Tools Every Agency Needs: A Complete List
Although incredibly fruitful, the agency industry is competitive. Agencies can’t afford to shrink against the competition because they don’t have the right tools.
Working with a plethora of different clients, your agency's toolbox should be evaluated every so often. While some tools help your agency deliver better work to your clients, other tools enable you to scale your agency.
To streamline your workflow and ensure maximum success for your agency, we’ve created this guide with tool options according to your budget.
Keep in mind that here at The Campfire Circle help agencies with their suite of tools and optimize workflows. We don’t just generate leads but we do that too!
Content Ideation Tools
Creating content for your clients, albeit a blog post or an industry report, thought leadership fuels success, and that is usually gained from great content creation and promotion of that content. Tools come in handy because they help identify what will resonate with your client’s target audience, allow you to schedule your content, track your content marketing, and more.
The affordable option: Potent Idea Generator is a free tool that allows you to type in the topic of your content, and it comes up with catchy title options and takes your idea to the next level.
The middle of the road option: QuestionDB takes content ideation a step further. You can type in the keyword that you want to write about, and the platform will identify the top questions being asked about your keyword to inspire questions you should tackle in your content.
The premium option: BuzzSumo is great for searching for content that is already out there, and it helps you identify topics that will resonate with your target audience. This tool also has fantastic analytics to measure your content and report on performance.
Social Media Marketing Tools
The affordable option: Statusbrew is all-encompassing and trusted by a lot of notable brands. What I really like about this platform is that they offer agency pricing that starts at just $49/month for each client.
The middle of the road option: HootSuite is another popular all-encompassing tool. Their strongest feature is their advanced social media scheduling, followed by their social listening functionality.
The premium option: SproutSocial is an all-in-one social media marketing tool and is perfect if your agency does a lot of social media marketing for your clients. This platform is the best for collaboration across your team and offers the most detailed analytics.
Email Marketing Tools
Email marketing is crucial for your agency to both nurture leads for your company as well as offering this service to your clients. This type of marketing can’t be done without a tool, so it’s important that you consider all of your options, try a few tools, and don’t give up until you find the perfect email marketing platform for your business.
The affordable option: MailChimp is great if you’re a smaller agency. It’s easy to use and comes with templates to spruce up the emails that you send. In MailChimp, you can set up journeys and automation along with one-off campaigns.
The middle of the road option: Drip has a ton of email marketing and automation functionality for a reasonable price. Drip is proud to be a customer-first platform which means they will value your agency as a client and help you pass that value on to your own clients.
The premium option: Klaviyo is amazing if you have the budget for it. Not only is it intuitive, this platform also offers SMS communication. And if that wasn’t cool enough, Klaviyo provides the best analytics I’ve seen.
CRM Tools
Keeping detailed records of your clients and leads is very important, but you know that. But, taking it a step further, a lot of agencies help their clients with their own CRM, so it’s important to know your options.
The affordable option: Company Hub is perfect for smaller agencies. It works just like an Excel spreadsheet and keeps all of your client data in one place and makes it easy for your team to collaborate.
The Middle of the road option: Active Campaign is great because it acts as a CRM and an email marketing tool in one platform. It’s easy to get started with and easy to use. This is the tool I usually recommend to my clients if they don’t have a large budget.
The premium option: HubSpot is an incredible platform. I suggest it whenever my clients have a large budget and savvy goals. Not only is HubSpot a CRM, it’s also a marketing automation tool. The data available in HubSpot allows for a stronger customer journey.
Collaboration Tools
With so many agencies pivoting to remote work environments, collaboration tools are more important now than when you were in an office with your team. Keep everyone in the loop and brainstorm epic campaigns for your clients with the help of the right collaboration tool.
The affordable option: Pumble has a free plan that honestly has all the functionality your team will need. It allows you to collaborate with your co-workers efficiently, and you can even set up channels for your clients. I’m still trying to figure out why something so awesome is free…
The middle of the road option: Slack is my go-to solution when it comes to choosing a platform to streamline workplace communication. But maybe that’s because it’s what most businesses use. I just find it so easy to use, and it keeps me organized.
The premium option: Moxo is gaining popularity with agencies because it makes it easy to bring clients into the platform. It also is extremely robust and allows users to share and power different tasks.
Project Management Tools
It’s the nature of the industry that your agency is working with multiple clients on multiple projects at once. So going a step beyond just a collaboration tool for your team, many agencies also use project management tools.
The affordable option: Trello gives your entire agency visibility when it comes to who is doing what, progress on projects, prioritizes tasks, and more. It’s affordable but has all the features that you need.
The middle of the road option: Asana is flexible and easy to use. This platform keeps your agency on track with its collaborative and intuitive features.
The premium option: Basecamp takes the complexity out of project management and was designed to be simple to use. It’s personally my favorite.
SEO Optimization Tools
Whether it’s your agency’s website, your clients’ websites, or both–SEO is key for a thriving business. SEO can be a beast with the algorithms constantly changing so many agencies use SEO optimization tools to get ahead. Even if your agency doesn’t offer SEO as one of your services, it’s still important to glean the basics so that the content your agency puts out is SEO optimized.
The affordable option: KWFinder is great if you want to do simple keyword research to optimize your website or your client’s website copy, as well as to gain keywords to use strategically in your blog posts.
The Middle of the road option: SEMRUSH is incredibly robust and a great tool if your agency offers or plans to offer SEO audits. This platform goes beyond keyword research and gives you a full view of both your website’s performance and your clients’ website performance.
The premium option: MozPro is the Mercedes Benz of SEO tools. If you have the budget and you want to offer first-class SEO services for your clients, you just may need this platform.
Analytics Tools
You already know that you can execute excellent strategies for your clients, but they expect to see reports on the performance of your efforts. That’s where analytics tools come in handy, they allow you to track, analyze and measure the strategies you put in place.
The affordable option: Google Analytics is the obvious affordable option as it is free. Once you have it set up, you can track where your traffic is coming from, set conversions, analyze website performance, and more.
The middle of the road option: AgencyAnalytics is a great option because it was created specifically for agencies. The platform automates client reporting and has intuitive dashboards with all of your client data.
The premium option: Adobe Analytics is the best analytics platform that I’ve found. The platform literally has the power to transform how you track and measure data.
Graphic Design Tools
The need for graphic design often comes up in agencies. Whether it’s a simple social image or an eBook, there are tools that don’t require graphic design expertise to be able to publish something visually appealing. The following graphic design tool options are for the average person who doesn’t know the complexities of graphic design.
The affordable option: VistaCreate is free to use and has thousands of templates to choose from. It’s a great option if your agency’s design needs are minimal.
The Middle of the road option: befunky was created so that marketers and PR folks can easily create visually appealing designs without any technical skills required.
The premium option: Canva is easy to use and comes with a ton of templates for things like social posts, banners, flyers, and more. You can quickly create professional designs.
PR Databases
Finding contact information to seed the media, journalists and even influencers is crucial to many agencies. Finding the right PR database means that you’ll automatically have access to email addresses of people who can promote your clients.
The affordable option: Prowly is affordable and they offer a free trial without you having to enter in your credit card information to see if it is a good fit. The platform offers access to over a million media contacts.
The middle of the road option: Muck Rack is my personal favorite PR tool. It’s easy to use and it has functionality that helps you pitch and build relationships with the media, journalists, influencers, and more.
The premium option: Cision is a great option if your agency does or want to do a lot of PR. A little pricey but the most comprehensive PR database on the market.
Are there any tools that your agency uses that didn’t make it onto this list? I’d love to read all about it in the comments below!
