[ad_1]
When most folks think about marketing, output comes to mind. Finished blog posts, ads, and campaigns take center stage.
But, if you’ve ever done marketing yourself, you know that output is just the tip of the iceberg. Most work goes into input — the planning and communication that ensure quality output. Marketing management is one aspect of this input that keeps everything running smoothly.
Effective marketing management software automates and organizes the process to save time and add clarity. Based on years of experience, we selected 30 software to keep you on top of your work.
What Is Marketing?
The discipline of marketing covers strategies that aim to earn businesses money by drawing customers’ attention and urging them to take action.
Marketing can include:
- Product and market research
- Promotional activities
- Pricing analysis
- Product distribution
What Is Marketing Management?
Marketing management oversees a business’s practical application of marketing to ensure it aligns with business goals. A marketing manager supervises and organizes these elements of marketing:
Marketing Manager Priorities
What Is Marketing Management Software?
Marketing management software is a set of tools that help the user perform marketing management activities effectively through functions like:
Management Software Assists Users Through Functions Like:
- Planning features: Software with marketing planning features assist with strategizing, brainstorming, and budgeting marketing activities. They might help you create a timeline for your campaign or set a budget for a project.
- Communication and collaboration features: Marketing management software involving multiple users often lets you assign, discuss, and approve marketing activities. One of the most popular features of this type is the ability to leave comments on tasks, documents, and projects.
- Budget management features: Some software tracks marketing budgets to help you coordinate your work and resources.
- Campaign, project, and task management features: Marketing managers can also use their software to delegate projects and tasks. Software with this kind of feature allows users to assign activities to different team members.
- Creation features: Software with creative elements enable marketers to write and design copy, graphics, and technology for their campaigns. Examples include photo editing software and content management systems.
- Proofing, quality assurance, and compliance features: After a marketing team member creates copy or design, a manager can use additional software to ensure its quality and compliance.
- Channel features: Marketing management software for channels lets you schedule and publish content on a marketing channel like social media or email.
- Measurement features: Measurement features in marketing software help you track and report your performance. One such function is website analytics which monitors numbers like page clicks and visitors.
- Asset features: Modern marketing involves wrangling digital assets like brand kits, graphics, and documents. Marketing management software that deals with asset management helps you keep them all in one place.
- People management features: When marketing management involves overseeing employees and teams, people management software helps you promote an effective working environment for them.
What Makes Great Marketing Management Software?
What went into our decision to include the software on this list? These factors come into play:
Factors Considered When Assessing This List
- CoSchedule’s head of marketing’s decades of expertise in marketing management
- Ratings and reviews from real users
- Our experience using the software (when possible)
- The software’s ability to meet our definition of marketing management software and serve at least one key function
Not every item on this list will be dedicated to marketing, but they all have effective marketing use cases.
Evaluate Your Software Finalists With This Tool
Before you dig into our list of marketing management software, download our marketing tool research notes template to use as you go. Use the second tab of the spreadsheet to brainstorm your must-have and nice-to-have software qualities. Then, plug them into the first tab and rate the software you try based on those traits.
1. CoSchedule Marketing Suite
CoSchedule Marketing Suite is a family of the following four products that achieve many of the marketing management software features we covered:
Features included in the CoSchedule Marketing Suite
- Calendar Organizer: Plan marketing campaigns and projects
- Content Organizer: Keep your content publishing workflow moving smoothly
- Work Organizer: Delegate and automate work processes
- Asset Organizer: Store your digital marketing assets all in one place
2. CoSchedule Marketing Calendar
CoSchedule Marketing Calendar lets you schedule all your marketing projects on a single calendar, including social media posts for publishing. Marketing Calendar offers powerful project scheduling, and Marketing Calendar Pro helps you save even more time with additional collaboration and automation features.
3. Plannuh
The operational marketing management app Plannuh lets you plan campaigns, manage your budget, and measure your marketing performance. It automates the financial aspects of marketing for easy comparison with your marketing plan and operations. By letting you oversee your marketing plan and budget in the same place, Plannuh makes resource management much more straightforward.
4. ClickUp
ClickUp is a multi-purpose project management software that you can tailor to marketing using existing or custom templates. Add your marketing projects and tasks, then slot them into a timeline for smoother project management. Then, use the built-in collaboration features to comment on assignments and proof documents.
5. TeamGantt
As its name suggests, TeamGantt organizes your work into a dynamic Gantt chart. The Gantt chart format places all of a project’s steps into an ongoing timeline. TeamGantt kicks that visualization up a notch with features like commenting, task dependencies, and resource management.
6. Monday
Monday combines project and task management with document collaboration to serve as a headquarters for your daily operations. This software has multiple views, including calendars, tables, and Gantt charts. You can also connect over 100 app integrations to sync projects and collaborate on files.
7. Jira
Based on agile project management, Jira’s roots lie in bug and project tracking for developers. After the software’s expansion into other markets, marketers can use Jira for product marketing and detailed work management. Plus, it has a generous free plan for small teams.
8. Trello
If you like kanban boards, you’ll love Trello. This app organizes projects and tasks into cards on a board that you can swap around according to their status. Trello’s “power-ups” let you connect apps, add features, and change views to make your board truly yours.
9. Zoom
Zoom is a video conferencing app with a free base plan, making it accessible to small businesses and personal users. If you really want to invest in your collaboration options, you can opt for a paid plan with features like mail, a calendar, cloud storage, and caption translation.
10. Slack
Marketing teams use Slack to meet and discuss over text. This software excels at instant messaging and asynchronous collaboration because of its customizable channels. But remember that you’ll need a paid plan if you want a long-term archive of your messages.
11. Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams incorporates video meetings, group chats, online calls, and document collaboration into one software. Its features are geared towards internal collaboration over text, voice, and video. While it only offers paid plans, it has cheaper plans than Zoom and integrates with Microsoft 365’s apps.
12. BambooHR
BambooHR is a people management app that handles the entire employee experience. You can manage employee records, oversee the hiring process, onboard new team members, and track your team’s work time. Think of this software as a jack-of-all-trades for your people ops workflow.
13. 15five
While BambooHR covers various aspects of the employee experience, 15five revolves around employee engagement and performance. The tools in the 15five family gather employee feedback, guide performance reviews, manage employee growth goals, and help managers grow their skills.
14. Google Workspace
Google Workspace comprises Google’s most popular document management and collaboration apps — Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Drive, Google Docs, and Google Meet. While its core apps are free by default, you can pay for a Google Workspace plan to connect them through custom email, dedicated cloud storage, and user management.
15. Microsoft 365
The software originally available under the Microsoft Office umbrella, plus some new friends, is now available in one bundle as Microsoft 365. This package includes Word, Excel, and Powerpoint for creating fundamental office documents and other popular Microsoft products like OneDrive. If you’re also interested in Teams, every Microsoft 365 plan includes it as well.
16. Adobe Creative Cloud
Adobe Creative Cloud includes Adobe’s software for photo editing, digital illustration, animation, and video editing, such as Photoshop and Premiere. These apps are some of the most well-known and used creative tech worldwide. Keep in mind that Adobe charges an early cancellation fee for its annual plan if you aren’t sure how long you want to commit to it.
17. GoVisually
GoVisually’s proofing platform allows marketers to collaborate with designers to add markups and annotations to designs. It also lets you review and compare revisions to give you complete control over the proofing process. If you manage marketing for an agency, this software also includes client collaboration features for easier review.
18. GoProof
With GoProof, you can oversee the entire creative collaboration process from brief to final version. In addition to proofing features, it provides creative brief templates and intake forms to ensure marketers and designers have the same vision in mind. GoProof also has an Adobe integration that delivers proofing features directly in apps like Photoshop.
19. Red Marker
Think of Red Marker as a spell check, but instead of looking for spelling errors, it evaluates your marketing compliance. This software looks out for phrasing in your marketing materials that could cause legal issues.
20. Litmus
Litmus enables you to design and manage an email marketing campaign from the ground up. After you create an email in Litmus, you can analyze its performance, test different versions, and collaborate with others on your design.
21. WordPress
WordPress offers an online content management system (CMS) and a downloadable option to add to your self-hosted website. Using the WordPress CMS, you can add content to your website, customize its appearance, and manage its functionality.
(Quick disclaimer: I also write for WordPress.com, but I was not involved in the decision to include WordPress on this list.)
22. HubSpot
Looking for software to help you manage multiple channels and teams? HubSpot provides interconnected software for marketing, sales, customer service, and operations. Its marketing capabilities include automation, a CMS, email campaign management, and social media management.
23. ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign automates marketing, email marketing, and sales. Use its email campaign, marketing automation, and sales tools together to create a smooth customer experience. This software also includes landing pages and forms for further customer engagement.
24. Mailchimp
If you’ve heard of Mailchimp, you might associate it with email only, but it also offers marketing automation and social media management. Many of its newer features use AI to offer suggestions for improving your content.
25. SproutSocial
SproutSocial serves as an all-in-one social media management tool. In addition to the scheduling, publishing, and analytics features you’d expect, it offers a managed DM inbox and social listening. Plus, its employee advocacy tools provide resources that help your team members share your social content.
26. Aprimo
With Aprimo, you can manage your marketing assets in the context of your current projects and budget. Aprimo provides asset, project, and budget management tools you can use individually or together.
27. Google Drive
Whether on its own or as part of Google Workspace, Google Drive stores files and offers collaboration tools. If you don’t have any special security considerations, you can use Google Drive as-is for free. For added security, invest in a Google Workspace plan that includes Drive.
28. Dropbox
Dropbox provides encrypted cloud document storage in its base product. You can also add other Dropbox products for document signing, transfer, and backup. The free plan caps at 2GB of storage, so most teams must invest in a paid tier.
29. Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a free tool for measuring and reporting your website performance. It tracks data like page visits and visitor behavior to help you understand what content resonates with your customers the most.
30. Heap
If you want to capture your typical customer’s journey on your website, Heap offers the tools for it. This software walks you through the actions your customers take on your website with its Session Replay feature. The Illuminate feature points out parts of your website that might be holding your visitors back from taking action and suggests how to change them.
Nail the Rest of Your Marketing Management Workflow
Once you have the right tools for marketing management, your job’s not done. You’ll need to integrate them into a workflow that accounts for your strategy, team, and resources. Our marketing management tips will teach you what to consider throughout your journey as a manager.
[ad_2]
Source link
