CRMs are such an essential part of any good marketing and sales team that we think everyone should have one. That’s why the HubSpot CRM is completely free.

Featured CRM Tool:

1. HubSpot CRM

HubSpot CRM automates the tasks salespeople hate and takes minutes to learn — not months. That means doing more deals and less data entry.

Other CRM Tools:

2. Zoho CRM

3. Zendesk

4. Pipedrive

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: 

5. AdStage

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:

6. HubSpot Ads Tracking Software

7. Perfect Audience

8. Google Keyword Planner

9. AdRoll

10. WordStream

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: 

11. Iconosquare

Iconosquare is the perfect tool for marketers to grow their brand on Instagram with easy-to-use analytics. It’s not always easy to know what’s working and what’s not on Instagram. But, as the second most popular social channel and one that’s quickly approaching first most popular among some age groups, it’s a channel that marketers can’t afford to miss out on. Try Iconosquare now to maximize your Instagram analytics and optimize your brand Instagram channel for success.

Other Social Media Tools:

12. Buffer

13. Hootsuite

14. BuzzSumo

15. HubSpot Social Inbox

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tools

Whether its keyword research, content optimization, or checking your current page rankings, every marketer needs a go-to tool for planning what content to create and how to optimize it for SEO. 

Featured SEO Tool:

16. Ryte

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:

17. Ahrefs

18. SEMrush

19. Moz

20. Keywords Everywhere Chrome Extension

21. HubSpot Content Strategy Tool

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:

22. Adobe Spark

Adobe Spark is a suite of three web or mobile apps — Spark Page, Spark Post, and Spark Video — that allows marketers to easily create graphics, webpages, and videos in a variety of themes in minutes.

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!

Other Content Creation and Design Tools:

23. Venngage

24. Piktochart

25. Canva

26. Recordit

27. Kap

28. Adobe Color CC

Video Marketing Tools

Haven’t you heard? Video is the thing everyone is talking about. But how do you actually implement it into your marketing?

Maybe your strategy is just to put a YouTube video embed on one of your blog posts or landing pages. But then what happens? Someone else’s ad plays on your landing page before your video even begins. That’s bad for your conversion rates, brand, and your user. Luckily, there’s a solution.

Featured Video Marketing Resource:

29. Wistia

Wistia is a powerful video hosting platform that allows you to host your videos on your website — ad free — with a guaranteed smooth playback and responsive player. Wistia also helps you prove the ROI of your video efforts by offering you video analytics and key metrics to fine-tune your video marketing efforts over time. Ready to take your video marketing to the next level?

Other Video Marketing Tools:

30. Vidyard

31. Vimeo

32. Loom

Event Marketing Tools

Whether your team holds monthly customer and prospect events, yearly conferences, or just occasional community outreach parties and events, it’s important to have the best event marketing tool up your sleeve when the time comes to use it. After all, in-person events are some of the best ways to interact with potential customers and create a brand experience that prospects, customers, and your community will remember.

Featured Event Marketing Resource:

33. Eventbrite

Eventbrite is an efficient, easy-to-use tool tons of marketers rely on not only to manage the logistics (like ticketing) of events but also to promote their events. Eventbrite lets you create an event landing page and allows you to set up your ticketing and payment for the event all within the same platform. The best part? Eventbrite is always free if you’re hosting a free event!

Other Event Marketing Tools:

34. Facebook Events

35. AddEvent

Lead Capture and Conversion Tools

When it comes to your bottom-line goals, you probably want a few tools for not only attracting prospects to dedicated marketing campaigns, but just as importantly, converting those visitors into leads and customers.

Featured Lead Capture and Conversion Resource:

36. HubSpot’s Free Marketing Tools

HubSpot’s free marketing tools can help do just that. The moment a lead shares their email, you’ll know who they are, where they work, and what pages they visited — all in real time. When they view an offer or check your pricing, you’ll be ready to follow up right away.

And with simple but powerful analytics, you’ll learn more about what’s working and what’s not — like which traffic sources or pieces of content are driving the most conversions. It’s a risk-free way to find out what inbound marketing can do for you. No budget necessary.

Other Lead Capture and Conversion Tools:

37. HubSpot’s Free Pop-up Forms Tool

38. Typeform

39. OptinMonster

40. Sumo

41. Convertflow

Lead Generation Tools

If you’re in the mood for demand generation, you probably have your eyes on the prize: converting anonymous website visitors into contacts with email addresses that you can successfully nurture. Landing pages are a must for capturing lead information on important offers and opt-ins.

Featured Lead Generation Resource: 

42. Unbounce

Thanks to a drag and drop interface, Unbounce lets you quickly build mobile responsive landing pages without developer assistance. The tool also integrates with a number of different CMS platforms and software.

With Unbounce Convertables, you can also launch targeted overlays on top of any web page, each with a dedicated call to action. Customizable triggers and targeting rules give you control over who sees your offers and when so you can serve the most relevant offers to the right audience.

Other Lead Generation Tools:

43. Leadpages

44. Instapage

45. HubSpot’s Landing Page Builder

Website Optimization and CRO Tools

As marketers, sometimes it feels like we’re constantly making educated guesses about how our site visitors are going to interact with our content. While we might design a page to draw our user’s eye to a spot on a page, how do we ever really know where their focus is so that we can improve that experience?

Featured CRO Resource:

46. Hotjar

Hotjar is a new and easy way to truly understand what your web and mobile site visitors are looking at when they interact with your site. With its visual heatmap tools, you can understand what users want, care about, and interact with on your site. Hotjar visually represents visitors’ clicks, taps and scrolling behavior, giving you the ability to find hot areas for growth and conversion rate optimization.

Other CRO Tools:

47. Optimizely

48. Lucky Orange

49. Google Optimize

50. Clicky

Lead Nurturing and Email Marketing Tools

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. 

Featured Lead Nurturing Resource: 

51. HubSpot’s Email Marketing Software

HubSpot offers robust email marketing software from free to enterprise. You’ll be able to create emails in a simple drag-and-drop interface, personalize emails for better experience and performance, and see email activity in your free CRM. HubSpot also offers automation solutions in their paid plans. 

Other Lead Nurturing and Email Marketing Tools:

52. Constant Contact

53. Campaign Monitor

54. MailChimp

55. AWeber

56. ActiveCampaign

Marketing Automation Tools

Automation is nothing new to marketers. Whether you want to save time doing marketing tasks or simply cut time wasted doing those daily tasks like saving emails and files to spreadsheets, having a tool that makes your life easier and saves you time is ideal.

Featured Marketing Automation Resource: 

57. HubSpot Marketing Automation

As previously mentioned, HubSpot has a powerful automation tool included in its paid marketing tiers. It doesn’t just send drip sequences. You can also use it to trigger specific actions such as updating a contact record or adding a contact to a list when certain criteria is met. 

Other Marketing Automation Tools: 

58. Drip

59. Marketo

60. Omnisend

Data Reporting and Analytics Tools

Most tools that automate some of your marketing strategy will also provide reports that allow you to see and present your campaigns’ performance to other employees in your company. What if you want a more holistic look at the health of your marketing?

Featured Data Reporting and Analytics Resource: 

61. Digital Marketing Tuner

From the efficiency of your content calendar to the effectiveness of your lead-generation methods, Digital Marketing Tuner offers a helpful overview of all of your latest marketing activities.

Developed by OverGo Studio, an inbound marketing agency and HubSpot Agency Partner, Digital Marketing Tuner guides you through a brief survey where you can submit basic information about your company’s content volume, email open rates, website traffic, and more. The tool then sends you a detailed report in which you can better visualize your team’s strengths and weaknesses so you can make even better decisions for your company moving forward.

Other Data Reporting and Analytics Tools: 

62. Google Analytics

63. Google Search Console

64. Databox

65. RavenTools

Digital Asset Management Tools

In any marketing team, the inevitable happens: there’s a million files and pieces of content between everyone on your team without one place to keep it all. Organization on any team — let alone a marketing team — is essential. That’s why it’s important to have a collaborative organization tool to keep you sane.

Featured Digital Asset Management Tool:

66. Dropbox

Dropbox is the perfect tool to keep your team organized and your files under control. With cloud-based software to keep your files accessible anywhere at anytime, Dropbox helps your team store all of its files in a central location. Dropbox makes it easy to collaborate, too. With tools like Dropbox Paper, which allows you to write and collaborate in real time on the same doc — and sharing tools for shared folders and files, you’ll be organized and ready for any project that comes your way.

Other Digital Asset Management Tools:

67. Google Drive

68. Box

69. Shift

70. Brandfolder

Team Communication and Collaboration Tools

Where would your work day be without accessibility and communication between you and your colleagues? Probably pretty frustrating. Marketers can’t shy away from communication when it comes to aligning with team members and across the company, so having the right team communication tools is necessary every single day.

Featured Communication and Collaboration Resource:

71. Slack

I wouldn’t be given any slack if I didn’t make the world aware of this tool.

Slack is a powerful messaging app that allows you and your teammates to quickly message back and forth without the hassle of email. But it’s not just AOL instant messenger 2.0. Slack has powerful features and integrations that make it possible for you to integrate all of your other daily tools — like Trello, Gmail, Giphy, and so many more — right where you’re already communicating. You can start channels between different teams or just chat with specific colleagues. Slack makes remote and in-person work possible and easier than ever.

Other Communication and Collaboration Tools:

72. Join.Me

73. Zoom

74. Skype

Project Management Tools

File management and organization is one thing, but how do you manage all of the moving pieces of a marketing campaign or project? There are many different tools you can use for project management, but only one sticks out when it comes to the number of integrations and features at the price of — oh yeah — free!

Featured Project Management Resource: 

75. Trello

Trello is a great project management tool for small teams and individuals. With it’s Kanban-style setup and fun user interface, Trello lets you set up to-do lists and tag individual cards with due dates, members, labels, and more. You can attach files, links, images, and more to your cards and easily get a full-view of any project that you’re working on. At HubSpot, we use Trello daily to manage our team campaigns and individual to-do lists. Want an example of how we do this? Check out our Powerful Tools for Business Success.

Other Project Management Tools:

76. HubSpot Projects

77. TrueNorth

78. Asana

79. Airtable

80. Wrike

81. ProofHub

Advertising Tools

1. Sendible

Sendible has a reputation for supporting agencies operating multiple social media accounts. Sendible is built around collaboration and automates almost everything making the interaction between team members easier.

Additionally, the advertising tool has the “send for approval” option for content that needs verification before posting.

More interesting is the CRM features in Sendible. Customer relationship management features allow you to nurture interactions with other social media users.

With Sendible, you can stay in touch with people you have had conversations with and even send personalized messages.

Sendible also monitors your hashtags and keywords on Twitter and sends automatic retweets and replies with links or contents related to the customers’ content.

Pricing:

Sendible has the starter, traction, growth, and large plans. All the plans start with a free trial and have a price range of between $29 to $299 per month.

2. Stiddle

Stiddle is a tool made to help you easily create and optimize your Facebook Ads and entire funnel.

You can easily create and target your Facebook ad campaigns using Stiddle’s AI-Targeting – over 50k+ AI-Audiences, design your ad graphics with their Canva integration, and create a landing page to collect your leads, all without leaving the platform.

They also provide easy-to-understand analytics, with customizable dashboards and tons of metrics, so you know exactly how your campaigns perform.

A very sought-after feature is the auto-budget allocation, allowing you to allocate budget to ads that are performing well and automatically stop the ones that aren’t, with the quick toggle of a switch.

After running ads with Stiddle, you can see the exact CPA, ROI, and ROAS after collecting leads through their native landing page forms, e-scheduler integrations, or by using their native integration with Shopify and MailChimp.

Stiddle also has many great free resources, including marketing blogs, ebooks, and community marketing discussion groups.

3. Buffer

If you are looking for an easier way of publishing content on various social media platforms, Buffer is the best tool. Buffer offers a one-place solution for publishing and scheduling social media posts.

You can use it to manage your Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook pages. This allows for better management and engagement on all your social media channels.

Pricing:

Even more impressive is the affordable rates for working with Buffer. For a start, you can use the free plan for three social channels and ten social schedules. If you need more features, you can choose between pro, premium, and business plans.

The prices range from $15 per month to $99 per month, and they all have a 14-day paid trial. Buffer is most recognized for its friendly prices that promote better customer engagements for small and large organizations.

Content Marketing Tools 💻

4. Hubspot

https://www.youtube.com/embed/DMmd2kzN1-Y?feature=oembedVideo Source: HubSpot

Hubspot helps in creating more responsive content strategies. With Hubspot, you can identify trending topics that help you rank better on SERPs. Even more impressive is how Hubspot factors every online business.

You can be an emerging or established brand and still use Hubspot to boost your content marketing efforts. There are also plenty of HubSpot Integrations for you to explore and make use of.

Pricing:

There’s a free plan that allows you to upgrade as you grow. The paid plans start at $50 per month and go as high as $3200 per month, depending on the level of marketing you require for your business.

5. Buzzsumo

Buzzsumo helps you discover topics for your content marketing strategies. It offers insight into what’s trending, thus allowing you to see what could work for return and new customers.

If you are looking for the most shared content on social networks, Buzzsumo will help you discover the content. It also helps you identify influencers best suited for your promotions, based on the niches they specialize in.

Pricing:

Buzzsumo offers a free trial for all its plans. It has the pro, plus, and large plan with a price range of between $99 per month to $299 per month.

SEO Tools 🚀

6. Ahrefs

Ahref is among the most sophisticated tools for SEO. It supports

• Keyword research
• Link-building
• Traffic estimates
• Tracking rankings
• Content marketing
• Website audits
• Competitive research

It helps deliver reports that will boost your growth in organic search results.

Pricing:

Ahref has four plans; lite, standard, advanced, and agency. The prices range from $99 to $999 paid monthly. No free trials are available for all the plans.

7. SemRush

This tool lets you get a comprehensive report of what your competitors are doing. Before running an SEO campaign, it’s important to use SemRush to inform most of your strategies. The tool is convenient for

• Checking the changes in ranking in your competitors’ pages
• Finding out links that help them rank
• Performing detailed competitive analysis.

Pricing:

SemRush offers free trials. It has the pro, guru, and business plans with prices ranging from $119.95 to $449.95 per month.

Email Marketing Tools 💌

8. MailChimp

MailChimp is an email marketing tool for everyone. It allows both small and big organizations to manage their email messaging campaigns most conveniently.

Its AI-powered features and reasonable pricing helps you create ad marketing campaigns. It also supports sending personalized email messages for your PPC marketing strategies.

Pricing:

If you are new or just trying out this advertising tool, then you’ll find the free plans a great place to start.

The forever-free plan allows you to send up to 12,000 emails per month. And with the paid plans starting from as low as $10 per month, you’ll find this tool most convenient for your lead generation strategies.

9. Aweber

The designs at Aweber are outstanding. With this tool, you can send out professionally appealing emails that improve your open rates.

It also integrates with most programs, and this makes it ideal for various email marketing campaigns.

Anyone with little or advanced technical knowledge can use Aweber. And with Aweber’s’ ability to segment customers based on open rates, you can easily track your business growth with the ad tools’ analytics.

Pricing:

Aweber offers a simple pricing option. You can choose a free plan that factors up to 500 subscribers or go for the pro plan that starts from $16.15 per month. The paid plan depends on the number of subscribers on your list.

Marketing Automation Tools 🤖

10. Marketo

Marketo helps you build and nurture business relationships. It delivers outstanding results by keeping customers engaged from when they interact with your brand until conversion.

It helps you leverage sales by tracking customer behavior across your platforms. It’s an advertising tool that focuses on automation practices that attract the right customers that scale your marketing campaigns.

Pricing:

Marketo has four plans; select, prime, ultimate, and enterprise. The lowest plan costs $895 per month, and the highest costs $3195 per month.

11. Copper

Copper comes with automation capabilities that make it convenient to track all your emails, operations, and teams. With Copper, you are sure that your target audiences get fast responses and in the right format.

Copper also allows you to get first-hand information about your leads and what interests them. And with its in-built features that promote real-time notifications, you get to know when they need the most attention.

Pricing:

Copper’s prices are fair, with the basic, professional, and business plans having prices as low as $25 to $119 per month billed annually.

Website Analytics Tools ⚒️

12. Google Analytics

If you aren’t using Google Analytics, you might be missing out on competitor information that can improve your search rankings.

With Google Analytics, you can keep tabs on landing pages, keywords, or content that competitors are using to appear on top of search pages.

Even more important is how it allows you to select search categories. You can segment audiences based on demographics, interests, and location.

And with the tool being free to access, we place it among the 20 best advertising tools you need for your 2022 campaigns.

Video Creation and Editing Tools 📹

13. Vimeo

https://www.youtube.com/embed/WLDeuIAFOyo?feature=oembedVideo Source: YouTube

Vimeo is an ads-free site that allows people to create, manage, and share high-quality videos. It offers a platform for you to share professional videos that help you stand out. Even more critical is the analytics features that help you see how your videos perform online.

Pricing:

You can try the free plan for 30 days before moving to the paid plans for between $7 and $75 per month billed annually.

14. Wistia

If you want to turn your videos into marketing tools, then Wistia will help you achieve this. With Wistia, you can include a call-to-action at the end of the video, making it easy for viewers to convert.

Most impressive is how Wistia delivers picture-perfect, SEO-driven features that make your advertising efforts a breeze.

Pricing:

You can start with the free plan or choose the pro plan for $79 per month. You can also request a quote for the more advanced video creation options.

Customer Service Tools 👩🏾‍💻

15. LiveChat

LiveChat allows for fast communication on your website. It’s where potential customers with concerns about your business can ask and receive instant responses.

With LiveChat, you can attract more leads and convert more visitors because of its proactive approach to brand communications.

Pricing:

LiveChat doesn’t have a free plan but offers a free trial that runs for 14 days. For the paid option, you can choose from the starter, team, business, and enterprise. The prices range from $16/mo going upwards.

16. Zendesk

If you are looking for a fast way to respond to customer queries, Zendesk is the best solution. Zendesk will build your team for success by helping them stay in touch with customer needs.

Zendesk is built with customer support in mind. So, the ticket responses, customer history, and widgets are all built to deliver rich experiences.

Pricing:

The plans start at $49 per month and go up to $215 per month, depending on how powerful you want your customer support system to go.

Digital Advertising Tools 📲

17. AdRoll

Adroll offers advanced retargeting features that create the brand awareness necessary for the growth of a brand. Adroll grants access to hundreds of platforms to help inform your remarketing goals.

With Adroll, you can use the data to personalize your emails and ads to target high converting audiences. The AI-driven recommendations also help you build a brand that customers will love.

Pricing:

Adroll offers both a free plan and a free trial. The paid plans start from as low as $9 to $450 per month, billed annually.

Survey Tools 🧰

18. SurveyMonkey

SurveyMonkey is the best tool for collecting lots of data. If you are looking for a wide array of data from a diverse audience, SurveyMonkey can help collect the information in the shortest time.

SurveyMonkey is especially beneficial for organizations keen on getting feedback from their marketing campaigns.

For example, a recently introduced brand can use SurveyMonkey to collect data about business reception. Survey Monkey is also convenient for determining ratings and social media sites that your users prefer.

Pricing:

It has a free forever plan and paid plans. The paid option starts at $37 per month.

19. Paperform

https://www.youtube.com/embed/4c1Cq4xnBwk?feature=oembedVideo Source: YouTube

Paperform is a rockstar software for many reasons. It’s a great alternative to Typeform with tons of customizable templates, surveys, and payment options. With clean and crisp UI, great customer support, and Zapier integrations, it’s not something to miss.

Conclusion

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