The tools I actually use.
Not "tools I've heard of," not "tools I recommend in general" — these are the apps actually open in my browser this week. Listed in the order they appear in a typical engagement: discovery first, content production in the middle, measurement at the end.
No affiliate links. No sponsorships. If something here gets replaced, I'll update the page.
1 · Discovery & research
The first two weeks of any engagement live in these tools. Before I touch a campaign, I want a complete picture of where the team is starting.
- Google Search Console · the source of truth for organic. Why over Ahrefs/Semrush as the starting point: GSC is your data, theirs is a model. Start with what's true.
- Google Analytics 4 · property audit, event review, conversion definition. Painful UI, but until BigQuery export is universal, it's the floor.
- Ahrefs · competitor backlinks + content gap. Picked over Semrush for the cleaner content-gap report and faster site explorer. Both work. Cancel whichever you don't open daily.
- Screaming Frog · technical SEO crawl, indexability, redirect chains. Free version up to 500 URLs covers most personal-site audits.
- The Mom Test, in person · five distributor / customer calls per week during discovery. Not a tool, a habit. The biggest single source of "we were wrong about X" findings.
2 · Content production
Where the AI stack lives. The goal here is throughput without sacrificing the part of marketing that has to feel human.
- Claude · long-form drafts, audit synthesis, schema scaffolding. Picked over GPT for marketing copy: better at restraint, less prone to AI-tells like "delve" and "in today's fast-paced world."
- HeyGen · AI avatar videos for LinkedIn and ebook funnels. Drove +70% view-through uplift at Excelerate. Worth the per-seat cost if your script template is solid.
- ElevenLabs · voice cloning + multilingual narration. Pairs with HeyGen for one-take avatar + voice. Clean Mandarin and Bahasa Indonesia output mattered for Yuan.
- Figma · ebook layouts, quiz wireframes, OG card design. Auto-layout + components mean a non-designer can keep producing variants without breaking the brand.
- Canva · LinkedIn carousels and quick-turn assets. Picked over Figma for assets that don't need precision: 5× faster for a marketer who doesn't want to learn auto-layout.
3 · Funnel infrastructure
Where leads turn into rows in a CRM. I keep this simple — the temptation to over-engineer is the single biggest waste in marketing.
- WordPress + Elementor · landing pages, ebook capture, quiz hosts. Picked over Webflow for B2B teams who already have a marketing site there. Less elegant, more familiar to ops.
- Make.com · the glue. Form → enrichment → CRM → email → notification. Picked over Zapier for cost at scale (operations, not Zaps) and better branching logic.
- HubSpot Free / Pipedrive · CRM + lifecycle stages. HubSpot Free for very early teams; Pipedrive when sales is the dominant function. Salesforce only when forced.
- Loops / ConvertKit · email nurture sequences. Loops for SaaS, ConvertKit for creators / personal brands. Both beat Mailchimp on deliverability and UX.
4 · Measurement & reporting
Phase 4 of the process. The dashboards that survive me leaving.
- Looker Studio · client-facing weekly dashboard. Free, GA4-native, ugly defaults but pretty with 30 minutes of work. Better than Tableau for this scale.
- Google Sheets + AppSheet · attribution and cohort analysis. Where I do the analyst work that GA4 can't do. Power Query lives here when finance is involved.
- Notion · audit docs, SOPs, weekly review notes. The handover artefact. Anyone on the team should be able to open it and run the engagement next month.
5 · The personal layer
What runs in the background of every project, regardless of client.
- Obsidian · personal knowledge base, draft articles, captured thinking. Picked over Notion for personal notes: faster, local-first, won't disappear behind a paywall.
- Raycast · launcher + clipboard history + quick prompts. The single biggest productivity upgrade of the last two years. Free tier covers everything I need.
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Linear-style task list · for me, just
tasks.mdin Obsidian. Tried Things, Todoist, Linear personal — all overkill. A markdown file with checkboxes is enough.
The tools are nothing without the order they're picked up.
The page that explains why discovery comes first and dashboards come last.