7 Best Digital Marketing Tools for Growth-Driven Agencies in 2020

As an agency owner, you know that there are always new marketing tactics and tools on the horizon. Unfortunately, prioritizing the right kinds of tactics and tools can be a real challenge. 

What types of tools will your agency and clients find most valuable? How do you know that these latest marketing tactics will actually work for your business?

It’s a lot to consider.

As an industry-leading text message marketing provider, we know that your time is limited. For that reason, we’ve compiled a ready-access list of the most valuable digital marketing tools for growth-driven agencies. From data discovery to internal operations, the following tools fulfill a variety of use cases.

7 of the Best Digital Marketing Tools for Agencies

Agency owners have unique needs when it comes to digital marketing tools. You need tools that help your agency grow, but you also need tools that empower you to be able to get results for your clients as well. 

Save time selecting the right tools for your agency and clients by starting with the ones on this list.

1. MAXG: Prescriptive Marketing Analytics

MAXG is an artificial intelligence tool used to analyze complex marketing data. Based on the data received, MAXG makes intelligent marketing optimization recommendations. You won’t have to continue wading through charts and charts of data to uncover trends, MAXG does that for you. It intelligently analyzes your marketing and sales metrics and then tells you what to do next. 

Initial Price

As an agency partner, you get some amazing savings to help you utilize MAXG for your clients. Pricing starts at $129/month for 10 client accounts PLUS you get your agency account free as long as you can sign up just two clients within the first year.

How Does This Tool Help?

Sifting through data is one of the most time-consuming jobs for an agency. From Google Analytics to data dashboards like HubSpot and Databox, you have more numbers and graphs than you can possibly analyze. MAXG is built by the first-ever Diamond HubSpot Partner — Square 2 Marketing. They poured their experience into MAXG’s software to help you grow your agency with smarter tools.

Getting Started

Visit their website to find out more about MAXG and give their free trial a spin. 

2. HubSpot Marketing

HubSpot Marketing is an all-in-one inbound marketing software that gives you the tools to implement marketing automation, build a smart website with blogging and content personalization, perform A/B testing, and launch sophisticated drip campaigns. HubSpot’s all-in-one tools suite gives you the ability to create connected campaigns with clear insights into performance across all channels. You will be able to grow traffic, convert leads, and show proof of ROI (return on investment).

Initial Price

They offer a set of free tools to get you started, including the free CRM and Marketing Suite.

How Does This Tool Help?

Sometimes having too many tools is actually a hindrance. You can’t collect meaningful insights when email campaigns are in one tool, social is in another, your website is somewhere else, and paid ads are off in another corner. HubSpot gives you the “one tool to rule them all” approach by either including the tools you need or integrating with them so that you can get the big picture and details in one place.

Getting Started

Find out more about the free plan and sign up for an account on HubSpot’s website.

3. SEOPress

SEOPress is a WordPress plugin that helps you optimize your pages and posts for search engines. You can easily customize the way your pages and posts appear in search results to help them rank higher and be more enticing to click.

Initial Price

The free version is pretty robust, but they offer a pro version for $39 if you want access to more features and tech support.

How Does This Tool Help?

Once you have installed the free plugin to your WordPress website, you will gain the ability to customize your titles and metas — as mentioned above — and create an XML and HTML sitemap, build a Google knowledge graph, manage open graph tags, create Twitter card data, and perform on-page content analysis.

Getting Started

Download the free version from SEOPress and install it to get started. 

4. ClickUp

ClickUp can help you maximize productivity by helping you manage projects and tasks with your team. It gives you tools to help with process management, task management, time management, team collaboration, and reporting. 

Initial Price

Sign up for an account for free and move to a paid plan as your business grows.

How Does This Tool Help?

Assign tasks for yourself and employees, create checklists, and communicate with your team and clients to make sure deadlines are hit and nothing gets lost in the hustle. You can also create templates for repeatable tasks to ensure that your team maintains quality, consistency, and scalability as you deliver work for clients.

Getting Started

Create your free account and add your team on ClickUp’s website.

5. Canva Business

Canva helps you create visually appealing designs without the need to hire a graphic designer. You can use their library of print and digital templates to kick-start a professional design and then customize it to suit your client’s branding.

Initial Price

They have a free version, but if you want access to more fonts, templates, and stock images, you will need to shell out the $12.95 per month for Canva Pro.

How Does This Tool Help?

Canva Pro eliminates the need to learn graphic design or pay someone to do the work for you. They have a full library of professionally designed and easily customizable graphics for everything from social posts to ebooks and letterhead.

Getting Started

Find out more and try it out for yourself on Canva’s website.

6. Slack

Slack makes communicating with your staff and clients simple and fun! You can keep your conversations organized, and make it easy to collaborate with your team and clients.

Initial Price

The free version gives you access to their basic features.

How Does This Tool Help?

Slack enables you to collaborate with employees and clients quickly and easily. You can create channels to talk to specific groups of people, send direct messages to individuals, search conversations for info, and make video calls all directly from Slack.

Getting Started

Get started with Slack by signing up for an account on their website.

7. EZ Texting

Text message marketing is one of the most effective ways to reach your audience and increase engagement. It allows you to communicate without your audience having to download any special software. They can receive and send messages to you using their texting app that they already have on their phone.

Initial Price

EZ Texting offers a free trial with full access to all the features, and you can send your 1st 100 messages for free.

How Does This Tool Help?

“92% of the U.S. population owns a mobile device, and texting is the preferred method of contact for consumers under the age of 50.”

EZ Texting offers a full suite of features to help you take your marketing efforts to the next level. Send out payment reminders, appointment confirmations, and communicate with clients effortlessly through the new chat feature. We have helped more than 210,000 clients send over 4 billion messages, and we’re here to help you too.

Getting Started

Creating your account and activating the free trial is simple and fast. Follow the steps below to get started and send out your first 100 messages for free.

Step One: Start the Free Trial

Fill out the form on the signup page to create your account.

Step Two: Create Some Groups

Segment your list into groups for staff and clients, or whatever suits your business needs best.

Step Three: Add Your Contacts

Upload contacts to your list and assign them to your groups.

Step Four: Create Your First Keyword & Short Code

Keywords are specific words or phrases that trigger an event within the system when sent to your EZ Texting number — aka a short code. Keywords can be used to allow new subscribers to sign up to your list, send subscribers special offers, schedule appointments, or even RSVP to an event.

Step Five: Grow Your List

Include your keyword and shortcode in all the ads you create, your website, social media pages, estimates, receipts, and anywhere your customers frequent.

Step Six: Send Your First Message

Send out your first message once you have a decent list of subscribers.

Step Seven: Get Your Free Guide

Read our free guide and learn how you can implement effective campaigns using text marketing: How to Mass Text for Business: 9 Game-Changing Tips.

Photo: Adobe Stock/REDPIXEL