The Best Marketing Planning Software List
Here’s a shortlist of the best marketing planning software:
Marketing planning software is exactly what it sounds like: an easy way for marketing teams to coordinate and collaborate online on marketing projects, tasks, and assets. After all, marketing is not a "one-person show"—you'll need a way to communicate marketing plans to the whole company and then pass tasks down to graphic designers, copywriters, social media managers, and partners.
This article will help you quickly compare and evaluate the best marketing planning software and other marketing management tools. I'll outline best use cases, key features, software integrations, pros & cons, and pricing information.
What Is Marketing Planning Software?
Let's start with the basics. Marketing planning software is a tool designed to assist businesses in developing, organizing, and executing their marketing strategies effectively. It provides a comprehensive platform that enables companies to create and manage marketing plans, track key performance indicators, analyze market trends, identify target audiences, allocate budgets, schedule campaigns, and collaborate with team members. This software serves as a valuable resource for marketers, helping them streamline workflows, improve communication, and ultimately drive better results in a rapidly evolving and competitive marketplace.
Overviews Of The Best Marketing Planning Software
Here’s a brief description of each of the software that are featured on this top 10 list.
Wrike
Best free marketing planning software
Wrike is a work management platform that provides marketing features and functionalities. The platform can help managers support their team members and ensures they know that every understands what they’re supposed to do. It’s an excellent choice for task management and planning marketing campaigns.
Why I Picked Wrike: Wrike works well as a marketing planning software due to its robust features and user-friendly interface. The free version of Wrike allows users to create tasks, set priorities, and collaborate with unlimited team members, facilitating efficient marketing project management. It provides a centralized platform for marketing teams to plan and execute campaigns, with features like customizable templates, interactive Gantt charts, and shared calendars. The ability to assign tasks, set deadlines, and track progress enhances collaboration and ensures accountability. The AI-driven task automation within Wrike recommends priorities and tasks for your teams based on your campaign’s performance and status.
Wrike Standout Features & Integrations
Key features include its dynamic request forms, which allow teams to create custom forms to streamline project intake and request processes, ensuring all necessary information is captured upfront. This feature simplifies project initiation and reduces manual back-and-forth communication. Wrike's advanced resource management enables businesses to optimize resource allocation by providing a clear view of team members' availability, workload, and capacity. This feature helps prevent resource overloading and facilitates resource-leveling.
Integrations include 400+ pre-built native integrations, including integrations with the most popular file management software from Microsoft, Google, and Dropbox, along with sales and marketing software from Salesforce and Marketo.
Pros
- Free plan for unlimited users
- Built-in scheduling & time tracking
- iOS & Android apps
Cons
- Important features hidden deep in menues
- Feature-packed means learning curve
GanttPRO
Best for managing projects with Gantt charts
GanttPRO is a project management platform that can be used to plan and manage marketing roadmaps, campaigns, and individual projects. You can set project timelines, manage and assign tasks, and run reports to understand your team's performance with the software.
Why I Picked GanttPRO: The software has an intuitive visual interface that allows you to easily set up your project plan or craft a marketing campaign. You can then outline your tasks, set task dependencies, and assign specific tasks to specific team members. You can also rank your projects by priority to facilitate a more agile workflow.
In addition to its project management features, the software also has team collaboration tools. Employees can work together on shared tasks, share files and messages, and tag each other in projects. Users receive notifications when they have deadlines coming up, tasks to complete, or they've been tagged in the system.
GanttPRO Standout Features & Integrations
Features include interactive Gantt charts, task and resource management, time tracking, collaboration tools, project templates, integrations with other productivity tools, and a range of reports.
Integrations include Slack, Google Drive, MS Teams and Jira Cloud. More integrations are available through their API.
Runrun.it
Best for automations
Runrun.it is a marketing planning software that allows you to organize all your team’s work on one centralized platform. The business intelligence tool inside the platform can also help you track the most vital details so you can make the best decisions and prioritize work. You’ll understand where any bottlenecks are, which tasks are the most time-consuming, and when team members can handle a specific demand.
Why I Picked Runrun.it: RunRun.it offers comprehensive project management functionalities, allowing marketing teams to create and assign tasks, set priorities, and track progress. It provides a centralized hub for collaboration, enabling seamless communication and file sharing among team members. The platform's time tracking and reporting features enable teams to monitor project costs and measure the performance of marketing activities. You can tap into dozens of project templates to quickly build out your strategy and also standardize processes by building templates of your own from scratch.
Runrun.it Standout Features & Integrations
Key features include its AI-powered task prioritization and its integrated time tracking capabilities. RunRun.it's AI-driven task prioritization analyzes factors such as due dates, dependencies, and team availability to intelligently prioritize tasks, helping teams focus on the most critical and time-sensitive assignments. Additionally, RunRun.it's integrated time tracking allows team members to track the time spent on each task accurately.
Integrations include over 4000 other applications through Zapier, which requires a separate subscription and may incur additional costs. These applications include Microsoft Teams, Zendesk, Salesforce, Google Analytics, and Slack. You can also use their Restful API to build your own.
Pros
- Dozens of project planning templates
- Can automate repeating tasks
- Free plan for 5 users
Cons
- Lack of native integrations
- Mobile app has limited functionality
ActiveCollab
Best for digital agencies
ActiveCollab is a super easy-to-use marketing planning software that helps you organize tasks, plan your team’s tasks, and monitor everything from one platform. When using the software, you can set priorities and collaborate with clients and team members in real time. You can also track the time it takes to complete tasks and track your budget.
Why I Picked ActiveCollab: ActiveCollab can be effectively used for marketing planning, particularly by agencies, with a strong focus on its billing and invoicing for work done. The platform allows agencies to create detailed project plans, set milestones, assign tasks, and track progress. With its integrated time tracking feature, agencies can accurately track billable hours for each team member, ensuring accurate client billing. ActiveCollab also integrates with payment gateways like PayPal and Stripe, so clients can pay for services rendered with ease.
ActiveCollab Standout Features & Integrations
Key features include comprehensive time tracking functionality, allowing users to track the time spent on tasks and projects effortlessly. This feature helps teams monitor productivity, accurately estimate project timelines, and analyze resource allocation. Additionally, ActiveCollab's integrated invoicing feature streamlines the billing process by generating professional invoices based on tracked time and project expenses. This eliminates the need for separate invoicing tools, saving time and simplifying financial management.
Integrations include Google Drive, Dropbox, Trello, Basecamp, Asana, Wrike, Slack, Hubstaff, TimeCamp, QuickBooks, Authorize.Net, Braintree, PayPal, Stripe, and TestLodge. You can access more integrations through Zapier, but that requires a separate subscription and may incur additional costs.
Pros
- Useful built-in collaboration tools
- Time-tracking & invoicing capabilities
- Easy to learn & use
Cons
- More customization options welcomed
- Only one asignee per task
GoodDay
Best for customization
GoodDay is an integrated marketing planning and work management solution that provides businesses with advanced planning, management, and tracking capabilities in one platform. You can customize workflows with an agile board and unlimited hierarchies, which provides you with an overview of all assignments, tasks, and teams.
Why I Picked GoodDay: GoodDay allows you to manage your marketing processes with a scheduler, task and time tracker, and daily timesheets. The platform can support your entire work processes end-to-end and automate many of your routine management actions. GoodDay’s expansive set of features allows you to build and customize solutions that reflect and compliment your processes instead of making you change them to fit the platform. With GoodDay, you'll be able to fully configure project workflows, create custom task and project types, add unique field types, and set-up custom views.
GoodDay Standout Features & Integrations
Key features include its customizable workflows and its extensive integrations. GoodDay offers flexible workflow customization, allowing teams to design and adapt their project management processes to align with their specific needs and preferences. Plus, GoodDay boasts a wide range of integrations with popular tools and platforms, such as Google Drive, Slack, Jira, and Trello. These integrations enhance collaboration and streamline the flow of information across different systems.
Integrations include Google Workforce, Slack, and Google Drive. The platform also integrates with over 1,300 applications through Zapier, though that requires a separate subscription and may incur additional costs. If needed, GoodDay has an API that can integrate with any existing systems and workflows.
Pros
- Offers built-in asset management
- Highly customizable
- Robust automation & scheduling
Cons
- CRM functionality could be better
- Not appropriate for complex projects
MyMarketingMate
Best for beginners
MyMarketingMate helps business owners and marketing managers of any size and industry create effective marketing plans. The platform allows you to streamline your marketing planning and track your plan’s progress towards your targets. The software is an excellent choice whether you’re a seasoned professional or have never created a marketing plan before.
Why I Picked MyMarketingMate: One of MyMarketingMate’s most interesting capabilities lies in its marketing plan wizard, which helps you create your plan in a few steps. When creating your marketing plan using the wizard, the platform provides tips and ideas throughout the process when creating a plan from scratch. The system also offers a suite of ready-made plans that are populated with proven strategies for specific goals and industries. This makes it a great tool for beginners who might have not used work planning or project managing tech before.
MyMarketingMate Standout Features & Integrations
Key features include its AI-powered marketing recommendations and its integrated marketing calendar. MyMarketingMate leverages artificial intelligence to provide personalized marketing recommendations based on data analysis and industry insights. Plus, MyMarketingMate's integrated marketing calendar allows users to visualize and manage their marketing activities in a single interface. It enables businesses to plan and track their marketing campaigns, schedule content releases, and coordinate cross-channel efforts.
Integrations are not listed on their site.
Pros
- Completely marketing focused
- Step-by-step wizard to get started
- Plenty of templates to choose from
Cons
- Lack of integrations
- Not cost effective for small teams
BrandMaker
Best marketing resource management (MRM)
BrandMaker is a product management software that enables marketers to plan and manage digital marketing campaigns. BrandMaker is great for product marketers who juggle two or three platforms to keep track of their marketing assets, plan marketing campaigns, and oversee customer engagement data on social media.
Why I Picked BrandMaker: One of BrandMaker’s features I like the most is their approach to global digital asset management (DAM). Their tool, along with workflow and campaign tools, offers a dedicated DAM system with asset control, brand compliance, and metadata tagging features. This is hugely helpful to product marketers who need to distribute photo or image assets to different partners and tightly control the asset proofing/approval stages.
BrandMaker Standout Features & Integrations
Key features include comprehensive DAM system that allows businesses to store, organize, and manage their digital assets in a centralized repository. This feature enables efficient asset search and retrieval, version control, and rights management. Additionally, BrandMaker's marketing resource management functionality provides a robust set of tools for planning, budgeting, and resource allocation.
Integrations are sparse and mostly rely on developers using the BrandMaker API to build their own connections. Instead, BrandMaker encourages users to expand software functionality with their own first-party modules: Media Pool, Brand Template Builder, Job Manager, and Marketing Planner.
Pros
- All-in-one marketing solution
- Flexible & scalable platform
- Clean, clear user interface
Cons
- Lack of integrations
- Slight learning curve
MarketPlan
Best for dynamic marketing plan maps
MarketPlan.io can help you plan your customer’s path from visitor to lead and from sale to a lifetime customer. It’s a powerful platform that offers your business the functionalities you need to plan, execute, project, and optimize your marketing strategy. MarketPlan.io has ten built-in marketing applications, such as a blog planner, email sequence, keyword planner, and social plan.
Why I Picked MarketPlan.io: MarketPlan.io helps you align your marketing efforts and align them to help you optimize your customer’s journey by offering dynamic and customizable marketing plan mapping. You can use visuals to plot how marketing assets get made, who touches then and when, and expected platforms they will alnd on (and in what priority). The platform also provides a canvas that gives your marketing campaign a central location for easy management. You can also keep your entire team on the same page, add comments, assign tasks, send files, and provide progress notifications.
Standout Features & Integrations
Key features include collaborative editing, allowing multiple team members to work on marketing plans simultaneously. This feature fosters real-time collaboration, enabling teams to brainstorm ideas, make updates, and provide feedback seamlessly. Additionally, MarketPlan.io's Live Presentations feature enables users to present and share marketing plans in real-time with stakeholders or clients.
Integrations include most payment processors, ClickFunnels, Shopify, and WooCommerce.
Pros
- Collaborative editing capabilities, text & video
- Funnel planning & visualization
- Generate tracking code & UTMs
Cons
- Free plan for 1 user only
- Tedious to set up tracking for multiple ads
Keen
Best for data-driven companies
Keen is a powerful marketing planning software designed to help businesses streamline their marketing strategies and achieve their goals. With its user-friendly interface, customizable features, and comprehensive planning tools, Keen empowers marketing teams to collaborate, track progress, and make data-driven decisions.
Why I Picked Keen: Keen is a robust marketing planning software that excels in budgeting and financial analytics. The platform offers intuitive budgeting tools that allow marketing teams to create, allocate, and track budgets for their campaigns. With Keen, businesses can easily set budget goals, monitor spending, and make informed financial decisions. Furthermore, Keen provides advanced financial analytics capabilities, enabling teams to analyze the performance of their marketing initiatives, measure return on investment (ROI), and gain valuable insights into cost-effectiveness.
Keen Standout Features & Integrations
Key features include predictive analytics to provide users with insights into future campaign performance based on historical data and industry benchmarks. This feature helps marketing teams make informed decisions, optimize their strategies, and anticipate potential outcomes. Additionally, Keen's campaign performance tracking enables users to monitor and evaluate the success of their marketing campaigns in real-time.
Integrations include AMP and Pixlee TurnTo. Their API offers a further means to build two-way data sync with other platforms but developer/IT support is required in most cases.
Pros
- Predictive campaign analytics
- Budgeting & financial analytics
- Mixed media modeling + multi-touch attribution
Cons
- Lack of integrations
- Costly API (no data usage caps)
Mediatool
Best for media management
Mediatool is a cloud-based marketing platform that helps marketing teams plan, measure, and report on their activities. The platform gives a complete overview of campaigns’ performance in real-time and helps you make better decisions by combining plans and results from data. When using the software, you can monitor expenses and filter data by brand, market, product, media type, or promotional channels.
Why I Picked Mediatool: Mediatool functions as a comprehensive marketing planning tool with robust media management capabilities. The platform enables marketing teams to efficiently plan, execute, and analyze their media campaigns in one centralized hub. Mediatool allows users to set campaign objectives, define target audiences, allocate budgets, and schedule media placements across various channels. Its media management capabilities include features such as media inventory management, media buying, and performance tracking. Users can track media spend, monitor campaign performance, and generate detailed reports to evaluate the effectiveness of their media efforts.
Mediatool Standout Features & Integrations
Key features include advanced media analytics capabilities, allowing users to track and analyze the performance of their media campaigns in-depth. With detailed insights into impressions, clicks, conversions, and other relevant metrics, users can make data-driven decisions to optimize their media strategies. Mediatool also provides a Collaboration Hub that facilitates seamless communication among team members, clients, and stakeholders. This feature enables real-time communication, task management, and document sharing.
Integrations include Google Analytics, Adform, and Google Campaign Manager.
Pros
- Create tailor-made reports
- Set budgets & KPIs
- Good for complex, integrated marketing
Cons
- Cluttered UI difficult to navigate
- Lengthy onboarding process
The Best Marketing Planning Software Summary
Tool | Free Option | Price | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Wrike Best free marketing planning software | Free plan available | From $9.80/user/month | Visit Website |
2 | GanttPRO Best for managing projects with Gantt charts | 14-day free trial | From $7.99/user/month (billed annually) | Visit Website |
3 | Runrun.it Best for automations | 14-day free trial + free plan | $8/user/month (annually) | Visit Website |
4 | ActiveCollab Best for digital agencies | 14-day free trial + free plan | From $6.25/user/month | Visit Website |
5 | GoodDay Best for customization | Free version available | From $6/user/month | Visit Website |
6 | MyMarketingMate Best for beginners | 14-day free trial + free plan | $29/month (3 users) | Visit Website |
7 | BrandMaker Best marketing resource management (MRM) | Free demo | Pricing upon request | Visit Website |
8 | MarketPlan Best for dynamic marketing plan maps | Free plan available | From $9/user/month | Visit Website |
9 | Keen Best for data-driven companies | Not available | Pricing upon request | Visit Website |
10 | Mediatool Best for media management | Not available | Pricing upon request | Visit Website |
Other Options
Here are a few more that didn’t make the top list. If you need additional suggestions, check these out.
- Seismic
Best for large enterprises
- Screendragon
Best for proofing & approvals
- Planview
Best goals-based marketing planning software
Comparison Criteria for Marketing Planning Software
Here are my process and considerations when evaluating marketing planning software for placement on this list. First, I built a shortlist of software vendors with informative and modern websites, positive user reviews, and maybe even some awards for customer satisfaction or usability. To whittle this down to a top 10, I researched each software using vendor websites, online tutorials, and free trials. With years of SITE experience, I was able to look at each software and think, "Is this something I would use? Is this something I would give my teams to use?"
The following is the list of requirements I considered when making my final picks.
Core Functionality
Each marketing planning software may be quite different, with unique features or a specific targetted audience. However, to qualify for this list they must cover the following basic functionalities.
- Providing tools and features to assist businesses in developing their marketing strategies, including conducting market research, defining target audiences, creating marketing calendars, and identifying key performance indicators (KPIs).
- Enabling businesses to execute their marketing plans efficiently, including campaign management, content creation and management, scheduling and automation of marketing activities, tracking and analyzing campaign performance, managing budgets, and collaborating with team members.
Key Features
Key features may differ from software to software, but some or all of these should be present in any good marketing planning tool.
- Market Research: Tools to conduct market research and gather relevant data about target audiences, market trends, and competitor analysis.
- Goal Setting: Functionality to define marketing objectives, set measurable goals, and establish key performance indicators (KPIs) to track progress and success.
- Budget Allocation: Capability to allocate and manage marketing budgets, track expenses, and analyze the return on investment (ROI) for various marketing activities.
- Campaign Management: Tools to create, schedule, and manage marketing campaigns across multiple channels, such as email, social media, advertising, and content marketing.
- Content Creation and Management: Features to develop and organize marketing content, including content calendars, asset libraries, and collaboration tools for content creation and approval processes.
- Analytics and Reporting: Built-in analytics capabilities to track and measure campaign performance, generate reports, and gain insights into key metrics, such as conversion rates, customer engagement, and ROI.
- Collaboration and Workflow: Functionality that enables team members to collaborate, communicate, and share information within the software, streamlining workflows and facilitating effective teamwork.
- Scalability and Customization: Flexibility to adapt to different business sizes, industries, and marketing strategies, with customizable templates, workflows, and reporting options.
Usability
Usability and a user-friendly interface (UI) play a crucial role in selecting marketing planning software as they directly impact the efficiency and effectiveness of the marketing planning process. Intuitive navigation, clear design, and well-organized features allow users to quickly understand and leverage the software's capabilities. For example, a drag-and-drop interface for campaign creation and content management simplifies the process, making it easier for users to create and modify campaigns without requiring extensive technical skills. Customizable dashboards and visualizations help users track and analyze key metrics at a glance. And features like collaboration tools with real-time updates and notifications ensure smooth teamwork and seamless communication among team members.
Software Integrations
Software integrations are essential when selecting marketing planning software as they enable seamless data exchange and streamline workflows by letting tools "talk" to one another. Integration with customer relationship management (CRM) systems, such as Salesforce or HubSpot, allows for a unified view of customer data. Integration with email marketing platforms, like Mailchimp or Constant Contact, simplifies the process of sending targeted email campaigns and automating follow-up communications. Integration with analytics tools, such as Google Analytics or Adobe Analytics, facilitates comprehensive data analysis, providing marketers with valuable insights to optimize campaigns and measure their impact.
Automations
Automations play a vital role in selecting marketing planning software as they help streamline repetitive tasks and push projects from one stage to the next. Workflow automations, such as automated email campaigns triggered by specific actions or events, help nurture leads and maintain consistent customer communication. Automations can be used in planning charts and calendars to move a task from one department to the next (say, graphic design to editorial) or one person to another (manager to team member). Social media scheduling is another good example, where you can enter post assets and text into one system and push them out to multiple platforms simultaneously. This is used to save time, reduce resource usage, and prevent human error.
People Also Ask
Here are a few of the most common questions I come across when people ask me about using marketing planning software.
How much does marketing planning software cost?
What are the 9 types of marketing plans?
What are the benefits of using marketing planning software?
Other Marketing Planning and Strategy Software Reviews
If you need other marketing planning software adjacent for your organization, here are some other marketing strategy tool lists that will help you find the best option for your marketing strategy needs.
- Best Marketing Software
- Marketing Strategy Software
- Marketing Management Software
- Marketing Calendar Software
- Marketing Collaboration Software
- Marketing Planning Tools
- B2B Marketing Software
- Field Marketing Software
The Takeaway
Marketing planning tools are critical to guiding marketing projects from start to finish, brainstorming to execution. Your team will appreciate having tasks, milestones, and goals plotted out visually and management will appreciate more transparency around time spent, budget used, and deadlines met. Overall, marketing planning software can be your sherpa in the fast-paced and ever-changing landscape of the marketing world.