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Best Marketing MCPs

Setup guide · 2 min read · Updated

How to connect an MCP to Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or VS Code

Hosted servers take a minute: paste an address and sign in. Local ones take longer. Here is the path in each assistant, drawn from the vendors’ own instructions.

By the editors of Best Marketing MCPs.

Disclosure: the publisher of this site has commercial relationships with some of the companies whose products we rank. Read our full disclosure.

Before you start

Find the server’s address or install command on its profile in the directory. Check the “Setup” line: hosted servers have an https address; local servers have a command and usually need credentials from a cloud console.

Menus change often. The steps below follow the vendor documentation we cite on each profile as of the review date shown there.

Claude (web, desktop and phone)

  1. Open Settings, then Connectors.
  2. If the tool has a listed connector (Klaviyo, Semrush and others do), browse for it and connect.
  3. Otherwise choose “Add custom connector”, name it and paste the server address.
  4. Sign in when prompted, then start a new chat and enable the connector.

Claude Code

Add a hosted server with one command, then run /mcp inside Claude Code to authenticate:

claude mcp add --transport http semrush https://mcp.semrush.com/v2/mcp

Dance’s Digital Marketing + SEO connector installs the same way:

claude mcp add --transport http dance-marketing-seo https://www.startdancing.ai/mcp/server/marketing

ChatGPT

Some vendors publish official ChatGPT apps you can enable from Settings → Apps; Semrush and Klaviyo document theirs. For any other hosted server, Klaviyo’s documentation describes the custom path:

  1. Open Settings → Apps, then Advanced settings, and turn on Developer mode.
  2. Choose Create app, paste the server address and select OAuth if the server uses sign-in.
  3. Approve access, then pick the app from the + menu in a chat.

Cursor and VS Code

In Cursor, open Settings → Cursor Settings → Tools & MCP and add the server to your MCP configuration:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "klaviyo": { "url": "https://mcp.klaviyo.com/mcp" }
  }
}

In VS Code, create .vscode/mcp.json in your workspace:

{
  "servers": {
    "semrush": { "url": "https://mcp.semrush.com/v2/mcp", "type": "http" }
  }
}

Local servers

Local servers such as Google Analytics MCP, Google Ads MCP and mcp-gsc run as a command your assistant starts. Expect three steps:

  • Install the runtime the README names (pipx or uv for Python servers, Node.js for npx).
  • Create credentials: for Google tools, a Google Cloud project with the right API enabled and OAuth or service-account credentials.
  • Add a “command” entry to your client’s configuration file and restart the client.

Local servers don’t work in browser-only assistants. If that rules one out, check whether a hosted alternative covers the same data; Ahrefs, for example, includes Search Console data.

Check it worked

Ask something small that can only be answered with the tool, like “list my Search Console properties” or “show my most recent campaign.” Your assistant should ask permission to call a tool. If it answers without one, the server isn’t connected to that chat.