The honest answer to "what tools do you use?" is: fewer than you'd expect, and most of them are free.
We get this question a lot, usually from clients who assume a sophisticated agency stack is the answer to their marketing problems. Sometimes a tool does help. More often, the tools aren't the gap.
Here's what we actually use, what we use occasionally, and what we've stopped using and why.
The Ones We Use Every Day
Google Ads
For most of our clients, Google Ads is the primary paid acquisition channel. We're in the platform daily, checking performance, managing bids, reviewing search terms, testing new creative. It's not glamorous, but consistent attention to the fundamentals is what separates well-run Google Ads accounts from ones that quietly drain budget.
Meta Ads Manager
For clients running social paid media, Meta Ads Manager is the second daily platform. Creative review, audience management, performance monitoring. We also use the Ads Library to monitor what competitors are running.
Google Analytics 4
GA4 is our primary source of on-site data: traffic sources, landing page performance, conversion event tracking. We have it open for every client account every day, cross-referencing what the ad platforms report against what GA4 shows happening on the site. The two rarely agree perfectly, and the gaps are often where the useful information is.
Google Tag Manager
Every tracking implementation goes through GTM. Conversion tags, event tracking, GA4 configuration. GTM is the layer everything else depends on. If your tracking is off, everything downstream is wrong, so we spend a disproportionate amount of time making sure GTM is set up correctly.
Google Search Console
For clients with an organic search component, GSC is a daily tool: query performance, crawl errors, indexing status, Core Web Vitals. It's the most honest source of data about how Google is seeing your site.
Looker Studio
Our reporting layer. We build client dashboards in Looker Studio that pull from Google Ads, GA4, GSC, and occasionally Meta. Clients can see their own performance data without needing to log into three separate platforms. Free, reliable, and useful.
Semrush
Keyword research, competitive analysis, backlink monitoring, and site audits. Not free, but worth it for the depth of data. We use it for SEO strategy work and for the initial competitive landscape analysis when onboarding new clients.
ClickUp
Our project management and client communication layer. Every client has a ClickUp workspace. Tasks, briefs, feedback, deliverables: it all lives there. It's replaced email as the primary channel for ongoing client work, which means less context-switching and a better audit trail.
Kit (formerly ConvertKit)
Email marketing for clients who need it. We use Kit for list management, broadcast emails, and automation sequences. Simple to use, reliable deliverability, and the subscriber-centric model makes list hygiene easy.
The Ones We Use Regularly But Not Daily
Hotjar
Heatmaps and session recordings for diagnosing conversion issues. We use it when a client has a conversion problem that click data alone can't explain. Often the session recordings reveal something obvious that wasn't visible in the numbers alone.
WhatConverts
Call and lead tracking. For clients who receive enquiries by phone, WhatConverts lets us connect phone call conversions back to the marketing channel that drove them. Invaluable for any service business where calls matter.
Claude
AI-assisted work: research synthesis, first drafts, content review, and increasingly, automation work. We're cautious about how we use it for client-facing content (AI writing needs careful review), but for internal work and research it's useful.
The Ones We Ditched
Hootsuite / Buffer for client scheduling
We don't manage organic social for clients (see our post on why we don't offer social media management), so scheduling tools aren't part of our stack. When clients need them, we point them toward the native schedulers on each platform: they've improved significantly and the third-party tools don't add enough value to justify the cost.
Generic rank trackers
We tried several over the years. GSC plus Semrush covers everything we need for SEO monitoring. Standalone rank trackers that only track rankings without the associated traffic and conversion data aren't worth the overhead.
Canva Pro for client work
We use Canva for our own content. For client creative, we work with designers or use the platform's own creative tools (Meta's ad builder, Google's responsive ad formats). Canva Pro is excellent for what it does; it's just not part of our client production stack.
Third-party tools that require ad account credentials
We're cautious about tools that ask for access to client ad accounts beyond what the native platform allows. Too many require you to grant access to a third-party app at the account level, which is a security risk. If a tool can't work with read-only access or API keys, we generally don't use it.
The Pattern
The tools that stay are the ones that either give us data the platforms don't provide, or help us work faster without reducing quality. The tools we've ditched were either redundant with something native, too noisy to be useful, or created more complexity than they resolved.
The most common mistake we see clients make with tools is treating tool acquisition as a substitute for strategy. No amount of software makes a fundamentally flawed channel work. The tools in this list all serve a fundamentally sound approach. They don't replace one.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need most of these tools as a small business?
No. If you're running a small Google Ads account yourself, you need Google Ads, GA4, and GTM. The rest are useful at larger scale or for specific use cases. Start with the platforms, get them working correctly, and add tools when you have a specific problem they solve.
Is there a tool that makes Google Ads easier to manage?
Several, but we'd be cautious. Most of them abstract away the detail in ways that make it harder to diagnose problems. The native Google Ads interface is actually well-designed for experienced users: the learning curve is worth it. For beginners, Google's own resources and a focus on campaign structure are more valuable than a third-party tool.
What about AI tools for ads?
The ad platforms themselves have built AI deeply into their products: Smart Bidding, Responsive Search Ads, Advantage+ audiences. These are worth using. Third-party AI tools for ad management vary significantly in quality; we'd recommend testing carefully against a control before committing budget to anything AI-managed outside the native platform.
