We asked clients how they allocate time on data-related activities and found that 63% spend it on tasks that can be at least partially if not fully automated. That’s a lot of inefficiency. Your clients need you to be an efficient, strategic partner providing insights they can’t get. You need the proper toolbox to make that happen, but many digital marketing agency tools are inefficient and expensive. They can also fragment workflows if you have too many.
Building agency management on smarter systems is the solution, but how do you avoid the high price tag and steep learning curve?
There are plenty of useful tools that are free or have tiered pricing, so you can align your toolkit to your budget without sacrificing the value you offer to your clients. You just have to know which tools are worth your time.
The 12 tools in this list aren’t the typical free social media management tools or analytics software; they’re intelligent solutions designed to help you experiment, refine and scale without unnecessary overhead. Read on for the best options for marketing analytics and reporting, project management, business development and more.
Reporting and analytics marketing agency tools
If you’re pulling reports manually, your account managers spend countless hours tinkering with different platforms, manually entering data and chasing team members for project updates.
It’s a time drain that leaves too little room for strategic work. But the right analytics tools can end up being a growth driver, not just a time-saver. Sixty-six percent of agencies think advanced analytics are a major growth opportunity.
Agencies identify advanced analytics as a major growth opportunity.
We’re biased, but we think Funnel is the best solution for marketing agencies because it can automate data gathering and create meaningful reports at scale, helping you deliver value to a growing list of clients.
1. Funnel: Automatic data gathering and analysis
Example of a Funnel report for performance marketing clients.
Reporting can get overwhelming as your agency grows. Each client has unique requirements. Keeping reports consistent across data sources can stretch resources thin as you get more of them.
Yet the stakes in improving this process have never been higher. Only 40% of marketers believe agencies are invested in their long-term growth, and 47% say agencies fail to focus on measurable outcomes. To bridge this gap, you’ve got to move beyond task execution and become an indispensable strategic partner.
Funnel is built to tackle this challenge by automating much of what makes reporting stressful. It can aggregate data from many different sources, like Google Analytics and BigQuery, to eliminate the process of manually pulling, cleaning and transforming data into insights.
You’ll end up with a single source of truth that saves you hours of tinkering inside spreadsheets while also giving you a foundation for offering advanced analytics. This foundation is our data hub, a centralized place that houses all your cleaned and normalized marketing data. You can then build on that data with measurement methodologies like marketing mix modeling (MMM) and triangulation, which give you an edge as a source of strategic decision-making for clients.
Pricing
Our pricing plans are based on flexpoints, which determine how much data you can process, connect and store within our platform. Here’s a quick breakdown of the available plans:
- Free plan: Start using Funnel at no cost with up to four connectors. There’s no commitment or credit card required, and there’s no time limit.
- Starter plan: This plan is a simple solution for small agencies to centralize and securely manage marketing data and access reporting tools.
- Business plan: Get access to more integrations, destinations and support for growing agencies.
- Enterprise plan: Streamline operations with advanced data connections and enterprise-level support.
Top project management tools for marketing agencies
Project management accounts for 20% of an agency’s success, but more than 70% of projects face serious challenges.
Managing projects is a core challenge for agencies.
Changing how you approach projects to avoid these challenges requires tools that keep you organized and create frictionless communication. This starts by using a project management tool that keeps your team on track without bogging them down.
2. Asana: task management tool
Asana is intuitive project management software used by over 150,000 customers in 200+ countries. Its free Personal plan offers features like lists, calendars and workflow automation.
You can use Asana’s list view to organize ongoing client campaigns. Adding tasks to the list, such as "Develop social media copy" or "Review ad performance," will keep you organized. Assign tasks to team members to keep them accountable and automatically get an overview of project timelines.
Pricing
Asana’s pricing plans are built to grow with the number of projects your agency takes on.
- Personal plan: This free option is built for teams managing tasks with basic workflows and a few project views.
- Starter plan: This one is ideal for digital marketing agencies that need automation, enhanced security and AI reporting.
- Advanced plan: It’s designed for teams requiring advanced workflows, portfolio management and resource tracking for complex projects.
3. Notion: internal documentation tool
Notion combines task management, collaboration and documentation into a single platform.
If you outsource content marketing to freelancers, for example, you might find it useful to host a centralized style guide in Notion. It includes features to toggle between pages, embed examples and link to approved assets. You can also leave comments and see updates in real time.
Pricing
As digital marketing agencies scale, Notion’s pricing plans add features like advanced permissions, forms for client input and automation to optimize workflows.
- Personal plan: This free plan offers basic task management and collaboration tools.
- Plus plan: Access helpful features such as advanced project views and increased collaboration capabilities.
- Advanced plan: Benefit from advanced workflows, reporting and resource management tools.
- Enterprise plan: At this level, you get enterprise-grade security, compliance and dedicated support.
4. monday.com: overall project management tool
Over 225,000 customers trust monday.com. It’s a market leader in project management and stands out for its powerful customization and automation capabilities. You might use it to manage multiple client campaigns by creating a dedicated board for each client.
Within that board, you can create rules to automatically notify clients about complete deliverables or remind team members of upcoming deadlines. A forms feature allows multiple clients to submit creative requests, which can be immediately logged as tasks.
Pricing
As agencies scale, monday.com plans unlock advanced dashboards that consolidate client data across boards for a comprehensive overview.
- Free plan: This option provides basic tools to organize simple projects.
- Basic plan: This tier has essential collaboration features for teams starting to scale their workflows.
- Standard plan: You get advanced planning tools like timelines and integrations.
- Pro plan: Benefit from more automation tools, reporting and multi-board dashboards.
- Enterprise plan: This tier is made for enterprise-level security, permissions and scalability.
Top business development tools for marketing agencies
Total marketing agency revenue was expected to reach $70.1 billion in 2024. Capturing a larger share of this market is easier with business development tools. Look for tools that align prospects with your expertise by identifying firmographics and prioritizing accordingly.
Marketing agencies have the opportunity to capture millions in outsourced projects.
With the right tools, you can organize research, manage pipelines and avoid missing major opportunities.
5. Pipedrive: lead and pipeline management tool
Pipedrive offers intuitive CRM tools and pipeline management features. You can visually track leads through typical funnel stages like "initial contact," "proposal sent" and "closed deal," and prioritize leads based on custom research.
Its automation features eliminate repetitive work like follow-ups or logging calls. For example, you can use it to automatically send a follow-up email three days after a proposal is sent. It even integrates with tools like Slack, Gmail and Google Calendar, so those automations work with tools you already use.
Pricing
You can start using Pipedrive with a free trial. The pricing tiers include plans with various automation tools and the ability to see how potential clients have engaged with your proposals.
- Essential: This plan has pipeline management, client management, reports, integrations and personalized onboarding.
- Advanced: You get email tracking, group emailing and automation tools for growing teams.
- Professional: This plan includes advanced AI tools, e-signatures, lead routing and revenue forecasting.
- Power: You benefit from project tracking, enhanced permissions and 24/7 support.
- Enterprise: This plan provides full feature access, unlimited customizations and advanced security.
6. HubSpot: marketing automation tool
HubSpot’s customers include companies like DoorDash and Reddit. The free version includes features like email, forms, live chat and ads.
You can use it to set up personalized digital marketing campaigns, capture leads using forms that sync with your customer relationship management (CRM) tool and provide real-time client support through live chat.
Pricing
Upgrading to paid HubSpot marketing plans unlocks more automation features, integrations and website hosting tools.
- Marketing Hub Starter: This plan includes email and content marketing, basic automation and space for 1,000 contacts.
- Starter Customer Platform: It combines Marketing Hub with CRM and other hubs for a complete customer platform.
- Marketing Hub Professional: At this level, users benefit from advanced automation, personalization and reporting for growing businesses.
- Marketing Hub Enterprise: This plan is tailored for enterprises who need AI-powered insights, multi-touch attribution and advanced analytics.
7. Mailchimp: email tool
Mailchimp works with over 11 million users to provide email marketing tools. Its free version allows you to build simple campaigns for your clients with pre-built email and landing page templates and basic automation. For example, you could set up a welcome email series for new subscribers or automate follow-ups after newsletter sign-ups.
Pricing
Mailchimps paid plans help make your email marketing efforts more dynamic and automated.
- Free: This plan has a limit of 500 contacts, basic email tools and forms and landing pages.
- Essentials: This tier offers flexibility and support for up to 10x contacts, multiple audiences and the ability to remove Mailchimp branding.
- Standard: Users benefit from advanced segmentation, A/B testing and user behavior targeting.
- Premium: Your clients can have 10,000+ contacts. This plan also offers dynamic content creation tools and custom templates and comes with priority support.
Top AI marketing agency tools
Agencies are at a pivotal point where the ability to evolve determines whether they grow. Part of that evolution is replacing manual processes with AI. Sixty percent of marketers already use AI for tasks like generating images and writing copy.
Marketers are adopting AI at high rates.
Learning to work with AI could be the difference between scaling your business and being replaced by agencies that do.
8. Writesonic: content creation tool
Writesonic lets users generate high-quality, SEO-optimized content. Its AI Article Writer can create long-form articles for clients based on real-time data competitor content.
It’s especially helpful if you’re managing a blog targeting multiple industries. For example, if you’ve got a Black Friday article targeting the beauty industry, you could use Writesonic to adapt it for finance, fitness and technology. It will automatically insert keyword research requirements and target links.
Pricing
Writesonic’s paid plans allow you to create content in bulk and integrate other platforms using their API.
- Free: This plan offers 25 credits, some Writesonic and Chatsonic features and basic content generation.
- Individual: This option has 100 credits, GPT-4.0, unlimited Chasonic use, advanced templates and SEO tools.
- Standard: More suitable for agencies, at this tier, you get 1,000 credits, team collaboration tools and advanced AI tools like bulk article generation and topic clustering.
9. Invideo: video tool
40 million users use InVideo to produce professional-quality videos without the typical upfront costs of production. The free plan offers 10 minutes of weekly AI-generated content.
You can create social media marketing ads and explainer videos and test faceless YouTube videos to promote a new service and see how well your audience responds. You’ll get access to 16 million stock media alongside AI-driven scriptwriting.
Pricing
Invideo’s paid tiers offer more minutes and key features like voice cloning.
- Free: This plan offers basic AI generation at 10 minutes a week, limited exporting, 10GB of storage and access to standard media.
- Plus: This second tier expands AI generation to 50 minutes a month and provides iStock assets and 100GB of storage.
- Max: Users get 200 minutes of AI generation a month, storage and voice cloning.
- Generative: This plan features high generative credit limits and full access to premium features.
10. Admaker by Picsart: ad creative tool
Admaker by Picsart is used by over 150 million people for professional ad creation. It uses customizable templates and AI-generated visuals and ad copy to build ads for various social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Pinterest.
If you’re managing ads for an e-commerce client, you could upload a product image, use AI, add an appealing background and create AI-generated ad copy. The platform makes it easy to test ad variations with export options in multiple sizes.
Pricing
Admaker’s paid plans allow you to produce more ads and offer additional exporting features.
- Free: This plan includes 16 images a month and lets you export images in multiple sizes.
- Lite: Go up a level for 200 images, ad copy generation and social media exports.
- Plus: Benefit from 400 images and all Lite Plan features.
- Pro: The highest tier includes 800 images and unlimited ad copy generation for Facebook.
Top graphic design marketing agency tools
Design-driven companies achieve 32% more revenue growth over five years than those who don’t consider it a priority. But, scaling high-quality design is usually expensive and challenging.
Design-driven companies outperform those who don’t prioritize it.
Whether for you or your clients, design should be a priority. These agency tools make professional design more accessible and easier to scale.
11. Figma
Figma works with over 10 million users to make collaborating on design mockups more accessible. It lets you comment directly on website frames, ads or other design projects.
It is useful for gathering feedback from client marketing teams more intuitively. Instead of gathering feedback on an image in a separate email thread or spreadsheet, clients can comment directly on your work.
Pricing
Upgrading to Figma paid plans increases the number of collaborative files and features you can access.
- Free: This plan gets you started with three collaborative design files, unlimited personal drafts and basic file inspection.
- Professional Team: Level up for unlimited design files and additional features like team libraries and advanced prototyping.
- Organization: This plan offers organization-wide libraries, design system analytics, branching, merging and private plugins.
- Enterprise: The enterprise tier comes with advanced security features, support and API integration.
12. Adobe Express: professional design tool
Adobe Express is meant for quick designs on the go. It offers over one million templates, stock images and over three million free photos. You can use its drag-and-drop editor to create content like social media posts, ads or flyers.
Pricing
Opt for Adobe Express paid plans to unlock tools like background removal, resizing for multiple platforms and over 100 million media assets.
- Free: Sign up at no cost and access basic editing tools, 10,000+ templates, Adobe Stock assets and 5GB of storage.
- Premium: This plan has AI tools, premium templates and advanced editing features, and it includes 100GB of storage.
- Teams: This plan comes with real-time collaboration tools and 1TB of storage.
De-risk innovation with free marketing agency tools
The real power of marketing agency software isn’t just its cost-saving potential. It’s the ability to de-risk innovation. For agencies, experimenting with free tools creates a sandbox to test workflows, processes and marketing strategies before committing resources.
This “try-before-you-invest” model is more than frugal; it empowers agencies to evolve their services with agility. Those who embrace these tools can redefine their roles as task executors into adaptable, insights-driven partners who scale smarter and deliver cutting-edge value in an increasingly competitive market.
Start your journey with Funnel today, where better insights build better client relationships.
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