The 11 Best Social Media Campaign Builders, PPC, and Ad Monitoring Tools

Revised March 2, 2023
Revised November 16, 2022
Revised April 4, 2017

Social media has become a core element of marketing across businesses of all types and sizes: maintaining active,  optimized profiles; sharing industry-related updates; amplifying their own content; and engaging with prospects, influencers, advocates, and customers.

As part of the business fabric, social media marketing is an ongoing activity with a beginning for every company but no real end (though specific social networks may go, e.g., Jaiku, Pownce, FriendFeed…).

Social media campaigns, on the other hand, are short (and defined) term bursts of activity and advertising relating to a specific promotion, event, contest, report, or other call to action.

While social media marketing is optimized through the use of social media monitoring and management tools, social campaigns are most effectively built and managed through the types of tools in this post. Ad monitoring tools, meanwhile, help you keep tabs on where and how your competitors are running online campaigns.

Social Media Campaign Builders

1) Rafflecopter
Google Review Count: 449

Launch and manage a giveaway campaign in minutes without coding. Select a prize, choose your entry methods, and start collecting entries. When your giveaway is over, select and announce your winners with a few clicks.

Sample review: “Competitions get social media users engaged. Plus, they’re dead simple…Rafflecopter…lets you add multiple ways to enter the contest, from following you on Twitter to signing up for your newsletter…It’s a quick and easy way to entertain users, and collect lead information.” — Mention

Pricing: free, or $13/$43/$84 per month

Showcase reviews: Mention

2) Optimizely
Google Review Count: 320

Run various types of tests (e.g., A/B split, multivariate) across platforms and apps. Experiment with variations on pricing, product recommendations, and features to optimize ad spending.

Sample review: “Split testing is an important part of your website.  If you are getting good traffic but poor conversion you can test out different pages on your website to see which gets better conversion.  Optimizely is a neat tool for this.” — RazorSocial

Pricing: contact vendor for quote

Showcase reviews: Blogging Wizard (WordPress), Marketing Insider Group, MarketingLand, RazorSocial, SnapApp

3) Audiense (formerly SocialBro)
Google Review Count: 295

A suite of tools for social media monitoring, social marketing (campaign workflow, audience management, ability to build segmented audiences for social campaigns) and social advertising.

Sample review: “This is an application I have been using from the very early beta days. I love it. I love the analytics and insights I can capture about my communities, client communities and their competitors. I love the simplicity by which the engagement within Twitter communities is tracked.” — ArCompany

Pricing: contact vendor for quote

Showcase reviews: ArCompany, Catherine Pham/SlideShare, RazorSocial, Visually

4) Woobox
Google Review Count: 250

Create virtually any type of social media campaign: giveaways, coupons, photo/video/hashtag contests, polls, quizzes, games, landing pages for downloads, Facebook page apps, and more.

Sample review: Create “engaging social media promotions with powerful contests, sweepstakes, coupons, polls…The promotional marketing and Facebook apps allow you to engage your fans to grow your fan base by spreading your message, while keeping fans happy. Although Woobox is more of a social platform for contests and engagement, they do offer some Facebook analytics.” — MarketingLand

Pricing: $30/$100/$500 per month; contact vendor for enterprise pricing

Showcase reviews: MarketingLand

5) SumAll
Google Review Count: 224

Now out of business, SumAll was a tool that enabled agencies and consultants to connect unlimited Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Google Analytics accounts for their own accounts and  client reporting. As an alternative, check out the social media tracker from BrandMentions.

Sample review: “Want to connect your social media activity to other areas of your business? SumAll can help you do that…To get the most out of your SumAll account, be sure to connect to other platforms such as Google Analytics, Constant Contact, Amazon Payments, eBay and Shopify. This helps you visualize how your activity on social media affects other areas of your business and your bottom line.” — Social Media Examiner

Pricing: $99 per month

Showcase reviews: Blogging Wizard (Monitoring), Social Media Examiner, StoreYa Blog

6) ShortStack
Google Review Count: 202

Collect leads, boost engagement and drive sales using landing pages, contests, and forms. Tweet your campaign, post it on your Facebook Timeline, in your Instagram bio, or even in an email. Your published ShortStack Campaign can act as a hub to help manage your marketing efforts across multiple channels.

Sample review: “One strategy for ensuring more of your fans see your updates is converting your fans to eMail subscribers.  This means you can communicate with them over both channels and have a better chance of reaching them. You can add a customized application to your Facebook page…or a run a competition using Shortstack and start building those email subscribers.” — {grow}

Pricing: free; four levels from $29 to $499 per month; contact vendor for enterprise pricing

Showcase reviews: {grow}, RazorSocial

7) Socedo
Google Review Count: 181

Run multiple social demand generation campaigns concurrently to reach each of your audience segments and promote multiple products. Manage all of your campaigns in a single place.

Sample review: “Socedo is an enterprise level tool that can also be used just as easily by small businesses to generate leads through social media…you can almost automate the process of finding and selecting the people to build those relationships with.” — SmallBusinessNewz

Pricing: contact vendor for quote

Showcase reviews: Entrepreneur, SmallBusinessNewz

8) Likeable Local
Google Review Count: 155

A tool for small businesses to build social campaigns and partially automate social media posting. Includes functions for creating landing pages; curating content for Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn; amplifying social reach; and monitoring brand mentions and campaign results.

Sample review: “Likeable Local is a powerful social media platform that offers small businesses a simple solution for managing a social media presence…it’s a scalable tool solution to small businesses who are looking for an easy-to-understand and easier-to-implement complete social media solution.” — Rebekah Radice

Pricing: $299/$599 per month; contact vendor for enterprise pricing

Showcase reviews: Rebekah Radice

9) Openr
Google Review Count: 98

Generate traffic and leads from social media. Promotes a product, service or your content with a call-to-action button going to your website. Capture leads and email subscribers. Use quick polls to gather opinions and feedback.

Sample review: “Make the most of your social-media efforts with (Openr), which lets you add a promotional message to any message you share on your social-media profiles. The result is more leads and traffic while letting you learn more about your audience.” — Entrepreneur

Pricing: four levels from $39 to $2,275 per month

Showcase reviews: Entrepreneur

Ad Monitoring Tools

1) WhatRunsWhere
Google Review Count: 198

DEFUNCT Identify which ads work best, where. Keep track of your competitors’ strategies, to effectively plan and buy advertising more efficiently. Get insights into their campaign strategies, and use these insights to improve how you advertise online.

Sample review: “(What Runs Where) has some great features for watching your competition. It supports over 40 ad networks across several different countries and allows you to track a list of your competitors. You then get an alert every time that competitor launches a new ad or publishes new content.” — Kissmetrics

Pricing: $175/$249/$329 per month; contact vendor for enterprise pricing

Showcase reviews: Kissmetrics

2) The Search Monitor
Google Review Count: 132

Agencies, search marketers, and affiliate managers use The Search Monitor® to increase revenue from their online advertising campaigns. The Search Monitor platform provides real-time advertising intelligence to monitor brand and trademark use, affiliate compliance, and competitive advertisers on SEM, SEO, local search, display, mobile, PLAs, and shopping engines.

Sample review: “(The Search Monitor) offers great information. It focuses solely on competitor data. Also, it allows you to monitor affiliates and trademarks. It monitors results from Google, Bing, Yahoo, YouTube, and Baidu along with blogs, websites, forums, news, mobile, and shopping.” — Kissmetrics

Pricing: based on number of keywords tracked, starts at $399 per month

Showcase reviews: Kissmetrics

More Tools

BigSpy
Google Review Count: 95

BigSpy is the largest advertising creative library with more than 600 million advertising creatives, including video ads, social ads, and image ads. It covers major global platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, Google, YouTube, Twitter, Yahoo, Pinterest, TikTok, etc., global networks and local networks for enterprise plan. Discover competitors, find out where they are advertising, and see what creative works best.

Pricing: $9/$99 per month; contact vendor for enterprise pricing

NinjaSEM
Google Review Count: 63

PPC management software that enables you to manage keyword research, ad creation, and campaign scheduling from a central location; optimize your search campaigns for better conversions; create and enable multiple combinations of ads automatically to drive more traffic; and identify competitors’ targeted keywords then modify your campaigns accordingly.

Pricing: $15/$75 per month; contact vendor for enterprise pricing

Fyrebox
Google Review Count: 59

Easily create quizzes for lead generation, education, market research, or other purposes in familiar formats like Whatsapp, Messenger, or WeChat. Export answers to Excel, and the contact information of participants to more than 3,000 applications. Use the last page of your quiz to encourage an action such as redirecting participants to your Facebook page, ecommerce site, or a landing page on your website.

Pricing: $20/$33/$58 per month

Outgrow
Google Review Count: 27

Simplifies the process of creating online calculators (e.g., ROI calculators) and quizzes for lead generation. Build and test tools, add mathematical formulas for savings or other calculations, return results by email or instantly online, set up confirmation emails, analyze engagement and response metrics, and add social sharing buttons.

Pricing: $45/$125/$720 per month; contact vendor for enterprise pricing

Showcase Reviews

ArCompany
Blogging Wizard (Monitoring)
Blogging Wizard (WordPress)
Catherine Pham/SlideShare
Entrepreneur
{grow}
Kissmetrics
Marketing Insider Group
MarketingLand
Mention
RazorSocial
Rebekah Radice
SmallBusinessNewz
SnapApp
Social Media Examiner
StoreYa Blog
Visually

This was the 31st post in the Best Online Business Tools series.

#1: Best Online Business Tools Series Kicks Off Today
#2: The 12 Best Competitive Intelligence and Benchmarking Tools
#3: The Nine Best Facebook Marketing Tools
#4: The 14 Best Content Planning and Research Tools
#5: The 23 Best Content Ideation Tools
#6: The 24 Best Online Writing Tools and Apps
#7: The Six Best Google+ Marketing Tools
#8: The Four Best Online Education Tools For Business Pros
#9: The 14 Best Marketing Automation Tools
#10: The 17 Best Keyword Research Tools for SEO and SEM
#11: The Seven Best File Sharing Tools
#12: The Five Best Infographic Creation Tools and Services
#13: The 28 Best Influencer Marketing Tools
#14: The Five Best Pinterest and Instagram Marketing Tools
#15: The 24 Best Visual Content Creation Tools
#16: The Six Best Online HR, Payroll, and Employee Scheduling Tools
#17: The 20 Best SEO Rank Tracker Tools
#18: The Six Best Screen Capture Tools
#19: The 15 Best Special-Purpose SEO Tools
#20: The Four Best Online Survey Tools
#21: The 26 Best All-in-One SEO Tool Suites
#22: The 32 Best Twitter Marketing Tools
#23: The 29 Best Web Analytics Tools
#24: The 24 Best Email Marketing Tools
#25: The 28 Best Web Design Tools
#26: The 29 Best Social Media Monitoring Tools
#27: The 17 Best Project Management Tools
#28: The 21 Best Content Curation Tools
#29: The 26 Best WordPress Plugins
#30: The 14 Best Personal Productivity Tools
#31: The 11 Best Social Media Campaign Builders and Ad Monitoring Tools