Social media marketing isn’t easy, but there are plenty of great tools and resources that make it a whole lot easier than it would otherwise be. With so many marketing tools out there, though, it can sometimes be tough to sort the genuinely valuable tools from the ones that are little more than a waste of time and money.
That’s why you’re here. We’ve researched the best and most helpful marketing tools that benefit social marketers the most. Honing your social marketing strategy means benefiting from what the right software solutions can offer you. If you fail to make the most of some of these resources, you’ll run the risk of being left behind by competitors.
We’ve picked out the very best free marketing tools that you can start using right away at no cost to your marketing team, as well as the best-paid tools for those of you willing to push things a little further. Read on now if you want to find out more about these tools and how they might benefit you.
The Best Free Marketing Tools
These marketing tools can all be used for free, and each of them offers something unique for people looking to succeed with their social marketing efforts.
AdsReport
Understanding your ads and how they’re performing for you is vital if you’re going to succeed with your social media marketing strategies. It’s crucial to know when ads are working and when they’re not, and that’s only possible with the help of metrics and tracking them over time. AdsReport makes it much easier and more streamlined to track impressions, cost per click, and other critical metrics when creating ads on Facebook and other social platforms. The insight you gain from this tool will help you make sensible adaptations.
Bit.ly
When you’re producing a lot of content for social media, you’re likely to be posting many links across a range of different social platforms. That’s why it makes sense to use the free link-shortening service provided by Bit.ly. You can’t afford to be wasting characters or making posts look messy with long-tail links. With Bit.ly, your links not only get shortened for free, but those links are then stored in your own database so you can go back and copy them whenever you want to use them again. They also have a QR code generating function that’s very useful too.
Zoho Social
If you need to manage multiple profits simultaneously and work collaboratively with a team, having a good management platform with a range of free features is essential. Zoho Social stands out in this space because it features Facebook lead ads, CRM integration options and advanced reporting solutions. There’s a lot here for people trying to grow profiles, especially on Facebook, without having to spend a lot of money.
Buffer
Suppose you’re looking for a top-level and reliable social media management platform that provides a comprehensive way of overseeing your social strategy. In that case, Buffer is an excellent free option that’s worth considering. If you’re looking for something that does the basics well and doesn’t offer anything too complex or in-depth, the free plan with Buffer will more than likely offer everything you need. You can schedule posts, use the browser extension feature and create content with their video uploader and image creator.
Canva
Whether you’re looking to branch out on Pinterest or Instagram, or you’re simply looking to create more image-centric content for your social strategy, the free platform Canva is essential for you. They provide hundreds of free templates on which you can add bespoke text and image arrangements, helping you to draw attention to your posts and capture people’s eyes as they scroll through their feeds. You can use your own original images or use the library of images that Canva provides for you. It’s a lot of fun and so easy to use.
Loom
If you ever need to capture your screen quickly and easily and then post the recording to social media platforms, Loom is the right tool for the job. It’s very efficient and easy to use, so even people who are not particularly tech-savvy can make use of it as part of a social marketing strategy. You can add text to the screen, provide a voice-over or overlay it with a video of yourself in the corner. If that’s something you often want or need to as part of your strategy, Loom will save you a lot of time.
Headline Analyzer
If you’re using blog content as part of your social marketing strategy, it’s important to consider using a tool such as Headline Analyzer. It’s free to use and helps you to improve your blog content and your headlines in a way that’ll draw in more traffic. Good headlines make a huge difference, but thanks to tools like this, you don’t need to be a seasoned sub-editor to get this right. Headline Analyzer looks at the balance of the words you use, the number of characters, the importance of the first and last words and which keywords are used.
The Best Paid For Marketing Tools
Here are some examples of the marketing tools you can pay for to give your marketing efforts a boost and make your social media marketing easier.
Sprout Social
As all in one social media managing platforms go, there aren’t much more popular right now than Sprout Social, and it’s not hard to see why. There’s a couple of different payment levels you can choose from. It costs $99 a month for the cheapest package and $250 a month for the package with the full range of features. It makes post scheduling easy, engagement is more straightforward and overseeing all of your social strategies in one place couldn’t be easier.
Hypergrowth
Hypergrowth is a platform tailored towards Instagram and Twitter, and people looking to grow their profiles on these platforms. It’s all about helping customers engage with their following on these platforms more efficiently and to attract more people. As the name suggests, the service aims to help people grow and expand in the most efficient way possible. And their features are undoubtedly good at pushing you towards achieving those goals. You’ll start to notice the difference pretty quickly.
AdEspresso
If you’re looking for a tool that makes the process of designing and creating ads a lot easier, AdEspresso is one of the best out there. It’s a fully comprehensive campaign building software, giving you the guidance you need to craft ads and campaigns that’ll help you get the most from your social ad strategy. Whether you’re focusing on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, AdEspresso can help you create ads for all of those platforms and more. After that, it can also help you gain insights into your ads and campaigns’ performance.
Driftrock
There are few better lead generators for Facebook and LinkedIn than Driftrock. Some marketers we know feel there is no tool better at tracking leads from start to finish than this one. If you want to find out more about how your customers interact with your brand and their journey towards conversion, you definitely need to give Driftrock a try. It connects you with the source of your lead generation and then allows you to track it through to the purchase, or not as the case may be. From there, you can start to make sensible changes to your strategies.
Trello
Trello is a tool that does numerous things, but what it’s best for is internal communication. So for marketing teams that contain many different people, Trello makes it easier to communicate, collaborate and ensure everyone remains on the same page with what’s happening with your social strategy. That can make a big difference for growing teams and want to avoid the wastefulness and inefficiencies that often come with bigger marketing teams.
Sprinklr
Many different tools are on offer as part of the Sprinklr platform. Among the most important and valuable of these tools for social media marketers is its ability to plan content and make the most of AI insights into your social strategy’s performance. There’s also a wealth of possibilities when it comes to gathering data on particular demographics.
Followerwonk
For marketers focusing on Twitter and Twitter growth, Followerwornk is a platform and tool you might want to explore. It allows you to track followers, search Twitter bios for people you can connect with, understand your followers’ demographic makeup better, and find accounts with follower overlap. If your sole aim is to maximize your Twitter presence and you want to grow your audience in a way that makes sense, give Followerwonk a try and see how it changes things for you.