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These are the top marketing team tools to help you get the job done.
Here, you’ll find:
- Popular tools for digital marketers
- How tools help manage and analyze campaigns
- Productivity-boosting tools
- Why these tools are worth exploring
I’m going to assume that, if you work in marketing, you’re at least aware of the erstwhile hour-long drama that was “Mad Men.”
One of the things that stood out to me about the TV show focused on a high-powered 1960s Manhattan advertising agency, which ran from 2007 to 2015, was how… analog it all was. Often, advertisers were just using a pen, paper, typewriter, and their brains.
Cut to today, and things look a bit different (and I don’t just mean the absence of midday martinis).
Modern marketers, especially in the digital space, have a lot on their plates. Staying organized and efficient is basically required for success. Luckily, we’ve got marketing tools.
There are dozens of tools out there that can make a marketer’s job easier. Let’s go over some of the most popular productivity tools for marketing teams.
Keeping all of your projects and campaigns organized helps bring calm and order to your workdays — and who couldn’t use that? (Image: Unsplash)
Communication tools
Proper communication is a key pillar of a well-functioning marketing agency. And with an increasing number of businesses going partially or fully remote these days, most of that communication happens online.
These tools make it easy to conveniently chat with team members:
You can connect via chat, video, and audio, depending on the platform. You can also share documents, images, and other files quickly.
Plus, many of these programs offer free and paid options depending on your team’s needs.
Project management tools
Another pillar of a well-run marketing team: organization. After all, you’re likely working on multiple projects and deadlines at any given time, and the last thing you want is for something to fall through the cracks.
Project management tools like these offer visual, cloud-based platforms so you and your team members can update statuses, add notes, and stay in sync:
Not only that, but keeping all of your projects and campaigns organized helps bring calm and order to your workdays — and who couldn’t use that?
Time-saving tools
No surprise here: Getting acquainted with Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) products will likely do you a world of good, no matter what kind of campaigns you’re managing. The main tools under this umbrella are:
- Gmail
- Drive
- Docs
- Sheets
- Slides
- Forms
- Calendar
- Meet
- Keep
Google Tag Manager (GTM) is also a great efficiency tool for quickly and easily updating “measurement codes and related code fragments collectively known as tags on your website or mobile app,” according to the search engine itself. (Google also has a free Tag Assistant extension for Chrome browsers.)
Instapage is another time-saving tool we’re fond of around here. It allows you to create landing pages primed for maximum conversions with built-in personalization, testing, collaboration, and page speed features.
Last but not least is LastPass, which bills itself as “a freemium password manager that stores encrypted passwords online.” This single sign-on tool keeps you from having to waste time trying to remember or locate various passwords while ensuring your login info is secure. (This is particularly crucial when you manage a lot of accounts.)
Pro tip: Though not exactly a “tool” per se, many members of the HawkSEM team swear by having two screens to toggle between. This allows for maximum efficiency and can keep you from being buried under seemingly endless tabs.
Better, faster, stronger — marketing tools come in handy in so many situations. (Image: Unsplash)
Keyword tools
Whether you’re working on SEO, paid search, or some marketing initiative in between, keyword planning is often an instrumental part of the process. Keyword tools abound to make identifying, analyzing, choosing, and tracking keywords a breeze.
These are just a few common keyword tools that can help make sure you’re on the right track when it comes to going after the keywords that’ll connect you with your intended audience:
Pro tip: Google Trends is another helpful tool when it comes to finding patterns for seasonality, comparing verbiage in different regions, tracking various keyword popularity over time, and more.
SEO tools
It’s easy to get in the proverbial weeds with SEO management. There are technical, onsite, and offsite aspects to consider, and the ever-changing algorithm can make rankings unpredictable.
That’s where SEO tools come in. A few that our team members have turned to are:
These tools can help you monitor backlinks, optimize content, check your site health, and much more.
Analytics tools
When it’s time to analyze the progress and results of your marketing initiatives, analytics tools come in handy.
One of the main analytics tools is obviously Google Analytics (GA). This platform can measure, track, and generate reports that’ll tell you things like bounce rate, traffic sources, and goal completions.
Of course, you want to make sure you’re tracking things properly. GTM Sonar is another Chrome extension that can be used to debug your tags without clicking through the link or button by turning the click listener on. You’ll stay on the page you’re testing, which can make debugging easier.
Along with GA and GTM, tools like Supermetrics can aggregate all your marketing data into one succinct place.
Then there’s CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer, which helps create effective title tags and headlines for articles. The program gives a “score” based on elements such as word count, sentiment, and clarity.
Design tools
From drafting mock-ups to crafting eye-catching social media content, design tools can help you create quality visuals in no time. (It’s nice to have a designer in-house or contracted, of course, but we know that’s not the reality at every company.)
Design tools offer features such as templates, color matching, graphics libraries, photo editing, and more. A few worth looking into are:
Pro tip: Free photo libraries are a great resource for adding visuals to ads, social posts, and blog content. Choose from hundreds of royalty-free images on sites like Unsplash, Rawpixel, Pixabay, and Pexels.
Miscellaneous tools
It’s safe to say that tools are integral to a digital marketer’s day-to-day tasks. But some of them simply don’t fit into the above categories.
Grammarly is a plug-in we love to make sure things like our spelling and subject-verb agreement are on point. Screencastify lets us easily record our screens for tutorials and video calls.
Tab Suspender helps “hibernate” our unused tabs, saving our computers’ memory space and battery. Hootsuite lets you view and manage multiple social media accounts, with special features like social listening, scheduling, and analytics.
The takeaway
Better, faster, stronger — marketing tools come in handy in so many situations.
While you don’t have to leverage a tool for every task, knowing what your options are can help you handpick the tools and platforms that’ll make you a more organized, efficient, and productive team member.
It’s about working smarter. By using tools where it makes sense, you can free up your time and brain space to accomplish all the tasks you have at hand.
