Essential digital marketing tools

Discover useful MarTech tools to effectively manage your digital marketing

How will this digital marketing tools guide help me grow my business?

This guide gives our free members a preview of some of the classic and essential digital marketing tools. As a result, you will be able to enhance your strategy and help grow your business. This free guide gives you a taster of our full (78 page) Marketing Technology Selection Tools Guide. This is exclusive for business members and provides you with the top categories and tools that are widely used to boost growth. It breaks down each tool with useful details to help you pick the right options for your business.

Who is this digital tools guide for?

This guide has been made for marketers of all levels, from managers and major stakeholders who need to find big-picture solutions and improve internal processes to marketing executives who will be using the tools on a daily basis.

How is the guide structured?

This digital marketing guide presents the tools we recommend you use in your marketing strategy. It’s a small sample of our Marketing Technology Selection Guide which contains hundreds of digital marketing tools across more than 30 categories, containing full breakdowns of costs, features and more.

This guide groups the essential digital marketing tools across the Smart Insights RACE Planning Framework for managing digital marketing so you can review where to make improvements across your business’s customer lifecycle.

If you’re a Business Member of Smart Insights you can get access to the full guide containing:

The full explanation of all 30 categories
Recommendations on the top 5 tools within each category
A separate tool for auditing your MarTech stack
Recommended process of selecting MarTech solutions

Latest updates

This guide is reviewed and updated on a regular basis. It has been updated in 2024 to remove outdated tools and to include new tools that have emerged to help marketers. We have added a new section on Generative AI tools. We have also updated our Essential Tools wheel to help you visually see what tools are available across the marketing funnel.

Resource Details

Authors: Dr. Dave Chaffey & Amelia Cooper, Smart Insights
Format: Downloadable PDF guide, 78 pages

About the authors

Dr. Dave Chaffey

Dave is co-founder of Smart Insights and creator of the Smart Insights RACE planning framework. For his full profile, or to connect on LinkedIn or other social networks, see the About Dave Chaffey profile page on Smart Insights. Dave is author of 5 bestselling books on digital marketing including Digital Marketing Excellence and Digital Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice. In 2004 he was recognized by the Chartered Institute of Marketing as one of 50 marketing ‘gurus’ worldwide who have helped shape the future of marketing.

Amelia Cooper

Image of Amelia smiling

Amelia Cooper is Head of Content at Smart Insights. She is responsible for managing the paid member content library and e-learning resources, as well as strategic planning to ensure customers get the most from their memberships. She is a University of Southampton and the Chartered Institute of Marketing graduate with over 8 years’ experience in digital marketing, specializing in content marketing.