Industry studies reveal that content marketing is projected to experience a $217.3 billion compound annual growth rate between 2016 and 2021. This begs the question: why are companies investing so heavily in content marketing?
The reason is straightforward: content marketing offers significant value that traditional marketing methods can’t match. Firstly, it’s 62% less compared to traditional marketing and yields three times the leads. This list compiles 41 excellent content marketing tools to elevate your content and help you consistently generate high-quality leads.
Are content marketing tools essential?
One thing is certain: content marketing is here to stay. The demand for content marketers is expected to rise in the coming years. While this is positive news, it’s worth noting that not every content marketer will benefit equally from this surge. This raises the question: what sets successful content marketers apart? Research from Content Marketing Institute suggests that content technology proficiency is a key differentiator between successful and less successful content marketers. Additionally, 29% of B2B content marketers have reported increased technology spending in the past year.
Mastering content marketing tools is crucial for success in the field. However, navigating the thousands of available tools can be overwhelming. To simplify things, we’ve curated a list of 41 top content marketing tools, categorized to address various content marketing needs. Let’s dive in.
Content Management Tools
1. HubSpot
HubSpot is a comprehensive inbound marketing, sales, and CRM suite offering content marketers a complete set of tools for crafting impactful content that drives sales and generates leads.
This marketing suite equips content marketers with resources to create, optimize, and target content effectively. It analyzes your marketing strategy’s sales and overall performance post-creation and distribution.
2. Contentools
Contentools is a robust content marketing platform for creating, publishing, and analyzing content for marketing efforts. This app also features an in-built content editor with an SEO indicator to facilitate content creation. Notable features include AI-powered content insights, automated social media posting, collaboration support, and integration with numerous third-party tools like Salesforce, Evernote, Dropbox, and more via Zapier.
3. WordPress
WordPress is the ideal tool for those seeking to create compelling blog content effortlessly. It provides marketers with the necessary tools to build websites or blogs, along with an intuitive publishing platform for content creation, upload, visitor tracking, and a plethora of plugins to enhance the marketing process.
The free version includes a WordPress.com address (you.wordpress.com) and three gigabytes of storage.
4. Google
No content marketing tools discussion is complete without mentioning Google. It offers marketers a wealth of tools that can significantly impact content strategies. These include Keyword Planner for conducting keyword research, Google Analytics for an in-depth understanding of content performance over time, Google Search Console, Google Trends, and more. The best part? They’re all free.
Content Team Collaboration Tools
5. Slack
Slack is a communication and collaboration tool designed for the workplace. It facilitates online collaboration between individuals and teams globally. The Slack workspace comprises channels where teams can collaborate and share ideas. Its ability to integrate with other apps like Google Docs and Dropbox eliminates the need to leave the Slack environment.
6. Asana
Asana is a work management platform designed for team collaboration on projects, daily tasks, and goals. Asana streamlines project assignment, sharing, and activity monitoring within teams. It allows task prioritization and eliminates the need for spreadsheets and email for collaboration and communication.
7. Trello
Trello is a visual collaboration and project management tool that injects an element of fun into planning and collaboration.
This platform uses boards to represent projects and cards to signify tasks. Within these cards are lists for categorizing and monitoring the progress of each task. Trello serves as a central hub for organizing and tracking team files and projects, with support for integration with most apps commonly used by teams.
Digital Analytics Tools
8. Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a comprehensive web analytics tool that empowers marketers with a robust system for reporting and analyzing website data. This includes understanding customer interactions with ads, website content, and social tools across all devices. It helps website managers identify what resonates with their audience, enabling informed adjustments to their content strategies.
9. SEMrush
Optimizing your content for search engine results pages (SERPs) is crucial for success as a content marketer. This is where SEMrush comes in. It’s a digital marketing tool designed for SEO/SEM professionals, providing engagement data to improve search engine rankings. The tool boasts a vast SERP database of over 106 million keywords and 71 million domains.
10. Adobe Marketing Cloud
Adobe is an integrated online marketing solution that assists marketers in refining marketing campaigns and analyzing website performance data. The tool consolidates all your data into a single, manageable dashboard.
Furthermore, it integrates with over 200 partners across 20 countries.
11. Moz
Monitoring factors that can affect your website’s performance and ranking is crucial. Moz helps you track your website’s rankings for relevant keywords. It also offers valuable features like on-page optimization, competitor analysis, and a keyword difficulty tool.
Email Marketing Tools
12. MailChimp
MailChimp is an email marketing automation platform that simplifies the creation, distribution, and analysis of email campaigns. Its freemium plan allows sending 12,000 emails to 2,000 subscribers. Notable features include integration with various web services, customer data synchronization, and automated product follow-ups.
13. Constant Contact
Constant Contact is a cloud-based marketing solution equipped with essential features for marketers to execute highly effective, targeted campaigns.
This tool offers robust email tracking and reporting capabilities, enabling you to manage various projects such as customer surveys, live events, and product showcases from a single platform.
14. GetResponse
GetResponse is an email marketing service that simplifies the creation of professional emails and landing pages. Its email intelligence feature analyzes campaign performance. It also provides precise customer targeting to help you generate more leads and improve conversion rates.
15. SendinBlue
SendinBlue is a comprehensive digital marketing toolbox for optimizing email campaigns. Its “send time optimization” feature leverages algorithms to determine the optimal email sending time, increasing open rates. It offers a user-friendly and powerful email and SMS messaging service.
Content Project Management Tools
16. Basecamp
Basecamp is a dependable online project management software that streamlines team organization, project delegation, and progress tracking. It features a remote project management system, facilitating collaboration regardless of location. Basecamp also allows for convenient file and document storage through a drag-and-drop mechanism.
17. DivvyHQ
DivvyHQ is a content planning and production software designed for content teams and publishers. This software offers customizable workflows to align with team needs and features a Master Content Calendar for visualizing team members’ current tasks.
18. CoSchedule
CoSchedule is an agile marketing platform that consolidates all your marketing efforts. It boasts a Work Organizer for creating and managing team workflows and an Asset Organizer for seamless file and document sharing within teams.
CRM Tools
19. Salesforce
Salesforce CRM is a comprehensive system for tracking customer information and interactions in one central location. It offers real-time customer data for generating critical reports and sales forecasts, optimizing the sales process. It seamlessly integrates with other business solutions like Desk.com, LeadExec, and Zendesk.
20. Zoho
Zoho is a powerful CRM software packed with features that simplify closing deals and attracting new customers. It allows you to monitor customer accounts for cross-selling and upselling opportunities. It also includes an Opportunity Tracking Tool for analyzing your customers’ stage in the sales cycle.
21. Drip
Drip is a cloud-based email marketing and automation software featuring a visual workflow builder that clarifies the customer journey. It enables targeted campaigns to enhance subscriber retention. The platform also ensures that only valid emails are added to your list.
AI Tools for Content Creators
22. Acrolinx
Acrolinx is an AI-powered content creation platform that empowers users to create a better content experience. It achieves this by generating helpful and relevant content tailored to customer needs. The tool analyzes content performance, providing insights for improvement and optimization.
23. PathFactory
PathFactory is a content insight engine that leverages AI. This platform helps businesses automatically curate personalized customer journeys. Through AI-powered recommendations, PathFactory enables marketers to optimize their content and identify sales-ready leads.
Advocacy Software Tools
24. HootSuite
Hootsuite is a social relationship software that assists marketers in leveraging social platforms for campaign execution.
HootSuite’s primary advantage is its ability to manage all social media platforms within a single, user-friendly dashboard. The tool provides social intelligence by tracking brand and product mentions across social media.
25. TrustRadius
TrustRadius is a software review platform that bridges the gap between buyers and vendors. Marketers can utilize this tool to engage potential customers effectively. The platform leverages customer reviews to drive conversions and minimize churn.
26. Influitive
Influitive is a customer marketing and advocacy platform that utilizes gamification, automation, and personalization to foster customer engagement. The software also generates reports on customer engagement and integrates with other CRM software.
Content Analytics Tools
27. Digimind
Digimind is an online social media analytics platform that allows businesses to track conversations relevant to their brand or industry. It delivers insights and data to optimize marketing strategies. It also features a customizable dashboard for monitoring content performance across unlimited social accounts.
28. Parse.ly
Parse.ly is a content analytics platform that provides insights into the content that resonates most with your audience. Through content analytics, graphs, and charts, you gain access to key data points for making well-informed decisions.
29. Ceralytics
Ceralytics is a cloud-based content intelligence platform that furnishes marketers with data to identify content topics with the highest conversion potential. Key features include channel optimization, funnel analysis, and competitive intelligence.
Content Experience Tools
30. Ceros
Ceros is an experiential content creation platform empowering marketers to create engaging and interactive content without requiring any coding knowledge.
31. Uberflip
Uberflip is a content experience platform that helps marketers create optimized, tailored content for every stage of the buyer’s journey. It also offers marketing automation to bridge the gap between content and lead generation.
32. ScribbleLive
ScribbleLive is a content marketing platform that amplifies your content’s reach through social media sharing and syndication across over 500 ScribbeLive partners. It enables marketers to create, manage, and publish content on the go.
Influencer Marketing Tools
33. BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo is a content curation and social media analysis tool for content marketers. It provides insights into key industry influencers who can help you grow your business and facilitates connections with them.
34. BuzzStream
BuzzStream is an influencer outreach management platform that assists marketers in identifying the right influencers for their content and target audience. This platform enables you to organize outreach efforts by project, add tags, and assign contacts to team members.
Content Optimization Tools
35. Optimizely
Optimizely is an experimentation platform designed to maximize the effectiveness of your content marketing strategy. It analyzes your website, identifies areas for improvement, helps reduce bounce rates, increases on-site time, and strengthens customer relationships.
36. Yoast
Yoast is an exceptional platform for optimizing websites to improve their search engine friendliness. Yoast analyzes websites for SEO and functionality issues, assisting site owners in resolving both technical and non-technical SEO problems.
Online Advertising Tools
37. nexus-security
nexus-security Advisor offers marketers a suite of marketing and advertising tools to enhance keyword research and management for PPC and SEO campaigns. It evaluates the performance of your Google AdWords accounts and provides recommendations for increasing ROI.
38. ClickFunnels
ClickFunnels is an online sales builder that empowers businesses to create marketing and sales funnels from the ground up. It helps marketers select the most suitable sales funnels for their business needs and provides pre-built templates for expedited and optimized funnel creation.
Desktop Publishing Tools
39. Adobe InDesign
Adobe InDesign is a publishing software compatible with Windows and Mac, enabling marketers to create interactive documents, multimedia proposals, and digital publications adaptable to various devices and content formats.
40. FlipHTML5
FlipHTML5 is a desktop publishing platform that swiftly transforms images and PDFs into interactive HTML5 flipbooks. Noteworthy features include free cloud storage, multimedia support, and an animation editor.
41. Scribus
Scribus is a free and open-source desktop publishing tool for effortlessly creating magazine publications, business cards, brochures, newsletters, posters, flyers, and even books.