According to research from The Drum, the compound annual growth rate of content marketing would climb by $217.3 billion from 2016 to 2021. Why are brands spending so much money on content marketing?

The answer to this question is simple: Content marketing delivers enormous value that brands can’t get from other traditional types of marketing. For a start, content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing and generates three times as many leads.

In this list, we’ve compiled 41 top content marketing tools that can help you boost your content—and keep generating those high-quality leads.

Do I need content marketing tools?

The one thing we can be sure of is that content marketing isn’t going anywhere. We would continue to see an increase in the need of content marketers in coming years.

While this is great news, not all content marketers would benefit from this boom. This now leads me to ask: Why would some content marketers experience more success than others?

According to research from Content Marketing Institute, a key factor that differentiates successful content marketers from the less successful ones is content tech proficiency. Plus, 29% of B2B content marketers reported that they increased technology spend in the previous 12 months.

Your mastery of content marketing tools goes a long way to determine how successful you would be as a content marketer. But looking through thousands of content marketing tools available can lead to information overload. That’s why we gathered 41 of the best content marketing tools here, broken down into different categories to meet the different needs of a content marketer.

Let’s get started.

Content management tools

1. HubSpot

HubSpot is an all-in-one inbound marketing, sales, and CRM suite that provides content marketers with all the tools they need to create actionable content that generates sales and drive leads.

The marketing suite provides content marketers with resources that enable them to create content, optimize it, and make sure it reaches the right audience. Once you’ve created your account and distributed your content, HubSpot analyzes your marketing strategy in terms of sales and overall performance.

2. Contentools

Contentools is an efficient content marketing platform for creating, publishing, and analyzing content for marketing campaigns. The app also comes with an in-app content editor that allows you to create content with an SEO indicator in place. Some features to note is its AI-powered content insights, auto-publishing for social media posts, collaboration support, and integration with a ton of third-party tools like Salesforce, Evernote, Dropbox, and a lot more through Zapier.

3. WordPress

If you’re interested in creating great blog content with ease, then WordPress is the tool for you. WordPress offers marketers the tools needed to create a website or blog as well as an easy to use publishing platform for content creation, uploading content, visitor tracking, and a lot of plugins to help optimize your marketing process.

The free version comes with a WordPress.com address (you.wordpress.com) and three gigabytes of storage.

4. Google

When talking about content marketing tools, we cannot neglect Google. Google offers marketers a ton of tools that can have significant impact on your content strategy. Some of these tools include Keyword Planner for conducting keyword research, Google Analytics to give you an in-depth overview of your content performance over a period of time, Google Search Console, Google Trends, etc. The best part is that they are all free.

Content team collaboration tools

5. Slack

Slack is a workplace communication and collaboration tool. The app is designed to help users collaborate with other people and team members online from anywhere in the world. The Slack workspace is made up of channels where teams can work together and share ideas. It supports the installation of other apps like Google Docs and Dropbox so you don’t need to ever leave the Slack workspace.

6. Asana

Asana is a work management platform that allows teams to work together on projects, daily tasks, and goals. Asana makes it easy to assign projects to team members, share projects, and monitor the activities of everyone on the team. It provides the option to organize tasks by priority and eliminates the need for spreadsheets for collaboration and email for communication.

7. Trello

Trello is a visual collaboration and project management tool that makes planning and collaboration fun.

The platform makes use of boards to represent projects and cards to represent tasks to be done. Inside the cards, there are lists that categorize and track the progress of each task. With Trello, you get to organize and track all the team files and projects all in one place. It also supports integration with most of the apps your team already uses.

Digital analytics tools

8. Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a web analytics tool that offers marketers a comprehensive system of reporting and analyzing website data. This includes how customers engage with ads, website content, and social tools across all devices. It helps website managers to understand what is working on their website, allowing them to adjust their content strategies accordingly.

9. SEMrush

To achieve success as a content marketer, it is important that your content is optimized for the SERPs. This is where SEMrush comes into play. SEMrush is a digital marketing tool created for SEO/SEM professionals. Content marketers are provided with engagement data to help them rank higher in search engines. The tool has a massive SERP database of over 106 million keywords and 71 million domains.

10. Adobe Marketing Cloud

Adobe is an online marketing cloud and integrated marketing solution that assists marketers in optimizing marketing campaigns and analyzing website performance data. The tool would sync all of your data in one easy to manage dashboard.

Even better, the tool integrates with more than 200+ partners in 20 countries.

11. Moz

Monitoring issues that might affect the performance and ranking of your site is very important. Moz helps you monitor your site rankings for any keyword that is of importance to you. Some other important features that Moz offers is on-page optimization, competitive analysis, and a keyword difficulty tool.

Email marketing tools

12. MailChimp

MailChimp is an email marketing automation platform that allows users to create, send, and analyze email campaigns. On the freemium package, you can send 12,000 emails to 2000 subscribers. Some features to note are integration to several web services, sync customer data, and automation of product follow-ups.

13. Constant Contact

Constant Contact is a cloud-hosted marketing solution that provides the essential features needed for marketers to run highly effective targeted campaigns.

The tool comes with powerful email tracking and reporting capabilities. With this tool, you can manage all your projects such as customer surveys, live shows, product showcase, all in one place.

14. GetResponse

GetResponse is an email marketing service that helps marketers create professional-looking emails and landing pages with ease. It comes with an email intelligence feature that makes it possible to analyze the performance of your campaign. It also provides accurate customer targeting to help you generate more leads and increase conversions.

15. SendinBlue

SendinBlue is an all in one digital marketing toolbox that helps businesses to optimize email campaigns. It has a helpful feature called “send time optimization” to help you increase the open rate of your emails by making use of algorithms that determine the right time to send out emails. It provides a robust email and SMS messaging service that is user-friendly.

content-marketing-tools-sendinblue

Content project management tools

16. Basecamp

Basecamp is a reliable online project management software that makes it easy to organize people, delegate new projects, and monitor the progress of people in your team. It also features a remote project management system that enables people to work together regardless of location. You can also use Basecamp to store documents and files using a simple drag and drop mechanism.

17. DivvyHQ

DivvyHQ is a content planning and production software that was created for content teams and publishers. The software provides workflows that users can customize to fit the needs of their team. It features a Master Content Calendar that allows users to view what their team members are currently working on.

18. CoSchedule

CoSchedule is an agile marketing platform that allows you to organize all your marketing in one place. It features a Work Organizer to help you create and manage workflows among your team and an Asset Organizer that makes sharing files and documents with team members easy.

CRM tools

19. Salseforce

Salesforce CRM provides an extensive system to help track customer information and interactions in one place. It offers real-time customer data that allows you to create critical reports and sales forecasts to help optimize the sales process. It also integrates easily with other business solutions like Desk.com, LeadExec, and Zendesk. content-marketing-tools-salesforce

20. Zoho

Zoho is an effective CRM software with a range of features that makes it easy to close sales and attract new customers. Zoho CRM allows you to monitor all customer accounts for cross-sell or upsell opportunities. It also features an Opportunity Tracking Tool to help you analyze what stage of the sales cycle your customer is.

21. Drip

Drip is a cloud-based email marketing and process automation software. The application features a visual workflow builder that helps users to understand their customer journey. It allows you to send targeted campaigns to increase chances of subscriber retention. The platform also ensures that only healthy emails are added to your list.

AI tools for content creators

22. Acrolinx

Acrolinx is an AI-powered content creation platform that allows users to create a better content experience for users by producing helpful content that customers need. The tool allows you to create better marketing content by analyzing what kind of content works and how to improve them.

23. PathFactory

PathFactory is a content insight engine that leverages AI. The platform helps businesses to automatically curate micro-personalized journeys that are unique to each buyer. With AI powered recommendation, PathFactory help marketers to optimize their content and determine which leads are sales ready.

Advocacy software tools

24. HootSuite

Hootsuite is a social relationship software that helps marketers use social platforms to execute marketing campaigns.

The biggest advantage of HootSuite is that it allows businesses to manage all social media platforms in one user-intuitive dashboard. The tool provides social intelligence by tracking mentions of your brand and product on social media.

25. TrustRadius

TrustRadius is a software review platform that connects buyers and vendors. For marketers, the tool is very useful in engaging potential customers. The platform provides customer reviews to help convert more buyers and reduce churn.

26. Influitive

Influitive is a customer marketing and advocacy program that engages customers by using gamification, automation, and personalization features that drive engagement. The software also provides reports on customer engagement and integrates with other CRM software. 

Content analytics tools

27. Digimind

Digimind is an online social media analytics platform. The platform allows businesses to monitor conversations related to their brand or industry and provides insights and data to optimize marketing strategies. It also features a customizable dashboard that helps you monitor the performance of your content across an unlimited number of social accounts.

28. Parse.ly

Parse.ly is a content analytics platform that helps you understand what kind of content has the most impact on your business. With the use of content analytics, graphs, and charts, you get access to key insights to help you make data-driven decisions.

29. Ceralytics

Ceralytics is a cloud-based content intelligence platform that offers marketers data that will help them identify content topics with the highest conversion rate. Some key features include channel optimization, funnel analysis, and competitive intelligence.

Content experience tools

30. Ceros

Ceros is an experiential content creation platform that helps marketers in creating highly engaging and interactive content. The platform does not require any coding to get started.

31. Uberflip

Uberflip is a content experience platform that helps marketers to create optimized tailored content for every stage of the buyer journey. The platform also provides marketing automation to bridge the gap between content and demand generation.

32. ScribbleLive

ScribbleLive is a content marketing platform that amplifies the reach of your content by sharing it on social media and syndication on over 500+ ScribbeLive partners. The platforms help marketers to create and manage their content strategy while publishing content on the go.

Influencer marketing tools

33. BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is a content curation and social media analysis tool for content marketers. The tool provides you with insights on the key influencers in your industry that can help you grow your business and connects you with them.

34. BuzzStream

BuzzStream is an influencer outreach management platform that assists marketers in finding the right influencers that work best for their content and audience. The platform allows you to organize your outreach by project, adds tags, and assign specific contacts to team members.

Content optimization tools

35. Optimizely

Optimizely is an experimentation platform that helps you to make the most out of your content marketing strategy. The app helps you to analyze your site and determines how you can improve it. It helps you to reduce bounce rate, increase on-site time, and build better relationships with your customers.

36. Yoast

Yoast is an amazing platform that optimizes websites to make them more search engine friendly. Yoast analyzes websites to find issues that affect SEO and functionality of a website. They also help site owners to resolve both technical SEO issues and non-technical SEO issues.

Online advertising tools

37. WordStream

WordStream Advisor provides marketers with a suite of marketing and advertising tools to help them optimize keyword research and management for PPC and SEO campaigns. They help you to evaluate the performance of your Google AdWords accounts and offer recommendations that help can help you increase your ROI.

38. ClickFunnels

ClickFunnels is an online sales builder that helps businesses to create marketing and sales funnels from scratch. They help marketers to choose the sales funnels that best suit their business requirements. The tools come with a ton of prebuilt sales funnels and templates to fasten and optimize the process.

Desktop publishing tools

39. Adobe InDesign

Adobe InDesign is a publishing software available for both Windows and Mac Users. The platform gives marketers the ability to create interactive documents, multimedia proposals, digital publications and adjust them to suit different devices and content.

40. FlipHTML5

FlipHTML5 is a desktop publishing platform that converts images and PDF into interactive HTML5 flipbooks in minutes. Some features to note are free cloud storage, multimedia support, and an animator editor.

41. Scribus

Scribus is a free and open-source desktop publishing tool. With Scribus, you can easily create magazine publications, business cards, brochures, newsletters, full-size posters, flyers, and even books.

About the author

Marvellous Aham-adi is a freelance writer and content marketer. He teaches individuals how to start a profitable blog, improve productivity, and grow a brand using marketing at TheZeroed. You can also connect with him on LinkedIn.