Marketing planning software is a set of tools designed to streamline the process of planning and managing marketing campaigns. These programs come with features like project management, automation, and analytics to maximize efforts and help you achieve successful campaign results.
Different software can have varying main features and purposes, so it’s important to find the right ones to use in your strategy. In today’s post, we’ll give a rundown of the 13 best marketing planning software you need in 2024 and discuss key factors to consider when choosing one.
Let’s dive in!
What is Marketing Planning Software, & Why is it Important?
Marketing planning software is an application that helps businesses plan and manage their campaigns. By providing a centralized hub for all the tasks in a campaign, marketing planning tools can improve collaboration, efficiency, and decision-making, which can result in more effective marketing campaigns.
There’s an old paper by McDonald published in the Journal of Marketing Management back in 1991 that correctly highlighted many challenges one may encounter during marketing planning that still hold true today, including “failure to prioritize objectives and the lack of a systematic approach,” among others.
Nowadays, we have various marketing planning software tools that can help us identify and address these issues with far less manual effort, especially when handling multiple campaigns.
Let’s explore the best options on the market today.
13 Best Marketing Planning Software to Use in 2024
Knowing the best marketing planning software for 2024 will help you gain a competitive advantage. By using tools to simplify campaign planning, you can focus on more strategic tasks and maximize your results.
Whether you’re an established business looking to elevate your marketing campaigns or an influencer who’s just starting out, the right programs can be a game changer for your strategy.
With that said, here are the top 13 marketing planning software programs you should consider:
#1. Publer
Best Features
- Social media analytics
- AI Assist
- Social media asset management
- RSS feed
- Explore tab
With over 320,000+ satisfied users, Publer is the top marketing planning software for businesses looking to venture into social media. Publer comes with several features, like a dedicated workspace, a unified content calendar, and expansive integrations all in one dashboard, to make it easier to plan all your marketing content.
This powerful platform also offers content workflow automation to boost your efficiency and a layered social media approval process to ensure that the content you publish embodies your branding and is always of the highest quality.
In addition to these features, Publer also boasts a competitor analysis tool so you can see how well your strategy compares to the competition and varied social media scheduling options to maximize your content’s engagement online.
All these features are also on Publer’s mobile app, so you can easily manage your marketing plans and collaborate with your team, even on the go.
Publer has a great free plan that is perfect for teams who are just starting out, but this can be quite limited for bigger teams or those managing multiple social media accounts.
To access the app’s full set of features, you can try one of our paid subscriptions.
- Professional plans start at $12/month
- Business plans start at $21/month
#2. Planable
Best Features
- Alternative text
- AI tool
- Post filtering
Despite being primarily a project management tool, Planable has great collaborative organizational features, which is an important feature for marketing planning software. This is going to be a fairly common theme on this list, as many project management tools are well-optimized for facilitating marketing projects, including planning.
Now, back to Planable.
This user-friendly platform offers social media integrations, post-scheduling, and a layered approval process to make planning and managing campaigns easier.
This platform also has a decent set of image editing tools that you can use to create visuals for all your content. While Planable has an analytics feature, it isn’t as comprehensive as Publer’s, and it isn’t included in any of their paid plans but is an optional add-on instead.
You can try Planable’s software on their free plan or by subscribing to one of their paid plans:
- Basic plans start at $13/month per user
- Pro plans start at $26/month per user
- Pricing for Enterprise plans is customized to fit your needs
#3. ClickUp
Best Features
- Whiteboards
- Easy task management
- Real-time reports
ClickUp is a versatile marketing planning software that allows you to create multiple dashboards per project, helping you stay organized and maintain smooth workflow processes. Moreover, it comes with built-in time-tracking features so you can easily monitor your team’s performance and readjust their tasks accordingly.
With this platform, you can use Gantt charts, Kanban boards, or calendars to visualize your campaigns clearly. You can also organize different campaigns into their own spaces, folders, and lists to make it easier to keep track of each one.
With its feature-packed system, ClickUp is ideal for enterprises but can be overwhelming for smaller teams. Plus, the platform doesn’t support social media scheduling, so you would need to use a separate tool.
ClickUp offers a free plan and three paid subscriptions.
- Unlimited plans start at $10/month per user
- Business plans start at $19/month per user
- Enterprise plans are customizable, and pricing would depend on your needs.
#4. GanttPRO
Best Features
- Gantt charts
- Time tracking
- Comprehensive reports
GanttPRO is a marketing strategy software perfect for managing marketing campaigns and projects. With its intuitive interface, you can easily craft marketing plans using hundreds of templates, outline and assign tasks, and rank projects by importance to allow for a smoother and more efficient workflow. You can even import your existing plans onto the platform.
This software also comes with features that allow you to set timelines for tasks, collaborate with team members, and integrate other tools like Slack and Google Drive to further improve efficiency.
That said, GanttPRO offers limited customization options and can be quite expensive for smaller teams that won’t be able to fully utilize all the platform’s features.
The app also doesn’t have a free plan, and its paid plans are only available on monthly pricing if you purchase a minimum of five users. So, if you don’t need five users, you would need to commit to an annual subscription.
Here is their pricing plan for each tier:
- Basic plans start at $9.99/month per user
- Pro plans start at $15.99/month per user
- Business plans start at $24.99/month per user
- Enterprise plans have custom pricing and require a minimum of 10 users
#5. Marketplan.io
Best Features
- Funnel planning
- Live presentations
- Custom permissions
Marketplan.io is a powerful marketing planning software best suited for businesses that want to map out their entire sales funnel. This platform allows you to plan every step of your marketing campaign, budget resources, and assign tasks to maximize results.
It also supports real-time collaborations, so you can align with your team and provide updates on tasks seamlessly. Marketplan.io also has built-in marketing applications, including keyword and blog planners and email sequencing.
While its full set of features can benefit enterprises and organizations, it can be too overwhelming for smaller businesses. Plus, companies have to invest a significant amount of time training their teams to use the platform fully.
Marketplan.io doesn’t offer a free plan, but they provide a 30-day trial for all paid plans.
- Starter plans start at $49/month for 3 users
- Pro plans start at $99/month for 5 users
- Agency plans start at $179/month for 15 users
#6. Toggl Plan
Best Features
- Seamless communication
- Drag-and-drop elements
- Visual interface
Toggl Plan is an efficient marketing calendar software that functions similarly to a Kanban board. It comes with a comprehensive visual calendar where you can easily assign responsibilities, collaborate with your team, and provide feedback to ensure the timely completion of tasks.
You can create and customize different boards for each campaign and you can monitor your team’s performance on the app’s simple dashboard. Members can also attach files, set milestones, and create checklists to keep everyone on the team updated on their progress.
Despite its great interface, Toggl Plan has limited third-party app integrations, and its mobile app isn’t as versatile as the desktop version.
This software also doesn’t have a free plan, but it offers a 14-day trial for its paid plans:
- Team plans start at $9/month per user
- Business plans start at $15/month per user
#7. Marmind
Best Features
- Roadmapping
- Analytics and reporting
- Interactive calendar
Marmind is excellent marketing planning software for larger organizations. It has a great budget tracking feature and a comprehensive set of tools that you can use to plan, schedule, and manage multichannel campaigns.
This platform also makes it easier for teams to collaborate on different tasks and to keep track of campaign performance and task progress. Marmind also allows you to completely manage access and permissions for all users to maintain your data’s security.
Due to its features, navigating Marmind can take some time, and learning and setting up campaigns can be quite complicated.
Marmind offers three paid plans, and pricing is only available upon request.
- Essentials plan
- Professional plan
- Enterprise plan
#8. Monday.com
Best Features
- Customizable workflows
- Seamless integration
- Marketing automation
Monday.com is a project management system that boasts excellent workload management and visual timeline features, which is why it makes our list of marketing planning software.
This platform is equipped with project-specific templates to make campaign planning a breeze. Plus, you can easily set deadlines and assign tasks while utilizing the app’s various automation features to boost efficiency.
That said, while Monday.com has a lot of great features, it has a limited reporting tool and lacks social media scheduling.
Monday.com offers a free plan, but to access the app’s more comprehensive features, you need to purchase a paid subscription with a minimum of three users:
- Basic plans start at $12/month per user
- Standard plans start at $14/month per user
- Pro plans start at $24/month per user
- Enterprise plan pricing will depend on your needs
#9. Trello
Best Features
- Butler automation
- Kanban board system
- Intuitive interface
While Trello is also mainly a project management tool, it has several features that make it decent marketing budgeting and planning software. Its simple interface, which utilizes the Kanban board system, allows teams to collaborate on different projects and keep track of all the tasks in your marketing campaigns.
It also has a built-in automation tool, aptly named Butler, that can help you set up custom commands and tailor different workspaces to each project’s needs. However, the app lacks extensive reporting capabilities, which can be a drawback for teams that need this feature.
Trello has a free plan and three paid plans:
- Standard plans start at $6/month per user
- Premium plans start at $12.50/month per user
- Enterprise plans start at $17.50/month per user and are only available for annual pricing
#10. Asana
Best Features
- Customizable templates
- Task management
- Third-party tool integrations
The Asana marketing planning app offers a variety of features that make collaboration and project management much easier. With customizable workspaces and automation features, this platform can help streamline workflow processes and significantly improve efficiency.
While Asana is great for task management, it lacks content creation and scheduling features and can be overwhelming for new users.
Asana offers a free plan and three paid subscriptions:
- Starter plans start at $13.49/month per user
- Advanced plans start at $30.49/month per user
- Enterprise and Enterprise+ pricing is customized based on your platform requirements
#11. Wrike
Best Features
- Custom workflows
- Real-time reports
- Time-tracking
Wrike is a project management software that excels at workflow processes. It comes with Gantt charts, templates, and real-time reports that help you monitor marketing campaigns more easily, making it a great option for marketing planning software.
Plus, these features are all customizable, so you can tailor your solution for each campaign and achieve better results.
Wrike also supports integrations with other tools like Adobe Creative Cloud and Google apps, which can significantly improve your productivity. However, because of its wide variety of features, Wrike has a steep learning curve, and some functionalities aren’t immediately accessible from the dashboard.
Wrike has a free plan and offers a 14-day trial on all its paid plans:
- Team plans start at $9.80/month per user
- Business plans start at $24.80/month per user
- Enterprise and Pinnacle pricing will be based on your needs
#12. CoSchedule
Best Features
- Extensive integrations
- Automation capabilities
- Asset management
CoSchedule is a marketing calendar software that can help you stay organized and efficient while planning marketing campaigns. The platform comes with excellent collaboration features to improve productivity and a comprehensive calendar where you can schedule content and manage marketing tasks with ease.
CoSchedule also has an AI social assistant that you can use to craft content for social media posts. Despite these features, however, the app’s social media scheduling capabilities are quite limited compared to other tools on this list.
Plus, some of its key marketing features, like asset management, project and campaign reports, and approval workflows, are only available on their higher-tier plans.
CoSchedule has a free plan and four paid subscriptions:
- Social calendar plans start at $29/month per user
- Agency calendar plans start at $49/month per user
- Content calendar and marketing suite plans have custom features and pricing
#13. Bitrix24
Best Features
- Time-tracking
- Lead scoring
- Seamless collaboration
Despite being a customer relationship management system, Bitrix24 also functions well as marketing planning software. It comes with several features, like task and project management, marketing plan templates, and multiple communication channels, to improve team efficiency and foster coordination.
This platform also has great automation features, workload planning capabilities, and even a website builder that can be especially helpful for newer businesses. However, Bitrix24’s interface is quite unintuitive, which can result in a steep learning curve, and its mobile app is lacking compared to the desktop version.
Bitrix24 offers a free plan and four paid plans that come with a set number of users:
- Basic plans are $61/month for 5 users
- Standard plans are $124/month for 50 users
- Professional plans are $249/month for 100 users
Enterprise plans start at $299/month for 250 users and can be scaled up to 10,000 users
5 Major Benefits of Using Marketing Planning Software
Utilizing marketing planning software in your campaigns provides several benefits.
#1. Enhanced Organization
Marketing planning software centralizes all your marketing activities on one platform, helping you stay organized. Additionally, these tools often allow you to easily access previous campaigns and data, which can help your team learn from past mistakes and continuously improve your strategy.
With task management and collaboration features, marketing planning software allows teams to work more efficiently and reduces the risk of errors.
#2. Improved Coordination
Features like a unified calendar and transparent task assignments will help improve your team’s coordination on marketing campaigns.
The Harvard Business Review highlights coordination as one of the top challenges of remote work. This is due to the fact that it would require more effort to ensure that each team member is included in all lines of communication.
With marketing plan software, you can keep everyone aligned on the project timeline and their responsibilities, ensuring that your marketing plans are executed seamlessly. Plus, with each member’s roles clearly defined, there will also be less back and forth between them, and everyone will be able to focus on their tasks and work more effectively.
#3. Real-Time Updates
Rather than having to use different tools, or worse, emails, to communicate with your team, you can use marketing planning software to easily exchange feedback and provide approvals for different tasks in real time.
A study by Yang et al. (2022) in the Nature of Human Behavior observed that there was a decrease in synchronous communication among remote workers, which made it harder for employees to receive and share information across their network.
With marketing planning software, all your team’s communication happens on one platform, making it easier for them to update each other on tasks that need input. This dynamic flow of information will allow you to maximize your efforts and keep your marketing campaigns on track.
#4. Streamlined Workflows
Marketing planning software also helps streamline your workflows by automating repetitive tasks and integrating different parts of your campaign into one platform. This will help you save time on administrative work and ensure that all tasks and content go through the right approvals before they are implemented.
There are several tools you can utilize to simplify workflows, like AI copywriting programs and image generators. By leveraging these in your strategy, you can expect an increase in productivity, faster task completion, and better marketing campaign results.
#5. In-Depth Data Analysis
With marketing planning software’s comprehensive analytics and reporting tools, you can make more data-driven decisions and ensure the success of your campaigns. These systems often collect and organize data from different campaigns, which can help you identify top-performing metrics and areas in need of improvement.
You can also use this information to evaluate the effectiveness of your current strategy and determine current market trends so you can change your approach accordingly.
7 Key Features of Marketing Planning Software
Your choice of marketing planning software should come with a variety of features, including automation, budget tracking, and analytics, to make campaign planning much smoother and easier; it should essentially function as a jack of all trades.
Considering that, here are the key features to look for in marketing planning software:
Data analytics and reporting
Marketing planning tools often come with a built-in analytics feature that tracks your campaign performance and provides insights into important marketing KPIs, such as conversions, customer acquisition cost, and ROI.
Collaboration
Knowing how to function effectively as a team is one of the key factors in a campaign’s success. Which is why choosing marketing planning software with excellent collaboration features, like file sharing, invites, and notifications, is important.
Budget tracking
Marketing planning software with budget tracking features will help you allocate resources more efficiently and ensure that you stay within your set range.
Project management
Having project management features like Gantt charts and integrated calendars in your marketing planning software will help you stay organized and ensure that deadlines are always met.
Customization
The marketing planning software you choose should also be flexible enough to meet the demands of your business. Customizable dashboards, templates, and workflow processes will ensure that you can adapt your strategies to each campaign’s unique needs.
Automation
One of the main purposes of marketing planning software is to help you plan campaigns more efficiently, which is why automation is a must-have feature. Start by identifying the areas in your campaign plan that can be automated, and then select software that can help you improve productivity and achieve more results.
Scalability
Your choice of marketing planning software should also be able to accommodate your business’s growth. After all, a program that’s ideal for smaller teams may not be able to handle the demands of a larger organization. Because of this, it’s important to select a tool that offers scalable solutions.
5 Crucial Factors to Consider When Choosing the Software
Aside from its main features, however, there are other important factors you should consider before selecting marketing planning software.
These factors are:
- Integration capabilities. Not all marketing planning software supports integrations with other tools or social media platforms. So, if you’re already using apps, like CRM systems, in your marketing strategy, we recommend selecting software that will allow you to integrate them into the platform.
- User-friendliness. The goal of marketing planning software is to make it easier for you to handle marketing campaigns, which is why user-friendliness is a crucial factor to consider. The software you choose should allow you to use it in your campaigns quickly without having to go through a learning curve.
- Layered approval processes. A strong marketing approval process is essential for maintaining the quality and consistency of your output in marketing campaigns. So, when choosing marketing planning software, opt for one that offers multi-layered approval processes.
- Assets management. Having convenient asset management in your marketing planning software, like Publer’s built-in media library, is a must. By allowing you to organize and access all marketing assets easily, you can greatly improve content creation efficiency.
- Unified calendar. Marketing planning software with a unified visual calendar can improve coordination within your team. Look for features like color-coding, filtering, or labels to help you categorize tasks and improve task efficiency.
Key Takeaways
- Marketing planning software tools can help elevate the way you plan and manage marketing campaigns.
- The top three marketing planning software programs you will need in 2024 are Publer for social media marketing campaigns, Toggl Plan for its efficiency and customization, and Monday.com for its variety of customizable templates.
- Utilizing marketing planning software in your campaigns can lead to better coordination, streamlined workflows, and improved organization, to name a few.
- Comprehensive data analytics and reporting, automation, and scalability are some important features to look for in marketing planning software.
- User-friendliness, integration capabilities, and approval process are crucial factors to consider when choosing marketing planning software.
Ervin Kalemi
