The 110 Best Marketing Tools To Consider When Building Your Toolstack

You may disagree, but consider the following:

• Your social media automation glitches and buries your audience with irrelevant messages.
• Your analytics provide inconsistent...unreliable… therefore, inactionable numbers.
• The customer support team at such-and-such company is delayed in resolving your issue, pushing the entire project back a few days.
• Your email marketing software goes down unexpectedly... messing with your time frame and frequency.

Any of the above can turn a good week sour in a matter of seconds. Which is why marketers should seek tools they 1) love to use and 2) find reliable. The problem is there are SO many tools out there. How do you choose? We’ve compiled a list of the top marketing tools, broken up by category. In addition, the team here at CoSchedule highlighted their favorites to help steer you in the right direction. Now you can find a reliable fit for your toolstack, cut out time-sucking tasks, and start getting more done, faster. ?

Marketing Tool Categories:

Check Out CoSchedule’s Entire Marketing Toolstack

Email Marketing Tools

Defined: Messages sent directly via email to prospects and/or customers to build + nurture a relationship between the recipient and the product/service. The beautiful part about email is that your recipients have already subscribed to be there... so why not take advantage of a receptive audience? However, it is more important that ever to focus on providing consistent value to your subscribers’ inbox in order to continue building your relationship. Back to the Top

Social Media Management Tools

Defined: A tool used to engage with your audience + measure performance across all social networks. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram….these are the social networks where your audience spends their days. This is where they keep up on news, engage with friends and family, shop, or find out about career opportunities. Unfortunately, these are also the places they seek out to complain about an experience, product, or person. Using a social media management tool simplifies the process and helps preserve your Social Media Manager’s sanity. Instead of separate tabs for every, single network… you have a single place to log-in, plan, schedule, post, + measure ALL of your social media activities. Back to the Top

Influencer Marketing Tools

Defined: A tool designed to help you find potential influencers within key topic categories to expand + connect with new audiences. Influencers can be a powerful weapon to incorporate into your marketing strategy. These individuals have become trusted and admired amongst subsets of people (potentially future customers). The common problem with influencer marketing is knowing where to start. This is where influencer marketing tools can help you get the ball rolling. Back to the Top

Paid Advertising Tools

Defined: The tools marketers use to plan, execute, and measure their paid advertising efforts in order to gain traffic they may not have acquired organically. It’s becoming increasingly more difficult to reach your audience and earn traffic organically. In addition, changes to social media channels are making it harder to reach potential customers through social media marketing. Because of this, many brands have turned to paid advertising to make up for lost volume. Similarly to social, this can lead to countless open tabs and hopping back and forth between networks. Paid advertising tools help advertisers simplify this process with all-in-one campaign management for ppc, display, and retargeting across multiple networks. Back to the Top

Social Media Automation Tools

Defined: A tool that’s set to automatically post to your social network(s) on your behalf. Social media is a 24-hours/day, 7-days/week world that doesn’t stop or slow down. Because your Social Media Manager is human, it simply isn’t realistic for them to be present every, single second. Intro: social media automation. These magical tools automate your social media and fill in gaps in your schedule so your brand can be consistently active in the networks that matter to your audience. Back to the Top

Social Media Monitoring Tools

Defined: Tools that consistently crawl sites to track pre-determined mentions across the internet. This enables social media marketers to engage with mentions in a timely manner. You have three options when it comes to social media monitoring:

1. Continuously check in across every social network, multiple times a day.
2. Allow mentions to go unnoticed and leave your audience neglected.
3. Use a social media monitoring tool to mine it all for you + simplify the engagement process.

The choice here is a no-brainer. CoSchedule Fave: "From a PR and social perspective, Brandwatch is pretty awesome. In my experience, it has the most powerful boolean logic queries, mixed with a comprehensive and customizable dashboard that provides great context. I use it to monitor what is being said about CoSchedule and by whom, as well as keeping on eye on what's being said about competitors. We can also track the performance of feature launches, campaigns, and product areas. If you're not experienced with writing a boolean query, it can take some time to get your data pulling correctly, but it's worth the troubleshooting." Back to the Top

Conversion Rate Optimization Tools

Defined: A Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) tool offers web page testing and insights in order to increase conversion rates. In order to achieve growth, digital marketers can either increase traffic volume to their site, or increase on-page conversion rates. Better yet… both. Tools like these help marketers by providing actionable insights and a/b testing. An added bonus: it will be easy to show your boss the ROI this tool provides. ? Back to the Top

Landing Page Builders

Defined: A tool designed to simplify your landing page creation process in order to convert visitors into leads. For marketers that don’t have the technical expertise to code their own page, landing page builders can be a great alternative. Many have templates and drag and drop design features to help you create quality pages quickly. This can be game-changing for collecting new leads or bottom of the funnel sales. Back to the Top

CRM Tools

Defined: Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools are designed to manage customer information and aid in sales enablement. Depending on the product or service, your customer journey can be fairly lengthy and complex. CRM tools are crucial in order to keep leads organized at every stage of their journey. The ideal software helps to align your marketing and sales goals while collecting customer data and providing actionable insights. Back to the Top

Marketing Analytics Tools

Defined: Tools to manage + measure your marketing activity in order to determine success of each campaign. What is the ROI of your marketing efforts? When your boss asks, having the data to backup your hard work can prove invaluable. With marketing analytics tools, everything you do can be measured and reported on so you can show off your brag-worthy results. ? Back to the Top

Content Marketing Management Tools

Defined: Tools designed to manage your entire content planning, creation, + distribution process. Providing value through content marketing is one of the best ways to turn your audience into fans (and ideally customers). However, providing quality content, consistently would be near impossible without a content marketing management tool to 1) keep you on track and 2) ensure consistent publishing. Back to the Top

Video Marketing Tools

Defined: Tools that simplify video creation and/or hosting in order to visually promote your brand. Video has become an important piece of content marketing in the last few years. It has the ability capture your audience’s interest early, then show + tell your brand’s value within minutes. With the emergence of video marketing, a variety of tools have emerged to assist marketers with editing, adding effects or cta’s, animation, and hosting. Back to the Top

Design Tools

Defined: Software used to simplify the design process and add visual branding to your marketing strategy. Design is what brings the rest of your marketing to life. It has the power to grab attention, tie in themes, and communicate beyond simply text. Great design tools are an extension of a great designer. Your needs will vary (like everything else) depending on budget, team resources, and time. Some tools are built for advanced designers, while others are geared towards the artistically adverse. Back to the Top

Marketing Research Tools

Defined: Tools used to aid in the process of collecting information in order to accurately define opportunities and develop a marketing strategy. Sure, you can walk around a new city and discover some neat places… BUT if you do your research and build a plan, you’re more likely to get the most out of your experience. Similarly, you might occasionally strike gold without preparation. However, marketers tends to produce the best results when paired with adequate research + planning. When you have a thorough understanding of your target demographic, you can strategically create a marketing roadmap geared towards success. Back to the Top

Marketing Automation Tools

Defined: a tool with the goal of automating repetitive tasks in order to streamline and simplify a marketing team’s workflow. Sure, we all have the same 24 hours in a day, but what if we could take better advantage of our already limited time? Marketing automation tools can help ease some of the time-suck activities that take up too much of your valuable time. The best tools allow you to set it and forget it so you can focus on the rest of your ever-growing task list. Back to the Top

Marketing Workflow Tools

Defined: Tools that offer planning features necessary to move a marketing project from idea to execution. Every marketer has a process in place for bringing an idea to fruition. However, if your process involves sticky notes, calendar reminders, check-in meetings, and spreadsheets… there are likely tools out there that could simplify this process for you. Marketing workflow tools feature built-in task management, collaboration features, and progress updates to help keep the entire team on track. Back to the Top

Copywriting Tools

Defined: Tools used to assist copywriters in crafting compelling language for various forms of marketing. Copywriting isn’t as simple as slapping a sentence down and calling it good. The best Copywriters approach their work thoughtfully and with intent- often going through multiple drafts before landing on the perfect message. Although Copywriters seem to have magic ink, even they need a little help sometimes to ensure they are crafting the best message possible. Back to the Top

SEO Tools

Defined: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tools assist marketers with insights and opportunities for improvements that will increase their performance within search engine result pages. In the battle for page one rankings, marketers need to do everything they can to improve their page performance. SEO tools help simplify this process by giving you the information you need to make incremental improvements that can lead to big results. Back to the Top

Marketing Communication Tools

Defined: The in-office (often chat-based) tool used for communication + collaboration. Nobody likes unwanted desk drop-bys. They put a wrench in your day and throw off your focus. Communication tools allow collaboration between team members without being intrusive. Chats are great for quick questions, reminders, office announcements, or an occasional gif. In addition, chatting is a great alternative to sending out yet another email. Back to the Top

Additional Notable Marketing Tools

To be honest, this list could go on forever. There are SO many tools in existence that marketers can use to make their daily lives a bit simpler. Some of these can’t be boxed within a specific category, but are nevertheless indispensable and deserve their own shout-out. Back to the Top

Which Marketing Tools Are Best For You?

There you have it! Over 100 marketing tools to consider while building your toolstack. Once you find the ones that best meet your needs you’ll be able to save time + achieve more (with less frustration). Which other marketing tools have you tried? Let us know about your favorites in the comments.