In the world of marketing, it seems like there are always new tools, tips, tricks, and trends to discover and incorporate into your marketing strategy. How is it possible to keep up with them all?
As a marketer myself, I often wish I had a better sense of all of the tools available to me -- and what sets each of them apart -- so I can make more informed decisions on how to create and optimize content.
Luckily, I have the privilege of working on a team of 150+ other marketers who specialize in different functions than I do. And because of that, I was able to curate this list of the top 61 tools every marketer should know about and use in 2019.
The list of recommended tools below is sorted into different sections so you can get a better sense of what tools are available for different functions of the job. At the end, you'll see the whole list of 61 tools that you can skim and bookmark for later. Nearly 50 of them are free marketing tools, which means the product offers either a free version with limited resources or a select group of tools inside the product that are yours to use at no charge.
Enjoy!
Your List of the Best Marketing Tools to Build Your Strategy in 2019
Marketing Automation
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.
While there are lots of automation tools out there for specific fields or verticals (for example, the HubSpot workflows tool for marketing automation), there aren't many tools that allow you to automate the various different tools you use throughout all aspects of your life.
Wouldn't it be nice to link lots of tasks between different apps together? Like posting your Instagram photos to all your social networks or linking your app reminders together. With IFTTT you can!
IFTTT (IF This Then That) is a service that allows you to create chains of simple conditional statements, called applets. These "if this then that" applets are triggered by a wide range of other web-based services at the choice of the user. Some of the web-based services that work with IFTTT include Gmail, Google Drive, Facebook, Twitter, Fitbit, and much, much more.
Sounds great, right? Check it out.
Data Reporting
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?
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.
Closing Deals and Tracking Relationships
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.
HubSpot CRM automates the tasks salespeople hate and takes minutes to learn -- not months. That means doing more deals and less data entry.
Check out the HubSpot CRM Now
Collaboration
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.
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 Collaboration Tools:
- Google Drive
- Box
- Trello
Content Creation
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.
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!
Check out Adobe Spark
Other Content Creation Tools:
- Venngage
- Piktochart
- Canva
- Recordit
- Kap
- Adobe Color CC
Video Marketing
It's 2017 -- 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.
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?
Try Wistia for Free Now
Other Video Tools:
- Vidyard
- Vimeo
- YouTube
Content Distribution and Brand Awareness
While it might seem like a given, when it comes to getting your content distributed online, there really is king that we'd be remiss if we'd different mention:
I know, I know. Google isn't "exactly" a new or a fascinating tool that you didn't already know about. That said, within the same parent company is another important distribution channel that many marketers often forget when they're strategically distributing content for the sake of brand awareness.
YouTube is becoming more and more important to marketers lean more heavily on video-based content. While, of course, you should continue to optimize your text-based content for search engine optimization, don't forget to consider YouTube as an important channel as well. Not only is YouTube great for hosting your videos and getting them shared across social networks, it's also important to optimize your videos for search to get found on YouTube as well.
Other Distribution and Brand Awareness Channels:
- Product Hunt
Continuing Education and Learning
A challenge all marketers face is the need for continuous learning over time. With new tools and methods changing all the time, it's essential to stay on top of the trends and changes. Luckily, there aren't a shortage of tools and platforms for you to learn new tactics or techniques and take necessary classes.
HubSpot Academy, for example, is a great place to go anytime you need to get up-to-date information on the latest marketing best practices, find answers to your questions, get certified in a new area of expertise, or renew certifications on subjects that you're a little rusty on.
Bookmark your HubSpot Academy portal today
Other Ongoing Education and Learning Tools:
- Lynda.com
- Udemy
- Codecademy
- Skillshare
- General Assembly
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
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.
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 tools.
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.
Try Out Unbounce Now
Other CRO Tools:
- Hotjar
- Optimizely
- Leadpages
- HubSpot Landing Pages Tool (try it below)
Event Marketing
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.
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!
Check Out Eventbrite Now
Other Event Marketing Tools:
- Picatic
- AddEvent
Innovation and Efficiency Tools
If you're on the search for new marketing tools, chances are you're not just looking for the hammer and the nail in your toolkit. Instead, you might be looking for new and innovative solutions to try out and experiment with in your marketing. Sound about right?
As marketers, you've probably used forms -- whether on your site or in a survey -- more than a few times. But have you ever started to get bored with the same old, robotic form type?
Typeform is the tool you need to try if you're looking for new ways to interact with your prospects and customers while giving them a positive, human-centered experience. Typeform isn't just another survey tool. It's a conversational, interactive typeform that feels more interactive than a standard form. Use it to host survey content, lead forms, or even create content with it by putting together quizzes and more.
Try Using Typeform in your Marketing Today
Other Innovative Tools to Try:
- Giphy
- Todoist
Keeping Up with the Latest Industry News Tools
Reading this post alone won't end your career-long pursuit for the latest tools, trends, and marketing techniques. That's why keeping up with the latest industry news is a full part of your job as a marketer.
Product Hunt, a tool meant for finding the latest tools and products, is a must for any marketer trying to stay on top of the industry and find new channels to promote their own product launches. Product Hunt is a daily feed of launched tools, letting people upvote what they think is interesting. Pro tip: when you sign up for Product Hunt, set it as your homescreen in your browser so you'll always have a reminder to keep an eye out for what's new. Who knows? You might even decide to use some of the featured tools yourself!
Sign Up for Product Hunt Now
Other News and Timely Tools:
- Your choice of online news sources or magazines
Lead Generation
If you're in the mood for demand generation, you probably have you eyes on the prize: converting anonymous website visitors into contacts with email addresses that you can successfully nurture. While landing pages are a must for some things, sometimes you want a shorter, simpler user experience to capture lead information.
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.
Try HubSpot's Free Marketing Tools
Lead Nurturing
In the world of lead nurturing, the tools and techniques used are constantly involving. While some aspects of nurturing remain the same, like using email to nurture contacts down your funnel, for example, the content and positioning you use is ever-changing. It would be easy for us to introduce a set of standard workflow and automation tools (like HubSpot's, for example) you can use to nurture your contacts down the funnel. But if you're looking for something a little more innovative for actually creating nurturing content, we have a new tool for you to try.
Vidyard is a great tool for creating and hosting awesome video content in your nurturing flows and otherwise. At HubSpot, for example, we've even started using Vidyard to create unique, customized nurturing videos specific to our audience and product. What makes Vidyard so great is its variety of video tools that you can use to create remarkable content.
From Vidyard's live feature to its studio content creation products to its free tool - ViewedIt -- Vidyard is an excellent tool if you're a marketer looking to jump on the video bandwagon and start integrating video into all of your content.
Online Advertising
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 a tool for that.
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.
Check out AdStage
Other Online Advertising Tools:
- HubSpot Ads Add-On
- Perfect Audience
- Google Ads
- AdRoll
Project Management
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!
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 guide to managing marketing campaigns in Trello.
Get Trello -- It's Free!
Other Project Management Tools:
- HubSpot Projects Tool (one of many tools in the HubSpot Marketing Platform)
- JIRA
- Asana
- Airtable
Search Engine Optimization
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. Google Analytics and SEMrush our great tools for planning which keywords to rank for, but how do you make sure the content you create actually meets your goal once it's created?
Ryte is the ideal tool marketers can use to make sure their SEO efforts are having a real impact on their marketing strategy.
Check out Ryte now
Other SEO Tools:
- HubSpot Content Strategy Tool
- Google Analytics / Keyword Tool
- Keywords Everywhere Chrome Extension
- Ahrefs
- SEMrush
- Moz
Social Media
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.
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.
Try Iconosquare Now
Other Social Media Tools:
- Buffer
- Hootsuite
- HubSpot Social Inbox (one of many tools in the HubSpot Marketing Platform)
Team Communication
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.
I'd be given a lot of 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.
Get Slack today. Seriously. Do it.
Another tool to mention, though slightly different in purpose, is Shift. If you're running multiple email account and multiple extensions and applications, this is a great way to organize everything.
A cool part of Shift is that, in addition to compiling your email inboxes, it also allows you to manage other applications, such as HubSpot Sales, Grammarly, and Asana.
Other Team Communication Tools:
- HipChat
- Google Chat
- Join.Me
- Zoom
- Skype
Website Optimization
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?
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.
Convinced? Try Hotjar. It's Free!
Other Website Optimization Tools:
- HubSpot Website Platform
- Optimizely
- Unbounce
Get the Full List of Tools
* = Free Marketing Tools
We've covered a lot of tools for every part of your job on this page. But sometimes, it's just helpful to see the full list. Here is our list of the top 61 marketing tools you need to know about. You'll see an asterisk (*) next to each free marketing tool that has either a free account with limited features or a select group of free functions within the product.
Top 61 Tools Every Marketer Should Know About |
||
| AddEvent | Hootsuite* | Piktochart* |
| Adobe Color CC* | Hotjar* | Product Hunt* |
| Adobe Spark* | HubSpot Academy* | Recordit* |
| Adroll | HubSpot CRM* | SEMRush* |
| Adstage | HubSpot Marketing* | Skillshare* |
| Ahrefs | Iconosquare | Skype* |
| Airtable* | IFTTT* | Slack* |
| Asana* | JIRA | Todoist* |
| Box | Join.Me* | Trello* |
| Buffer* | Kap* | Twitter* |
| Canva* | Keywords Everywhere* | Typeform* |
| Codecademy* | Leadpages | Udemy* |
| Dropbox* | LinkedIn* | Unbounce |
| Eventbrite* | Lynda.com | Venngage* |
| Facebook* | Moz* | Vidyard* |
| Flipboard* | OnPage.org | Vimeo* |
| General Assembly | Optimizely | Wistia* |
| Giphy* | HipChat* | YouTube* |
| Google Ads | Pocket* | Zoom* |
| Google Analytics* | Picatic* | |
| Google Drive* | ||
| Digital Marketing Tuner* | ||
You've got all the tools you need, but are you looking for a place to start putting them all together? Check out our free marketing blueprint. It'll walk you through creating your own marketing plan and teach you how to use all of these tools together.
http://bit.ly/2pOkzF8
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