We all know running and managing a digital marketing agency can be challenging. There are simply too many different elements to manage from human resources to creative concepts to approval processes, among others.
Fortunately, there are now various different tools powered by advanced technologies that can help digital marketing agencies in their various tasks from tracking clients’ requirements and deadlines, providing a centralized collaboration hub, cloud-based creative suites, and so on.
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Thus, for a modern digital marketing agency, arguably the key to success is choosing and using the right software and tools to optimize (and ideally, automate) as many aspects of the business as possible.
By having the right tools in place, you can instead put your focus on other areas that can contribute more to keeping your clients satisfied and ultimately, grow your creative agency as a business.
Here, we will discuss five must-have tools and techniques for managing your digital marketing agency so you can stay focused on your core purpose: fulfilling your client’s needs.
1. All-In-One Agency Management Suite: Function Point
The success of an agency is closely related to how effectively it can manage its clients’ needs and expectations. This is why CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is very important for any agency.
The thing about CRM is the bigger your agency and the more clients you manage, the more challenges you’ll meet. This is why having a robust CRM software tailored specifically for agencies like Function Point is important, where you’ll have important features like:
- A centralized hub for various types of content and projects for different clients
- Managing invoice and billing, tracking billing status
- Tracking and managing communications with different clients in just a single dashboard
- A centralized hub for everyone in your agency to view any information related to a client, including different projects belonging to one client
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With Function Point, you can easily build a customized CRM and project management hub for your entire agency. With this, all members of your team can easily view and manage client information, track deadlines and requirements, track billable hours, and so on.
Function Point will also act as the centralized collaboration platform for your team so they can track each other’s progress, share files, and leave feedback with ease.
In short, we have everything related to each project in a centralized hub.
Function Point will also allow us to more effectively manage our resources and plan future workloads with various planning and forecasting tools for real-time visibility at all times.
2. Automation and Integration: Zapier
Even with an all-in-one agency management software like Function Point as your foundation, most likely your agency will still use various other software solutions that are disconnected from each other.
You’ll need a way to integrate these different tools together to maximize productivity, and this is where Zapier comes in.
You can think of Zapier as a “bridge” between different tools and software solutions that currently support more than 3,000 popular apps. What’s great about Zapier for digital marketing agencies is also how you can create automated workflows across different tools easily.
For example, you probably use solutions like MailChimp for email marketing, and you can program Zapier to send all leads captured by MailChimp to your CRM software (Function Point) automatically.
As you can imagine, this will help you save a significant amount of time. Another common application is to allow Zapier to download an attachment from a registered client’s email address to Google Drive and share it with relevant team members automatically while also updating your project management software.
Zapier, in a nutshell, will help you automate repetitive tasks so you can focus on tasks that matter more.
3. SEO Suite: SEMRush
While there are various other prominent SEO tools out there, we’d recommend SEMRush for what it offers: a great balance between price, features, and ease of use.
You can literally use SEMRush for anything related to content marketing and SEO, which is often the majority of work for most digital marketing agencies. You’ll get features like:
- Arguably the best keyword research tools for SEO
- On-page SEO checker tools
- Website audit tools
- Link profile analysis
- PPC builder and keyword tool
- Organic traffic insights for your website
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SEMRush will obviously help in performing SEO optimizations for your client’s website and digital assets, but you can also use it to optimize your agency’s online presence, perform competitive analysis, and even gain insights into potential clients that can help when pitching them.
4. Social Media Management: Hootsuite
Similar to SEMRush, we choose Hootsuite out of various other social media management tools due to its overall value.
Hootsuite is very versatile, offering you a combination of social listening, social media management, and powerful social analytics tools in one place. So, you can use Hootsuite to manage all your clients’ social media campaigns as well as your own social media publications.
Hootsuite also offers a very powerful analytics tool that can help you analyze the performance of each social media post, improve the ROI of social media ads, and optimize each client’s social media campaign. Hootsuite also acts as a collaboration tool for your social media team.
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Also, a great feature for agencies is how you can customize reports easily by choosing from over 200 metrics to tailor the client’s needs.
Hootsuite supports all the major social media channels: Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.
5. Email Marketing: SendGrid
Of course, all digital marketing agencies must have a comprehensive email marketing tool, and here we’d recommend SendGrid.
SendGrid is a very feature-rich email marketing solution that is also easy to use for beginners. You’ll get a drag-and-drop email builder, but if you want more customization, you can also use a coding-based email builder or a combination of both methods.
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Also, you’ll get really powerful email performance analytics, so you can easily analyze which email is performing, and which can be improved.
SendGrid offers a forever-free plan that is actually usable for many digital marketing agencies, but there are also premium plans that will match your needs as you grow your (or your client’s) email list.
Social Media Pricing Calculator
Knowing how to price your services is one of the most important aspects of running an agency. This social media pricing calculator will help you price your social media services accordingly and land more clients.
Developed by Planable and the pricing experts at Soft Fight, this pricing calculator uses a complex algorithm that determines the ideal pricing range for your business. It uses data from 3 different sources. Once you input all the relevant information, the calculator will determine an optimal pricing range you could be charging. It takes into account your costs, the quality of the work you provide, perceived value, and competition.
Bonus: You get a free e-book that covers the most useful pricing-related subjects such as types of pricing models & strategies, agency fee structure, what to consider when deciding on pricing, and how to increase profit margins.
Interesting related article: “What is Internet Marketing?”