#1 Ahrefs
Price: Tiered prices, from 99€ to 399€.
Ahrefs is a comprehensive SEO tool that helps SEO managers increase traffic to their website. It has data for around 150 million keywords in the US and even more for 150 other countries.
Ahrefs is great for competitive analysis because you can use it to find out who is linking to your competitors, what their top pages are, and more. You can see where their content ranks and use the Content Gap tool to identify key weak points for your content marketing strategy.
You can see which pages are getting the most traffic with the Top Pages tool, and you can identify how much traffic is going to competitors' sites.
Ahrefs is one of our favorite SEO tools. It's constantly impressing us with features that I we use, and we're constantly learning new features. It's simply the most robust product in this space.
Pros: With a seven-day trial for $7, you can see what Ahrefs can do and if it's right for you.
Disadvantages: As with SEMRush, for example, it will take you some time to learn how to use it efficiently.
#2 Google Analytics
Price: Free of charge
Google Analytics is the gold standard for website analytics. Nowadays, it's difficult to work in online marketing if you don't have some level of Google Analytics knowledge.
At the most basic level, Google Analytics can show you who's coming to your site, where they're coming from, and which pages they're spending the most time on. In addition, you can set up goals to track conversions, build an advanced e-commerce setup, and track events to learn more about user engagement.
Pros: If you want to understand your users better and know what's working (and what's not) on your site, this is not only a great tool, but it's also a free one. Google Analytics is a freemium service, and money is charged for proprietary features and functionality.
Disadvantages: The offering is very extensive, so it can be overwhelming.
#3 Buffer
Price: Starts free and goes up to €199/month.
Managing all your social media marketing in one place can be a huge time saver for social media managers. Buffer is just what you need with its clean and simple interface and intuitive setup process. Plus, there are plenty of advanced features for the many social media tasks you'll need to handle.
With Buffer, you get a comprehensive social media management solution: you can plan, create, and schedule your social media posts, track the performance of your posts with smart analytics, and communicate with your followers via a social media inbox. Plus, you can collaborate with your team to manage your entire organic social strategy through Buffer.
Pros: It's free for up to one profile.
Disadvantages: The scheduling software can be very error prone. You should make sure you have it set up correctly and keep checking back to make sure there aren't any issues, like posting at the wrong time.
#4 SEMRush
Price: from 99€ to 449€ per month.
Any business that publishes blogs on their website wants to be sure that their blogs aren't just sitting around in cyberspace, but that they can actually be found. SEMRush can help you get those results.
When it comes to SEO, you need an all-in-one marketing tool that not only lets you do your keyword research, but also track how your website is performing: whether through keyword position tracking, website analytics, or backlinks; SEMRush is truly an all-in-one platform for SEO and your website's visibility and analytics.
You can also use SEMRush to check organic search rankings for your keywords and see what your competitors have been doing.
Pros: It really has a lot to offer.
Disadvantages: It can take some time to learn the program.
#5 BuzzStream
Price: free trial, up to 999€ per month.
Buzzstream is an effective tool for finding influencers and potential customers. As you search the web, you can add new bloggers, websites and social profiles to your database. This way you can make and maintain personal contacts.
BuzzStream lets you keep track of your conversations, since this service automatically saves your emails and tweets. You'll be able to set up reminders to follow up on any discussion, so you don't lose track of the conversation. This is the ideal way to prioritize your most important contacts.
Buzzstream is also a very effective platform for research. Buzzstream offers different pricing models for users.
Pros: You can try it for free. You can use the prospecting tool to find potential customers. It's great and easy to use.
Cons: Only searches for contact information, which can be limiting.
#6 HubSpot Marketing
Price: Free to $3,200/month for businesses, depending on plan.
HubSpot has several tools to help you grow your business, no matter what stage you're in.
To start, several tools are available for free. You can set up web forms, pop-up forms, and live chat software for lead capture. Then you can send email marketing campaigns, feed all your data into the free CRM, and analyze website visitor behavior.
As you use the paid versions, the advanced marketing automation options get more sophisticated.
From managing your content and social media to tracking emails and contacting your leads, HubSpot is an all-in-one solution - also because it works well with other point solutions you use (Typeform, HotJar, etc.).
Pros: All-in-one solution with holistic infrastructure
Disadvantages: It takes some time to get through the various tools and be able to use them efficiently.
#7 Hotjar
Price: free up to 389€ per month.
"Connect the Dots with One Powerful Solution" is the motto of Hotjar, which allows online marketing experts to gain insights into user behavior on their website.
This includes heat mapping - heat maps are a great way to understand what users want and care about, and what they do while on your site - and recordings of user interactions with your site.
Using these records, you can observe the moments in the browsing process when users get frustrated, abandon their search, and leave the site.
It also shows you the content they spend the most time on. Hotjar also lets you ask users questions through surveys and get direct answers about how they interact with your site.
Hotjar offers pricing plans for businesses of all sizes.
Pros: Hotjar gives you insights on how to optimize your website in the future.
Disadvantages: It is a large website, which can affect load time.
#8 Google Search Console
Price: Free of charge.
Google, Google, Google - it's THE search engine! Google offers you tools to improve your website and optimize your ranking in searches.
If you don't use the tools Google offers, you're doing yourself a disservice. Google Search Console (formerly Google Webmaster Tools) is a great platform. You can use reports to measure your website's performance and traffic.
With Search Console, you can add a sitemap to get your site crawled by Google's bots, and tell Google to re-crawl one or more pages you just re-optimized.
As Google says, this will "make your site shine in Google search results."
Pros: It's free. Disadvantages: It can be a little confusing (especially with the semi-new update), but it's worth it once you get the hang of it.
#9 Google Ads
Price: depends on the ad.
Continuing the long list of Google's marketing tools, we've listed Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords) as our #9. Google Ads offers SEA managers a great way to promote their website, services or page. With Google Ads, you can promote your brand and business, find relevant users, and increase conversion rates.
Pros: If you do it right, you can get a pretty good click-through rate and reach your target audience.
Disadvantages: The navigation and cost (for ads) can be quite cumbersome and expensive.
#10 Facebook Business Manager & Facebook Insights
Price: free.
Facebook Business Manager provides the perfect way to maximize the use of your Facebook business profile. You can run campaigns, review analytics, and really take advantage of everything Facebook has to offer, whether you're reviewing an ad or a previously boosted post, or creating an ad from scratch; this tool is something you can really use in your social media arsenal.
With Facebook Insights, you can successfully track user interactions. Anyone who is an administrator of your page can use this tool to see how followers are reacting on your Facebook page, and then track the number of active users you have. This is an ideal way to better understand how your page is performing.
You can then use Facebook Insights to determine the best time of day to post, or the best day of the week, and find out what type of content is most popular.
Pros: Facebook Business Manager is free with a business account.
Disadvantages: The interface is not intuitive, so it's easy to get lost.
#11 LinkedIn Programmatic Ads
Price: depends on the ad.
If you're running paid ads, programmatic advertising is a good option. This is the use of software to automate your media buying so that your ads are served automatically based on data.
With programmatic media buying solutions, you can reduce the time you spend searching for the right networks to advertise on. A good tool for this is LinkedIn Programmatic Ads, which can handle a variety of data from your target audience.
LinkedIn allows you to promote your company updates to audiences on desktop, mobile and tablet. This way, you can deliver your content directly to the most viewed professional news feeds. It's also a way to deliver personalized messaging that leads to more conversions than email.
Pros: Your ads can be easily crafted for the people you want to target.
Disadvantages: It can take some time to get comfortable with the application.
#12 Proof
Price: Tiered pricing based on the volume of your website traffic, starting at €24/month.
Proof connects to your CRM or website and uses social proof to increase conversions on your website. You can implement Social Proof messaging (e.g. "25 people are viewing this post right now"), reviews, and videos that target your customers as soon as they visit your website.
The popular "Live Visitor Count" and "Hot Streak" notification features increase customer awareness of your brand and give potential customers insight into how other people are reacting to your product. Plus, it's super easy to install - you just copy and paste the pixel onto your website.
You can identify your visitors and analyze their journey through your website, which can help you optimize your website design for higher conversions. It integrates with an impressive number of other software systems and is optimized for mobile devices.
Pros: Very easy and quick installation.
Disadvantages: Notification features are still a bit limited so far.
#13 AdRoll
Price: depends on the ad.
Display retargeting tools are becoming increasingly popular today, especially retargeting ads that follow internet users from one website to the next. Retargeting is an increasingly popular tool for getting customers back to your website to make a purchase.
A good website for this is AdRoll, which gives performance marketers access to more than 500 ad exchanges, including most of the major social networks.
Advantages: Online marketers who have used AdRoll in the past report an increase in sales of up to 265%.
Disadvantages: With AdRoll, you pay for ad space, and AdRoll retains a small percentage for placing your ad. Your total spend is the cost of buying ad space to run your ads.
#14 Sprout Social
Price: free trial up to $249 per month.
If you use social media to reach your audience, there's a popular website called Sprout Social that offers social media management, advocacy, and analytics software for businesses.
With this website, you can communicate more effectively with customers on social channels using social media management tools that give you faster communication tools because you can monitor, respond, and collaborate more quickly.
For example, Sprout Social collects social mentions from different networks, puts them in one place, and makes it easier for you to manage your responses when your account is mentioned or when you receive comments from followers. You can also schedule your content across platforms and add analytics.
Benefits: A 30-day free trial is offered.
Disadvantages: Reports may not be very detailed.
#15 ActiveCollab
Price: free up to 9€ per month.
ActiveCollab is a great task management tool that helps you organize your client work (agile) or your work in general. It's a good platform to make sure everyone is in the same boat or on the same task.
You can comment directly in the platform and assign tasks for everyone involved in a particular project. When it comes to marketing, tasks and organization are a must. With team collaboration and time tracking, you can make sure everyone is on the same page. Plus, ActiveCollab is not only a great tool for online marketers, but also for project managers, for example!
Pros: It allows collaboration, which is perfect for any work environment.
Disadvantages: Although it is easy to use, the search function is really bad and most of the time unable to find the task you are looking for.
#16 Wyng
Price: depending on the display.
Organic social media tools are popular, and for good reason. Facebook has more than 2 billion monthly active users, Twitter has 320 million, and Instagram has more than 700 million.
Not surprisingly, online marketers are looking for an edge to stand out from all the online traffic, and so social media management tools have become common ways to improve engagement.
One useful engagement marketing tool is Wyng, which is changing the way brands can engage and convert mobile and social consumers.
Benefits: Wyng has a built-in analytics dashboard to monitor the performance of each campaign and helps increase engagement through hashtag campaigns, contests, referral programs and more.
Disadvantages: Wyng has a variety of pricing plans. However, they can be expensive.
#17 Optmyzr
Price: from 208€/ month to 665€/ month and more as an individual solution.
Optmyzr is another great tool. This tool can help you maximize - or optimize - your Google ads.
With this tool you can create a quality score. The higher the quality score, the lower the cost per click, and that's what it's all about, after all. The program claims to be fast and can help you optimize your reports in no time.
Pros: It has a quality score that can make PPC management a lot easier.
Disadvantages: The location bidding tool could be a bit more user-friendly.
#18 BrightLocal
Price: free trial, up to 79€ per month.
BrightLocal is a great way for you to find leads, discover local citations for SEO, and maintain your local SEO.
You can create detailed reports that will help you evaluate the success of your campaigns.
Pros: You can try it for free for 14 days.
Disadvantages: It may take some time to set up and get used to.
Bottom line: online marketing tools are a must today.
These 18 online marketing tools are just some of the digital marketing tools available to you to boost your online marketing efforts. How successfully you can use these tools depends on how much time and money you can spend on them.
So there are many different tools you can use to tackle your online marketing challenges - you just need to decide what to focus on first. Which tool is the best fit for your business structure and goals?
No matter which online marketing tool you choose, digital "tools" are here to stay in the online marketing space. And online marketers are in demand like never before - according to StepStone, online marketers in Germany earn an average salary of 45,500€ per year. You earn too little or want more? Let FiveTeams poach you above your desired salary
Price: Tiered prices, from 99€ to 399€.
Ahrefs is a comprehensive SEO tool that helps SEO managers increase traffic to their website. It has data for around 150 million keywords in the US and even more for 150 other countries.
Ahrefs is great for competitive analysis because you can use it to find out who is linking to your competitors, what their top pages are, and more. You can see where their content ranks and use the Content Gap tool to identify key weak points for your content marketing strategy.
You can see which pages are getting the most traffic with the Top Pages tool, and you can identify how much traffic is going to competitors' sites.
Ahrefs is one of our favorite SEO tools. It's constantly impressing us with features that I we use, and we're constantly learning new features. It's simply the most robust product in this space.
Pros: With a seven-day trial for $7, you can see what Ahrefs can do and if it's right for you.
Disadvantages: As with SEMRush, for example, it will take you some time to learn how to use it efficiently.
#2 Google Analytics
Price: Free of charge
Google Analytics is the gold standard for website analytics. Nowadays, it's difficult to work in online marketing if you don't have some level of Google Analytics knowledge.
At the most basic level, Google Analytics can show you who's coming to your site, where they're coming from, and which pages they're spending the most time on. In addition, you can set up goals to track conversions, build an advanced e-commerce setup, and track events to learn more about user engagement.
Pros: If you want to understand your users better and know what's working (and what's not) on your site, this is not only a great tool, but it's also a free one. Google Analytics is a freemium service, and money is charged for proprietary features and functionality.
Disadvantages: The offering is very extensive, so it can be overwhelming.
#3 Buffer
Price: Starts free and goes up to €199/month.
Managing all your social media marketing in one place can be a huge time saver for social media managers. Buffer is just what you need with its clean and simple interface and intuitive setup process. Plus, there are plenty of advanced features for the many social media tasks you'll need to handle.
With Buffer, you get a comprehensive social media management solution: you can plan, create, and schedule your social media posts, track the performance of your posts with smart analytics, and communicate with your followers via a social media inbox. Plus, you can collaborate with your team to manage your entire organic social strategy through Buffer.
Pros: It's free for up to one profile.
Disadvantages: The scheduling software can be very error prone. You should make sure you have it set up correctly and keep checking back to make sure there aren't any issues, like posting at the wrong time.
#4 SEMRush
Price: from 99€ to 449€ per month.
Any business that publishes blogs on their website wants to be sure that their blogs aren't just sitting around in cyberspace, but that they can actually be found. SEMRush can help you get those results.
When it comes to SEO, you need an all-in-one marketing tool that not only lets you do your keyword research, but also track how your website is performing: whether through keyword position tracking, website analytics, or backlinks; SEMRush is truly an all-in-one platform for SEO and your website's visibility and analytics.
You can also use SEMRush to check organic search rankings for your keywords and see what your competitors have been doing.
Pros: It really has a lot to offer.
Disadvantages: It can take some time to learn the program.
#5 BuzzStream
Price: free trial, up to 999€ per month.
Buzzstream is an effective tool for finding influencers and potential customers. As you search the web, you can add new bloggers, websites and social profiles to your database. This way you can make and maintain personal contacts.
BuzzStream lets you keep track of your conversations, since this service automatically saves your emails and tweets. You'll be able to set up reminders to follow up on any discussion, so you don't lose track of the conversation. This is the ideal way to prioritize your most important contacts.
Buzzstream is also a very effective platform for research. Buzzstream offers different pricing models for users.
Pros: You can try it for free. You can use the prospecting tool to find potential customers. It's great and easy to use.
Cons: Only searches for contact information, which can be limiting.
#6 HubSpot Marketing
Price: Free to $3,200/month for businesses, depending on plan.
HubSpot has several tools to help you grow your business, no matter what stage you're in.
To start, several tools are available for free. You can set up web forms, pop-up forms, and live chat software for lead capture. Then you can send email marketing campaigns, feed all your data into the free CRM, and analyze website visitor behavior.
As you use the paid versions, the advanced marketing automation options get more sophisticated.
From managing your content and social media to tracking emails and contacting your leads, HubSpot is an all-in-one solution - also because it works well with other point solutions you use (Typeform, HotJar, etc.).
Pros: All-in-one solution with holistic infrastructure
Disadvantages: It takes some time to get through the various tools and be able to use them efficiently.
#7 Hotjar
Price: free up to 389€ per month.
"Connect the Dots with One Powerful Solution" is the motto of Hotjar, which allows online marketing experts to gain insights into user behavior on their website.
This includes heat mapping - heat maps are a great way to understand what users want and care about, and what they do while on your site - and recordings of user interactions with your site.
Using these records, you can observe the moments in the browsing process when users get frustrated, abandon their search, and leave the site.
It also shows you the content they spend the most time on. Hotjar also lets you ask users questions through surveys and get direct answers about how they interact with your site.
Hotjar offers pricing plans for businesses of all sizes.
Pros: Hotjar gives you insights on how to optimize your website in the future.
Disadvantages: It is a large website, which can affect load time.
#8 Google Search Console
Price: Free of charge.
Google, Google, Google - it's THE search engine! Google offers you tools to improve your website and optimize your ranking in searches.
If you don't use the tools Google offers, you're doing yourself a disservice. Google Search Console (formerly Google Webmaster Tools) is a great platform. You can use reports to measure your website's performance and traffic.
With Search Console, you can add a sitemap to get your site crawled by Google's bots, and tell Google to re-crawl one or more pages you just re-optimized.
As Google says, this will "make your site shine in Google search results."
Pros: It's free. Disadvantages: It can be a little confusing (especially with the semi-new update), but it's worth it once you get the hang of it.
#9 Google Ads
Price: depends on the ad.
Continuing the long list of Google's marketing tools, we've listed Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords) as our #9. Google Ads offers SEA managers a great way to promote their website, services or page. With Google Ads, you can promote your brand and business, find relevant users, and increase conversion rates.
Pros: If you do it right, you can get a pretty good click-through rate and reach your target audience.
Disadvantages: The navigation and cost (for ads) can be quite cumbersome and expensive.
#10 Facebook Business Manager & Facebook Insights
Price: free.
Facebook Business Manager provides the perfect way to maximize the use of your Facebook business profile. You can run campaigns, review analytics, and really take advantage of everything Facebook has to offer, whether you're reviewing an ad or a previously boosted post, or creating an ad from scratch; this tool is something you can really use in your social media arsenal.
With Facebook Insights, you can successfully track user interactions. Anyone who is an administrator of your page can use this tool to see how followers are reacting on your Facebook page, and then track the number of active users you have. This is an ideal way to better understand how your page is performing.
You can then use Facebook Insights to determine the best time of day to post, or the best day of the week, and find out what type of content is most popular.
Pros: Facebook Business Manager is free with a business account.
Disadvantages: The interface is not intuitive, so it's easy to get lost.
#11 LinkedIn Programmatic Ads
Price: depends on the ad.
If you're running paid ads, programmatic advertising is a good option. This is the use of software to automate your media buying so that your ads are served automatically based on data.
With programmatic media buying solutions, you can reduce the time you spend searching for the right networks to advertise on. A good tool for this is LinkedIn Programmatic Ads, which can handle a variety of data from your target audience.
LinkedIn allows you to promote your company updates to audiences on desktop, mobile and tablet. This way, you can deliver your content directly to the most viewed professional news feeds. It's also a way to deliver personalized messaging that leads to more conversions than email.
Pros: Your ads can be easily crafted for the people you want to target.
Disadvantages: It can take some time to get comfortable with the application.
#12 Proof
Price: Tiered pricing based on the volume of your website traffic, starting at €24/month.
Proof connects to your CRM or website and uses social proof to increase conversions on your website. You can implement Social Proof messaging (e.g. "25 people are viewing this post right now"), reviews, and videos that target your customers as soon as they visit your website.
The popular "Live Visitor Count" and "Hot Streak" notification features increase customer awareness of your brand and give potential customers insight into how other people are reacting to your product. Plus, it's super easy to install - you just copy and paste the pixel onto your website.
You can identify your visitors and analyze their journey through your website, which can help you optimize your website design for higher conversions. It integrates with an impressive number of other software systems and is optimized for mobile devices.
Pros: Very easy and quick installation.
Disadvantages: Notification features are still a bit limited so far.
#13 AdRoll
Price: depends on the ad.
Display retargeting tools are becoming increasingly popular today, especially retargeting ads that follow internet users from one website to the next. Retargeting is an increasingly popular tool for getting customers back to your website to make a purchase.
A good website for this is AdRoll, which gives performance marketers access to more than 500 ad exchanges, including most of the major social networks.
Advantages: Online marketers who have used AdRoll in the past report an increase in sales of up to 265%.
Disadvantages: With AdRoll, you pay for ad space, and AdRoll retains a small percentage for placing your ad. Your total spend is the cost of buying ad space to run your ads.
#14 Sprout Social
Price: free trial up to $249 per month.
If you use social media to reach your audience, there's a popular website called Sprout Social that offers social media management, advocacy, and analytics software for businesses.
With this website, you can communicate more effectively with customers on social channels using social media management tools that give you faster communication tools because you can monitor, respond, and collaborate more quickly.
For example, Sprout Social collects social mentions from different networks, puts them in one place, and makes it easier for you to manage your responses when your account is mentioned or when you receive comments from followers. You can also schedule your content across platforms and add analytics.
Benefits: A 30-day free trial is offered.
Disadvantages: Reports may not be very detailed.
#15 ActiveCollab
Price: free up to 9€ per month.
ActiveCollab is a great task management tool that helps you organize your client work (agile) or your work in general. It's a good platform to make sure everyone is in the same boat or on the same task.
You can comment directly in the platform and assign tasks for everyone involved in a particular project. When it comes to marketing, tasks and organization are a must. With team collaboration and time tracking, you can make sure everyone is on the same page. Plus, ActiveCollab is not only a great tool for online marketers, but also for project managers, for example!
Pros: It allows collaboration, which is perfect for any work environment.
Disadvantages: Although it is easy to use, the search function is really bad and most of the time unable to find the task you are looking for.
#16 Wyng
Price: depending on the display.
Organic social media tools are popular, and for good reason. Facebook has more than 2 billion monthly active users, Twitter has 320 million, and Instagram has more than 700 million.
Not surprisingly, online marketers are looking for an edge to stand out from all the online traffic, and so social media management tools have become common ways to improve engagement.
One useful engagement marketing tool is Wyng, which is changing the way brands can engage and convert mobile and social consumers.
Benefits: Wyng has a built-in analytics dashboard to monitor the performance of each campaign and helps increase engagement through hashtag campaigns, contests, referral programs and more.
Disadvantages: Wyng has a variety of pricing plans. However, they can be expensive.
#17 Optmyzr
Price: from 208€/ month to 665€/ month and more as an individual solution.
Optmyzr is another great tool. This tool can help you maximize - or optimize - your Google ads.
With this tool you can create a quality score. The higher the quality score, the lower the cost per click, and that's what it's all about, after all. The program claims to be fast and can help you optimize your reports in no time.
Pros: It has a quality score that can make PPC management a lot easier.
Disadvantages: The location bidding tool could be a bit more user-friendly.
#18 BrightLocal
Price: free trial, up to 79€ per month.
BrightLocal is a great way for you to find leads, discover local citations for SEO, and maintain your local SEO.
You can create detailed reports that will help you evaluate the success of your campaigns.
Pros: You can try it for free for 14 days.
Disadvantages: It may take some time to set up and get used to.
Bottom line: online marketing tools are a must today.
These 18 online marketing tools are just some of the digital marketing tools available to you to boost your online marketing efforts. How successfully you can use these tools depends on how much time and money you can spend on them.
So there are many different tools you can use to tackle your online marketing challenges - you just need to decide what to focus on first. Which tool is the best fit for your business structure and goals?
No matter which online marketing tool you choose, digital "tools" are here to stay in the online marketing space. And online marketers are in demand like never before - according to StepStone, online marketers in Germany earn an average salary of 45,500€ per year. You earn too little or want more? Let FiveTeams poach you above your desired salary