109 Smart Marketing Tools for Digital Marketers 👋

If you want to see the best marketing tools for every digital marketer in 2021, keep reading.

I personally gathered, tested, and reviewed 109 free and premium online marketing tools. 

Then, I organized this list of tools into categories so you can find the best software for your needs. 

Above is the list of all the types of marketing tools we will cover in this article. You can instantly jump to any category by clicking on it. 

Now, let’s go over the best overall tools for each category, starting with social media. 

107 Marketing Tools for Social Media and More...

Each marketing software we go over is ranked within its category based on usability, credibility, and usefulness. As a marketer myself, I will include the first tool in each category as my personal recommendation. 

Affiliate Disclaimer: This post may include affiliate links, which means that we earn a commission from qualified purchases. This does not in any way impact the recommendations we make.

READ MORE: 109 Small Business Ideas for Online Entrepreneurs

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Social Media Tools

Having effective social media tools is a huge part of any social media manager’s job. If you’ve ever been tasked with managing, growing, and optimizing a social media brand, you know how frustrating it can be to lose followers because of a simple error.

Most of these software tools allow you to schedule all your posts ahead of time, minimizing the chance of a typo going unnoticed.  They provide users with a marketing hub where you can see all your social media posts before they go live.

We also chose ones that help with/are:

Our Recommended Social Media Tool:

Sprout Social is the most powerful social media management platform on the market. As an industry leader, it gained notoriety as an all-in-one platform that reinvents how businesses and entrepreneurs strategize their social media. It’s so powerful that, in fact, it’s even used by the Chicago Bulls NBA team.

Compared to the tools I listed below, Sprout Social’s stand-out component is the analytics dashboard. This tool provides visible trends and insights which will help you craft a sound social media strategy. After that, your organic growth becomes testable and repeatable.

In addition, you get access to a full range of management tools, including the ability to publish content, engage with your audience, and schedule posts.

Pricing: $89/month – $279/month

Other Social Media Tools:

2. Crowdfire (Free Alternative)

3. SocialPilot

4. Zoho Social

5. ContentStudio

6. Postpone (Reddit Scheduling)

7. Tailwind (Pinterest Scheduling)

8. PhantomBuster (Linkedin Profile Scraper)

9. Inflact (Instagram Marketing Toolkit)

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Design Tools

This list of graphic design tools contains software for creating marketing images, social media posts, TikTok videos, logos, ebooks, and more. 

At the heart of every content creator lies a toolkit of their favorite design tools. If you want to create stunning visuals for your website, awe-inspiring videos, and beautiful graphics, these are the tools you need to succeed.

Our Recommended Design Tool:

Our favorite graphic design tool comes in the form of a free and incredibly easy platform to use. With Canva, you can design graphics, social posts, videos, infographics, ebooks, and much more. You can avoid spending loads of time to learn complicated video editing tools and instead focus your attention on creating amazing content quickly.

Personally, I use Canva to design nearly all of my blog graphics and it hasn’t disappointed me once. The best part? It’s completely free to use, forever.

Pricing: Free forever – $12.99/month

Other Design Tools:

11. Adobe Spark

12. Venngage (Infographic Designer)

13. RecordIt (Screen Recording Tool for Bloggers)

14. Visme (Graph Maker)

15. Oneboard (Online Whiteboard/Sketching Tool)

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Online Writing Tools

In addition to creating imagery, content creators are often tasked with drafting and publishing written content. This can be for a social media post, a blog, email draft, etc.

With the right software, writing content can be made easier and more effective—especially when it comes to writing product descriptions and blog copy. These are the best tools for content marketing and writing.

Our Recommended Writing Tools:

Jarvis.Ai is an AI copywriting tool. With this tool, I have been able to write over 20,000 words in a day—without sacrificing quality. Jarvis utilizes over 50 copywriting skills including product descriptions, AIDA (attention, interest, desire, action) frameworks, and sentence rewriters. The best part is that you can pump out original content with the AI, edit it down, and immediately post it online.

If you’re a content creator who writes articles, social media descriptions, and essays, you absolutely need to try out this tool. As a user myself, I truly can’t recommend this tool enough.

Pricing: $24/month – $99/month

By the way, I managed to work out a deal to get 10,000 free words for any user that signs up with my link!

SEMrush’s writing assistant tool is the perfect software to pair with Jarvis. It essentially allows you to double-check your writing for readability, search engine optimization, tone, and originality.

You can use this tool to make sure your blog copy is optimized for search engine rankings, which is a huge help for boosting your site traffic. It also makes sure your writing is readable, something that many writers struggle with at the beginning.

Pricing: Free forever – $449/month

Other Writing Tools:

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Digital Presence Tools

These are the tools that influencers use to measure their online presence, get insights on other influencers, and maximize their digital impact.

Our Recommended Digital Presence Tool:

Kred is a tool for marketers, influencers, and business owners to measure their online influence. It gives you two scores: an influence score and an outreach score.

The influence score is based on how often other people engage with your Twitter and Instagram accounts. Your outreach score is based on how much you engage with others in the community and share their content. 

Pricing: Free

Other Digital Presence Tools:

25. ContentStudio Content Insights Tool – This tool helps you identify the types of content and the social media platforms that work best for your business

26. Feedly (AI Research Assistant)

27. ShareIt 

28. CoSchedule (Content Planning)

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Sales Funnel Tools

Businesses and entrepreneurs usually have one goal when they create content online—generating sales. By using a sales funnel marketing tool, creators can take advantage of marketing strategies proven to convert traffic into customers. 

A sales funnel is a marketing term for your customer’s life cycle as they progress from first discovering your brand to finally making a purchase. By optimizing your sales funnels (with landing pages, upsells, and remarketing), you can convert more of your leads into customers. 

Our Recommended Sales Funnel Tool:

SamCart is the best software tool for crafting digital product pages. Its built-in features include A/B testing, upselling, templates, and different payment plans. With a simple drag-and-drop page builder, you can easily create 1-page sales funnels that are built to convert customers.

Pricing: $39/month – $159/month

Other Sales Funnel Tools:

30. ClickFunnels 

31. Kartra 

32. Thrive Architect (For WordPress) 

33. Ontraport

34. CartFlows (For WordPress)

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Email Marketing Tools

One of the oldest (and most effective) methods of messaging customers is still email marketing in 2021. According to Hubspot’s curated research, email marketing provides a return on investment of $42 for every $1 spent

With the right marketing tools, you can send the right emails at the right times, increasing your odds of turning leads into customers. If you’re a creator who’s constantly pumping out new content, use these email marketing tools to promote and share your work.

Our Recommended Email Marketing Tool:

ConvertKit is the only email marketing tool specifically targeted towards content creators and entrepreneurs. If you want to save your time and money,  ConvertKit’s simple email designer and scheduling tools are built to deliver. 

The best part is how tailored the experience is for busy creators. Instead of focusing on designing a crafty email, you can put all your attention on perfecting the content. ConvertKit is our favorite email marketing tool and the only one we will ever use.

Pricing: Free forever – $59/month

Other Email Marketing Tools:

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Lead Capture Tools

Marketers use a variety of lead capture tools to collect, verify, classify, and organize new leads for their businesses. These types of marketing tools can range from landing page builders, data collection software, and email scrapers. 

Capturing leads is an essential part of any marketer’s job. That’s why I collected the best tools for identifying and capturing new prospects for your business.

Our Recommended Lead Capture Tool:

Leadpages specializes in helping marketers create lead generation landing pages (which they explain in this in-depth article). With Leadpages, you can create highly optimized landing pages to promote email opt-ins, sign-ups, and digital purchases. By putting your content behind a landing page, you can capture leads and continue to nurture them via email marketing. 

Pricing: $27/month – $79/month

Other Lead Capture Tools:

42. Unbounce

43. GetResponse

44. ActiveCampaign

45. Ucraft

46. Instapage

47. Uplead (B2B Lead Prospecting Tool)

48. Prospect.io (Email Prospecting Tool)

49. Hunter.io (Email Website Scraper)

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Video Marketing Tools

It’s no secret that video marketing is one of the most effective ways to tell a brand story and increase sales. In fact, Wordstream claims that “68% of consumers prefer watching videos to learn about new products or services, as compared to articles, infographics, ebooks, and presentations.”

In 2021, video marketing tools have grown in popularity as platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook continue to dominate our attention spans. Advertisers everywhere are focusing their efforts on crafting attractive videos that get shared on social media like wildfire.  If you’re a content creator who needs the best tools for crafting your own marketing videos, these software choices won’t disappoint.

Our Recommended Video Marketing Tool:

Promo is an easy-to-use video maker for businesses of all kinds. Its selection of tools includes everything you need to make eye-catching social media posts, explainer videos, and advertisements. If you need a simple but elegant video maker (that doesn’t take time to learn), this is your best option. 

Pricing: $12/month – $199/month

Other Lead Capture Tools:

51. Animoto

52. VideoScribe (Whiteboard Explainer Videos)

53. FlexClip

54. Adobe Premiere Pro

55. Biteable

56. Breakout Clips

Content Management Systems
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Content Management System Tools

A content management system is a software tool that helps creators manage their content on a website. The most popular CMS is called WordPress, and it runs over 450 million websites today. Content stored in a CMS is put in a database so that multiple users can access it and modify it at any time. 

Here are the best CMS tools you should use if you want to launch a website for your content. 

Our Recommended Content Management System Tools

WordPress is the most popular content management system for a reason. As an open-source software tool, WordPress gives users the highest level of customization while remaining completely free. With thousands of plugins and themes to choose from, creating a website on WordPress is a great way to share your brand and your content with style.

While it started as a blogging tool, you can now create any type of website using WordPress. All you have to pay for web hosting (which can cost less than $3 a month if you use Bluehost) and you’re set.

Pricing: Free forever

Other Content Management System Tools:

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Team Collaboration Tools

Having a team collaboration tool is essential for keeping track of work and progress. This is especially true in 2021, where startups, small businesses, and corporations are largely relying on remote workers to get the job done. 

Next, let’s look at the best team collaboration tools that help with organization, management, and communication.

Our Recommended Team Collaboration Tool

By now, you’ve probably heard of Slack. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if you had it open on your computer at this very instant. Slack is a messaging app for businesses that connects teams together so that they can always get the information they need. It is often called the “single place for messaging, tools, and files.”

Pricing: Free forever – $12.50/month per user

Other Team Collaboration Tools:

65. Podio

66. Chanty

67. Discord

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Video Communication Tools

Since the Covid-19 pandemic started, marketers and businesses have been relying on video communication tools to conduct meetings, share information, and collaborate. Software companies like Zoom have become incredibly profitable, and for good reason. 

These are the most reliable tools for online video communication.

Our Recommended Video Communication Tool

Zoom is a simple to use, scalable video conferencing tool that most schools are currently relying on. You can start or join a meeting with only a few clicks, set up webinars, and conduct classes using this software.

As an industry leader, Zoom is currently taking around 60% of the online video conferencing market share in the United States. Globally, Zoom owns nearly half of the entire share (48.7%).

Pricing: Free forever – $19.99/month per license

Other Video Communication Tools:

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Project Management Tools

Project management software are essential marketing tools for developers, content creators, and small businesses. By laying out your work on a Kanban board or a similar framework, you can boost productivity while being transparent with your team. These tools are also used to track progress and schedule future tasks. 

The best project management software tools are easy to navigate and contain lots of different scheduling options. Let’s take a deeper look. 

Our Recommended Project Management Tool

Zoho Projects is a highly customizable project management tool for businesses of any size. With brands like Stanford University and Dell using this tool, you can bet that it’s one of the most intuitive, trustworthy, and efficient options on the market. Additionally, Zoho Projects can integrate with lots of third party apps like Slack, GitHub, Zapier, and more.

That being said, the stand out feature is its mobile app. Whether you want to use this tool to keep track of tasks or work on team projects, everything can be tracked right on your phone.

Personally, I also chose to recommend this tool because of its affordability. Compared to the other options, Zoho Projects costs barely a cup of coffee a month—a great deal, especially considering all the other tools I pay for. 

Pricing: Free forever – $10/month per user

Other Project Management Tools:

73. Asana

74. Monday.com

75. ClickUp

76. HubSpot

77. Trello

78. Jira

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Digital Asset Management Tools

Keeping track of your digital assets is an important part of every marketer’s job. After all, what good would a marketing graphic be if you lost it in a sea of other content. 

Digital asset management tools help businesses and content creators stay on top of all their digital files: including images, videos, documents, and legal forms. 

Our Recommended Digital Asset Management Tool

Dropbox is the simplest document storage tool for organizing your documents, files, and media. Professional users can also take advantage of extra features, such as document signing, watermarking, and e-signing.

With full integrations, mobile app support, and countless resources, Dropbox has proved itself to still be the number 1 software for digital asset management.

Pricing: $9.99/month – $19.99/month

Other Digital Asset Management Tools:

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Customer Relationship Management Tools

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools are used to manage a company’s relationships with current and potential customers. These technologies come into play after the lead generation stage. They are built to help businesses nurture relationships and increase future sales. 

While entrepreneurs and content creators probably won’t need to use these tools (at the start of their careers at least), larger companies rely on them to be successful.

Our Recommended Customer Relationship Management Tool

HubSpot is the overall best CRM tool for any business with any budget. It offers a completely free option for small businesses, and scales its product for the established companies.

HubSpot splits its CRM into two parts—there’s a marketing hub and a sales hub. Each one provides users with different tools depending on which you use. 

The free version of the CRM still allows you to take advantage of basic features in both the marketing and sales hubs. I would highly recommend checking it out before deciding to purchase the real product.

Pricing: Free forever – $45/month (Starter)

Other Customer Relationship Management Tools:

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Trend Analysis Tools

To be an effective content marketer, you have to keep up with current trends. Being able to see what content is trending is a great way to increase your chances of growing your online presence. After all, if you create content that appeals to trends, it is much more likely to get shared and spread around. 

These are the tools that will help you understand your audience’s needs and interests. Let’s dive right in.

Our Recommended Trend Analysis Tool

Google Trends is an incredibly powerful tool, especially when you consider how strong Google’s search engine is. This tool gives you direct insights on what people are searching for. You can even segment the information and discover trending topics based on region, time, recency, and location. 

All you have to do is enter any search term into the search bar and you will receive an instant snapshot of peoples’ interest on the topic.

Pricing: Free forever

Other Trend Analysis Tools:

92. Audiense

93. Hashtagify (Twitter Hashtag Trends)

94. BuzzFeed

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Content Research Tools

In addition to knowing the current trends, content marketers need to do research whenever they start working on a new article/blog/post. As a result, they use a collection of software tools to simplify their research and see what works for similar creators. 

Our Recommended Content Research Tool

BuzzSumo is a tool that helps marketers see what type of content works and what goes unnoticed. It uses web crawlers and social feeds to show you the most popular pieces of content that show up for any niche you choose. 

With this tool, you can see exactly what types of content get the most shares on social media, how websites gain backlinks, and how current trends are affecting the popularity of new content. In addition, you can find influencers and identify the ones most likely to help you grow your digital presence. 

If you’re a content creator who is constantly searching the web for ideas and inspiration, you absolutely need to try out BuzzSumo.

Pricing: Free forever – $299/month

Other Content Research Tools:

96. Headline Analyzer by CoSchedule

97. Ubersuggest

98. Topic Research Tool by SEMrush

99. VidIQ (YouTube Content Insights/Research Tool)

100. Paw Research

101. Keywords Everywhere (Chrome Add-on)

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Influencer Marketing Tools

According to Statista, the global influencer marketing market size has grown from 6.5 billion to 13.8 billion USD in only 3 years. With so many companies now looking for influencers to share their products, it is necessary to know the best tools for finding them. 

Not only that, these tools will also help you segment influencers, build relationships, and target the right audiences. 

Our Recommended Influencer Marketing Tool

Heepsy is a simple-to-use influencer searching tool for all types of brands and businesses. It includes a database of over 11 million influencers on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube—and they’re looking for brands to collaborate with. 

Using this tool is as easy as searching for influencers via filters, analyzing their audiences, and reaching out. 

Pricing: $49/month – $269/month

Other Influencer Marketing Tools:

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Search Engine and SEO Tools

Lastly, we have search engine and search engine optimization (SEO) tools. These are the software products that help marketers rank their content on search engines like Google and Bing. They include insights on things like keyword research, competitive analysis, site audits, and ranking difficulty.

Without these tools, it would be nearly impossible to predict how your content will perform on organic searches. Let’s look at our final batch of marketing tools, starting with SEMrush. 

Our Recommended SEO Tool

SEMrush is an award-winning SEO tool that millions of content creators and marketing professionals rely on. It has a huge collection of search engine tools that go much deeper than any basic keyword researcher. 

As a testament to how many great features SEMrush has, this tool has already been mentioned multiple times in this article. If you want to learn more about each feature, check this full review of SEMrush here.

Pricing: Free forever – $449.95/month

Other SEO Tools:

108. Moz

109. Ahrefs

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Summary

Well, there you have it. A complete list of marketing tools for businesses and content creators. If you got this far, thank you so much for taking the time to read my article and I hope you found it useful. For those of you who would like a rundown of every tool we went over in this guide, here is the full list:

  1. Sprout Social
  2. Crowdfire
  3. SocialPilot
  4. Zoho Social
  5. Tailwind
  6. Postpone
  7. ContentStudio
  8. PhantomBuster
  9. Inflact
  10. Canva
  11. Adobe Spark
  12. Venngage
  13. RecordIt
  14. Visme
  15. Oneboard
  16. Jarvis.ai
  17. SEMrush Writing Assistant
  18. Topic
  19. Grammarly
  20. Evernote
  21. Zenpen
  22. WebFX Readability Test Tool
  23. Blog Idea Generator
  24. Kred
  25. ContentStudio Content Insights Tool
  26. Feedly
  27. ShareIt
  28. CoSchedule
  29. SamCart
  30. ClickFunnels
  31. Kartra
  32. Thrive Architect
  33. Ontraport
  34. CartFlows
  35. ConvertKit
  36. GetResponse
  37. AWeber
  38. Hubspot
  39. Mailchimp
  40. Sendinblue
  41. Leadpages
  42. Unbounce
  43. GetResponse
  44. ActiveCampaign
  45. Ucraft
  46. Instapage
  47. Uplead
  48. Prospect.io
  49. Hunter.io
  50. Promo
  51. Animoto
  52. VideoScribe
  53. FlexClip
  54. Adobe Premiere Pro
  55. Biteable
  56. Breakout Clips
  57. WordPress
  58. Squarespace
  59. Contentful
  60. Hubspot CMS
  61. Wix
  62. GetResponse
  63. Leadpages
  64. Slack
  65. Podio
  66. Chanty
  67. Discord
  68. Zoom
  69. Microsoft Teams
  70. Google Meet
  71. GoToMeeting
  72. Zoho Projects
  73. Asana
  74. Monday.com
  75. ClickUp
  76. Hubspot
  77. Trello
  78. Jira
  79. Dropbox
  80. Google Drive
  81. Filestage
  82. BrandFolder
  83. FileCamp
  84. Hubspot
  85. Keap
  86. Salesforce
  87. Monday.com
  88. SalesFlare
  89. Freshsales
  90. Pipedrive
  91. Google Trends
  92. Audiense
  93. Hashtagify
  94. BuzzFeed
  95. BuzzSumo
  96. Headline Analyzer
  97. Ubersuggest
  98. Topic Research Tool
  99. VidIQ
  100. Paw Research
  101. Keywords Everywhere
  102. Heepsy
  103. Social Animal 
  104. Ninja Outreach
  105. BuzzSumo Influencers
  106. Grin
  107. SEMrush
  108. Moz
  109. Ahrefs

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