Best Marketing Planning Software 2026
Software solutions for your marketing needs

If you’re involved in coordinating marketing management for your department, then you may have been looking for a tool to help you keep track of who’s responsible for what. A project management tool is the ideal software for making sure that all your marketing resources are kept on track and up to speed with project delivery. Here’s what to look for in your next—or your first—marketing project management software.

Editorial Calendar Creation

If your team is engaging in inbound marketing and producing content, then you’ll want to develop an editorial calendar to make sure that you have a cohesive plan for the content that your team is going to be producing over the coming quarter. Many marketing project management tools support content calendar creation, allowing digital marketing managers to plan and execute their content marketing efforts throughout the year. If your team needs a social media editorial calendar as well as one for general marketing activity, then this should be no problem. Many of today’s best softwares in this category allow unlimited charting and editorial calendar creation.

Centralized Communication Repository

Marketing project management tools will typically feature real time collaboration tools allowing team members to keep communication in one place and see what everybody on the team is doing. File sharing and real time chat are common add-ons allowing users to upload documentation to the project rather than sharing email attachments. Whether your marketing team is involved in event planning or lining up the latest SEO campaign, when team members annotate projects instead of sharing emails and Slack messages, it’s easier to see who is doing what—in real time. Your digital marketing project manager will thank you.

Dependency Management

If your event coordinator is unavailable due to a commitment, what’s going to happen to the project? These kinds of deliberations can be eliminated thanks to marketing project management tools. Many kinds of marketing project management software allow users to create complex project management charts with built-in logic which can calculate dependencies and map out critical paths to project completion. Many softwares also allow users to create formal project management charts such as Gantt charts. These can provide visual overviews of what tasks are going to happen to bring a project to completion—and when.

Easy Scheduling

Sometimes the very act of assigning tasks to your different in-house marketing resources can be time-consuming—not to mention freelancers and consultants. With a formalized marketing project management system, assigning tasks to a resource can be as easy as tagging them on a project and assigning a due date. Most software in this category will send an email notification to the team member informing them that they have been assigned work—alongside any details needed to bring the task to completion.

It Could Save You Money

Sure, signing up for a marketing project management tool is likely going to cost you a monthly subscription fee. But have you worked out how much not having your resources know what they’re supposed to be doing is costing your organization every year? Project management software is a wise investment—particularly for marketing teams where priorities can quickly change and the workflow is quick and agile. Rather than see it as money spent increasing corporate bureaucracy, look to the spend as an investment in the efficiency and productivity of your team.

Better Budget Control

If your marketing team is running on a tight budget, then you need to make sure that your resources operate within the budgetary parameters that they have been given. Many marketing project management tools also include functionalities to track project spend. Some even allow resources to upload receipts so that spend is constantly updated and remaining budget is computed as transactions are posted. All these features can make it substantially easier to come in on time, on spec, and on budget.

Transparency Breeds Morale

If your SEO person has no idea what the content guy does and vice versa, then you might find that a project management system is what your organization needs to finally get your team members on the same page about the work they are doing. By pooling all marketing management resources into one online login area, it’s easy for each sub-section of your marketing team to see what the other is doing. Better transparency breaks down silos. And besides—it’s good to know what the person you share a desk with actually does.

Quick and Easy Reporting

Need to present management with a high level overview of how marketing is doing to reach its end of quarter targets? With project management tools, it’s generally easy to create and edit dashboards and generate reports. KPI tracking can also often be included so that it’s easy to measure performance of key marketing resources against predefined targets.