Running a business isn’t an easy task. With so many tasks, projects, and even people to work with it would be nearly impossible to run a modern day business without the various tools and services to manage these projects, grow your online presence, and interact with your audience.

So, if you’re looking for the best marketing tools to elevate your business, then this list will give you a good starting point to jump start your success.

Best Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software: HubSpot

If your business requires a lot of communication with leads and customers, a CRM is an absolute must. This will allow you to keep track of every email, phone call, live chat, and even physical mail that you send or receive with this contact. All of this information is crucial so anybody in the company can pick up right where they left off and there is no ambiguity across any of the communications.

The best free CRM is HubSpot. If you’re a smaller business without much cash laying around, then HubSpot will certainly satiate your CRM needs. In addition, HubSpot has a lot of additional tools and services, including ones for marketing, operations, and sales.

Alternatives to HubSpot: Pipedrive, Zoho CRM, Salesforce

Best Tool for Advertising: Google Keyword Planner

Running ads is one of the best ways to get your product or service in front of the right people. Paid advertising through platforms like Facebook, Google, and TikTok can really boost your company’s presence and awareness.

But the right ads with the wrong copy will cost you a lot of money, and you likely won’t see a return on your investment. That’s why Google Keyword Planner is a brilliant tool for your arsenal.

With Google Keyword Planner, you’re able to input keywords that are related to the product, service, brand, or business you’re marketing for. Once you’ve inputted those keywords, Google will provide you a list of search terms and their search volume so you can determine whether it’s a good keyword to target with your ads.

Alternatives to Google Keyword Planner: Ahrefs, SEMrush, WordStream

Best Service for Ad Management: YŌK Digital

When it comes to ad management, you can run all of the ads on each platform (Facebook, Google, Reddit, YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, etc), or you can run them in one dashboard to save yourself a lot of time.

That’s where YŌK Digital thrives. YŌK Digital allows users to connect all of their ad accounts into one convenient dashboard. Additionally, YŌK has a robust platform with integrations into advertising platforms like Hulu, Rolling Stone, and many more.

Best Social Media Management Tool: Hootsuite

Social media is certainly a necessity in today’s day and age. The best place to connect with your customers is through social media, and having tabs open for each site is not ideal or efficient. 

That’s where a social media management platform like Hootsuite comes into play. Hootsuite allows users to connect multiple social media accounts into one convenient dashboard. This way you’ll be able to manage messages, likes, comments, and more from one dashboard instead of multiple. 

Alternatives to Hootsuite: Buffer, Sprout Social, MeetEdgar

Cream of the Crop Tool for Deep SEO Research: Ahrefs

When it comes to searching for how to better position your business online, it comes down to a few things. But one of the main things is search engine optimization (SEO). Without the proper SEO, search engine’s will have a more difficult time recommending your content to the right people. SEO is done for the website’s copy as well as its blog (if there is one). 

One of the prime programs for SEO is Ahrefs. Their tool allows users to audit their website to see how it can be improved, as well as analyze competitors, find keywords customers are searching for, learn about a niche’s top performing content, and track ranking progress across search engines.

Alternatives to Ahrefs: SEMrush, Monitor Backlinks, Moz Pro

Best Tool for Creating Engaging Graphics: Canva

Your business needs to look enticing online and in-person. Without engaging graphics for your logo, social media posts, or blog posts, your business may not get the attention it deserves. And not every business has the budget to hire a graphic designer.

Canva is one of the best tools for content creation, including social media graphics, header images for blog posts, and email newsletters.

Alternatives to Canva: Adobe Express, Visme, Stencil

Best Product for Marketing Events and Selling Tickets: Eventbrite

Certainly there will be a time when you need to sell tickets to an event that your business will host. Events are a great way to network with customers, prospects, and other businesses, as well as grow your brand awareness.

There are a myriad of ways to sell tickets, but one of the best ways is through Eventbrite. It’s a Rolls Royce in the world of event ticketing and is free to use.

Alternatives to Eventbrite: TicketBud, Eventbee, Eventzilla

Best Service for Selling Digital Downloads: Gumroad

Digital downloads are a way for your business to spread its awareness and solidify its expertise. By offering downloads to PDFs, keynote presentations, or even an exclusive course, this gives your “cold leads” a way to test the waters before they jump in and purchase one of your big ticket products or services.

The best way to sell these digital downloads is through Gumroad. It’s built for content creators to sell their digital downloads. It’s free to use the service, but Gumroad will take a commission on the sales you earn. As you sell more products, their commission decreases. 

Alternatives to Gumroad: WooCommerce, Shopify, Payhip

Best Tool for Website Optimization: Hotjar

Your website should be optimized for search so the search engines can crawl and recommend your site to the most relevant audience. But once it’s optimized and you’re getting traffic, do you understand how these people are using your website? Can you follow the typical visitor through one of their journeys?

That’s where Hotjar comes in. They will show you exactly how each visitor is interacting with your website. This information is vital because you can make user experience changes to your website to increase the user’s experience and hopefully improve your site’s bounce rate.

Alternatives to Hotjar: Smartlook, FullStory, Microsoft Clarity

Best Email Marketing Program: ActiveCampaign

Email marketing is a must-have in the world of digital marketing. Paid advertising on social media is great, and garnering a following on those platforms is also wonderful. But, if that platform goes under next week you lose your followers’ information. That’s why collecting email addresses is so important. If TikTok goes under tomorrow, you’ll still have a way of contacting people.

The best email marketing platform for small- to medium-sized businesses is ActiveCampaign. It’s very robust and easy to use. From sending a single email blast to your users to complex automations, ActiveCampaign has a lot to offer.

Alternatives to ActiveCampaign: Mailchimp, Sendinblue, Constant Contact

Simplest and Best Project Management: Asana

Managing yourself and the team of people working on various projects is made easy with project management software. There are a lot of options for project management software available, but one of the easiest and straightforward is Asana. 

Asana’s simplicity allows users to focus on working and not building out complex workflows. Simply create an account, invite your team, set up a project, and start adding tasks and assigning them to your team. 

Alternatives to Asana: Monday.com, Notion, Wrike