10 Best Marketing Strategy Software Shortlist
Here's my pick of the 10 best software from the 26 tools reviewed.
With so many different marketing strategy software solutions available, figuring out which is right for you is tough. You know you want tools for market analysis, campaign planning, budget management, and performance tracking—but now need to figure out which solution is best. I've got you! In this post, I'll help make your choice easy, sharing my personal experiences using dozens of different marketing strategy tools with brands of all sizes, with my picks of the best marketing strategy software overall.
What Is Marketing Strategy Software
Marketing strategy software is a digital tool designed to aid businesses in planning, executing, and monitoring their marketing strategies. It encompasses features for market research, campaign planning, budget allocation, and performance analysis. The purpose is to help in identifying target audiences, setting measurable goals, and tracking the effectiveness of marketing campaigns.
Overviews Of The 10 Best Marketing Strategy Software
Here are my summaries of the software I chose for this list and why I think they deserve extensive consideration.
Brand24 is a marketing strategy software that equips businesses with the tools to monitor, analyze, and respond to online mentions, aiding in the development and refinement of effective marketing strategies. The ability to monitor and analyze online conversations about a brand, its competitors, and industry-related topics allows companies to make informed decisions, tailor their messaging to meet audience needs, and ultimately, drive better marketing outcomes.
Why I picked Brand24: Brand24 serves as an invaluable marketing strategy software by offering businesses a comprehensive overview of their online presence and public perception, crucial for shaping effective marketing strategies. By tracking real-time mentions across social media, blogs, forums, and news sites, Brand24 provides insights into customer sentiment, emerging trends, and competitive landscape, enabling businesses to identify opportunities for engagement and areas for improvement.
Brand24 Standout Features and Integrations
Features include tools for monitoring online brand presence, including a Mentions Feed that aggregates real-time data from various online sources, and a Discussion Volume Chart to track conversation trends. The platform also provides sentiment analysis to gauge public perception, influencer scores to identify key influencers, and customizable alerts to stay informed about brand mentions.
Integrations include Slack and SEMrush.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Strong competitor analysis
- Real-time alerts let you respond to mentions quickly
- Real-time alerts let you respond to mentions quickly
Cons:
- Only supports a limited number of languages
- Could use more integrations
Google Analytics helps marketing teams discover how their strategies are performing and what people do when visiting their websites. The platform can track details such as page visits and visitor behavior to help organizations understand which marketing strategy best resonates with target audiences.
Why I picked Google Analytics: The reason why I added Google Analytics to this list is because of its ability to track the effectiveness of your marketing strategies. Google Analytics is a powerful platform that will help you understand how your marketing strategies are performing and how visitors interact with your brand. After adding a quick code to the back end of your website, you can get detailed reports that will enable you to make informed decisions about your marketing campaigns and where you need to make improvements.
Google Analytics Standout Features and Integrations
Features include predictive capabilities that use machine learning models to analyze your data and predict actions visitors might make in the future, such as making a purchase. Google Analytics also allows you to ask questions in the dashboard’s search bar to quickly find the insights, metrics, or reports you need.
Integrations include over 1,600 third-party systems that will help you simplify marketing campaigns by using the tools marketers use most. These include connections with systems such as Domo, GetResponse, HoneyBook, Improvado, Jotform, Odoo, Outgrow, Rambox, Salesforce, Smartlook, and other software options.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Easy to use
- Quickly exports data
- Captures all website details
Cons:
- System updates require extensive training
- Sometimes the reporting glitches
HubSpot provides excellent inbound marketing tools that help organizations attract the right audience and convert visitors into customers. With HubSpot, marketing teams can reach the right target visitors through blogging, social media, digital advertisements, and other effective marketing campaigns.
Why I picked HubSpot: HubSpot is a popular platform that provides inbound marketing strategy capabilities through the HubSpot Marketing Hub tool. During my research, I realized what makes HubSpot stand out the most among other inbound marketing tools is its ability to interconnect with other HubSpot systems, will improve efficiency, and pass along vital information across other organizational teams. With HubSpot, you can create various inbound marketing campaigns, including social media content, blogging, and email strategies.
HubSpot Standout Features and Integrations
Features include workflow automation tools that make sending out emails and completing other tasks when specific dependencies are met, which will save your team time and allow them to focus on more meaningful work. Another feature I believe is beneficial when creating new marketing strategies is HubSpot’s A/B testing capabilities which allows you to send two versions of emails to identify which performs better.
Integrations include connections with popular marketing systems such as Asana, Canva, Google Search Console, Hotjar, Mailchimp, Microsoft Teams, PandaDoc, Salesforce, Slack, Supermetrics, and other software options. If you have a paid Zapier account, you can create custom integrations with your toolset.
HubSpot costs from $18/month and offers a free plan.
PROS
Simple user interface
Quickly creates marketing strategies
Straightforward marketing channel integrations
CONS
Steep learning curve
Reporting needs improvement
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Straightforward marketing channel integrations
- Quickly creates marketing strategies
- Simple user interface
Cons:
- Reporting needs improvement
- Steep learning curve
Buffer allows businesses to schedule and share social media content across the most popular networks. It will help marketing teams automate recurring tasks and ensure all social media content is timely and relevant.
Why I picked Buffer: I wanted to add Buffer to this list because it’s considered to be one of the top social media content platforms. Buffer will help you compose, schedule, and publish social media content across some of the most popular networks, including Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and other high-traffic networks. The platform provides comprehensive social media content marketing capabilities, from planning to post analytics and custom reports.
Buffer Standout Features and Integrations
Features include engagement tools that enable you to navigate comments under your social media posts and interact with your audience; you can discover all unanswered comments and highlight the most important ones to keep you aware of important conversations. Buffer also provides an analytics dashboard that will help you track your posts’ performance and understand whether they’re performing well with audiences; you’ll also receive recommendations to help increase reach and engagement.
Integrations include multiple third-party tools that will help your team manage social media accounts and content efficiently, such as Canva, Cronycle, Crowdriff, Dropbox, Feedly, Giphy, Google Drive, Make, Pocket, SocialBee, and other software options. If you have a paid Zapier account, you can make custom connections with over 400 systems.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Excellent customer support
- User-friendly interface
- Easily manages multiple social accounts
Cons:
- Slows down when uploading multiple images
- No email notifications
Sprout Social is an all-in-one social media strategy tool that provides a control center for marketing teams to turn social presence into real results.
Why I picked Sprout Social: In my opinion, many marketing teams should take Sprout Social into consideration because it’s an all-in-one social media management platform that will help you organize your content calendar and assets. Sprout Social can help you schedule and publish content across multiple social media networks. It can perfectly time when you should post content based on when your audience is most active.
Sprout Social Standout Features and Integrations
Features include a smart inbox that provides an overview of all social messages, allowing you to respond in a timely manner. Sprout Social’s analytics tool can help you optimize your content’s performance by identifying which is performing best, uncovering trends, and discovering engagement opportunities.
Integrations include third-party applications that can get access to all the content and data they need to help you best serve your audience. These include Canva, Dropbox, Feedly, Google Analytics, HubSpot, Marketo, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Salesforce Sales Cloud, Slack, Tableau, and other software options.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Easy to use
- Maintains branding
- Clear reports
Cons:
- High priced
- Slow onboarding process
Mailchimp helps marketing teams manage email marketing strategies that will help them have engaging conversations with audiences.
Why I picked Mailchimp: To make this list more robust, I wanted to add platforms that focus on specific types of marketing campaigns, which is why I added Mailchimp. This platform is an excellent tool for managing significant email campaigns. Mailchimp will help you get started with your email marketing campaigns immediately, thanks to its pre-built templates, segments, and one-click automation.
Mailchimp Standout Features and Integrations
Features include an advanced email dashboard that will highlight engagement metrics such as click-through rates. Another feature that makes Mailchimp stand out is its creative assistant, which leverages artificial intelligence to generate branded assets across marketing channels.
Integrations include connections with third-party applications to help you do more with Mailchimp. These include tools such as Adobe Photoshop, Canva, Formstack, Mixpanel, QuickBooks, Shopify, Stripe, SurveyMonkey, WordPress, Zendesk, and other software options.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Helpful automated customer journeys
- Excellent customer support
- Easy to use
Cons:
- Contact forms are challenging to set up
- List management is complex
Hootsuite helps businesses with planning, scheduling, and syndicating social media strategies across multiple networks. This way, marketing teams can focus more of their time on other crucial marketing functions.
Why I picked Hootsuite: The platform is one of the popular social media strategy management tools that many marketing teams use to plan and monitor social media efforts. You can use Hootsuite to monitor mentions, hashtags, keywords, and posts from specific social media networks. I found Hootsuite to be beneficial because it will allow you to monitor the multiple social media channels you’re active on and give you a constant feed of relevant social media activity.
Hootsuite Standout Features and Integrations
Features include team collaboration tools that provide access to multiple team members and allow them to oversee the same social media accounts and schedule posts; it also enables everyone to get edits or insights from others before publishing a post. Hootsuite also provides social media monitoring tools that will help you stay on top of the latest conversations about the topics that matter to you most and keep track of anyone who mentions your brand.
Integrations include over 150 third-party applications that will extend Hootsuite’s functionality and simplify your social media strategies. These include Adobe Creative Cloud Libraries, Airtable, Asana, Basecamp, Dropbox, Figma, HubSpot, Mailchimp, Marketo, monday.com, and other software options.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Regular updates
- Easily delegates roles
- Excellent customer support
Cons:
- No bulk rescheduling
- Higher tiers are expensive
Marketo helps businesses show they understand audiences by providing personalized content that’s delivered on time. Marketing teams creating new strategies can use Marketo’s real-time behavioral and demographic data as well as artificial intelligence to personalize audience experiences.
Why I picked Marketo: I wanted to add Marketo to this list for your consideration because of its content intelligence capabilities. Marketo helps you manage, deliver, and optimize content that feels relevant to your target audience. It uses artificial intelligence to learn which content works best and automatically optimizes it to increase conversions.
Marketo Standout Features and Integrations
Features include digital marketing tools that help you target the right audiences with personalized ads. You can also use Marketo’s marketing analytics feature to understand how your strategies are performing.
Integrations include third-party applications that help increase productivity and enhance engagement with audiences throughout your marketing strategy. These include over 600 options, such as Bynder, Domo, Improvado, Outgrow, Pipedrive, Rambox, Salesforce, Slack, Wrike, Zoho CRM, and other software options.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Simple folder and file arrangement
- Complete marketing operations platform
- Excellent marketing automation
Cons:
- Generating reports is complex
- Steep learning curve
Salesforce Marketing Cloud provides customer journey-building capabilities that allow marketing teams to understand their strategy’s strengths and weaknesses.
Why I picked Salesforce Marketing Cloud: The platform is a very popular marketing platform that enables businesses to run and test various types of marketing strategies. But what I believe makes Salesforce Marketing Cloud stand out the most is its customer journey mapping tool. The journey builder tool will help you create cross-channel marketing strategies to personalize experiences through the entire marketing cycle.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Standout Features and Integrations
Features include an artificial intelligence tool called Einstein, which will help you optimize your marketing strategy’s timing and personalization to improve engagement. The platform provides marketing intelligence capabilities that allow you to identify the results from every strategy you implement to improve efficiency and growth.
Integrations include connections with over 100 third-party software, including Brevo, censhare, Driftrock, Google Analytics 360, HubSpot Marketing Hub, Pipeliner CRM, ServiceNow, Tableau CRM, TapClicks, Yotpo, and other software options. You can also use a paid Zapier account or Salesforce Marketing Cloud’s API to create custom integrations.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Integrates with Salesforce CRM
- Simple setup process
- Excellent content builder tool
Cons:
- Limited email builder
- Very expensive
ActiveCampaign can help businesses collect data from every marketing touchpoint to help them understand when and where to automate engagement messages.
Why I picked ActiveCampaign: I believe ActiveCampaign is worth your consideration because of its ability to help your teams save time, thanks to its engagement automation tools. ActiveCampaign comes with over 135 triggers and actions that allows you to build automated engagement sequences when creating your marketing strategies. The platform has a customer relationship management tool that will help you trigger email messages based on where deals are in your pipeline.
ActiveCampaign Standout Features and Integrations
Features include split testing capabilities that will test your marketing automation sequences, helping you improve your sequences over time. The email campaign builder is another great feature from ActiveCampaign that uses a drag-and-drop tool that allows you to test almost anything you can think of.
Integrations include over 900 connections with third-party applications that make the most sense for your marketing teams, such as Airtable, Asana, Basecamp, Clickfunnels, Google Analytics, Postmark, Salesforce, Shopify, Slack, WordPress, and other software options. If you have a paid Zapier account, you can create custom integrations with your current systems.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Wealth of tutorials
- User-friendly navigation
- Excellent customer support
Cons:
- Moving contacts between lists is complex
- Expensive for larger teams
The Best Marketing Strategy Software Summary
| Tools | Price | |
|---|---|---|
| Brand24 | From $79/month (annually) | Website |
| Google Analytics | Free to use | Website |
| HubSpot | From $45/month | Website |
| Buffer | From $5/user/month | Website |
| Sprout Social | From $249/month. | Website |
| MailChimp | From $13/month | Website |
| Hootsuite | From $49/user/month | Website |
| Marketo | From $895/month | Website |
| Salesforce Marketing Cloud | Pricing upon request | Website |
| ActiveCampaign | From $29/month | Website |
Compare Software Specs Side by Side
Use our comparison chart to review and evaluate software specs side-by-side.
Compare SoftwareOther Options
Now, more than ever before, there are a significant number of marketing strategy software than I could possibly list in this article, so I added this brief list of other options that also deserves some consideration.
- Adobe Campaign
Best for omnichannel marketing strategies
- Klaviyo
Best for ecommerce marketing strategies
- Semrush
Best for search engine optimization strategies
- CoSchedule
Best for scheduling marketing strategies
- Smartsheet
Best work management platform
- Mention
Best for monitoring social media
- Trello
Best for task management
- Optimizely
Best for testing marketing strategies
- Asana
Best for managing and coordinating marketing strategies
- Wrike
Best for remote teams
- Canva
Best online graphic design platform
- Ahrefs
Best for tracking competitors
- monday.com
Best for building custom strategy workflows
- BuzzSumo
Best for content influencer strategies
- ClickUp
Best for collaborating on strategies
- Crazy Egg
Best for website visitor recordings
Selection Criteria For Marketing Strategy Software
Here’s a short summary of the main selection and evaluation criteria I used to develop my list of the best marketing strategy software for this article:
Core Functionality
Each marketing strategy software will cover somewhat different territory when it comes to use cases and features. However, to make it on this list the marketing strategy software must cover the following basic functionality:
- Ability to store and visualize data relating to marketing campaign strategy and execution plans
- Heavy focus on marketing strategy tasks and projects, with software integrations, templates, and tutorials that speak to this
Key Features
The top marketing strategy software will offer some of the following key features:
- Goals and Milestones: Marketing strategy software will allow you to set goals and milestones as part of the planning process to help your campaign development efforts.
- Campaign Simulation: This is an advanced feature that helps businesses predict the outcome of strategies, allowing you to choose the best ideas and prioritize actions.
- Campaign Management: Before starting your new campaign, your marking strategy software will arrange every aspect of your campaign, including team creation, task scheduling, and schedules and timelines.
- Campaign Templates: These will help marketing teams plan marketing strategies faster, especially when creating multiple campaign types.
- Team Collaboration: Strategy development is a collaborative process, and these platforms will enable teams to work together to create winning ideas with tools such as file sharing, messaging, and video calls.
- Automation: This is an important feature that will help marketing teams create strategies faster by handling repetitive campaign creation tasks.
Usability
During my research, I made sure to add as many tools as possible that allow marketing teams to easily manage campaigns after going through the first learning stages. All marketing strategy software will have a learning curve, but once you and your teams are over that curve, the platform’s interface will determine how fast everyone can complete their tasks. If the marketing strategy software isn’t very useful, your team’s productivity will take a significant hit.
Customizability
Marketing strategies require input from multiple team members, so having a solution that enables everyone to work the way they want is essential. It’s also important to use marketing strategy software that can expand as your company grows and accommodate the changes that come with launching larger campaigns with more assets, teams, and prospects to manage. So, to handle these scenarios, I made sure to add marketing strategy tools that are customizable to fit your needs and growth.
Software Integrations
Efficient software integrations will help you monitor team performance and discover areas where you can make improvements to your strategies. The marketing strategy software you use should have as many native integrations with third-party tools that you’re likely already using, such as email marketing platforms and analytics software. In case the solution doesn’t have a native integration with your current systems, it should also allow you to make custom connections, either through an API your developer can use or with a paid Zapier account.
People Also Ask
For many marketing teams, choosing the right marketing strategy software can be overwhelming, and many people have additional questions to ask about these platforms. Here are some of the common questions people ask when searching for new marketing strategy tools and my answers after doing some extensive research and evaluation of the tools on this list.
What are the benefits of marketing strategy software?
What are the different types of marketing strategy software?
How much does marketing strategy software cost?
Other Marketing Software Reviews
If you need other marketing strategy software for your organization, here are some other marketing strategy tool lists that will help you find the best option for your marketing strategy needs.
Strategy & Management
- Best Marketing Software
- Marketing Management Software
- Marketing Planning Software
- Marketing Calendar Software
- Marketing Collaboration Software
- Marketing Planning Tools
- B2B Marketing Software
- Field Marketing Software
Reporting & Analyitcs
Marketing analytics software offers businesses data-driven insights to measure and optimize marketing campaigns for improved results.
Advertising & Socials
The Takeaway
With the right marketing strategy software at your disposal, you can simplify your campaign creation process and automate many of the tasks involved in your strategy. Any one or combination of the tools I evaluated in this article will provide you with a solid foundation for effective marketing strategy planning and implementation. So, don’t be afraid to test some tools and go through trials and demonstrations to find what fits your needs and budget best.
If you need more software suggestions to help you operate other aspects of your marketing department or you want helpful advice from top marketing professionals, try signing up for The CMO newsletter. As a subscriber, you’ll receive the latest software suggestions and advice from some of the best marketers right in your inbox.
Related Read: How To Build A Successful Digital Marketing Strategy (With 10 Essential Tactics)