Top Tools for Maximizing Marketing Productivity & Efficiency in 2021 (NEW)

Please note: As of October 26, 2023, the Marketing Insights add-on is no longer available to new customers. Don’t worry, our award-winning software still offers robust support for marketing teams to measure and report on performance data. Check out our pricing page or contact our sales team for more information.

Pulling together a team with all the right skills to market your business should be the hard part - not how they actually work together. The bad news is that this challenge happens far more often than you would think. But the good news is with the right tools, you can turn around your team’s Kanban productivity issues and thrive...

There are dozens of tools out there for every facet of marketing team productivity, but in this article, we’ll just look at the top tools that every member of your marketing team can use to boost their effectiveness. From your content strategist to your social media manager, here are the top 40 tools for maximizing the productivity of your marketing team.

1. Tools for the Project Manager
2. Tools for the Content Strategist
3. Tools for the Social Media Manager
4. Tools for the Data Analyst
5. Tools for the SEO Expert
6. Tools for the Technical Specialist

The Project Manager

The job of the project manager is to oversee the work of the other team members. As a result, they need to be able to track deliverables, implement a cohesive workflow, increase accountability, and manage internal and external communication. Here’s how to help  them be more productive:

• 1. Wrike

   Plan and organize your online marketing campaigns in a real-time workspace. Manage incoming requests, delegate tasks, and track work progress in real time. Wrike delivers that in a real-time workspace.
  

• 2. CoSchedule

  An editorial calendar makes the life of a marketing project manager a lot easier, and CoSchedule is one of the best. Plan your blog, social media, and more in one place.
  

• 3. IBM Watson Marketing

  Formerly known as Silverpop, IBM Watson Marketing is a digital marketing platform that unifies your marketing automation, social media, email and more. You can converse with prospects on multiple platforms while measuring your relational results.

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• 4. Evernote

  Evernote is a great (and free!) system for managing notes, source documents, important information, and even travel receipts. With its tagging system and multiple input options, nothing will ever be lost. It’s a favorite among the marketing/growth team at When I Work.
  

• 5. Widen

  Widen allows you to create, manage and distribute content easily. This digital asset management software can be a hub for your marketing materials.
  

• 6. Google Trends

  What keywords are trending near you right this minute? Google Trends shows you the data and related visualizations so you can figure out if an idea or a keyword is good enough for your campaign.
  

• 7. Prezly

  And what about stakeholders? Prezly makes it easy to track and communicate with them so they hear all the latest updates on your projects. The tool gives you newsrooms, contact management, and even outreach.
  

• 8. Zoom

  When it's time for your marketing meetings, Zoom gives you HD video conferencing, screen sharing from desktop or mobile, recording features, and the ability to choose full screen or gallery views for video streams.
  

Content Strategist

Your content strategist curates existing content and creates new content, releasing it according to your content marketing plan. This content ultimately helps bring in new prospects and customers who are already warm to your ideas. Support these initiatives with the following tools:

• 9. SmartOcto

  SmartOcto is a content analytics system that sends out notifications whenever it finds actionable suggestions for improving your brand story or business model. This tool also illustrates the true value of your stories with graphs and charts that include historical data.
  
  

• 10. Curata

  Being able to find and share relevant content in a time effective way is vital, and Curata is the top tool for positioning your brand as a thought leader.
  

• 11. Ahrefs

  This tool is useful for checking SEO backlinks as well as accomplishing research on competitor keywords. What content pieces are your competitors ranking for? Which sites link back to your posts? Ahrefs answers it all.
  

• 12. Snappa

  Being able to edit your image dimensions, and have them immediately usable within a specific network such as Facebook or Twitter is a necessity for today's content marketers. Not to mention being able to add text, effects, or additional graphics. Snappa makes it easy to do all of the above.
  

• 13. Office 365 

  Let's face it, no content marketer is complete without access to this set of tools. Office 365 gives you the complete suite of online Office apps including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneDrive, and OneNote.
  

• 14. Grammarly

   Nothing says “unprofessional” like content full of errors. Grammarly will catch up to 10 times more errors than your normal word processor.
  

• 15. Canva

   Today’s content is visual as well as written, and Canva is a top tool for creating graphics for every content channel.
  

• 16. Piktochart

   Infographics are a great way to share information in an easy-to-consume way, and Piktochart provides graphic templates to make it simple to create them.
  

Social Media Manager

A social media manager is an essential team member in today’s digital marketing environment. They will share content, engage followers, and measure the success of your social campaigns, so support them with the right tools:

• 17. Buffer

   Scheduling content to multiple social media platforms in one easy system is key to social media success, and Buffer makes it possible. Link all your profiles and share content to them immediately or over time.
  

• 18. Mailshake 

  Mailshake allows you to build relationships with influencers who can then share your message with their followers. Influencer marketing is a vital part of a great social media program.
  

• 19. BuzzSumo 

  BuzzSumo allows you to see what content is performing best on your own social accounts as well as those of your competitors. Discover content, research your rivals, and more.
  

• 20. Sprout Social

   Your social media manager doesn't always act alone, and Sprout Social allows multiple users to schedule, analyze, and promote content across several platforms.
  

• 21. Crowdfire

   How about a free app on mobile or desktop that helps you grow your crowd on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and more? Crowdfire has growth tools that make it easy to build an audience — in a totally legal way.
  

• 22. Pixlr 

  Every social media manager needs tools to edit graphics on her mobile device. And Pixlr is one of the more robust apps (and still free) that give you the ability to create collages, or add overlays, effects, filters, and text to your social images.
  

• 23. Hootsuite 

  Collaborate on your social media accounts with Hootsuite. The tool gives you multiple users, multiple social profiles for all your brands/products, and even analytics reports to track social success. A must for managing all your channels.
  

Data Analyst

All the marketing in the world doesn’t matter if you don’t know how well it’s performing. Your data analyst fills this important role, keeping track of your marketing efforts and the ROI that you are getting. Here are the top five tools your analyst should be using:

• 24. Optimizely 

  Optimizely allows you to do A/B testing, track conversion opportunities, and analyze results throughout your website.
  

• 25. Kissmetrics 

  If ecommerce is part of your business, you need to know how your customers are behaving on your site and checkout page. Kissmetrics ties anonymous activity to a user profile once the visitor becomes a customer.
  

• 26. Simply Measured 

  Simply Measured allows you to analyze social media results across nine different platforms and creates comprehensive reports.
  

• 27. SEMRush

   You probably run paid and organic search campaigns, but do you know how well your keywords are doing? SEMRush gives you the ability to track their performance.
  

• 28. Outreach

   How do you know what your prospects are reading, or downloading? What messaging resonates with them? Outreach, though primarily a sales engagement tool, also has powerful analytics for marketers to look into audience engagement with content.
  

SEO Expert

Who's in charge of the backlinks, the keywords, and checking to see if the website is healthy in terms of being indexed by search engines and being found by prospective customers? None other than the SEO specialist, who must wrangle intent out of (sometimes random) search phrases. These tools help your SEO expert to efficiently manage it all.

• 29. Google Search Console

   It's free and it's extremely powerful for monitoring the health of your website. Google Search Console is an SEO tool that allows you to see your performance on Google Search, how many of your URLS have been indexed, and CTR. Essential learning.
  

• 30. SEOquake 

  This free Chrome/Firefox browser extension gives you the power to conduct on-page SEO audits, examine internal links, and compare domains and URLs in real time. SEOquake packs a lot of power into a tiny bunch of code.
  

• 31. Google Keyword Planner 

  And of course, the quintessential SEO tool that gives you search results that can be immediately actionable. It helps you find long tail keywords, with the least amount of competition, and with high search volume. Best thing about Google Keyword Planner? It's free.
  

• 32. MozBar 

  This Chrome browser extension adds a toolbar from Moz.com, which makes SEO research convenient. MozBar shows you Page Authority and Domain Authority of any site or page, it also allows you to find and highlight keywords on a page, and more.
  

• 33. Yandex Metrica 

  Yandex is the Russian Google and Yandex Metrica is their analytics tool. Included in this free service are heat maps, as well as the ability to replay video of user sessions — you get to see how users are interacting with your website. (Just make sure to warn users first, okay?)
  

Technical Specialist

Your technical specialists are often troubleshooters for your other team members, but they have their own needs as well. Someone who knows how to code, develop apps, work with APIs, and build retargeting sequences is an indispensable team member - and all of the following tools will help them get the job done:

• 34. AdRoll

   Retargeting is how you keep your message in front of your prospects when they don’t initially buy. AdRoll allows you to reach 98% of the internet to make the magic happen.
  

• 35. AppMachine

   Developing mobile apps is a great way to extend your marketing reach, and AppMachine makes it easy for your technical specialist to do it. You can develop apps for events, holidays, or special promotions.
  

• 36. Zapier 

  Sometimes you use a variety of tools that don’t natively talk to each other. Fortunately, with Zapier, integration becomes simple. Set up as many zaps as your account allows, and watch your tools react to each other easily.
  

• 37. Stack Overflow 

  Even the best technical specialist has questions, and Stack Overflow is a free community-sourced help platform for programmers of all kinds.

Tools for Remote Marketers

Since the pandemic began in 2020, 71% of workers are doing their job from home all or most of the time. As globalization continues at lightning speed, marketing project management is relying on tools that make communication, time management, and calculating productivity easier.

• 38. Clockify

  Clockify is a free time tracking software for teams. Its features include automatically generated spreadsheets for streamlined reporting and sharing.

• 39. Slack

   Slack directly integrates with your project management software providing in-platform notifications and task previews. Slack also allows users to create new tasks within their chat that can be automatically added to Wrike.

• 40. MediaValet

   MediaValet is a file storage system that makes it simple to save, organize, and search for all your team’s marketing assets in one place. You can also visually markup content and keep your project management software up to date with automatic syncing.

What are the best metrics for measuring marketing productivity?

• Customer engagement
  The process of selling products and services involves a series of steps that help customers move closer to a purchase. Monitoring where and how often customers interact with each step will give better insight into high marketing team performance. For example, marketers can track how many people sign up for the company newsletter, read blog posts, or participate in social media live streams.
• Lead generation
  Make a note of which services generate the most leads over time. Also, record which is most consistent, as these may not be the same. Knowing where your leads come from will help your team take advantage of the 80-20 rule for future campaigns.
• Conversion rate
  Now that you know which steps have the best engagement and what channels you get the most leads from, you can monitor how many prospects are converting from each area. This number directly translates to revenue. Study where and why you see the conversions in some areas but not in others, then apply those lessons to the rest of your marketing sales funnel.

How to measure marketing productivity and efficiency with Wrike

Wrike helps digital marketing leaders make informed decisions about their company's digital marketing KPIs. Its visual reporting features make it quicker to digest and share. Both remote and in-house marketing teams built for success rely on the data from these reports to make smart decisions.

Wrike for Marketing Insights simplifies the management of performance metrics by automatically distributing them to the right people at the right time. This feature helps digital marketers get the most out of their work.

It's also possible to integrate data from various marketing platforms into Wrike, which serves as a single point of truth. This way, your team can see how your work is performing across all channels at once and identify areas of improvement.

Wrike saves and measures key marketing data points, including:

• Channel type
• Marketing campaign names and important dates
• Currency
• Campaign expenses
• Ad revenue
• Engagement from views, clicks, and impressions
• Transaction revenue and purchases made from conversions
• Email marketing opens, clicks, and time spent on each funnel phase
• New and returning website users
• Shop impressions, sessions, and conversions

Ready to make your marketing team more efficient? Start your free trial.