A successful marketing campaign require marketing agencies to use a holistic approach. In addition to an airtight strategy and talented, organized team members, agencies need intuitive marketing agency software that is user-friendly, saves time, and streamlines the ultra-complex digital marketing process.
Why Proper Software Is Crucial to Marketing Agencies
For any given client, digital agencies need to be able to handle CRM, SEO, Facebook ads, graphic design, copywriting, video marketing, and A/B testing. Complex projects can easily get overwhelming and confusing since they have wide client portfolios in different regions and large teams working on different projects. To streamline the whole process, both large and small digital agencies need project management tools that help them with time and task management.
Marketing automation is an absolute MUST for any professional agency. Agencies typically have a highly diversified client portfolio that includes region, lingo, terminology, and needs.
Using the right software to automate this process allows agencies to break down their clients by industry, geography, and other particularities, which ensures that every campaign is properly targeted.
Best Marketing Agency Software
Marketing agencies often have several goals, including growing market shares, targeting new customers, raising brand awareness, entering new markets, building customer loyalty, launching new products and services, and, of course, increasing sales and profits.
With a multitude of strategies available, marketing agencies need specialized software to help them move toward these goals. Here’s an overview of the presented ad agency software in this article:
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Creative Project Management Software
Creative Project Management Software
Handling a lot of parallel projects can be tough. You need to allocate the existing resources and stay on top of your client projects. Hence, using proper project management software is vital.
Filestage
Filestage helps marketing agencies collaborate on creative projects and enables them to involve all internal and external stakeholders who are part of the project. The tool allows you to build your own content review process to quickly request and get feedback from clients or team members. Filestage makes sure that all project information is stored in one place while removing any project bottlenecks. The project progress is automatically documented and all files and projects are easily accessible to the whole team.
G2 Crowd Rating: Filestage scored 4.9/5 on average on G2 Crowd.
Pricing: You can easily test Filestage for free for 2 weeks. If it’s a fit, pricing starts at $89/month.
Asana
Asana is a project management tool that helps your team to manage creative projects while always staying on top of things. You can easily assign tasks to co-workers and use different ways of structuring projects such as Kanban or lists.
G2 Crowd Rating: Asana has a rating of 4.3/5 stars after 3211 reviews.
Pricing: Asana can be used for free while the paid plans start at $11.99 month and are charged on a per-user-basis.
Basecamp
The project management software Basecamp can be used for internally and externally collaborating on projects. Especially, the ability to integrate with most of your other tools will ensure that you don’t create another data silo.
G2 Crowd Rating: Based on 1,658 reviews, Basecamp has a rating of 4.0/5.
Pricing: Basecamp pricing is easy. It costs $99 per month and includes everything (no project or user restrictions).
Review and Approval Software
After you’ve created deliverables, you’ll send them to the client and wait for his feedback and/or approval. But easier said than done. Often, the client has several change requests and is not always able to communicate them the best way. Review and approval software helps you optimize this process and speeds up your revision cycles.
Filestage
Reviewing media files internally or together with clients often results in a mess. Long email chains and important information that is buried under dozens of other messages slow down the project’s progress. Filestage helps with that. The tool lets you upload your files and share them with relevant reviewers. The reviewers can directly comment on the videos, images or documents. That way, you’re consolidating feedback from different sources while you’re speeding up your feedback cycles.
GoVisually
GoVisually helps you review designs with your team and clients. It’s easy to use and enables you to quickly gather important feedback on your media files.
Pricing: GoVisually’s pricing plans start at $15 per month and goes up to $120 per month.
Visual Inspector
Visual Inspector provides a simple design collaboration software. You and your reviewers can directly comment on media files. That way, you’ll make sure that no feedback is lost. Moreover, the tool can be used from any device.
Pricing: Visual Inspector bills per month per user. Pricing starts at $9 for solo projects. If you have a team, pricing goes up to $79.
Business Proposal Software
Creating new proposals is essential to acquire new clients. But what’s the best way to build proposals that perform well? Using proposal software can help you come up with proposals your prospects will love.
Harvest
Harvest will help you and your co-workers manage your time and let you create basic business proposals without frills.
G2 Crowd Rating: The tool has a rating of 4.3/5 after 300 reviews.
Pricing: Harvest offers a limited free plan. If you want to work on unlimited projects, you have to pay $12 per month/user.
Better Proposals
Better Proposals is great software for providing professional assistance through proposal writing. The tool promises that you can build your proposal in minutes, instead of working on it for hours.
G2 Crowd Rating: Better Proposals scores impressive 4.8 stars (out of 5) while having 21 reviews.
Pricing: Starts at $24/month and goes up to $129/month (without extras such as additional users).
Proposify
Proposify is another good place to start building your proposal. It has numerous templates from different industries, so you can definitely find what you’re looking for.
G2 Crowd Rating: Based on over 100 reviews, Proposify was able to get 4.7/5 stars on average.
Pricing: The TALL plan costs $25/month, the GRANDE plan $75/month and the VENTI $250/month.
CRM Software for Agencies
The purpose of customer relations management (CRM) software is enhancing the customer’s experience and flawlessly organizing all the data about their customers.
CRM software has an incredible ROI. According to this study, you get $8.71 back for every dollar spent.
CRM is the best, if not the only, way to keep track of your customers and give them service that will keep them loyal. Without CRM, it’s hard to have lifetime customers.
Below, we review a few of the available CRM software.
Hubspot
HubSpot is an inbound marketing and sales software, but it also offers a powerful CRM module.
The free module is probably the best-integrated CRM software around. Users can have up to 1,000,000 contacts, users, and storage—all for free!
G2 Crowd Rating: Based on just over 2,000 reviews, HubSpot scored 4.2 out of 5.
Pricing: It’s completely free for unlimited users, but you can get additional features for $50 to $1,200 per month.
Freshsales
Freshsales is a go-to platform for businesses that are small or just starting out. It’s a single contact with a simple, easy-to-navigate interface that helps salespeople during many stages of their process.
While the dashboard (or lack thereof) doesn’t give an intuitive overview of sales and leads, the platform is simple, flexible, thorough, and easy to use.
G2 Crowd Rating: Based on 437 reviews, Freshsales scored 4.7 out of 5.
Pricing: Ranges from free to $79/month
Podio
Podio has high-level, all-in-one functionality. It’s highly flexible and customizable, which is great for big companies. But it could be a little overwhelming for smaller ones.
G2 Crowd Rating: Based on 230 reviews, Podio scored 4.3 out of 5..
Pricing: Ranges from free to $24/month
SEO Tools
Digital agencies take care of their clients’ content marketing. The content needs to be useful enough to be shared, but should also be optimized for SEO. That way, it can be easily found on search engines. SEO tools are there to make this job easier.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs is mostly used to help get quality backlinks and find link-building opportunities. You can use this tool to completely analyze the traffic and keywords of any URL. It’s probably the best tool for backlink analysis.
G2 Crowd Rating: Based on 143 votes, Ahref scored 4.5 out of 5.
Pricing: Ranges from $99 to $999 per month
SEMRush
SEMRush is probably the #1 tool for keyword research. It makes easy-to- analyze competitor keywords, and even lets you create templates to guide you while you’re writing content that’s optimized for SEO. If you’re not sure if you should pick Ahrefs or SEMrush, have a look at this post that compares Ahrefs vs SEMRush.
G2 Crowd Rating: Based on 430 votes, SEMrush scored 4.5 out of 5.
Pricing: Ranges from $99 to $399 per month
Moz
If you’ve been involved in SEO for a while, chances are you’ve already heard of Moz.
It’s best for SMEs that need a simpler, more passive way to track their SEO progress than using a marketing and SEO pro. It also offers weekly reports and optimization guidance.
G2 Crowd Rating: Based on 236 votes, Moz Pro scored 4.4 out of 5.
Pricing: Ranges from $99 to $999 per month, with a yearly option
Tools for Facebook Ads
With 2 billion users on Facebook, brands need to be visible on this social media giant. And since newsfeed algorithms favor people over brands, marketers have no choice but to use Facebook ads. But since managing Facebook ads is insanely time-consuming, these tools can help an agency and its clients save time and money:
AdEspresso
AdEspresso is a self-service product for ad management. It has a user-friendly interface that is probably the best-suited option for beginners. Step by step, it shows you how to split-test your Facebook ad campaigns, and even offers a Canva integration to easily create images.
G2 Crowd Rating: Based on 14 reviews, AdEspresso scored 3.7 out of 5.
Pricing: Ranges from $49 to $499 per month
Qwaya
Qwaya mainly focuses on A/B testing Facebook ads. With this easy-to-manage, customizable platform, you can split-test a wide range of aspects of your campaign.
G2 Crowd Rating: One reviewer gave Qwaya a rating of 4.0 out of 5.
Pricing: Ranges from $149 to $349 per month
Hootsuite Ads
Hootsuite Ads is an enterprise-grade manager of Facebook ads that is highly customizable. In early 2017, Hootsuite acquired AdEspresso, and now both can be used on the same platform.
G2 Crowd Rating: Based on 2,292 votes, Hootsuite scored 4.1 out of 5.
Pricing: Ranges from $29 to $599 per month, and has a customizable enterprise rate for specific needs.
Graphic Design Software
In marketing campaigns, good graphics work wonders. Of course, information and content are important, but it needs to be presented in or accompanied by, professional graphics. Graphic design is one of the top factors to consider during a digital marketing campaign, and a digital marketing agency would be nowhere without proper graphic design.
Photoshop
So famous that its name is now a verb, Photoshop is software for designing and editing photos and images, and it lets designers do pretty much anything they want. It’s quite complex, so it’s mainly used by editing professionals.
G2 Crowd Rating: Based on 6,463 reviews, Photoshop scored 4.7 out of 5.
Pricing: Photoshop is about $120 a year.
Figma
Figma helps you creating user interfaces or general graphics. For example, you can easily design app prototypes or websites wireframes. On top of that, the tool allows you to collaborate with your team on these deliverables.
G2 Crowd Rating: Figma scored 4.4 stars on average.
Pricing: The tool charges $12 per month/user while allowing you to work on unlimited projects. For the enterprise plan, you have to contact the Figma team.
Piktochart
Piktochart is a graphic design software that lets you create amazing visuals while collaborating with your co-workers (or clients). It doesn’t require a lot of experience and helps you come up with designs in minutes offering a lot of great templates.
G2 Crowd Rating: Piktochart has a rating of 4.5/5. 94 people reviewed the software yet.
Pricing: The cheapest paid plan starts at $12.5 per month while you can start for free.
Copywriting Software
We’ve all heard that content is king. That’s why the best digital marketing agencies invest in the best copywriters, editors, and proofreaders to make sure they’re only producing top content. Some software also makes it easier for these teams to create content.
Google Docs
Google Docs is an incredible online platform that lets you create documents in the cloud. It allows users to access documents from any device. Plus, it saves everything automatically, so you’ll never have to worry about losing your work again. It’s also the easiest way to work on a document in a team, since users can see updates and comments in real time.
G2 Crowd Rating: Based on 2,532 reviews, Google Docs scored 4.7 out of 5.
Pricing: Ranges from free to $10/month (for unlimited storage)
Grammarly
Grammarly is a fantastic tool for both writers and non-writers. Working as a word plug-in and browser extension, Grammarly checks spelling, grammar, and plagiarism.
G2 Crowd Rating: Based on 449 reviews, Grammarly scored 4.6 out of 5.
Pricing: Ranges from free to $20/month, with an annual option
Copyscape
In writing, the most important thing to avoid is plagiarism. Copying somebody else’s work is a huge, huge, huge, huge no-no. Copyscape is software that lets you check the originality of your content, as well as whether anybody else is stealing your work.
G2 Crowd Rating: No entry on G2 Crowd
Pricing: 3c per search (for the first 200 words), then 1c per additional 100 words
Video Marketing Software
Video is an extremely powerful marketing tool. Videos are highly accessible, entertaining, and engaging, and no digital marketing strategy would be complete without them. Hence, this video marketing software might be worth a try.
BombBomb
BombBomb is software for video email that allows the user to record, send, and track custom emails (in lieu of traditional text emails) to customers for higher engagement. When personalizing communication, it lets marketers go the extra mile.
G2 Crowd Rating: Based on 149 reviews, BombBomb scored 4.4 out of 5.
Pricing: Ranges from $468 to $1499/year
Biteable
Bitable is a platform that allows anybody to create a video for any need, including charity events, birthdays, business explainers, social media, and slideshows. With templates and an easy-to-use platform, it’s ideal for people who don’t know how to use more sophisticated video editors.
G2 Crowd Rating: No votes yet
Pricing: Ranges from free to $23/month
Wistia
Wistia is a platform that allows companies to create, manage, host, and share videos, without being overwhelming or hard to navigate. It makes it easy to embed your video on any site and track video performance. Wistia is a go-to product for many businesses that use video marketing!
G2 Crowd Rating: Based on 125 reviews, Wistia scored 4.6 out of 5.
Pricing: From free to $99/month, with an optional, advanced, customized rate
A/B Testing Software
Most businesses don’t have the psychic power to figure out what their customers prefer or are more attracted to. And when businesses spend a motherload of cash on advertising and marketing, they don’t want their work to be based on chance. So the way to get the best results is through testing and deep-data analyses.
A/B testing (aka split testing) involves comparing two versions of an ad or website, in order to see which performs better. So which tools are best for digital marketers?
Google Optimize
In an effort to reduce ‘tool overload,’ Google has integrated Google Optimize with Google Analytics, so it’s one-stop shopping for testing and analyzing traffic data. It’s the best choice for companies that heavily rely on Google products, since everything is easily integrated.
G2 Crowd Rating: Based on 14 votes, Google Optimize scored 4.4 out of 5.
Pricing: Google Optimize is free.
Optimizely
For developers who prefer flexibility and configurable testing solutions across many channels, Optimizely is the A/B testing solution of choice. It offers real-time support, and it’s probably the best choice for professionals and experts. However, it requires a subscription for each separate component.
G2 Crowd Rating: Based on 103 reviews, Optimizely scored 4.3 out of 5.
Pricing: Pricing is unclear, since it isn’t listed on the website. It seems to start at $49 for every 1,000 unique visitors, so it could get quite steep.
VWO
VWO claims to be the easiest A/B testing software in the world. It’s all-in-one testing software that doesn’t require any coding skills. In addition to testing features, it offers guidance about customizing websites.
G2 Crowd Rating: Based on 127 votes, VWO scored 4.2 out of 5.
Pricing: Pricing isn’t listed on the VWO website.
File Sharing Software
Sharing files with your clients sounds easy but can become difficult, for example, if you want to transfer large videos via email. There are several services that easily allow you to send all kinds of files.
Dropbox
Probably, you’ve heard of Dropbox. They’ve got more than 12 million paying customers. Basically, it provides a centralized file workspace that can be accessed by your whole team. The tool makes it easy to share files with internal or external stakeholders. The good thing: Your clients don’t need to be Dropbox users as well. They can access your files without signing up.
G2 Crowd Rating: Dropbox already got over 4,500 reviews and scored 4.4 stars on average.
Pricing: The free plan provides you with 2 GB of storage space. Paid Dropbox plans start at $10 and offer additional features and more space (>3 TB).
Google Drive
Google Drive is a collaborative workspace that can be used by your whole team. If you already signed up for a Google account, you already have access to Google Drive as well since both are automatically connected. Google Drive lets you upload huge files and structure your existing data using folders. You can easily share files internally and externally while always staying on top of access settings.
G2 Crowd Rating: Google Drive scores amazing 4.6 stars out of 5 after 2,800 reviews.
Pricing: Google Drive can be used for free. Paid plans start at $1.99 per month (100 GB).
Filestage
Filestage is more than a file sharing software but you can definitely use it for sharing (and collaborating on) large media files. If you not only want to transfer files but you’re also looking for a versatile feedback solution, consider trying Filestage. After sharing the files, the recipients will be able to directly comment in the video, image or document. Hence, Filestage can be your centralized media file hub and pool all of your internal and external feedback.
Collaboration Software
Collaboration software helps your team quickly discuss important topics without being in the same room. Especially, if you’re working together with remote workers, implementing the right collaboration tool is key.
Slack
Slack is a communication and collaboration tool and lets you create different channels for different purposes. For example, you can have a dedicated channel to discuss your ad campaigns. Moreover, you can integrate most of the other tools you’re using. For example, you could integrate Slack with Asana and receive notifications in a specific channel if there are new comments related to a particular project in Asana.
G2 Crowd Rating: The tool received 4.4 stars on average (basedon 13,742 reviews).
Pricing: Slack can be used for free. If you need further functionality, you’ll have to choose one of the paid plans. They start at $8 a month for the Standard package ($15 a month for Plus package).
Fleep
Fleep helps you streamline your internal team communication. It’s a text-based collaboration software that can be also used for email communication.
G2 Crowd Rating: Fleep scored 4.3/5 on average.
Pricing: The pricing is easy. You have to pay €5 per month/user. If you need an Enterprise plan, you have to contact the Fleep team.
Flock
Flock is another collaboration software that allows you to centralize your internal communication. That way, you can work on your projects in real time while staying on top of all communication streams. Of course, you can also invite external people such as clients to optimize the outgoing communication as well.
G2 Crowd Rating: Flock scored 4.4/5 stars after 41 reviews.
Pricing: Flock offers a free and a pro plan. The pro plan costs $4.5 per month and is billed per user.
Time Tracking Software
If you work together with freelancers or if you’re billing your clients on an hourly basis, you’ll have to use time tracking software to track working time. There are a lot of great tools that allow you to simply (and almost automatically) track your time while working.
Timely
Timely is a simple tool for time tracking that can be used by freelancers and agencies. Of course, it’s based in the cloud and you’ll need internet access to use Timely. The tool provides you with a great reporting feature and helps you analyze the work of your teams. You can also easily integrate it with many other apps such as Xero or Mailchimp if needed.
G2 Crowd Rating: Timely got four 5-stars reviews so far.
Pricing: The software can be used for free if you don’t want to track more than 5 projects. If you need access to an unlimited number of projects, you’ll have to pay for Timely. Pricing starts at $7 per month.
Toggl
Toggl is a time-tracking software that is used by leading companies and not only allows you to track the amount of time you’re spending on tasks but also the websites you visit and the apps you use during that time. Moreover, it provides several apps ensuring that Toggl can be used on any device. The tool also provides an audit feature that checks the reports of your team for recurring patterns or inefficiencies.
G2 Crowd Rating: The popular tool has a rating of 4.3/5.
Pricing: Toggl isn’t available for free. Their paid plans start at $10 per month and are charged per user.
Everhour
Everhour is another option if you’re looking for time-tracking apps. If you put emphasis on integrations, Everhour might be your choice. The tool offers integrations with the most important tools such as Asana, Trello or GitHub. Everhour allows you to check time-tracking of your team in real-time and stay on top of things. Moreover, the tool provides a strong reporting functionality and even enables you to send invoices.
G2 Crowd Rating: Based on 60 reviews, Everhour has a rating of 4.7/5.
Pricing: The tool offers a free trial. After the trial, the cheapest plan costs $5 per user per month.
Invoicing Software
After finishing a project, it’s time to reap the fruits of your work and to send out the invoice. Invoicing software simplifies the process behind and lets you concentrate on the things you’re the expert on.
Wave
Wave is a free invoicing software that is built for freelancers and agencies. It’s very simple and you don’t have to download anything to get started. Wave allows you to create invoices in minutes and keep your finances organized.
G2 Crowd Rating: Based on 144 reviews, Wave scored 4.4 stars on average.
Pricing: Wave can be used for free.
Freshbooks
Freshbooks is one of the major accounting software players and was founded in 2004. Its 500k+ users love the versatile features. Freshbooks not only lets you manage your finances and create invoices but even provides a time-tracking feature. Moreover, you can also handle payments in different currencies if needed.
G2 Crowd Rating: Freshbooks has a rating of 4.6/5.
Pricing: The software charges $15, $25 or $50 per month (depending on the plan).
Zoho Invoice
Zoho Invoice is an easy to use invoicing tool that is perfectly suited for agencies, small businesses and freelancers. The software lets you create invoices in minutes without any frills.
G2 Crowd Rating: Zoho Invoice scores 4.6 stars out of 5.
Pricing: The tool provides a free plan. The paid plans start at $9.
The Right Advertising Agency Software
With so many different aspects in play, digital marketing agencies are like wizards that perform magic on your website. And a wizard is nothing without his wand, right? Digital marketing agencies need high-performing tools to do their jobs, and each tool offers different solutions to specific needs.
What’s your favorite marketing tool? We’d love to hear about it in the comments below!
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Max is a SaaS enthusiast and loves actionable content that provides direct value.