The Best Content Marketing Tools

Content marketing remains one of the most preferred strategies for online promotion.  82% of marketers are actively investing in content marketing by creating and publishing different forms of content such as videos, blogs, infographics, case studies, interviews, eBooks, whitepapers, and checklists.

However, companies still don’t apply tactics to scale their content marketing efforts or use tools to measure the ROI from content campaigns. Content marketing tools help marketers and agencies to revamp their content promotion efforts and to measure the ROI of every dollar spent on content marketing. 

This guide will help you find the 12 best content marketing tools that modern marketers use to acquire more customers. You can use these content promotion software tools to reach customers throughout the buyer journey.

Here are the best content marketing tools: 

‍

1. Campaignware 

‍Campaignware is a user engagement and insight platform for digital agencies and brands who use digital channels to engage with their audience.

It can be used by businesses of all sizes to achieve audience engagement targets. 

‍

‍Top features: Here are the top features of Campaignware:

• The platform offers 40+ pre-built quizzes, surveys, polls, and other forms of interactive digital content to increase your brand engagement on different online marketing channels.
• It offers embed functionality that makes it easy to engage your audience wherever you have an online presence.
• It provides an intuitive dashboard that allows you to see campaign performance in real-time.
• It is fully configured and GDPR compliant.
• It uses Zapier to integrate with over 2000 applications. Some of these applications are Mailchimp, Microsoft Dynamics, Salesforce, Twilio, Slack, Google Drive.
• It allows you to create multi-language campaigns.  

Pricing: Campaignware offers four pricing plans. The first plan is free of cost. The second plan, ‘Starter’ starts at $49. The third plan, ‘Grow’ is offered at $199, and the final plan, ‘Pro’ is priced at $399 per month. 

‍

‍2. WordPress

WordPress is an open-source platform for hosting and building a website. It offers different templates and plug-in architecture. You can use WordPress to publish blogs on a regular basis. Blogging is one of the best ways to acquire buyers at crucial stages of the buyer journey.

‍

‍

Top features: Here are the benefits and features offered by WordPress:

• It is quite easy to set up as it is designed for first-timers. You can quickly configure and start publishing your blogs with a pro.
• The platform is SEO-friendly, and it offers several SEO plugins to optimize your website content for the search engines leading to more organic traffic. 
• It offers a large collection of professional responsive themes which are fully customizable as per your needs. 
• It also allows you to add additional functionalities on your site that helps to capture email addresses, see analytics of pages, or even add live chat to increase user engagement. 

Pricing: WordPress is free to download and use. However, you need to pay for WordPress hosting, domain name, design, and plug-ins and extensions. 

‍

3. Google Trends

Google Trends analyzes the popularity of different topics and top search queries in Google Search across various regions and languages. Using Google Trends, you can check demographic insights, related topics, and related queries to help you better understand the current market trends relevant to your industry. 

‍

Insights from Google Trends help you create content according to topics that are most searched in your target region.

‍

‍

Top features: Here are the features of Google Trends:

‍

• It allows you to find out the most searched topics in your target niche.
• You can use data from Google Trends in your keyword research to optimize your site content around keywords that are popular.
• Since Google Trends has fresh data, you can use the data to revise existing content on your site. Updated content is loved by search engines like Google leading to higher organic rankings. 
• It allows you to discover event-triggered spikes in keyword search volumes.
• It makes the comparison between different search terms easier so that you know which keyword to target in your next blog post.

Pricing: Google Trends is free to use.

‍

4. Google Analytics

Google Analytics allows you to track visitor behaviour on your site. It also tells you the time a visitor spends on a page and which pages on your site get the most visits. You can use this information to decide the type of content you want to create for your audience. 

‍

‍

Top features:

Here are the best features of Google Analytics:

• It lets you track and measure campaign-level performance. For instance, you can know which content promotion campaigns generated the highest conversions.
• With the help of GA, you can create goals and measure conversions which is the action that you want your visitors to perform when they land on your site.
• It lets you create custom dashboards containing the metrics that you wish to analyze for your content marketing campaign.
• You can use content grouping in GA to divide all the pageviews on your site into logical buckets for further evaluation regarding the kind of content you should create on your site to receive maximum engagement.
• You can quickly identify the pages that have the highest bounce rate or the highest time on page.

Pricing: Google Analytics is a free service offered by Google.

‍

5. Ahrefs

‍Ahrefs is an SEO tool that offers link building, keyword research, competitor analysis, rank tracking, and site audit features. The main tools offered by Ahrefs are Site Explorer, Keywords Explorer, Site Audit, Rank Tracker, and Content Explorer. 

Ahrefs is majorly used to analyze a website's profile, SEO health, and keyword rankings.

‍

‍

Top features:

Below are the best features offered by Ahrefs:

• The Ahrefs Content Explorer tool helps you analyze the top-performing content in your niche. You can find the most popular articles on any topic and sort them on the basis of domain rating, traffic value, or backlinks.
• Ahrefs lets you perform comprehensive keyword research to identify the best keywords for your business.
• You can perform competitor content analysis to find the best content of your top organic competitors. 
• With Ahrefs, you can conduct a complete site audit to identify any SEO issues in your website. 

Pricing: Ahrefs offers four pricing plans. The ‘Lite’ plan is priced at $99 per month, Standard costs $179 per month, Advanced is charged at $399 per month, and the Agency plan costs $999 per month.

‍

6. Hemingway Editor

Hemingway is a tool that lets you know if your content is readable or not. It is a word processor and proofreading app that helps you determine whether your copy uses an active voice has sentences that are easy to read, or uses fancy words. 

The Hemingway Editor analyzes words, sentences, and paragraphs and offers suggestions to improve your content copy.

‍

‍

Top features: The following are the features of Hemingway Editor:

• The app colour-codes all the writing-related issues in your content.
• It provides a readability grade for your content. A grade below 9 is considered good.
• The editor offers distraction-free writing mode.
• You can easily send Hemingway highlights to another writer. 

Pricing: The online version of Hemingway Editor is free. However, the desktop version, Hemingway App, is available for $19.99.

We also came across this copywriting tools guide that contains alternatives similar to Hemingway, that can help with editing and writing good copy,

‍

7. Buffer

Buffer is a social media marketing software that helps your content reach the desired target audience on the top social media platforms. You can easily schedule posts at a time when your audience is most active on your target social channels. 

Buffer also lets you measure the ROI of your social media content promotion campaign.

‍

‍

Top features: Here are the most popular features of Buffer:

• You can easily create a profile and custom schedule for each social media platform.
• The social media calendar lets you plan your content beforehand so that you don’t miss any crucial dates.
• The Buffer browser extension allows you to share content from anywhere on the web. 
• You can use Buffer to effectively analyze what is working and what is not. You can track posts, shares, clicks, mentions, retweets, followers, and new followers. 
• Buffer also lets you easily track your top-performing content so that you can make changes in your content strategy when required.

Pricing: Buffer offers two plans. The free plan allows you to manage up to three channels. The ‘Essentials’ plan is available at $5 per month and allows you to add unlimited social channels. 

‍

8. Canva

Canva helps you create customizable graphs, prints, and presentations. It offers pre-built templates, layouts, frames, and voice icons, making it easier to create content in the form of images, videos, and GIFs.

‍

‍

Top features: Below are the most popular features offered by Canva:

• The drag and drop feature makes it easier for newbies to create a wide variety of content to attract maximum user attention.
• It offers over 50,000 ready-to-use social media banner templates and social media posts, stories, ads, and reels templates. 
• You can quickly cut, trim, splice, and split videos online for free. 
• It allows repurposing and resizing of your videos for Instagram, IGTV, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and WhatsApp while preserving video quality.
• You can import and edit PDF files into Canva for free. 

Pricing: You can use it for free. However, if you want to unlock premium photos, videos, and elements, or remove background, then you should go for the Premium plan starting at $119 a year. 

‍

9. Trello

Trello helps you coordinate with your teammates, manage projects, manage workflows, and track progress in a visual and productive way.

Using Trello, you can leave a message for your team members and share content with one another. 

‍

‍

Top features: Here are the prominent features of Trello:

• You can easily view your team projects using boards, timelines, tables, calendars, dashboards, and map views in real-time. 
• It offers various easy-to-use templates to manage your boards. 
• Trello allows you to automate tasks and workflows with no-code automation, Butler. Using Butler automation, you can create rules, buttons, and commands to automate your actions and share them with your team.
• You can power up your teams by linking favorite tools such as Jira, Slack, Google Drive, or InVision with Trello.  
• You can use advanced checklists to align your team with time-sensitive tasks.

Pricing: Trello offers four pricing plans. The free plan lets you manage upto 10 boards per workspace, the Standard plan priced at $5 per month lets you create unlimited boards, the Premium plan priced at $10 per month offers calendar view and dashboard view, and the ‘Enterprise’ plan priced at $17.50 offers public board management. 

‍

10. Mailchimp

Email marketing plays an important role in your content marketing strategy. Therefore, selecting the best email marketing tool is essential to acquire, nurture, and convert audiences at the right time. Mailchimp is a powerful email marketing automation platform that allows you to create, send, and analyze email campaigns. 

Using Mailchimp, you can easily share your content to your potential audience via email and also measure the actions your subscribers take.

‍

‍

Top features: Some of the best features offered by Mailchimp are:

• Offer detailed analytics of email marketing metrics.
• It allows you to re-engage your subscribers.
• You can easily follow up when people open the email that you sent. 

Pricing: If you have less than 2,000 email subscribers, then you can go for the basic plan that is free to use. 

‍

11. Pexels

Pexels provides high-quality and professional photographs and footage. Not just images, you can use Pexels to find short videos suitable for your content. 

You can also easily figure out the photographers with the most views of photos and videos uploaded.

‍

‍

Features: The two major features of Pexels are:

• It offers the ‘Explore’ feature, which is a hand-curated list of images that are organized by topic. 
• There are two great options by which you can filter the available images. Those options are ‘Trending’ and ‘New’. 

Pricing: You can use Pexels for free. 

‍

12. PathFactory

PathFactory can be used by large enterprise and mid-market B2B companies who want to deliver intelligent content experiences and virtual events across buyers’ journeys. It helps to connect your potential audience with your content and removes friction for B2B buyers. 

It is recognized by Deloitte as one of North America’s 2020 Technology Fast 500 companies. It is also rated as the ‘Top-Rated Content Marketing Software’ by TrustRadius. 

‍

Here are the top features of PathFactory:

• It is best for email nurture streams, landing pages, advertising, and virtual event follow-ups.
• It allows you to bundle around 5-7 assets together in a content track and share as one link.
• It helps you understand the content and channels that are top-performing.
• You can easily connect your CRM to PathFactory to measure the ROI of every content you produce.

Pricing: The pricing details are not disclosed by PathFactory. However, you can book a demo to see how PathFactory converts your audience faster. 

‍

13. Mailshake

Mailshake is an email outreach and sales engagement tool designed to generate leads and boost metrics. It allows sales teams to send personalized cold emails, engage with prospects over the phone or on social media and it provides a simple to use dashboard for easy workflow management.

‍

Top features of Mailshake include:

• Bulk email facilities and easy-to-use mail merge.
• Follow-up scheduling based on recipient engagement.
• Tracks opens, clicks, bounces, unsubscribes, and more.
• Allows you to set tasks within a cadence.
• Allows for AB testing on subjects, copy, and cadences.

Pricing: Prices start at $44 per user, per month for email outreach. Sales engagement features begin at $75 per user, per month.

‍

14. Sumo

Sumo is a suite of tools that helps your website get more traffic, and in turn, more sales. It can be used on almost any type of website, including WordPress, and it allows businesses to build their email lists, increase conversions, and generate more sales. It takes just a few minutes to set up.

‍

Features of Sumo include:

• Plug-in based installation of apps to help grow web traffic and email lists
• Works with HTML website or CMS-based platforms
• List Builder app is an email opt-in form and custom content pop-up tool
• Heat Maps provides real-time hotspots to show which pages people are clicking on
• Desktop and mobile optimization

Pricing: There is a free option that allows up to 10,000 emails a month and up to $500 Sumo-driven revenue. The paid option is $468 annual payment (or $39 per monthly payment) and offers 50,000 emails and unlimited revenue.

‍

15. BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is a tool for marketers that helps them analyze the digital world and find new ideas for content. It searches the web for effective SEO-based content so you can see how popular it was, how long it stayed online, and how many backlinks it received.

BuzzSumo gives content marketers a look at the best-performing content in any niche.

Top features include:

• Discover what’s trending so you can create and publish content to suit.
• Identify the best platform for your marketing to be sure you’re sharing with the right audience.
• Track your competition to see how they’re succeeding.
• Identify influencers that can enhance your brand or advertising.
• Keep on top of comments and social shares.

Pricing: Buzz Sumo offers a free plan that starts with 10 searches per month, with three other options for greater use. Prices start at $79 a month for small start-ups and freelancers, $139 a month for small agencies, $239 a month for marketing teams (prices are based on annual payments). A free 30-day trial may also be available for larger plans.

‍

Final thoughts

We are living in a world where companies are producing tons of content every day, and the pressure of generating top-quality content can be overwhelming. Businesses that use top content marketing platforms for content creation and promotion will lead the race. 

‍

‍