If you work at an advertising agency or are a marketing director for a large corporation, you’re probably interested in finding the best social media analytics tools to help you run your business.

There are a wide variety of social media tools out there, some of which are terrific and others of which are not so good.

We use a variety of good tools to help run marketing campaigns for our clients, and have learned a few things about which ones are the best and which ones are worth ignoring.

So, with that in mind, let’s take a look at the top social media marketing tools for ad agencies and marketing directors.

Google Analytics — This, of course, is a must for anyone running a digital advertising campaign or marketing campaign. By dropping a line of code into your website, you can track how people get to your site, how they navigate through your site, and how long they stay on your site. Google Analytics is getting more complex every day, which can make it difficult to use, but overall it’s really a terrific tool that everyone with a website should be using.

Act-On Software — Act-On is not a social media analytics tool as much as it’s a marketing automation tool, but some of the analytics features are so robust that it’s worth including on our list. If you’re interested in tracking how people engage with your brand via email and social media, then Act-On (or one of its competitors, which include SilverPop, HubSpot, Marketo and others) is a must. (Disclosure: Act-On is a sponsor of our sister blog called the 60 Second Marketer.)

KISSmetrics —The guys at KISSmetrics try to do what Google Analytics can’t. They take data and try to help you make sense out of it instead of just dumping it into your lap. It’s tough to compete against Google and it’s even tougher to compete against an entity like Google that provides its service for free, but KISSmetrics has done a good job so far and you have to give them credit for that.

Socialbakers — This social media metrics platform is perfect if you’re looking for in-depth data that allows you to measure, compare, and contrast your campaigns against your competitors. They provide a wide range of research and studies for free on their website and specialize in global analytics. According to the Socialbakers website, twenty percent of the Global Fortune 500 use Socialbakers.

SproutSocial —This platform allows you to publish posts to your social media channels while monitoring how people are responding to those posts. They have a dashboard that provides just the right amount of data and information so as not to be overwhelming. If you’re an advertising agency or marketing director that likes to see data visually instead of just a wall of numbers, then SproutSocial is worth taking a look at.

Here’s a screen shot of the SproutSocial dashboard to show you what I’m talking about:

As mentioned at the top of the post, if you work at an advertising agency or are a marketing director at a large corporation, you’re probably interested in finding ways to manage your social media campaigns. You’re probably also interested in finding ways to analyze data and put it to good use.

These are our top five social media management tools for people working in an ad agency or in a marketing department on the corporate side. What are your favorites? Let us know in the comments section below.

Jamie Turner is the CEO of the 60 Second Marketer and 60 Second Communications, a marketing communications agency that works with national and international brands. He is the co-author of “How to Make Money with Social Media” and “Go Mobile” and is a popular marketing speaker at events, trade shows and corporations around the globe.