In today’s digital age, inbound marketing is not just an option – it’s a necessity for survival.
With the overwhelming sea of content and competition online, standing out requires more than just creativity—it demands a smart arsenal of tools.
Thankfully there are a ton out there that can help and we’ve broken down 30 of them.
These tools are not just enhancements, they are the engines of growth and innovation in a world where attention is the most coveted currency. Consider this list your resource for the best inbound marketing tools that will make your life easier and give your leads and revenue a boost!
- Website Visitor ID Pixel
- Quora
- Medium
- SEMRush
- Ahrefs
- HotJar
- Cookieless Facebook Ad Pixel
- Hubspot
- JotForm
- Instapage
- Mailchimp
- Sendible
- Sprout Social
- Yoast
- Zapier
- Trello
- Ubersuggest
- Tailwind
- Slack
- Grammarly
- Calendly
- PandaDoc
- Wistia
- TypeForm
- Referral Candy
- SendGrid
- Lucky Orange
- Triple Whale
- Oktopost
- Ad Espresso
Inbound Marketing Tool #1: Customers.ai – Website Visitor ID Pixel
Cost: $99-$799 (see pricing)
Website Visitor ID X-Ray pixel is a website visitor identification tool that allows you to identify anonymous visitors on your website and capture the names and email addresses of site abandoners.
The downfall of cart abandonment is that unless someone fills out a form, you don’t know who they are. With website visitor identification, that changes and you can capture those who left their cart and can get ahead of pre-cart abandonment.
To install the Website Visitor ID X-Ray Pixel, sign up (for FREE!), go to your dashboard, and navigate to My Automations.
Select + New Automation and get your pixel. We have easy install options for Google Tag Manager, WordPress, and Shopify, or you can install the pixel manually.
Inbound Marketing Tool #2: Quora
Cost: Free
Your target audience is asking questions and you have the answers. Whether you are making a name for yourself in marketing on the question-and-answer platform or optimizing your SEO, it’s free and awesome.
Inbound Marketing Tool #3: Medium – SEO
Cost: Free and paid subscriptions start at $5/mo.
Writing great articles opens doors, especially at Medium. In a nutshell, write a quality article that links back to your website or blog, and voila! — traffic.
Inbound Marketing Tool #4: SEMrush – SEO Powerhouse
Cost: Plans start at $99/mo.
This is the ultimate tool for inbound marketers that want to leverage organic search traffic in their favor. Track keywords, analyze what keywords competitors are ranking for, view backlinks, and much more. We love SEMrush, and you will too.
Inbound Marketing Tool #5: Ahrefs – Content Marketing & SEO
Cost: Plans start at $99/mo.
Right up there with SEMrush, this is one of those essential tools that every marketer either has, had, or will have at some point in their career. Awesome backlink checking capabilities and site audit for driving organic traffic with SEO.
Inbound Marketing Tool #6: Hotjar – UX Optimization
Cost: Free and plans starting at $99/mo.
This tool is incredibly useful for optimizing your user experience (UX) and click-through rates. It’s also just fun to use! Another highly recommended and comparable inbound marketing tools is Lucky Orange.
Inbound Marketing Tool #7: Cookieless Facebook Ad Pixel
Cost: $99-$799 (see pricing)
Anyone who has run Facebook ads for some time knows how small audiences have become. iOS 14 drastically changed the Facebook landscape and now with the removal of third-party cookies across Chrome, it’s only going to shrink further.
It’s time for marketers to start collecting their own first-party data that can be synced with Facebook.
You can with the Customers.ai Cookieless Facebook Ad Pixel!
Capture your website visitors, create custom segments, and build remarketing audiences directly from the platform.
Inbound Marketing Tool #8: HubSpot – Automation & Beyond
Cost: Free features and premium plans starting at $50/mo.
The original inbound marketing platform, HubSpot is known for coining the term “inbound marketing”, so it’s a great place to start your inbound adventure.
HubSpot isn’t just one tool or thing, it’s many, many different automation tools combined into one user-friendly dashboard-centric place. It’s a one-stop solution and even has a lot to offer under the free plan!
This is the best choice for marketers who don’t want to jump around browser tabs or tools and prefer to have everything under one hood.
Inbound Marketing Tool #9: JotForm – Forms That Capture Leads & More
Cost: Free trial and plans start at $19/mo.
You need a form to drive traffic to that collects valuable data seamlessly for your inbound marketing strategy. JotForm is the easiest way to build forms and includes more useful widgets than you can shake a banana at.
Inbound Marketing Tools #10: Instapage – Landing Pages
Cost: Free trial and plans start at $199/mo.
Everyone has a favorite tool for creating landing pages. For 2021, we’re betting on Instapage for the most bang for your buck.
It’s very similar to LeadPages, but Instapage offers complete customization for mobile. If you know anything about marketing, you know mobile is where it’s at in 2021! There is also an abundance of free templates which saves time in design.
Inbound Marketing Tool #11: Mailchimp – Email Marketing for Everybody
Cost: Free with premium plans starting at $9.99/mo.
Are we biased because their logo is a monkey? Maybe. But it doesn’t matter — because every digital marketer knows that Mailchimp is a great foundational marketing tool. Plus, you can utilize it for free. Power to the chimps!
Inbound Marketing Tool #12: Sendible – Social Media Management
Cost: Plans start at $29/mo.
Social media is obviously an important lead generation channel, and there are countless options for scheduling, monitoring, and curating content. Sendible offers great value, is less buggy than some others, and is always being updated.
Inbound Marketing Tool #13: Sprout Social – Social Media Management
Cost: Plans start at $99/mo
Sprout Social has arguably carved itself out as the Cadillac of social media management software. Not surprising that the only drawback is that it’s a bit more costly than others at $99/user/mo.
The reporting alone is worth it. Plus, it’s practically bug-free whereas some of the more economical options are glitchy.
Inbound Marketing Tool #14: Yoast SEO – WordPress
Cost: Free and premium plans start at $89/year.
Yoast SEO makes on-site SEO optimization easy as banana cream pie. If you are using WordPress, you should have the Yoast plugin installed for the post or page audit.
Inbound Marketing Tool #15: Zapier – Automate Everything
Cost: Free and premium plans start at $25/mo.
We love automation, don’t you? Zapier integrates with almost everything and is super easy to boot! You have a use for it, guaranteed.
Inbound Marketing Tools #16: Trello – Agile Project Management
Cost: Free and premium plans start at $12.50/mo.
Keep projects under your thumb and orderly with Trello. A trusted standby for a simple agile workflow To-Do, In-Progress, and Done project management board.
Inbound Marketing Tool #17: Ubbersuggest – SEO
Cost: Free trial and plans starting at $29/mo.
Another solid choice for SEO insights, competitive research and link research feature. Plus a handy extension for Chrome.
Inbound Marketing Tool #18: Tailwind – Pinterest Powerhouse
Cost: Free and premium plans start at $15/mo.
Many marketers who found glorious Pinterest results with Board Booster were left hanging when the popular app shut down. Lo and behold — Tailwind has the same capabilities in a more robust GUI. Drive massive traffic with Pins using Tailwind’s scheduling feature and more.
Inbound Marketing Tool #19: Slack – Teamwork
Cost: Free and premium plans start at $7/mo.
Slack has become a household name, especially since the mass office exodus to WFH due to the pandemic. This is one of the best inbound marketing tools for collaborating with your team remotely.
Inbound Marketing Tool #20: Grammarly – Write Better Content
Cost: Free and premium plans start at $30/mo.
What’s an SEO strategy without proper grammar? Sloppy. You can bet that Google will penalize you in SERP so take a moment and let Grammarly proofread your content.
Inbound Marketing Tools #21: Calendly – Appointment Scheduling
Cost: Free and premium plans start at $8/mo.
As your funnel fills at the top, you will want to automate to the bottom by simplifying client calls, demos, and appointment scheduling . This is the most versatile tool to fill the empty spaces on your calendar with leads.
Inbound Marketing Tool #22: PandaDoc – Proposals and Contracts
Cost: Free trial and plans start at $25/mo.
There are plenty of options for sending proposals and e-signing contracts. PandaDoc has a slick interface, can shorten your sales cycle, and integrates with many other inbound marketing tools.
Inbound Marketing Tool #23: Wistia – Video Content
Cost: Free trial with pro plan starting at $99/mo
An inbound marketing-focused video tool! Wistia will give your videos cutting edge engagement with data-driven videos.
Inbound Marketing Tool #24: TypeForm – Capture Leads
Cost: Free and premium plans start at $35/mo.
Its slick one question at a time format improves your prospects’ user experience and reels in more leads! Another solid choice if you are looking for something beyond Google Forms.
Inbound Marketing Tool #25: Referral Candy Referral Generation Platform
Cost: Plans start at $59/mo.
ReferralCandy is a referral-generating platform that gets your customers to tell their connections about your product and service. And it does so by incentivizing customers to make product suggestions on your company’s behalf.
With Referral Candy, when a customer buys something from your ecommerce store, they automatically get a referral code that they can easily share with their friends and family. And when a friend of theirs makes a purchase with that referral code, the friend gets a discount on their purchase and the referrer earns rewards from your online store.
ReferralCandy is best for small to medium-sized businesses that don’t have the budget for designers and programmers to create custom web pages or custom referral programs.
Inbound Marketing Tool #26: SendGrid Email Automation Platform
Cost: Free and paid plans start at $19/mo.
Sendgrid is a powerful email marketing platform that has become a must-have tool for start-ups and eCommerce businesses of all sizes.
SendGrid is really renowned for its reliability and scalability. SendGrid’s advanced deliverability tools, including real-time analytics and ISP feedback loops, contribute to high email deliverability rates, ensuring that marketing messages successfully reach intended recipients’ inboxes.
Along with features like delivery management, detailed analytics, and customizable templates, SendGrid makes email marketing campaigns easy.
See how Customers.ai integrates with SendGrid.
Inbound Marketing Tool #27: Lucky Orange Website Optimization
Cost: Free and paid plans start at $32/mo.
Lucky Orange is a conversion optimization tool designed to help ecommerce businesses track and engage with visitors.
Lucky Orange offers real-time insights through features like heatmaps, surveys, session recordings, and conversion funnels, allowing businesses to understand user behavior, identify pain points, and make data-driven improvements that significantly enhance website performance and user experience.
“In the fast-paced world of e-commerce, Lucky Orange is your backstage pass to see how visitors really use your website. Study behavior to remove conversion blockers and take your store to the next level.”– Molly Staats, Director Of Strategic Partnerships at Lucky Orange
Inbound Marketing Tool #28: Triple Whale Data Platform
Cost: Free and paid plans start at $129/mo.
Triple Whale is an AI platform that centralizes all of your eCommerce data into one platform, enabling you to track key metrics and better understand attribution.
We talk a lot about the loss of cookies so we love that Triple Whale helps solve the cookie and attribution problem by using first-party data to connect ad clicks and conversions with greater precision.
Triple Whale excels in tracking the customer’s journey, providing ecommerce businesses with comprehensive insights that help them to make data-driven decisions, optimize marketing spend, and strategically allocate resources for maximum impact throughout the customer lifecycle.
Inbound Marketing Tool #29: Oktopost
Cost: Contact Oktopost
A fairly new contender, Oktopost came out the same year as CoSchedule and some other social media management platforms.
They continue to make upgrades that makes this social scheduler and all-in-one social management tool worthy of your consideration.
Inbound Marketing Tool #30: Ad Espresso Facebook Ads Manager
Cost: Paid plans start at $49/mo.
Performance marketing agencies can quickly be in control of managing hundreds or even thousands of ads for their clients. That’s why a tool like AdEspresso can be a particularly useful addition to your marketing agency tools.
Whether you’re a freelancer or an experienced marketing agency, AdEspresso has the right combination of Automation tools designed to save you time and generate more leads for your clients.
AdEspresso allows you to quickly create and analyze all your clients’ campaigns across three channels, all from one platform:
- Facebook ads
- Google AdWords
- Instagram ads
Building Your Inbound Marketing Tools Stack
The right inbound marketing tools are not just advantageous, they’re imperative.
Remember, the 30 tools we’ve explored today give marketers a roadmap to success, empowering businesses to capture attention, engage audiences, and convert leads like never before. By leveraging these powerful assets, you can not only stay ahead of the curve but also redefine it.
The tools are here; the rest is up to you.
Convert Website Visitors into Real Contacts!
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Important Next Steps
- See what targeted outbound marketing is all about. Capture and engage your first 500 website visitor leads with Customers.ai X-Ray website visitor identification for free.
- Talk and learn about sales outreach automation with other growth enthusiasts. Join Customers.ai Island, our Facebook group of 40K marketers and entrepreneurs who are ready to support you.
- Advance your marketing performance with Sales Outreach School, a free tutorial and training area for sales pros and marketers.
Inbound Marketing Tool FAQs
Q. What Is Inbound Marketing?
Inbound marketing is the practice in business of attracting customers by offering quality resources and content, driving customers or clients to you with various methods, as opposed to advertising outwardly.
Q. What are Inbound Marketing Examples?
Many businesses employ marketing automation tools to optimize the sales funnel and conversion process to be as frictionless and effortless for the customer to find the answer they need and obtain the solution from the business.
SEO and social media are often part of any inbound marketing conversation.
Whereas with outbound marketing, also known as interruption marketing and including practices like traditional advertising, the marketer engages in tools and channels to reach a customer who may not be looking for the business’s solution. This is legacy marketing at its best and is being swept away in the age of “digital transformation”.
Let’s take a look at some real-life examples to answer the question “What is inbound marketing?”
Search Engine Optimization
SEO: This is the obvious inbound marketing example. By utilizing content marketing to write informative and helpful blog articles, you can stay on friendly terms with Google’s algorithms.
Content Marketing
Similar to the aforementioned blog articles, you want to provide valuable content across multiple channels.
Establishing a trusted source of valuable content builds your re-engagement lists including SMS and email.
Social Media Marketing
A multi-channel inbound marketing strategy includes your social media. Social media campaigns should tie in with your overall inbound marketing strategy.
To put it simply, you should give away the goods in resources and data and processes and when you do, you won’t even have to ask prospects to buy — they are going bananas eagerly waiting for your solutions!
Q. What Is Inbound Marketing Software?
What is inbound marketing software? Inbound marketing software includes a variety of apps available to businesses to help generate leads, nurture prospects, remarket, and close more deals.
The magic is in the technology — why use outdated methods when we have new tools that work exponentially better? These 30 essential inbound marketing tools of 2021 will give you something to grind your inbound teeth.
Whether you are a seasoned lead generating machine or still wet behind the ears, there is something in this list for everyone.
Q. What are inbound marketing tools?
Inbound marketing tools are software solutions that help attract, engage, and delight customers through content creation, social media management, SEO, and lead nurturing.
Q. Why are inbound marketing tools important?
They are crucial for creating meaningful, personalized interactions that build trust and authority, helping businesses attract and retain customers more effectively.
Q. How do inbound marketing tools improve SEO?
These tools enhance SEO by optimizing content, improving keyword targeting, and tracking page performance, making it easier for businesses to rank higher in search engine results.
Q. Can inbound marketing tools automate social media posting?
Yes, many inbound marketing tools offer features to schedule and automate social media posts across multiple platforms, saving time and maintaining consistent online presence.
Q. What is the best inbound marketing tool for email marketing?
HubSpot is widely regarded as one of the best inbound marketing tools for email marketing, offering extensive features for personalization, automation, and analysis.
Q. How do inbound marketing tools facilitate lead generation?
They provide features like landing pages, form builders, and call-to-action buttons to capture leads, alongside lead scoring and segmentation to prioritize follow-ups.
Q. Are there free inbound marketing tools available?
Yes, there are free tools available such as MailChimp for email, Canva for content creation, and Google Analytics for website performance tracking.
Q. How do inbound marketing tools assist with content creation?
These tools offer content management systems, SEO suggestions, and editorial calendars to help plan, create, and optimize content for target audiences.
Q. What role do inbound marketing tools play in customer relationship management?
They help in managing and analyzing customer interactions and data throughout the customer lifecycle, enhancing customer service and fostering loyalty.
Q. How can inbound marketing tools track ROI?
They track various metrics like website traffic, conversion rates, and customer acquisition costs, providing insights into the effectiveness and ROI of marketing campaigns.
Q. Can inbound marketing tools help with blog management?
Yes, many tools offer blog hosting and management features, including SEO optimization, content scheduling, and analytics.
Q. What is the significance of analytics in inbound marketing tools?
Analytics provide insights into campaign performance, audience behavior, and conversion tracking, enabling data-driven decisions for marketing strategies.
Q. How do inbound marketing tools benefit small businesses?
They offer cost-effective solutions for attracting and engaging customers, leveling the playing field with larger competitors by leveraging digital channels.
Q. Can inbound marketing tools integrate with CRM systems?
Yes, many inbound marketing tools offer integration with CRM systems, allowing for seamless data sharing and enhanced customer insights.
Q. How do inbound marketing tools support video marketing?
Tools like Vidyard and Wistia specialize in video hosting and analytics, helping businesses optimize their video content for engagement and conversions.
Q. What is the best inbound marketing tool for startups?
HubSpot offers a comprehensive and scalable platform ideal for startups, with free versions of its CRM, marketing, sales, and customer service tools.
Q. How do inbound marketing tools optimize landing pages?
They provide templates and A/B testing features to create and optimize landing pages for higher conversion rates.
Q. Are there inbound marketing tools focused on B2B companies?
Yes, tools like LinkedIn Sales Navigator are designed with B2B companies in mind, offering features to target and engage with business prospects.
Q. How do inbound marketing tools address mobile marketing?
They ensure content and campaigns are mobile-friendly and track mobile engagement metrics, crucial for reaching audiences on mobile devices.
Q. Can inbound marketing tools help with link building?
While primarily focused on content and engagement, some tools offer features or integrations that assist with identifying and managing link-building opportunities.
Q. How important is user experience in inbound marketing tools?
User experience is critical; these tools often include features to analyze and improve website usability and content accessibility to enhance engagement.
Q. What is the role of AI in inbound marketing tools?
AI is used for predictive analytics, content personalization, chatbots, and automation, making marketing efforts more efficient and personalized.
Q. How can inbound marketing tools improve customer service?
By using chatbots and automated messaging for instant responses, and customer feedback tools for insights into customer satisfaction and areas for improvement.
Q. Do inbound marketing tools offer project management features?
Some tools include project management features to coordinate marketing campaigns, track progress, and ensure team collaboration.
Q. How do inbound marketing tools contribute to brand awareness?
They enable consistent and targeted content distribution across various channels, increasing visibility and recognition of the brand.
Q. What is the impact of inbound marketing tools on conversion rates?
By optimizing each stage of the customer journey, these tools can significantly improve conversion rates from initial interest to final purchase.
Q. Can inbound marketing tools support podcasting efforts?
Tools like Anchor and Podbean provide podcast hosting and analytics, facilitating podcast creation and distribution as part of content marketing strategies.
Q. How do inbound marketing tools help with event marketing?
They offer features for event promotion, registration, and follow-up, integrating event marketing with broader inbound strategies.
Q. Are inbound marketing tools suitable for nonprofit organizations?
Yes, many tools have special pricing or features tailored for nonprofits, supporting them in fundraising, volunteer management, and community engagement.
Q. How do inbound marketing tools enhance content distribution?
By automating and optimizing the timing and channels of distribution, these tools ensure content reaches the right audience at the right time.
