20 best digital marketing tools

The digital revolution has left no aspect of modern life untouched, and nowhere is that more apparent than in today’s business marketing landscape. Smart companies adopt innovative tools that help them stay competitive and connect with their target audience. These digital marketing tools simplify, optimize, and analyze the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns.

In this article we’ll explore different platforms and software solutions, show you how to get the most out of them, and introduce you to 20 of the very best digital marketing tools for your consideration.

Reasons for using digital marketing tools

These days, having the right tools for your marketing strategy is essential. They’ll save you time, streamline your workflows, and elevate your campaigns to achieve better results. By automating repetitive tasks, digital marketing tools help you understand your prospects and customers on a deeper level, then create data-driven strategies to reach your audience. Here’s how:

To increase efficiency and productivity in your campaigns

Digital marketing tools offer time-saving features such as scheduling content, including suggestions for the best time to post so you attract more views and engagement. Ultimately, these functions increase productivity and efficiency in creating, organizing, managing, and monitoring your campaigns.

To improve targeting and customer engagement

Precision is everything when it comes to targeting your ad and social media marketing campaigns. Digital marketing tools offer valuable insights that help connect you to the right people at the right time. With the data that tools like Meta’s Ad Manager and Google Analytics provide, you can dive deeper and segment your audience more creatively based on demographics, interests, age, and more. The result? More personalized messaging that makes a bigger impact on your prospects, leads, and customers.

To provide real-time tracking and performance analysis

One of the most useful functions that digital marketing tools offer is the ability for your business to track its campaigns in real time. No more waiting for results, wondering whether your campaign hit the mark or went woefully astray — with these tools, you can monitor the metrics that matter the most to you. Traffic, conversion rates, engagement — all of this information and more can be right at your fingertips. This immediate feedback helps you analyze performance in a more agile manner, optimizing as you go and making adjustments when needed.

To improve team collaboration

Collaboration is more than just a buzzword — it’s a necessity, especially in marketing. Many digital marketing tools come with collaboration features built right into the code, keeping everyone on the same page throughout the life cycle of your campaign.

Steps for choosing the right digital marketing tools

When you choose the right digital marketing tools for your business, you’ll save time and maximize your return on investment (ROI). Yet there are so many of these tools that it can be challenging to make a decision on which one works best for you and for your organization. To make the right choices for your business, use the following road map:

Assess your business goals and marketing objectives

Before you look at a single tool or app, identify your business goals and the objectives you need to meet in your marketing plan. For example, if you want to boost your engagement on social media, you’ll want to explore tools such as Sprout Social, Buffer, or Hootsuite. If your main concern is generating leads, you’ll want to look at platforms that focus on building and testing landing pages or developing opt-in forms. If you’re more interested in enhancing brand awareness, improving customer retention rates, or sending more targeted traffic to your sales pages, there are tools that can help you achieve these goals too.

Consider budget and scalability

Your business’s budget is a critical factor to evaluate when selecting which digital marketing tools you want to use. Look for a free or low-cost trial period to allow you and major stakeholders to evaluate a tool’s performance. Assess your budgetary restrictions so you won’t waste time evaluating tools that cost too much.

By the same token, consider how scalable the tool is before committing to purchasing it. Ideally, you want to choose a digital marketing tool that will grow with your business. Look for flexible pricing plans that let you pay a smaller amount up front and purchase add-ons or higher-cost plans as your business needs evolve.

Evaluate integrations with existing tools and platforms

A well-built integration will yield better results for your business, including a reduced need for manual data entry and repetitive tasks. Strong integrations also help minimize errors and improve productivity. There are two ways to evaluate a tool for the strength of its integrations — evaluate the tool during a free trial period, then find out whether the tool offers APIs or third-party connections to simplify integration.

Look for user-friendly interfaces and robust customer support

The most cutting-edge tool in the world won’t do you any good if your team can’t quickly get up to speed and bring it into existing workflows. That’s why ease of use should be a crucial factor when choosing the right digital marketing tool. Tools with a steep learning curve may cause confusion and frustration, and ultimately delay full implementation.

Instead, opt for tools that offer intuitive user interfaces with clearly written documentation and helpful tutorials. Additionally, evaluate the tool’s customer service options. You’ll want to make sure your team can get the support they need through multiple channels, including live chat, email, or telephone. This level of support helps resolve issues quickly, minimizing downtime for your team and disruption to your active campaigns.

Categories of digital marketing tools

Digital marketing tools perform diverse functions, and we can divide these tools into multiple categories based on their primary function. However, be aware that some tools take a broader approach and seek to fill diverse business needs, and therefore aren’t quite so easy to categorize.

SEO tools

At the top of most companies’ wish lists is a well-rounded and richly featured search engine optimization (SEO) tool. It’s no wonder that SEO tools are so sought after — the act of optimizing your pages for search engines is directly related to the amount of organic traffic your website gets, which in turn is directly related to increased sales and revenue.

Tools such as Ahrefs and Semrush make achieving your goals easier by providing a user-friendly way to analyze keywords, track backlinks, and conduct site audits. All of these functions work to make your page more attractive to Google and other search engines, meaning more of your target audience members can find you when they search for the products and services you sell.

Social media management tools

As ubiquitous as social media marketing has become, it’s important to find the right social media management tool for you. Posting original content to your social channels at the right time (and with the right language, structure, and hashtags) is a complex undertaking for any busy company.

Tools such as Buffer and Sprout Social help simplify the whole process of managing profiles across multiple channels. They’ll also empower you to schedule your posts at the optimal time for your audience, as well as monitor audience engagement, track campaign performance, and respond to brand criticism before it becomes a PR crisis.

Email marketing platforms

With a ROI approaching 3600 percent, email marketing is a critical tool for nurturing leads and existing customer relationships for every company. Fortunately, tools and platforms such as Mailchimp and Campaign Monitor offer features that make the entire process easier. From automating email campaigns to segmenting audiences and even personalizing messages to your customers, the right email marketing platform empowers your team to foster strong relationships with prospects and returning customers.

Content marketing tools

The rumors of the death of content marketing are, as always, exaggerated and premature. Content marketing is still a cornerstone of digital marketing. It comprises blog posts, videos, infographics, white papers, podcasting and more.

For written content marketing, tools that help you ideate, create, distribute, and optimize your content in all these formats will save your team time and help improve results. These platforms empower your marketing team to create engaging visuals, refine your messaging, and track the performance of your content to gain more targeted traffic and a higher conversion rate.

Analytics tools

Today’s strategic marketing decisions are driven by data, not guesswork. The only way to make better decisions is to ensure you have the best analytics tools working for you. Tools such as Google Analytics deliver real-time metrics such as website traffic, user behavior on the page, and overall campaign performance. Tracking and analyzing these metrics helps your company make smarter decisions about which types of marketing efforts are delivering the best results and where to focus your budget and effort in the future.

PPC and ad management tools

Even with inbound techniques, most companies find that paid digital advertising plays a valuable role in marketing campaigns. Pay-per-click (PPC) ads help drive targeted traffic to your site. Yes, you’ll have to pay for that traffic. However, if your campaigns are carefully created and implemented, those visitors should be more receptive to your ads and actively shopping for the services or products you provide. Tools like Google Ads and Optimizely help you create, deploy, manage, and optimize your ads through split testing.

Marketing automation tools

Marketing automation tools streamline repetitive tasks, such as sending emails or lead-nurturing to-dos. By automating these workflows, platforms such as HubSpot and Marketo save substantial time and promote consistent, timely communication. Delivering personalized content at the right time also enhances the customer experience, raising your brand profile and increasing customer satisfaction.

Top digital marketing tools to boost your strategy

An exhaustive list of every digital marketing tool on the market today would be too extensive and probably unhelpful. Fortunately, we’ve reviewed some of the most frequently recommended and well-reviewed tools and platforms in each of the categories explored above. Here’s where to start:

1. Ahrefs

• Key features: Ahrefs offers backlink tracking, keyword research, link building, and rank tracking for your published content. It’ll also help you perform a thorough site audit to make sure you’re offering your audience what they’re looking for.
• Plans/Pricing: Plans are available from $129 to $1499 per month. Users get progressively more projects and an longer look-back period for historical SERP data.

2. Semrush

• Key features: Semrush offers comprehensive SEO, PPC, and competitive analysis features to help you get the most out of your campaigns.
• Plans/Pricing: Three plans ranging from $139.95 to $499.95 per month offer increasing numbers of projects and keywords, as well as robust data and reports. Plus, over 20 integrations with third party apps such as Google Analytics and more.

3. Jotform

• Key features: Jotform is a complete solution for tracking and managing your company’s marketing plans and programs. Use Jotform’s marketing form templates for your marketing team’s workflows. Email marketing forms such as the Email Opt-in form template and the Email Capture form template collect contact information for delivery to your email marketing tool. There’s also SEO forms to automate your SEO efforts, while Jotform Tables automate and manage all submissions to their marketing forms. For example, this email marketing calendar template can be used to organize newsletters. In addition to the integrations mentioned above, Jotform’s integrations with notable marketing tools can streamline the marketing process with Emailing integrations, Marketing & Sales integrations, Blogging integrations, and more.
• Plans/Pricing: Jotform’s starter plan is free, while premium plans range from $34 to $39 per month. An enterprise level plan is also available with custom pricing. Each plan gives users access to increasing numbers of forms, submissions, and storage space, so your company can easily scale up as it grows.

4. Hootsuite

• Key features: Hootsuite is well known for its broad array of functions and features, especially when it comes to scheduling and monitoring your social media content. Manage multiple accounts and feeds from a single dashboard, and customize and export reports as your company’s needs evolve.
• Plans/Pricing: Hootsuite offers two premium plans at $99 and $249, as well as a custom enterprise plan where pricing is based on an organization’s size and unique needs. All plans include social analytics, engagement, optimization and management of social platform ads. You can also perform competitor analysis to help your business stay ahead of other organizations in your market. Each plan also offers a 30-day free trial.

5. Buffer

• Key features: Buffer provides robust management of your social media accounts, including scheduling and performance tracking. Connect your profiles and manage each from your Buffer dashboard. Use the Buffer AI assistant to help you refine, write, and revise your content.
• Plans/Pricing: Buffer offers a free plan that allows you to connect three channels for a single user and schedule up to ten posts at a time, refillable at any time. You can also choose the Essentials plan at $5 per month for a single channel or the Team plan at $10 per month, also for a single channel. Increase the number of channels for an additional fee.

6. Sprout Social

• Key features: With top-shelf social media management and analytics features, Sprout Social is a popular choice for larger organizations and teams. Competitor and follower analysis tools help you stay ahead of the curve. You can also use Sprout Social to create and maintain a content editorial calendar, which will help your content marketing team enhance productivity and output.
• Plans/Pricing: The entry level plan for Sprout Social costs $199 per user per month, and offers connection for up to five profiles, access to AI-generated alt text for images, and review management tools. At $299 per user per month, the Professional plan offers unlimited account connections as well as insights for competitors, keywords, and more. The Advanced plan at $399 per user per month also includes additional AI tools and customer support tool integrations. If you need more, Sprout Social’s sales team will give you a custom Enterprise plan quote.

7. Mailchimp

• Key features: Email marketing automation and segmentation capabilities are chief among Mailchimp’s most useful tools. With a 99 percent delivery rate and over 300 integrations to help streamline your workflows, Mailchimp helps companies build strong relationships with their clients and customers. And with Jotform’s Mailchimp integration, you can simplify list management even more by sending new leads, customers, and subscribers to your mailing lists.
• Plans/Pricing: The Standard Mailchimp plan starts with a free two-week trial period, then for 500 contacts, you’ll pay $20 per month. That rate increases with additional contacts so you can scale your use of Mailchimp as your email list grows.

8. ActiveCampaign

• Key features: Email marketing, sales automation and customer relationship management all come together in ActiveCampaign. With Jotform’s ActiveCampaign integration, you can sync your contact or lead-generation form with ActiveCampaign to instantly send submission data to your CRM.
• Plans/Pricing: Four plans, including an enterprise plan range from $15 to $145 per month. Features start with basic email marketing campaigns and add progressively more complex tools to automate and streamline your email workflow.

9. Canva

• Key tools: Canva is a highly popular graphic design tool for creating marketing visuals. Premium plans come with access to more advanced tools, such as premium animations, Magic Grab for grabbing and repositioning elements or text, and the ability to erase people or elements from an existing image.
• Plans/Pricing: Canva plans range from the free starter plan for individual use to the Canva Pro plan for individuals ($120 per year) and Canva Teams ($100 per year per user), with access to increasingly advanced image editing tools. There’s also an enterprise plan available for a quote.

10. BuzzSumo

• Key features: BuzzSumo is primarily known for its content discovery and performance analysis features. It also empowers users to share content directly, analyze competitors, and research top content through suggestions and search.
• Plans/Pricing: BuzzSumo’s plans are built around user needs, from Content Creation to PR and Comms. You can also subscribe to the entire suite for $499 per month for up to 10 users.

11. Google Analytics

• Key features: Google Analytics is known for being simple and intuitive. Get detailed data on the traffic to your website and insights on how your users behave and interact with your content. Set your own goals and track progress all from the same dashboard.
• Plans/Pricing: Google Analytics is free to use with a Google account.

12. ClickFunnels

• Key features: ClickFunnels isn’t just an ad manager, but a robust platform that helps users build their funnels for lead generation and sales. Features include a drag-and-drop builder to help design landing pages for your ad campaigns, A/B testing, email management, and much more.
• Plans/Pricing: ClickFunnels offers two plans. The Starter plan ($81 per month when billed annually) gives users three brand workspaces for three team members, with unlimited funnels, courses, contacts, and more. The Pro plan ($248 per month billed annually) offers the same features for ten workspaces and team members.

13. Optimizely

• Key features: A/B testing and conversion rate optimization features are just two reasons to check out Optimizely. This powerhouse platform shoots high and aims to provide a comprehensive platform that will elevate business marketing teams. It creates a single unified workflow with dozens of available integrations and a powerful assist from AI that’s embedded at most touchpoints along the way.
• Plans/Pricing: Optimizely and Optimizely One prices are available upon request.

14. HubSpot

• Key features: HubSpot offers a comprehensive CRM and marketing automation solution that includes tools for email marketing, landing page creation, content management, lead management, and advanced reporting and analytics. Use Jotform’s HubSpot integration to further automate sending lead information from your existing forms.
• Plans/Pricing: HubSpot offers many of its features for free for up to two users per account, including tools to help manage sales, CRM, e-commerce and more. Access to more advanced features are available in premium plans starting at $15 per month and up to $3,500 per month for enterprise-level solutions.

15. Trello

• Key features: Lots of fans sing the praises of Trello, a project management tool for organizing marketing campaigns and more. Its tools for task and project management are robust and easy to master. Use Jotform’s Trello integration to convert form submissions into new Trello cards and save even more time.
• Plans/Pricing: Trello’s plans range from free to $17.50 per user per month, depending on how many users you’ll need to grant access to and which features they’ll need. In the standard plan, for $5 per user per month, you’ll get unlimited cards for an unlimited number of boards, with up to 1,000 Workspace command runs available each month. The Premium plan offers a free trial period as well.

16. Asana

• Key features: Asana is another popular choice for project management and marketing task organization. Manage due dates, tasks, and projects from Asana’s intuitive dashboard layout, which you can reconfigure by date, status and more. Jotform’s Asana integration lets you create new projects, add tasks to existing projects, and much more.
• Plans/Pricing: Individuals and small marketing teams can select from three plans, ranging from free to $24.99 per user per month, billed annually. Asana also offers two enterprise plans for large companies.

17. Slack

• Key features: Slack is one of the leading communication tools for marketing collaboration and team communication. Use Jotform’s Slack integration to automatically send form submissions to Slack channels.
• Plans/Pricing: The free Slack plan is great for freelancers and solopreneurs. The Pro account costs $8.75 per user per month and offers access to unlimited message history and app integrations, as well as group audio and video meetings. The Business+ plan costs $15 per user per month and adds advanced features such as data exports for all messages. There’s also an Enterprise plan with pricing information available upon request.

18. Adobe Marketo Engage

• Key features: Adobe Marketo Engage provides a broad-based approach to marketing automation and customer engagement. Its tools are designed to coalesce around customer data, content, automation and analytics features needed for coordination between your marketing and sales teams. The result: personalized and measurable data points based on your brand’s engagement with customers.
• Plans/Pricing: Adobe Marketo Engage offers four plans and pricing is available upon request. The first plan, Growth, offers core email marketing, segmentation, automation and measurement features, while its top-tier plans provide lead- and account-based marketing with journey analytics and AI personalization.

19. ClickUp

• Key features: Billing itself as “the everything app for work,” ClickUp is a comprehensive project management and productivity tool for marketing teams. Jotform’s ClickUp integration helps you get even more out of this platform by collecting task requests and project info via online forms and syncing that info automatically to ClickUp.
• Plans/Pricing: ClickUp offers free starter plans with additional access and more advanced tools ranging from $7 to $12 per month. It also offers an enterprise-level plan.

20. Zendesk

• Key features: Take your customer service to the next level by integrating Zendesk’s CRM to handle service requests, and watch your customer engagement and satisfaction rates soar. With Jotform’s Zendesk integration, you can automatically turn form submissions into Zendesk support tickets.
• Plans/Pricing: Zendesk lets small business teams build their own plans, starting at $19 per month. Suite plans start at $55 per month and come with over 1,000 apps and integrations to make your tech stack work together seamlessly.

Tips for maximizing the effectiveness of digital marketing tools

No matter what tools and platforms you choose for your company, you can maximize their effectiveness (and hence the value to your marketing team) by following a few straightforward tips.

Regularly update and optimize tool usage

Software only works as well as its last supported upgrade. Regular updates ensure you’re getting access to the latest features and security enhancements. Also, remember to revisit your tool configuration whenever you change your marketing strategy or goals.

Provide training for your marketing team

While many of today’s digital marketing tools are simple enough for most folks to master on their own, it’s in your best interest to provide appropriate training for your marketing team. Investing in group and individual training helps your team ensure they’re getting the most out of each tool. Look into the availability of online tutorials, webinars, or in-person workshops.

Use analytics to inform strategy adjustments

Leverage your analytics tools to monitor a digital marketing software’s performance and identify areas for improvement. Data from these tools can help shape adjustments to your campaigns, and you can allocate your resources more effectively and ensure you’re targeting the right audience.

Integrate your marketing tools

For the most streamlined and seamless workflow, the key word is integration. By integrating your digital marketing tools, you can reduce manual task time even further and eliminate duplicate data entry tasks. For example, integrating your CRM with your email marketing platform means you can focus more time and attention on creating the right messaging and graphics assets.

Future trends in digital marketing tools

What’s ahead for digital marketing tools? Here are a few emerging tech trends to keep a lookout for:

Increased use of AI and machine learning

You don’t need a crystal ball for this one: AI and machine learning are already transforming digital marketing and will continue to do so. The vast quantities of data that these technologies can analyze help predict trends and personalize customer interactions. For example, AI-generated surveys can be used to collect feedback from customers or they can be used as a form of engaging content. With Jotform’s AI Survey Generator, you can create the surveys you need in less than a minute without the hassle.

Greater focus on personalization and customer data privacy

The more personalized and targeted your marketing messages, the better your results will be. Hyper-targeted content based on user behavior helps improve conversion rates and increase sales.

Integration across marketing platforms for unified workflows

Cross-platform compatibility will continue to be a goal in marketing technology circles. Platforms that empower marketers to manage their entire strategy from a single dashboard help reduce complexity and improve campaign coordination.

The right tools for creating lasting success

Choosing the right marketing tools helps you reach your audience and achieve your business goals. From content creation to analytics, these tools help your marketing team streamline their efforts, save time, and deliver more impactful campaigns. By aligning your tools with your strategy and goals, you can build a marketing toolkit that drives growth and keeps you ahead of the curve. Start small, test what works, and scale your efforts to create lasting success.

Photo by Arina Krasnikova