Marketing Tools: 25+ Free Online Apps For Your Marketing Agency

Digital marketing tools make our work easier. They allow you to do more with fewer resources. Online marketing tools give small agencies an edge in the competitive space against established businesses.

We’ve got you covered with these marketing tools from managing projects internally and client communication, sending out a client proposal, ad creatives, or handling client’s social media accounts.

List of best marketing agency software and tools

Mix and match the right set of digital marketing agency software and tools and be the rockstar for your clients.

Apps to send proposals

Among several marketing tools, proposal software lets you create intuitive and interactive proposals within no time that look professional to present to your prospects.

1. Better Proposals

Agencies love >Better Proposals because they make it easier than ever to get new clients! Unlike traditional proposals, Better Proposals has many proposal templates, so you spend less time writing. Just pick your favourite template, edit a few client and pricing details, and you’re ready to send.

Distinctive features:

1. Proposals are viewed as web pages and not email attachments.
2. Proposals are responsive and mobile optimised.
3. Track the client’s actions as they read the proposal – how much of the proposal they’ve read, the time spent, when they’ve signed, etc.
4. Spend no more than 15 minutes per proposal.

Pricing: Free trial available. Paid Plans start from $19/mo/user (up to 10 proposals).

2. PandaDoc

>PandaDoc helps small enterprise teams create, track and sign sales documents, proposals, and quotes that convert!

Sean Dudayev, Founder of >Fruitful Marketing, says – “Our favourite tool for proposals is Panda Doc. They come with templates for legalese and allow for easy e-signature of those documents. They also have a ton of tools that allow for design and modification. We usually combine it with Canva to develop professional and aesthetically pleasing proposals.“

>Lindsay Kirsch, says – My favourite proposal tool is PandaDoc. PandaDoc allows you to create reusable proposal templates, update key fields, and then send and sign so that you can get your contracts signed right away. PandaDoc has multiple other software integrations that allow you to integrate it with your marketing automation seamlessly.

Distinctive features:

1. Custom white-labelling of documents.
2. Heavy-customisation and engaged proposals available like adding videos, etc.

Pricing: Free Trial available. Paid Plans start from $9/mo/user (up to 5 proposals)

3. Proposify

>Proposify is a proposal software for sales teams to create, send and track proposals. It’s helpful for marketing agencies to send out proposals and contracts to clients.

Distinctive features:

1. Simple and intuitive design editor.
2. Native integration with Unsplash to create beautiful proposals.
3. It comes with a wide range of proposal templates like Facebook Marketing Proposal, Inbound Marketing, Email Marketing, PPC, SEO, etc.
4. It is client-focused and eases the process of sending out proposals.

Pricing: Free Trial available. Paid Plans start from $19/mo/user (up to 5 proposals).

Marketing tools for campaign reporting

Reporting for multiple clients across multiple campaigns can be painful when you’re doing it manually. Setup automated reports for clients and save yourself from hours of manual work!

1. Google DataStudio

>Google DataStudio is free software that lets you connect your data sources and create simple reports based on your requirements. You can also schedule these reports. 

For example, using Google Analytics for tracking website traffic and conversion goals, you can create a dashboard that shows the week-on-week trend of traffic, segmented by individual source and app signups coming from each channel.

Jordan Eller, Digital Marketing Manager of >Forma Life Science Marketing, says, – “Data Studio changed my life. Before I began using Data Studio, my marketing reports consisted of screenshots and spreadsheets. But Data Studio pulls your data directly from Google Analytics and arranges it cleanly and dynamically, and it’s all automated. Now, when I need to present a monthly report, all I need to do is change the report’s date range, and the new data automatically populates. It’s perfect for Google Analytics reporting, SEO reporting, and any other digital marketing-related reporting you need.“

Distinctive features:

1. Connect SEO and CRO (Conversion Rate Optimisation) tools with Google Data Studio to create a single go-to dashboard to track the website traffic and conversions.
2. Easily create a dashboard from any field available in the YouTube API for your channel.
3. Get insights from your data quickly, without knowing or writing SQL queries.
4. You can easily plot all your tracking metrics in line-graph or bar-graph in the Data Studio.
5. You can limit the edit access and only give them view-only access if you’re reporting to your clients.

Pricing: Google Data Studio is free for all users except when you want to get data from third party connectors like Facebook and LinkedIn.

2. Supermetrics

Reporting can be a huge time suck for agency marketers. Instead of manually copy/pasting data into client reports, automate client reporting with >Supermetrics. Spend more time analyzing data, making recommendations, and getting better results for your clients.

“We found that since using Supermetrics, we’ve saved around 53% of reporting hours during Q3.” – Maricarmen Vargas, Digital Account Manager, Vuelo6 (>Read the complete case study)

Distinctive features:

1. Make better decisions using all your data. That means improved results, client satisfaction, and retention rates for your agency.
2. With Supermetrics, you can gather it in one place for every client, whether it’s a spreadsheet, a data visualization tool, or a data warehouse.

3. Databox

>Databox is an all-in-one business analytics platform for online startups and SMBs. You can track all your KPI’s by creating intuitive dashboards in Databox.

Distinctive features:

1. Connect with over 70 apps like HubSpot, Google Ads, Shopify, Mixpanel, Google Analytics, etc.
2. Monitor and share the reports with your clients in one place.
3. Use the Databox Slack app, and get daily metrics like website traffic, number of signups, number of paid customers, etc., as Slack notifications!

Accounting and invoicing apps

You need accounting software that can do much more than just tally numbers. Online accounting tools provide features beyond simple bookkeeping and reporting. Here are a few apps that are an all-in-one accounting and invoicing solution for your business.

1. QuickBooks Online

>QuickBooks Online is the most popular Accounting app for solopreneurs, freelancers, and small to big businesses. 

Distinctive features:

1. Create estimates, send out invoices, track payments, create business reports, and much more.
2. For Agencies, QuickBooks has processes & Quickbooks Projects that help with proper vendor management, client expense tracking, and monitor time and money spent on each project.
3. Integrate your QuickBooks with your project management app and say goodbye to duplicate data entry and expenses.
4. Build custom automated workflows between accounts and payments by integrating Quickbooks and Stripe and reduce the scope for human error in bookkeeping. Also, integrate QuickBooks Online with 200+ apps using automate.io.

Pricing: Plans start at $12/mo only.

2. FreshBooks

>FreshBooks is an all-in-one small business accounting and invoicing solution that makes running a business fun. 

Jeremy Harrison, Founder of >Hustle Life, says – “For my business, I like to use Freshbooks for all my accounting needs. It has everything you need, from invoicing to payments to preparing financial statements, and even has a mobile app. The best part of this is the interface is easy to use. Anyone would look like a pro when using FreshBooks. I also love the fact that the phone app makes it easy to store receipts and can easily integrate with my bookkeeper.“

Distinctive features:

1. Integrate with other apps to create workflow automation.
2. Use time-tracking and insightful reporting to spend less time on grunt work and more time being productive.
3. Run your business from anywhere—desktop, phone, or tablet.
4. Collaborate with your team from anywhere.
5. Award-winning customer support is just a click away.

3. Wave

>Wave is a free accounting and invoicing platform that enables small businesses to manage everything using a single platform – from payroll, payments to invoicing. 

Agencies love it, and here’s what Aleksandar Ratkovic from >Neparno 10 has to say, – “Since our agency has a lot of clients who pay us monthly, Wave is very convenient. It reminds us when to send the invoice if someone is late and has great graph reporting features where we can see agency progress in earnings and profitability.“

Distinctive features:

1. Recurring billing
2. Automatic payments
3. Invoice templates

Integration and workflow automation app

1. Automate.io

At your agency, managing multiple clients is itself a big task, so why spend time manually syncing data between the marketing tools?

Making all your apps talk to each other helps reduce manual work, duplicate data entry and ultimately save time! Be it the leads you’ve generated for your clients or yourself via contact forms, push these to your CRM automatically.

Distinctive features:

1. Create automated sales, marketing, and other business processes.
2. Save nearly 40+ hours/month.

Pricing: Forever free plan available. Paid plans start from $49/month.

If you’ve not set up automation at your agency yet, get started with integrating your apps via Automate.io.

PPC and ad management apps

If you’re into paid advertising – managing heavy budgets, organising your campaigns, sorting out keywords can be quite a task! And all the more, when you’re working with multiple clients too.

Below are a few marketing tools to help you manage your ad campaigns efficiently and improve conversion rates.

1. Google Keyword Planner

>Google Keyword Planner comes along with your Google Ads Account tied to your ad campaigns, and all you have to do is sign in to your ad account and paste the keywords you wish to target.

It helps to understand the CPC, competition, and search volume of your keywords. You can also research for other relevant keywords that could have a high potential for conversion.

Distinctive features:

1. Get CPC, competition, and search volume of your keywords.
2. Research for other relevant keywords that could have a high potential for conversion.
3. No third-party data source, the keyword data is fetched directly from Google who runs the search engine.

Here’s a >complete guide on using the Google Keyword Planner to make the most out of your ad campaigns.

2. AdEspresso

>AdEspresso started with Facebook Ad Campaign Management and now supports Instagram and Google Ads too. 

Distinctive features:

1. Create and manage ad campaigns across different client accounts under one platform.
2. Analyse and get actionable insights on your campaign performance.
3. AdEspresso’s On-boarding Requests tool and Campaign Approval Flow can help clients provide access to their pages and ad accounts and approve ad campaigns.
4. Connect to the client’s CRM to push the leads.
5. AdEspresso supports tailored client reports with custom-branding to help clients understand the performance of their ad campaigns.

Pricing: 14-Day Free Trial. Paid plan starts from $58 paid yearly for an ad-spend of up to $3,000/mo.

SEO and analytics apps

To track your client’s website performance, regularly conduct SEO audits, track the keyword performance and report the website metrics, below are a set of marketing tools to help you with that.

1. Ahrefs

>Ahrefs is a popular SEO suite of tools that let you monitor your search traffic, perform a complete site audit, track your keyword rankings, spy on your competitor backlinks, and analyse content.

Distinctive features:

1. Ahrefs has a vast repository of Tutorials on their YouTube channel and guides on their blog, which help many SEOs enhance their skills.
2. Agencies can send out sample site audit reports to their clients as a part of their proposal too. Pointing out fixes can help you convert the client faster.

Pricing: It starts from $99/mo for one user and up to five projects.

2. MOZ

>MOZ is an all-in-one SEO tool with a great database. It gives the search volume of the keyword and also suggests the related keywords around that topic. It also predicts the keyword difficulty, which helps us to know if it’s easy to rank for that keyword or not!

Distinctive features:

1. Moz Pro features like On-page Grader and Rank Checker help reduce mundane SEO tasks like observing the On-page SEO issues, tracking keyword rankings, etc.
2. Download the MozBar Chrome extension and use it to check the DA and page authority of the browsed website without even going to the Moz account!

Pricing: It starts from $99/mo for up to 5 campaigns (each campaign can track one website with three other competitors).

3. Screaming Frog

>Screaming Frog is a complete suite of software for technical SEO. It is the go-to SEO tool for website crawling and checking the technical SEO issues like redirection fixes, verifying no-index and no-follow meta tags, etc.

Distinctive features:

1. Crawl the title and meta tags of the respective pages and download them in a CSV file.
2. Create an XML sitemap of the website.
3. Easily audit the “hreflang” attributes if the website is in multiple languages.
4. Crawl your competitor’s website and check their website and internal linking structure in Crawl Diagram under the Visualisation tab.

Learn more about using this tool for your client’s website in this >Guide to Screaming Frog by Seer Interactive agency.

4. Google Analytics

>Google Analytics is the most widespread and essential tool to understand your website analytics. For any marketer, Google Analytics is the go-to for marketing analytics & performance metrics. 

Distinctive features:

1. Analyse website data
2. Create reports
3. Get insights into unusual rise or dip in website metrics.

Free to use, set up the GA code on your website, and you can get started.

Apps for content marketing teams

Are you a content-heavy agency? Is content your bread & butter? Then here are a set of tools that’ll help you create compelling content at ease and vow your clients. Use these alongside other SEO tools and skyrocket your client’s blog traffic in no time.

1. Grammarly

Are you writing too many emails or just any content? Are you tired of checking if your content is legit & error-free? Install >Grammarly extension and keep yourself away from errors in your writing. It also helps in detecting plagiarism and makes your copy stand out.

Distinctive features:

1. Grammarly Editor.
2. It handles necessary grammar and spelling checks.
3. Grammar rule explanations.
4. Microsoft Office integration.

Pricing: Free extension, paid plans start from $11.66/mo.

2. BuzzSumo

Are you creating content each day and running out of ideas? >BuzzSumo lets you discover trending and most shared content to help you finalise your next topic.

Distinctive features:

1. It can browse 5 billion articles, scan through forums, send real-time updates and alerts of brand mentions.
2. Identify top influencers in a particular niche and the most shared content by them.
3. Facebook and YouTube Analyser to help you in creating marketing strategies for respective platforms.

Pricing: Free trial available; paid plans start from $99/mo.

3. CoSchedule

>CoSchedule is a family of agile marketing products that will help you stay focused, deliver projects on time, and make your team happy. Publish more content, deliver work on time and prove your team’s value.

Distinctive features:

1. Plan your content calendar using visual templates.
2. Content Organizer is a targeted product for content marketing teams provided by CoSchedule, comes with an in-built analyzer to write high-converting headlines.

Pricing: Content Organizer starts from $60/mo.

Graphic and design apps

Be it a creative agency or a simple marketing agency, design tools are needed to create stand-out imagery for blog posts, ad copies, social posts, and website infographics. Below is the list of your go-to design tools:

1. Canva

>Canva is a web-based graphic design product that offers a simple drag & drop designer. It supports hundreds of design layouts to get started with designing collateral.

Canva is your tool if you’re new to designing and would like to get started creating superficial marketing collateral and designs. Agencies can use Canva to the fullest by creating different brand kits for each of their clients.

Distinctive features:

1. Canva Pro has collaboration features wherein the client/ designer relationship is made simple and add comments on each design in real-time. 
2. With Canva, you get free templates to create almost any social media post or print design.

Pricing: A free-forever plan is available. The paid plan starts from $12.95/mo.

P.S: While Canva sorts all your graphic needs, >Biteable solves your video needs where you can create video content within minutes on the go.

2. Venngage

>Venngage is an infographic maker first, but it also helps marketers and agencies design everything from pitch decks, business proposals, social media visuals, and even marketing collateral like posters, brochures, etc.

Distinctive features:

1. A one-stop shop for agencies to create visual content online, with 1000+ professionally designed templates for all occasions.
2. A robust drag-and-drop editor that’s incredibly intuitive to ease. Create gorgeous visuals effortlessly; no designer needed.
3. Managing multiple clients requires the proper organisation of brand kits. Venngage’s My BrandKit allows businesses to import their logos, colours, and fonts to stick to their client’s brand guidelines.
4. It’s the perfect infographic and design-maker for larger creative agencies!

Pricing: Free plan available. Paid plans start from $49/mo.

3. Piktochart

>Piktochart is a web-based infographic designer tool that helps users create intricate to simple infographics, presentations and visuals using templates.

Distinctive features:

1. Piktochart’s creative collaboration feature brings your team members on the same page.
2. Picktochart for Teams, you can share your visuals, brand assets and receive feedback instantly.

Pricing: It starts from $29/mo.

Project planning and management apps

Managing multiple clients across different locations and projects can be overwhelming if you don’t use project management software.

Irrespective of your niche, whether you’re a creative and design, marketing, or branding agency, having smooth project planning helps deliver excellent results.

A project planning and management software will help you set up clear goals and tasks of the projects, collaborate with the client, assign tasks to individual account managers, and have a bird-eye view of each project’s timelines.

Select the one that suits your agency the best, and see your projects moving in a breeze!

1. Teamwork

>Teamwork is a full suite of tools for project planning, client collaboration, and internal agency collaboration!

Erin Sparks, Founder & CEO of >Site Strategics, says – “Client collaboration on a project is essential, but communication needs to be controlled with a level of governorship. Basecamp is certainly a great tool for the job, but agencies prefer Teamwork due to the depth of functionality, notebook utilities, and group messaging toolsets.”

Distinctive features:

1. Recurring tasks make it easy for marketing teams at agencies to set up repeated tasks at custom time intervals. For example, after every blog is published, you need to go through a content promotion cycle. You can add it as a recurring task in Teamwork Projects.
2. Teamwork is also a preferred project management app if you’d like to separate multiple projects for multiple clients quickly and without any clutter.

2. Workamajig

Created especially for agencies and creative teams, >Workamajig is the go-to project management software for creative marketing agencies.

Distinctive features:

1. Provides a full suite of apps for creative teams.
2. Opportunity tracking—right from you sending out proposals.
3. Task management
4. Resource planning
5. Time tracking
6. Client collaboration
7. Workamagic has experts that help you set up your project management software for your agency across all the locations.

3. Asana

>Asana is a simple and easy-to-use project management app to help teams organise, collaborate, and manage projects.

Elizabeth McCumber, a Content Strategist at >Wpromote, says – “Asana works like a breeze for us! It’s best for keeping deliverable for both clients and internal projects on track. For agencies offering integrated digital marketing services, collaboration and communication are paramount to client success. Asana enables them to deliver through streamlined feedback, transparent timelines, and clear accountability.”

Distinctive features:

1. Easily for clients to use and collaborate.
2. Give quick feedback by adding comments directly on images or PDFs that get assigned tasks.
3. Plan your day and week with a prioritised to-do list.
4. Sync Asana and Notion to better organise your tasks. 

Client communication apps

Communication is the key to maintaining a good client relationship. Being in an agency, you would know how crucial it is to keep your client informed at all times – be it the low conversion of the PPC campaigns or when you’ve hit the targets in no time.

Not just with clients, internally as well, these online communication tools help you send out files easily, share an interesting stat that you’ve come across on your morning commute, or just a cute cat GIF to keep up the team spirit!

1. Zoom

>Zoom is a cloud-based product for companies and individuals for their video and audio conferencing needs, chat, and webinars.

It’s an easy-to-use app to get started with your online meetings, share your screen, and record meeting sessions for further reference. As they say, modern teams use Zoom with excellent features like HD video and audio, built-in collaboration tools, end-end encryption for all meetings, recording and transcripts.

Distinctive features:

1. Available for iPhone and Android users to sign in to Zoom quickly on mobile devices on the go.
2. Reduce cost on video conferencing apps.
3. Improve efficiency and collaborate better internally and with clients.
4. Forever free plan for easy 1-1 meetings that can last up to 40 minutes and host up to 100 participants.

Pricing: Paid Plans start from $14.99/mo/host.

2. Slack

Over the years, >Slack has established itself as the go-to solution for small to enterprise teams for instant messaging and file sharing. It is also the best option when you just can’t wait for hours for approval via email and get it instantly on chat via Slack!

Quentin Aisbett, Founder of >OnQ Marketing, says – “Slack is the best software for marketing agencies and we are using it more and more often for ongoing retainers that require less collaboration but where it makes sense to take the communication away from email.”

Distinctive features:

1. Add clients in a shared channel with their respective account managers and work together!
2. Similar to a Google search, Slack helps you find what you need in a snap.
3. Set reminders in less than 30 seconds so that you are always on top of your tasks
4. Connect your Slack and Trello (project management tool) to receive messages when someone adds you to a task or adds a comment to your project. 

Pricing: Starts from $6.67 per month per user for small teams.

Slack makes it fun to work together. Learn Slack etiquette with our Slack tips and tricks to stay productive working from home.

3. Calendly

Are you tired of back and forth emailing? >Calendly lets you generate a link for your schedule to book meetings with ease and allow others to set up meetings with you.

Distinctive features:

1. Calendly provides a wide range of integrations to sync meetings with Google Calendar and other apps.
2. Send notifications to Slack for new events coming up and do more.

Pricing: Free Plan for Basics. The paid plans start from $8 user/month.

4. G-Suite

While choosing the right tools and software, agencies have a budget in mind and choose what suits their needs the best. 

For small agencies with limited clients and those agencies that are conscious of their budget, G-Suite (free digital marketing tools) is the best option for Agency-Client collaboration and internal communication. 

Lindsay Kirsch, Founder & CEO of >Lindsay Kirsch LLC, an expert in workflow management and digital marketing strategy, says – “GSuite is an amazing collaboration tool. Whether you are reviewing copy, proofs, or storyboards, GSuite allows you to easily share, comment, and create documents.“

Distinctive features:

1. Google Hangouts is the most feasible communication app if the agency relies heavily on GSuite. 
2. Connect G-Suite with your favourite apps to build workflow automation to increase collaboration and productivity.  
3. You don’t have to spend extra cents on other applications.

Pricing: It starts from $5 user/month.

Choose the tool that suits your role

While picking the right set of internet marketing tools, managing your agency’s budget, and satisfying the client is crucial!

We’ve done the grunt work and come up with this list of the best digital marketing tools and software for your agency. There are plenty of other online collaboration tools for your team you can look into as well. Use the best marketing tools at your agency and wow your clients with your work!