This is a list of top online marketing tools for digital marketers to use in the year 2020 and beyond. If you’re a digital marketer looking for advanced marketing tools, these are the top paid and free digital marketing tools to try now. If you are looking for the best tools out there, you are at the right place.
CRM (Customer Relationship Management)
Salesmate
Salesmate is among the leading CRM software that allows you to automate your sales process and build better relationships with your customers. It comes loaded with several advanced CRM features that enable you to drive sales and retain customers.
The software offers a simplified pipeline view to visualize, organize, and prioritize your deals with customers. It also has smart email features that you can use to track how customers are interacting with your emails.
Ups
- Easy to use
- Allows team members to collaborate on sales
- Detailed analytics and sales activity reports make it easy to visualize your sales team performance
Downs
- Suitable for startups and small businesses
- Too many features can overwhelm users
What’s Salesmate Best For?
With Salesmate it’s easy to keep every activity of your sales process well-organized
How Much Do You Need to Pay for Using Salesmate?
Salesmate has three pricing plans:
- Starter – $12 per user per month (billed annually)
- Growth – $24 per user per month (billed annually)
- Boost – $40 per user per month (billed annually)
Capterra/G2 Ratings
Capterra – (4.7 / 5) stars
G2 – (4.5 / 5) stars
HubSpot CRM
HubSpot CRM is among the top tools for marketing professionals for boosting sales activity and managing interactions with customers. It also lets you have a bird-eye view of your sales pipeline with its interactive visual dashboard.
The software comes with a plethora of features, such as live chat, email templates, and meeting scheduling, etc. that come handy while reaching and connecting with prospects.
Ups
- Responsive user interface design
- Allows you to track all your business deals
- Comes with an integrated email automation system
Downs
- Steep learning curve
What’s HubSpot CRM Best For?
HubSpot CRM allows you to streamline the lead generation and sales process.
How Much Do You Need to Pay for Using HubSpot CRM?
HubSpot CRM has three pricing plans:
- Starter – Starts at $40 per month
- Professional – Starts at $400 per month
- Enterprise – Starts at $120 per month
Capterra/G2 Ratings
Capterra – (4.5 / 5) stars
G2 – (4.3 / 5) stars
Social Media Marketing and Management
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is among the top-rated social media management software providing marketers the ability to manage all their social media campaigns. By having this software on your side, you can easily plan, create, and schedule all your social media campaigns with relative ease.
It’s also possible to manage your social media teams effectively with Hootsuite. You can set different permission levels for individual team members and control what they can access. You can regulate the permissions separately at the organizational level, team level, and social account level.
Ups:
- Performance monitoring of all your social media from one place
- Allows you to create and manage social media ad campaigns
- View customer messages and queries from different social media accounts and reply to them directly from Hootsuite’s Inbox
Downs:
- The user interface seems dull and outdated in terms of design
- A fair amount of time required to get familiar with the software’s functionality
What’s Hootsuite Best For?
Hootsuite is the ideal choice for anyone who wants to integrate and manage several social media accounts from a centralized location.
How Much Do You Need to Pay for Using Hootsuite?
Hootsuite has four different pricing plans:
- Professional – $29 per month (1 user) (10 social profiles)
- Team – $129 per month (3 users) (20 social profiles)
- Business – $599 per month (5+ users) (35 social profiles)
- Enterprise – Custom pricing
Capterra/G2 Ratings:
Capterra – (4.3 / 5) stars
G2 – (4.1 / 5) stars
Crowdfire
If you want to manage the social media of your business in a simple and effective way, Crowdfire is the ideal app that you need on your side. It is one of the best social media management platforms and offers best-in-class features to help you stay on top of your social media profiles and campaigns.
By using Crowdfire, it’ll become easier for you to boost your social media engagement and growth. Moreover, the platform allows you to publish content on blogs, and you can also interact with customers to provide them excellent customer service. You can also discover relevant content to share with your audience and even schedule posts to publish them automatically at different times.
Ups:
- Easy to learn and use
- You can curate articles as well as images to be used across your social media accounts
- Queue meter helps you ensure that your social profiles stay active
- Customizable reports simplify the way you measure, track and understand your business’s ROI
- Competitive pricing
Downs:
- Doesn’t work well with LinkedIn
- The free version comes with a limited set of features
What’s Crowdfire Best For?
Crowdfire is flexible enough to meet the social media management needs of individuals, agencies, and businesses.
How Much Do You Need to Pay for Using Crowdfire?
Crowdfire has three pricing plans:
- Plus – $7.48 per month (5 social media accounts)
- Premium – $37.48 per month (10 social media accounts)
- VIP – $74.98 per month (25 social media accounts)
Capterra/G2 Ratings:
Capterra – (4.1 / 5) stars
G2 – (3.9 / 5) stars
Buffer
Buffer is yet another popular app for managing multiple social media accounts using a simple dashboard. You can integrate all the major social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and LinkedIn with the app.
You can draft posts, schedule them, and analyze the performance of each social media campaign. With Buffer, you can harness the power of social media to increase the brand awareness of your organization and drive customer engagement.
Ups:
- Remarkable UI and UX design
- The in-built calendar lets you see all your scheduled content on different social platforms at a glance
- You can share posts with your teammates and ask for approval before publishing them
- It’s easy to measure social media performance and create detailed reports for analyzing how your efforts are paying off
Downs:
- Pricey for individuals and small businesses
- Lacks team management features
What’s Buffer Best For?
Buffers make a great choice for marketers who want a simple and intuitive app for managing social media.
How Much Do You Need to Pay for Using Buffer?
Buffer has two different products for publishing and analyzing performance on social media. Here are pricing plans for each product:
Buffer Publish:
- Pro – $15 per month (1 user) (8 social accounts)
- Premium – $65 per month (2 users) (8 social accounts)
- Business – $99 per month (6 users) (25 social accounts)
Buffer Analyze:
- Pro – $35 per month (8 social accounts)
- Premium – $40 per month (10 social accounts)
Capterra/G2 Ratings:
Capterra – (4.5 / 5) stars
G2 – (4.3 / 5) stars
SocialPilot
If you want to add some automation to your social media management work, SocialPilot is just the right tool. You can add the URL of your business’s website and other websites that you follow to share their blogs automatically on your social media.
With SocialPilot, you can view and reply to messages, comments on multiple Facebook profiles in real-time. The integrated social media analytics lets you analyze the engagement on social posts and also helps to understand the audience’s behavior. Also, you can document the analytic reports of your social platforms by downloading them in the PDF format.
Ups:
- Assign roles to team members and define their access levels
- Content recommendations from across the web
- Bulk scheduling makes it possible to schedule social posts for upcoming weeks or months
Downs:
- It’s somewhat difficult to navigate through the app
What’s SocialPilot Best For?
SocialPilot is particularly great for managing your social media accounts on Facebook.
How Much Do You Need to Pay for Using SocialPilot?
SocialPilot has four different pricing plans:
- Professional: $25 per month (3 team members) (25 social accounts) [billed annually]
- Small Team: $41.66 per month (5 team members) (50 social accounts) [billed annually]
- Agency: $83.33 per month (10 team members)(100 social accounts)
- Enterprise: custom pricing
Capterra/G2 Ratings:
Capterra – (4.4 / 5) stars
G2 – (4.3 / 5) stars
SEO and SEM
SEMrush
SEMrjush is one of the top-rated digital marketing tools for business that you can leverage to plan and monitor all your SEO strategies. It allows you to search relevant keywords for your website, analyze competitor’s SEO strategies, and create SEO-friendly webpage and blog content.
Apart from SEO, SEMrush can also help you with PPC (pay-per-click) ad campaigns and boost your business’s sales. It is a comprehensive software that can meet both your SEO and SEM needs, like backlink analysis, organic traffic insights, content audit, competitive research, and much more.
Ups
- Comes with a wide range of useful tools and features
- Suitable for marketing teams of every size
- Data-driven solutions for developing powerful content strategies
Downs
- Pricing is quite high for individuals, freelancers, and startups
What’s SEMrush Best For?
SEMrush can help you with almost all of your digital marketing strategies.
How Much Do You Need to Pay for Using SEMrush?
SEMrush has four pricing plans:
- Pro – $83.28 per month (billed annually)
- Guru – $166.62 per month (billed annually)
- Business – $333.28 per month (billed annually)
- Enterprise – custom pricing
Capterra/G2 Ratings
Capterra – (4.6 / 5) stars
G2 – (4.5 / 5) stars
Website Optimization and CRO
Hotjar
As a marketing professional, you need to analyze and understand the behavior of users visiting a website. Hotjar is a specialized behavior analytics software that allows you to gain better knowledge about user behavior with features, like heatmaps and visitor recordings.
The software also makes it possible for you to get feedback directly from users. This feedback data is useful for identifying the factors that trigger them to perform certain actions. With Hotjar, you can embed surveys on a website or share it with users to get their feedback.
Ups:
- Easy to set up and use
- Allows visitor targeting using URLs, device and user attributes
- You can export user responses in CSV or XLSX format
Downs:
- Suitable only for websites, you can’t use it for apps
What’s Hotjar Best For?
Hotjar provides important user behavior information that you can utilize to improve the overall user experience of a website.
How Much Do You Need to Pay for Using Hotjar?
Hotjar has three pricing plans:
- Personal (Plus) – $39 per month (unlimited team members)
- Business – Starts at $99 per month (unlimited team members)
- Agency – Custom pricing
Capterra/G2 Ratings:
Capterra – (4.7 / 5) stars
G2 – (4.3 / 5) stars
Content Creation
Canva
Canva is the preferred choice for marketing teams to create visual content that can be used in various marketing campaigns. The best thing about this tool is that it offers professional design templates that allow you to create beautiful graphic content without having hardcore graphic designing skills.
Whether you want to create stunning infographics that engage people with your content or videos to help customers learn better about your product/service, Visually can help you create a wide range of content.
Ups
- Allows you to create a wide range of content
- Comes with several advanced image editing features
- You can use free icons to make your designs more impactful
Downs
- Lack of collaborative features
What’s Canva Best For?
With Canva, you can create eye-catching designs for your marketing campaigns easily.
How Much Do You Need to Pay for Using Canva?
Canva has two pricing plans:
- Pro – $9.95 per user per month (billed annually)
- Enterprise – #30.00 per user per month (billed annually)
Capterra/G2 Ratings
Capterra – (4.7 / 5) stars
G2 – (4.7 / 5) stars
- Creatopy
Creatopy is an intuitive ad design platform that helps you easily craft engaging ads that fit all your needs, including banners and other display ads, social media ads, and video ads. You can start from industry-specific templates and standard sizes or create your own custom designs. By taking advantage of the high-quality stock photo, video and audio libraries, you can truly bring your ads to life.
Due to its automation capabilities, Creatopy allows you to generate large volumes of ad variations with just a few clicks, eliminating repetitive tasks. In addition, the platform gives you the possibility to work in bulk, creating sets of ads that can be edited and downloaded simultaneously.
Ups:
- Access to a mix of automation, animation and customization capabilities,
- Intuitive interface and short learning curve
- Scalable pricing model
Downs:
- It’s a new product, so new functionalities are still under development
What’s Creatopy Best For?
Creatopy makes ad design easy for everyone and comes with a mix of automation, customization and animation options, allowing users to level up their advertising game.
How Much Do You Need to Pay for Using Creatopy
There are four types of plans that users can access: Free, Create, Automate, and Enterprise. The Create pricing plan starts at $17/month (billed yearly).
Capterra/G2 Ratings:
Capterra – (4.6 / 5) stars
G2 – (4.4 / 5) stars
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Email Marketing
SalesHandy
Making effective email marketing campaigns to boost a business’s sales is what SalesHandy can do for you. The tool allows you to automate and track the outreach of emails sent to prospects.
SalesHandy comes equipped with several powerful features that help marketers to take maximum advantage of email marketing. It enables you to create personalized emails to target different customer segments, schedule emails, and track the performance of email campaigns in real-time.
Ups
- Compatible with Gmail and Microsoft Outlook
- Create and save email templates to cut the time required for drafting frequently used emails
- The auto follow-up feature helps improve customer engagement and reply rate
Downs
- The user interface is not up-to-date
- Email tracking can be better
What’s SalesHandy Best For?
SalesHandy is a great tool for managing several email campaigns from a single interface.
How Much Do You Need to Pay for Using SalesHandy?
SalesHandy has three pricing plans:
- Regular – $7 per user per month (billed annually)
- Plus – $16 per user per month (billed annually)
- Enterprise – $40 per user per month (billed annually)
Capterra/G2 Ratings
Capterra – (4.4 / 5) stars
G2 – (4.2 / 5) stars
MailChimp
Mailchimp is an all-in-one integrated marketing platform that is quite popular for its capability to create meaningful email marketing campaigns. You can use this software to draft professional emails for your customers and drive sales.
Its pre-designed email templates and drag-and-drop builder makes it easy to create engaging emails in no time. Additionally, you can manage multiple email campaigns using MailChimp and track all of them in real-time to make sure that all your efforts bring the desired results.
Ups
- The content studio store images and files that you can use readily in emails
- Allows you to create transactional emails, such as order confirmation emails.
- Integrated analytics tools make it possible to analyze audience behavior and engagement
Downs
- Suitable for small businesses
- Lack of advanced features
What’s MailChimp Best For?
With Mailchimp, it’s easy to launch and track email campaigns even if you have little experience of email marketing.
How Much Do You Need to Pay for Using MailChimp?
MailChimp has three pricing plans:
- Essentials – Starts at $10.40 per month
- Standard – Starts at $15.53 per month
- Premium – Starts at $310.50 per month
Capterra/G2 Ratings
Capterra – (4.5 / 5) stars
G2 – (4.3 / 5) stars
Video Marketing
Viewbix
Viewbix is an interactive video platform that marketers can use for improving their video marketing strategies. The powerful video analytics makes it possible to see how your videos are performing and get useful data to optimize videos for better viewer engagement.
By using Viewbix, you can easily identify the sections of your videos that most viewers find engaging. This way, it becomes possible to create meaningful content that delivers messages to your audience effectively.
Ups
- Supports cross-platform distribution
- Viewer engagement analysis and real-time campaign optimization
- You can add links to videos
Downs
- Clunky user interface
What’s Viewbix Best For?
The video marketing solutions offered by Viewbix helps businesses of all sizes to improve their ROI from their video assets.
How Much Do You Need to Pay for Using Viewbix?
- Standard – Starts at $10 per month
Capterra/G2 Ratings
Capterra – N/A
G2 – N/A
VidIQ
For marketers who want to optimize YouTube videos to have a better reach, the VidIQ software is the perfect tool. It allows you to improve the visibility of your videos and expand your audience.
Apart from offering detailed insights for YouTube videos, VidIQ also provides metrics that reveal audience engagement with your videos on Facebook and Twitter.
Ups
- Allows you to perform comprehensive keyword research for YouTube videos
- Analyze competitors and discover content that is working well for them
- It’s easy to know the performance of your YouTube channel with its channel audit feature
Downs
- Do not support integration with many popular social media platforms, like Instagram
- High-end plans are quite expensive
What’s VidIQ Best For?
VidIQ is the best choice if your video marketing campaigns are mainly focused on YouTube.
How Much Do You Need to Pay for Using VidIQ?
VidIQ has three pricing plans:
- Pro – Starts at $7.50 per user per month
- Boost – Starts at $39.00 per user per month
- Boost+ – Starts at $415 per user per month
Capterra/G2 Ratings
Capterra – (5 / 5) stars
G2 – (4.7 / 5) stars
Conclusion
So, there you have it. What is your goal? What strategy do you have in mind? What is your target market? You will need to ask yourself all these questions so that you have a clear focus on what is important to your business. These are the best tools out there, and you will benefit from them.