Do you own a marketing agency and have doubts about the performance of your current stack? Or have you just launched a marketing agency and are looking for the best tools to improve your workflows?

The use of high-performance marketing tools can help make your agency easier to manage.

I've put together a list of must-have tools for any competitive marketing agency.

What kind of tools does a marketing agency need to be effective?

From project management to data analysis to content creation, your agency has to take on many different tasks on a daily basis.

Project management, reporting, analysis, and automation tools can help you streamline processes and improve performance.

Let me give you an example:

Imagine that your teams need to work on a social network advertising campaign for one of your customers.

You'll need to:

  • Organize and plan the project
  • Analyze current trends on social networks to optimize your campaigns
  • Create ads
  • Facilitate communication between your marketing and creative teams
  • Analyze campaign results

For each of these tasks, the use of a high-performance tool can be a real game changer. In this case, you'll need project management software, a trend analysis tool, an ad builder and a reporting tool.

TIP - For even greater workflow efficiency, use tools that can integrate with each other.

Well, it's time to get to the heart of the matter and share with you the best tools used by digital marketers.

TOP 25 best tools for a digital marketing agency

#1. Google Trends

Category: SEO

Useful for: Evaluating keyword trends and interest over time

Marketing agency software example.

Google Trends is a free service offered by Google. It lets you visualize the popularity of search engine queries over time. I'm talking about a real window onto the Internet in real time.

If you're planning to launch a marketing campaign, then Google Trends is ideal for identifying what's hot right now. You can compare the popularity of different search terms, discover emerging trends, and even refine your results by region or time period.

Mohit V. - December 28, 2023 : “Best way to check if the trend is still there or dying - It helps you find the trending keyword on google search. You can use this to compare multiple keywords or see if the trend is dying or still going up. You can even see where is the exact search volume coming from.”

#2. AnswerThePublic

Category: SEO

Useful for: Evaluating the most frequently asked questions on search engines on a specific subject

Best tools for marketing agencies.

Developed by Neil Patel, AnswerThePublic explores the questions people ask themselves online. It complements the work done on Google Trends and helps you understand what really intrigues users on a specific topic. This way, you stay relevant to your target audience by directly addressing their concerns.

It's ideal if you want to create SEO content and implement a real content strategy. The tool organizes questions into graphs and lists to identify emerging trends.

Jena F - April 18, 2023 : “Fantastic Keyword Research + Blogging Tool - It makes keyword research a breeze. Because of how it breaks out data, it's also extremely useful for brainstorming blog topics. Sometimes the way searches come through, you can pull blog titles directly from the phrases. I also like that that it shows volume right next to each variation.”

#3. Notion

Category: Organization

Useful for: Managing several projects in the same place

Another example of a tool that marketing agencies use.

Is your list of customers, and therefore projects, growing? Are your teams having trouble keeping track of project progress or finding all the information and documentation they need to work?

Notion is all-in-one project management software that centralizes note-taking, project tracking, and databases and enables your team members to collaborate in real-time.

Notion is ideal for facilitating workflows and centralizing tools. You can create pages with integrated tables, calendars, databases, multimedia files, and more. In short, it's a real Swiss army knife that makes it considerably easier to keep track of collaborative projects.

Shay D - February 8, 2024 : Best productivity database tool! - The database feature of Notion is amazing. The categorization options have a wide variety and it allows you to sort entries based on the different tags you enter. It is fairly user friendly and you can learn for more advanced features as you use it.”

#4. Semrush

Category: SEO

Useful for: Analysing the SEO performance of your website and comparing it with the competition

Best SEO platform for a marketing agency.

If you offer SEO services, you're probably facing fierce competition to position your customers' websites among the top Google search results.

Semrush offers a comprehensive suite of SEO and marketing tools, providing an in-depth view of a website's performance and that of its competitors. It will help you optimize your online presence and that of your customers.

Semrush goes much further than Google Analytics in providing key information. This enables you to quickly identify opportunities to improve the online positioning of your marketing content and increase traffic to your website. And traffic means more conversions!

Stacey B - December 18, 2023 : Obvious leader in the Field - Semrush solves my problem of behind the scenes issues that I would not be aware of. Like broken links, back lines that are bad or too my references or no H1 headers.”

#5. Hootsuite

Category: Social media management

Useful for: Managing, scheduling and analysing posts on social networks

Social media scheduler for a marketing agency.

Regular posting on social networks is essential for gaining visibility. But it's also very demanding in terms of organization and content creation. A tool like Hootsuite can be a game changer.

It's one of the most widely used social networking platforms for agencies and community managers who need to manage several accounts at once. Hootsuite lets you centralize publication planning, monitor audience engagement and track the performance of your marketing campaigns across multiple social networks.

It's a true social network management tool that lets you publish regularly, even when you're busy doing other things.

Sylvia S - January 28, 2024 : "I use it daily! - Hootsuite helps me with time management. The scheduling feature allows me to plan my weeks with holidays, recognitions, etc., without completing everything in one day.”

#6. Agorapulse

Category: Social media management

Useful for: Managing, scheduling and analysing ads campaigns and posts on social networks

Another tool that agencies often use.

Do your customers want to invade social networks? You don't have enough community managers to keep up with the frantic pace of interactions on several accounts at once? Perhaps you should consider using Agorapulse.

The platform centralizes the management of your social networks in a single environment. You can schedule publications, monitor brand mentions, manage interactions with your audience, and even analyze the performance of your campaigns.

Agorapulse offers the advantage of managing several accounts at once. Its dashboard lets you share your performance with your customers live on their social networks. It's a handy way to keep them informed of the progress of a project.

Karen P. - August 14, 2023 : "Awesome Scheduling Tool! - I am able to simultaneously edit posts going on various platforms. It solves the problem of me having to go back and forth and edit across multiple platforms. Saves a lot of time and frustration! I used to not be able to see notifications, mentions, messages, etc. very easily but now I can easily check those every day through Agorapulse.”

#7. Slack

Category: Messaging

Useful for: Centralizing and streamlining internal communications

Slack.

If you feel like you hear phrases like "I didn't know..." or "Where can I find document X?" every day, then maybe you should be concerned about your internal communication.

Slack is an enhanced instant messaging system. It allows you to streamline internal communication between your teams by creating thematic communication channels. It's ideal for reducing unnecessary e-mails and centralizing all interactions in one place.

You can even integrate third-party applications to centralize important notifications from your various marketing tools.

Humam K - January 17, 2024 : “It's almost everything - Communication, documentation, quick meetings, Integrations for seemles workflows are the top ones I can mention.”

#8. Abyssale

Category: Creative automation

Useful for: Creating visuals marketing automatically

The best creative automation tool for agencies.

Are your graphics teams overwhelmed by requests to modify ads banners? Are they spending considerable time creating 100 versions of the same banner? It's time to automate your creative processes.

Abyssale is a creative automation tool. It lets you create visual marketing content automatically. Simply build a template by dragging and dropping multimedia elements. You can then multiply the versions (text, images, colors, etc.) of your creations from a spreadsheet.

This reduces the time spent by designers on tedious tasks by 90%. Marketing teams also gain autonomy. They can generate new visuals without any graphic skills.

Alexx D. - December 6, 2022 :”This quality tool has save me time effort and money… - The ability to scale and maintain quality.”

#9. ActiveCampaign

Category: Email marketing.

Useful for: Increasing conversions and improving customer retention with email marketing

Email marketing tool for agencies.

You've finally found the right formula for collecting e-mail addresses from your target audience. But now you don't know how to create a personalized relationship with each of them.

ActiveCampaign will help you keep in touch by e-mail with prospects who have left their contact details on one of your landing pages. You can automate marketing campaigns based on your customers' behavior, manage your contacts with the integrated CRM, and personalize your e-mails for more impactful messages.

This platform is ideal for tracking interactions with your hot prospects and customers. It will help you increase conversions and improve customer retention.

Jennifer H. - February 13, 2024 : “Great functions, ease of use - I've been using ActiveCampaign for 8 years, and it serves all of my main business goals and needs. It integrates with my shopping cart and membership plugin perfectly. I'm able to use targeted email strategies and integrate my gmail communications with my clients.”

#10. Mailchimp

Category: Cold emailing

Useful for: Reaching out new leads by email

Outreach tool for agencies.

Would you like to contact a large audience of professionals to offer them a product, a service or simply a partnership?

Mailchimp will enable you to launch relevant BtoB cold emailing campaigns. You'll be able to create new campaigns with ease, thanks to a user-friendly interface.

This platform is ideal for small businesses, content creators and entrepreneurs. You'll be able to manage the campaigns of each of your customers from your marketing agency's account.

Shobhit S. - December 12, 2023 : ”Get your Business to the next level with minimal efforts. - Mailchimp helps me in various things like to setup marketing automations, studied the accurate data related to my business and to retarget my customer which increase my conversions and revenue.”

#11. Lobstr

Category: Growth hacking

Useful for: Scraping databases from the biggest online business directories

A tool that many agencies use for growth hacking.

To launch a BtoB cold emailing campaign, you need a contact list to which you can allocate your emails.

Lobstr enables you to retrieve the contact details (e-mail, telephone, social networking account, website, etc.) of your ideal target for your email campaigns.

With this tool, you can scrape databases from the biggest online business directories like the Yellow Pages or Linkedin. You'll find everything your marketing teams need to target new prospects.

Enzo Achando - January 10, 2024 :”Perfect - I've been using this platform for over 1 year and what can I say ... it's a gold mine!”

#12. Mailreach

Category: Growth hacking & emailing

Useful for: Optimizing the deliverability of your email marketing

Email tool for agencies.

If you observe a high bounced rate and a low open rate on your email campaigns, it's probably due to the reputation of the sender's address. If it's too low, email managers tend to classify them as spam or block them.

Mailreach will considerably improve the deliverability of your e-mails. With this tool, you can prevent your prospects from spamming you. Simply activate it a few weeks before launching your first campaign to "warm up" your e-mail address and improve its reputation.

Agencies that use it wisely considerably improve the performance of their email campaigns.

Chandra M. - January 5, 2024 : "Say goodbye to spams, raise your email reputation - The manner in which it improves communication and hence collaboation among teams and customer is immense. Emails are brought together which establishes a comprehensive and clear conversation.”

#13. Hubspot

Category: CRM/Lead management

Useful for: Following up and reaching out all your leads

CRM for agencies.

As you generate new leads for your customers, following up each one becomes more complicated. Yet personalized follow-up is essential to maintain the relationship between the brand and the prospect or customer.

With Hubspot, you can integrate marketing with sales and customer service. This tool centralizes the follow-up of each of your leads on a single platform. You'll be able to follow your prospects' journey from initial contact right through to customer retention.

The platform is ideal for automating certain prospecting campaigns and taking care of the pre- and post-purchase customer journey.

Mikay P. - January 30, 2024 : “Great Features & Helpful Team! - The wide array of features from lead capture to email marketing to ads really allows us a lot of flexibility. We have HubSpot as our one primary piece of tech in our tech stack now, and that makes my life so much easier. The team at HubSpot is always willing to hop on a call and answer my questions too!”

#14. Make (Integromat)

Category: Automation

Useful for: Automate creative workflows

Automation tool for agencies.

Do you feel that you and your teams spend most of your time repeating the same actions every day? Maybe it's time to think about optimizing your workflows.

Make will enable you to connect all your tools and applications and automate your workflows without even knowing how to code. It allows you to automate certain marketing processes to save time.

You'll be able to trigger automated actions based on specific events. This frees your teams from repetitive, low-value-added tasks.

Alvaro H. - November 13, 2023 : “Efficiency. Avoid duplicate tasks in your business - It helps us to consolidate a better robustness in controlling the transfer of data between systems. And it saves us time in manual and automatic tasks.”

#15. Calendly

Category: Schedule management

Useful for: Simplifying the meeting’s scheduling for your customer

Scheduling tool for agencies.

Calendly makes it easy to book appointments by allowing your contacts to choose available slots in your schedule. You no longer need to exchange numerous messages before agreeing on a slot.

You'll see agendas fill up with appointments with prospects without having to intervene. In the end, all you have to do is define the time slots. Prospects choose a time slot that suits them.

Laurie W. - January 11, 2024 : This app eliminates all those appointment setting nightmares - Calendly eliminates all the guesswork and back and forth associated with making appointments. In my recruitment business I conduct phone screening calls with suitable candidates. Before Calendly this required major brain damage to set up a time. Now, I send the applicant a link and they pick the time that suits both of us!”

#16. Grammarly

Category: Communication

Useful for: Writing marketing emails, advertisements, or network posts without typos or grammatical errors

Grammarly.

Have you ever wondered what would happen if every one of your posts on social networks was full of spelling mistakes and syntax errors? It would probably damage the reputation of the brands your agency works with.

Grammarly is the perfect way to improve your written communication. The tool directly corrects syntax and spelling errors. It goes even further, with suggestions to improve the style and clarity of texts.

It's ideal for marketing emails, advertisements, or network posts without typos or grammatical errors. It helps you maintain a certain professionalism in your communication.

Valeriano E. - November 26, 2023 : “Introducing the top-tier writing tool assistant: Grammarly Business - I am using grammarly almost every day at my organization. I use this to enhance my writing skills and to organize the structure of a paragraph. Another feature of Grammarly Business is that the admin can monitor other accounts, which helps the productivity of the business. Moreover, it is flexible in integration; with your browser, you can add Grammarly as an extension, and that will help you automatically correct your grammar in your Google Docs or Microsoft software.”

#17. Weglot

Category: Translation

Useful for: Translating automatically all your content in your website in any other language

Weglot.

Do you or your agency's customers work internationally? Are you re-editing all the pages and articles on your website in other languages?

With Weglot, you have a multilingual translator for your website. The platform automates the translation of your content, making it accessible to a global audience.

It's a great way to extend the reach of your business or that of your customers, without having to hire a bilingual copywriter. Weglot centralizes all your translations in a dashboard to maintain and manage consistency between each language.

Paulina B. - February 2, 2024 : “Great tool for localization - Weglot is a game-changer! Setting it up is a piece of cake, and it clicks perfectly with Webflow. I tried a few similar tools, and Weglot is hands down the winner. Plus, their support team is awesome, making this the best translation tool out there.”

#18. Unbounce

Category: Funnel

Useful for: Creating easily a landing page with no code

Unbounce.

If you're looking to create attractive landing pages that convert without being held back by technology, Unbounce is your friend.

You'll be able to create your lead capture pages intuitively, without having to touch a single line of code. The tool offers templates that you can customize to capture leads efficiently.

Unbounce will enable you to rapidly deploy your capture pages. This is a real advantage when it comes to launching new offers in a short space of time.

Matt G. - September 20, 2023 : "Great piece of software for turning around landing pages on non-tech teams - Need to quickly turn around landing pages and run A/B testing without having to pull a developer onto a project. This way the team can create and tweak these pages and forms as much and as quickly as they want.”

#19. Zapier

Category: Automation

Useful for: Automating productive workflows

Zapier.

With so many different software and marketing applications, your worfklows are becoming increasingly complex. You and your teams are probably repeating numerous low-value-added tasks on a daily basis.

Zapier is an automation platform that lets you create "Zaps" or automated workflows. This enables you to complete tasks effortlessly and without manual intervention.

With such a tool, you free up your teams' time by leaving repetitive tasks in the hands of the algorithm.

Iceal G. - January 18, 2024 : "Zapier is the easiest automation tool I've used in my life! - What I love about Zapier are its simplicity to use, a wide range of apps to use and integrate, and bountiful helpful docs and community you can count on. Their support is superb, the last time I emailed them they were very responsive to my bug inquiry.”

#21. Albacross

Category: Growth marketing

Useful for: Tracking your website’s visitors behavior

Albacross.

Imagine being able to track visitor behavior on your website. Wouldn't it be a real game changer to identify friction points?

Well, with Albacross, it's possible! You can see which companies are visiting your site, understand their interests through detailed analysis, and track browsing behavior to anticipate their needs.

You'll be able to optimize your sales approach. You'll understand your prospects better, create relevant messages and interfaces, and improve your conversion rate.

Maxence D. - February 14, 2024 : “No brainer as soon as you have decent amount of traffic - Albacross is a great tool when it comes to detect who is actually on your website. The ability to plug albacross directly to the CRM or to wehbook let you orchestrate it as you wish.”

#22. Intercom

Category: Growth marketing

Useful for: Conversing with customers via personalized messages or intelligent chatbots

Intercom.

Customer support has become a marketing concern. Customers are looking for fast, personalized answers. Intercom will help you meet these demands.

I'm talking about a real-time messaging platform that enables companies to converse with their customers via personalized messages or intelligent chatbots. All communications are centralized on a single, intuitive interface.

This tool will enable you to create lasting customer relationships by offering tailor-made communication experiences.

Krystal T. - November 17, 2023 : “Seven years of seamless support with Intercom as our team's backbone - Over the years, Intercom has become our primary tool to service our customers, mixing chat, email support, and now a brilliant AI. Their constant innovation feels like having a tech-savvy buddy in our corner, making customer service incredibly painless for our team.”

#23. Formcarry

Category: Growth marketing

Useful for: Designing customized forms easily

Formcarry.

Do you feel your message isn't getting through to your target audience? Are you lacking the information you need to send them powerful messages? If so, you should implement a data collection strategy.

Formcarry will help you collect data directly from your audience. It's a form management platform that makes it easy to create, customize and integrate forms on your website.

You can design customized forms with a user-friendly editor, receive real-time notifications to stay informed of new submissions, and integrate data directly with other tools.

Yashasvi S. - August 23, 2021 : “Build your contact list in one stop solution - I can all messages directed to one mail id and build my audience.”

#24. Zoom

Category: Video conferencing

Useful for: Organizing meetings or webinars online

Zoom.

Zoom is the type of platform you'll be using every day for a multitude of different events. This videoconferencing platform will enable you to connect with your teams and customers.

You'll be able to plan strategic meetings with your teams from Zoom. You'll be able to meet your customers hundreds of kilometers away, thanks to Zoom. You can even use it to organize webinars with your prospects or those of your customers, in order to convert them.

In other words, this tool facilitates collaboration, communication and human connection across screens.

Alex R. - February 13, 2024 : “Zoom does the job + more - I love the AI feature. It was always so irritating taking notes, but now with Zoom's AI feature - we zoom more and have AI do the work for our "meeting minutes." You can also with permissions, record phone calls, and is helpful for AI to listen in and take meetings while on the road.”

#25. Salesforce

Category: Leads management

Useful for: Tracking your prospects and customer at every stage of their journey

Salesforce.

Another CRM tool, yes. But Salesforce is very comprehensive, giving you a 360-degree view of your customers, sales and workflows. Everything is centralized in a user-friendly, intuitive environment.

Salesforce enables collaboration between marketing, customer service, sales and management teams. With such a tool, you'll be able to track your prospects and customers at every stage of their journey.

This will enable you to have a personalized interaction with them. Whether it's a sales, marketing or after-sales contact.

Manoj S. - January 3, 2024 : “Salesforce Deals Cloud Outline - Salesforce Deals Cloud has been extraordinary for our business activities. Its easy to understand interface smoothed out our client information the board, supporting group efficiency. The lead following element, specifically, was a champion, empowering us to fundamentally further develop our change rates.”

Ready to scale your marketing agency?

Now that you're familiar with all these tools, you'll be able to scale your marketing agency. Your workflows will improve dramatically, your teams will become more efficient and your customers will be more satisfied.

It's almost essential to use the right marketing tools if you want to stay competitive. So get started!