Marketing Tools to Help You Automate, Analyze, and Meet Your Goals

Marketing tools help marketing professionals juggle the many tasks they complete on a given day. From drafting emails, creating campaigns, writing content, and collaborating with influencers, one of the marketers’ most vital skills is their ability to manage multiple projects at once—all to create awareness for products, services, and brands. Marketing tools can help you do just that, all while easing the workload and streamlining your daily tasks. 

What is a marketing tool?

A marketing tool is a valuable device or application that can help you be more effective and efficient as a marketing professional promoting a brand on behalf of a client. The term describes various materials and techniques used to perform your job. In today's technology-rich world, marketing tools usually refer to digital tools like software or online platforms that support tech-savvy marketing teams. 

Types of marketing tools

Marketing tools vary by company, needs, and goals. Some tools become integrated into a company's daily operations, while others have limited use, like project management software used by marketers to manage team campaigns. 

While many marketing platforms exist, they generally fit into these categories:

1. CRM

Customer relationship management (CRM) software keeps customer records and helps brands communicate with prospective and existing customers. This robust marketing tool combines sales, marketing, and customer support into one place, tending to give brands a more holistic view of customers.  

More specifically, a CRM builds customer profiles. It tracks every email sent, question asked, or purchase made by a customer and your team's response. The system helps teams delegate jobs, create to-do lists, schedule demos, and set reminders to ensure each contact receives the necessary assistance and attention at every sales funnel step.   

Automation features allow marketing teams to program certain tasks, like emailing a new subscriber. At the same time, robust reports give decision-makers the information needed to make real-time choices. 

Common CRM tools

• Salesforce

• Zoho CRM

• Hubspot CRM

Learn more about CRM with Salesforce Sales Operations Professional Certificate:

Read more: What Is a Customer Relationship? Definition + Business Strategies

2. Social media marketing tools

Social media tools can help you schedule, publish, and analyze content across your social channels. According to HubSpot, 90 percent of marketers say building an active audience on social media is critical to success [1]. With scheduling tools, you can plan and write posts in advance across multiple channels instead of logging into each platform and manually posting to each one. You can manage your social media channels in one central location as well. 

Another benefit of social media tools is that they offer robust analytics to help you understand who is visiting your channels and how they interact with you. Analytics can show you how successful your content is, allowing you to tailor your posts to your audience for more engagement. 

Common social media marketing tools

• Buffer

• Hootsuite

• BuzzSumo

Read more: 8 Social Media Trends

3. Email marketing

Email marketing remains a staple of the marketing professional’s toolkit because it is scalable, inexpensive, and tested. Email marketing tools allow you to write, send, test, and measure email performance.

Email service providers (ESPs) often have pre-made email templates you can use to send a polished message to customers without tweaking designs, saving you time and allowing you to quickly reuse templates with your company’s branding materials already in place. You can also automate email deliveries, integrate emails with your social channels, and test brand messages to see which resonates with recipients. 

Common email marketing tools

• Mailchimp

• AWeber

• eSputnik

Read more: What Is Email Marketing?

4. Event marketing tools

Many marketers rely on event marketing tools to ensure the success of each event, be it a trade show, conference, or workshop. Seventy-two percent of event marketers say in-person events are crucial to an organization's marketing strategy [2]. With event-planning software, you can sell and track tickets, collect customer data, stay organized, and collaborate with the event committee. Event marketing tools also allow you to use design elements so your event has a cohesive look with the rest of your branded materials.  

Common event marketing tools

• Eventsquid

• HoneyBook

• Webex Events

5. Data analytics tools

Effective digital marketing relies on excellent data to help you understand consumer behavior, predict their responses based on history, and create a more personalized customer experience based on their needs and preferences. Data analytics tools, which often include data visualization to make data easier to understand, as well as security features to keep your data safe, and sometimes generative AI to help you build models, ask complex questions in your natural language, and create charts and visualizations effortlessly. 

Common data analytics tools

• Tableau

• RapidMiner

• QlikView

Read moreL 10 Data Analysis Tools and When to Use Them

6. SEO tools

SEO (search engine optimization) tools can help marketing professionals improve brand visibility on search engines. They can help you analyze how your content appears on search rankings and what terms and users you use. You can also use SEO tools to understand how to improve your site’s performance and get AI recommendations about improving your content. 

SEO tools can identify keywords to incorporate into your website to improve your search rankings, audit your site for potential problems, and offer actionable steps to fix them.

Common SEO tools

• Ahrefs

• SEMrush

• Moz

7. Lead capture tools

Lead capture tools help you collect data about potential customers. In its simplest form, this tool allows users to supply their email, telephone, or home address, which sales representatives can use to contact them later. In many cases, lead capture ties into offers you make to your client, such as access to a free newsletter, ebook, or discount code. When users enter their information to access the product, your lead capture tool will create a sort of digital phonebook for sales reps to circle back and contact those potential customers. 

Beyond creating a database of fresh contacts, lead capture tools can also track lead activity, score leads based on their likelihood of conversion, and help reps nurture each lead to encourage more sales.  

Common lead capture tools

• Pipedrive

• LinkedIn Sales Navigator

• Hubspot

8. Marketing automation 

Marketing automation tools put repetitive tasks on autopilot, saving you time and giving your customers a more personalized experience. For example, you might send customers an anniversary promotion every year. Marketing automation tools will automatically determine which promotions need to be sent out every day and complete the task without any extra effort on your part. Other examples of functions that you could automate include reminding customers about an abandoned shopping cart or updating customers on their loyalty status. 

Automation saves marketers time and helps establish a reusable library of content. For instance, marketers can create welcome and birthday emails once and use them throughout the year. 

Common marketing automation tools

• Marketo

• Eloqua

• Pardot

9. Project management

Marketers use project management software to plan, track, and manage multiple projects at once, helping you stay organized and keep the project on track. Project management tools often allow you to project completion dates, assign budgets, delegate tasks, monitor quality, and identify problems quickly. 

You can expect tools to include visuals, like Gantt Charts, so administrators and marketers can see where a project is at a glance. Task lists, reminders, and time tracking are all included, as are communication tools, often in the form of messaging.    

Common project management tools

• Trello

• Asana

• Wrike

Read more; 12 Key Project Management Skills

Next steps

As a marketing professional, you have many tasks to attend to. Marketing tools can help you save time and reduce repetitive tasks. Consider continuing your marketing education through online courses. New marketers could benefit from Introduction to Marketing, offered by the University of Pennsylvania. This class focuses on branding, customer centricity, and go-to marketing strategies.  

For those looking for a more specific area of study, Meta offers the Meta Social Media Marketing Professional Certificate. You could also pursue the Google Digital Marketing and E-Commerce Professional Certificate. You’ll find these options and more on Coursera. Upon completion, gain a shareable Professional Certificate to include in your resume, CV, or LinkedIn profile.