Content marketing continues to evolve as a powerful marketing strategy in the fast-moving and information-driven digital world of today. It is the need of the hour for any business that wants to establish a strong brand image and boost its sales.
According to a Statista report, 42% of content marketing professionals expect their content budgets to increase in 2022. Another report said that 82% of marketing professionals use content marketing as an integral part of their strategy.
Although it is not a new marketing strategy by any means, it’s evident that the popularity of content marketing has grown exponentially in the last few years. The idea of content marketing is to share valuable and relevant content as means of persuading the decision-making audience. Customers today are intelligent decision-makers who are looking for useful and factual information that provides them with some kind of value. So it is your responsibility to ensure the quality and consistency of your content across channels. This is where content marketing tools come in.
Content Marketing Tools – What are they?
Content marketing tools are essentially marketing automation tools that simplify various aspects of the content processes. These tools can help businesses in:
According to CMI research, tech proficiency was found to be a key factor in differentiating successful content marketers from others.
Efficient content marketing is not just about posting on blogs, social media channels, and more. It is about how you are executing the content process. Whether your methods are helping you reach out to the target audience effectively. Whether the methods are helping you produce quality content. Whether they are helping you manage your content teams and ensure collaboration with other teams. The right content marketing software and tools can help you accomplish all this and more.
But the question remains – Which content marketing tools are the best to use?
In the last few years, the universe of content marketing tools has expanded. A quick google search will present you with thousands of tools to choose from. Knowing which content marketing automation tools to use will help you in carrying out successful content marketing campaigns. To help you streamline your content processes, we’ve researched and curated some of the best content marketing tools out there. Without further ado, let’s dive in.
8 Content Marketing Tools Worth Trying Out
1. Benchmark Email – Email Marketing Tool
When it comes to ROI, there are very few marketing channels that can compete with email marketing. If you want to level up your content marketing game, consider weaving it into an email marketing campaign. This is where Benchmark Email comes in. This simple yet powerful email marketing tool can help you in executing email marketing campaigns with ease. It can be used to create:
- Email newsletters
- Autoresponders
- RSS/blog emails
- Date-triggered emails
- Recurring emails
- Automated email campaigns
Benchmark Features:
- Drag and drop email editor: Simple and easy-to-use email editor with intuitive block design and email previews.
- Marketing Automation: With Benchmark, you can automate processes like sending out emails and managing contacts. It also comes with a smart visual builder.
- Email templates: More than 200 email templates with smart categorization. These email templates are available in multiple languages.
- Integrations: Benchmark Email can be integrated with more than 1500 popular technologies.
- Landing page builder: The easy-to-use landing page builder comes with many content options. However, it does not offer as many templates.
- A/B Testing: With this feature, you can test your email subject line, CTAs, copy, send time, and more to analyze what works best for you.
Pricing: Benchmark Email offers three plans – Free, Pro and Enterprise. The paid plans start from $11 per month.
2. Narrato – Content Planning and Collaboration Platform
If you want an all-in-one solution for streamlining your content processes, Narrato can be an indispensable tool. This content planning software can be used to manage your teams and content processes on a single platform. It can be used throughout the lifecycle of content, from ideation and planning to creation, optimization, and publishing.
Narrato Features:
- Content Planning: Narrato comes with a host of features for content planning like an AI topic generator (for topic suggestions), SEO Content Brief (keywords, references, questions), and Custom Content Templates. You can also create content style guides to standardize content, while Content Calendar and Kanban boards help in organizing your content better.
- Content creation and optimization: Create high-quality content with Narrato’s powerful AI writing assistant. This feature can be used to optimize your content for grammar, readability, and SEO. Canva integration and free image search make it easier to add visuals.
- Content collaboration: Collaborate with your teams and other stakeholders through on-platform messaging, in-line text comments, and publicly shareable links.
- Workflow management: Assign tasks to your team members and stay on top of their workflow statuses. Organize content under different projects to manage a repository.
- Team management: Provide custom access to different user roles.
- Content publishing: Publish your content easily with WordPress integration.
- Content marketplace: If you don’t have an in-house writing team, you can outsource this operation on Narrato’s Content Marketplace. Choose from hundreds of expert freelance writers to get quality content.
Pricing: Narrato offers three plans – Free, Pro and Business. The paid plans start at $8 per user per month, and there is also an option for custom plans.
3. BreadnBeyond – Explainer Videos
If you want to create engaging content that has a real impact on your followers and target audience, video marketing is the way to go. Explainer videos are excellent for communicating how your offering can benefit the target customer. BreadnBeyond is an excellent tool for explainer video production. This tool can be used to create explainer videos in a variety of styles, like whiteboard, motion graphic, cartoon, and more.
Pricing: BreadnBeyond provides three packages – Ultimate, Premium, and Advanced.
4. Insightful – Workforce Analytics Software
A successful content marketing campaign would not be possible when your teams are not able to maintain their productivity. This productivity analytics tool provides insights and real-time visibility into the efficiency and performance of your teams. Key features offered by Insightful are time mapping, productivity analysis, screen activity recording, and employee Activity Monitoring.
Pricing: Insightful offer three plans – Time Tracking, Employee Monitoring, and Automatic Time Mapping. The prices differ for each of them.
5. ProofHub – Project Management Tool
This is a great project and task management tool for executing effective content marketing campaigns. It essentially allows you to streamline all the important tasks for your content and marketing teams. ProofHub comes with a range of features for organizing content processes, lead nurturing, analysis of key metrics, and more. Furthermore, it also helps in streamlining both internal and external communication.
Pricing: ProofHub offers a free trial and two paid plans – Essential ($45/month) and Ultimate Control ($89/month)
6. SurveyMonkey – Online Surveys
When you are planning a content marketing campaign, you need to determine which type of content would be most appealing to your target audience. A research tool like SurveyMonkey can prove to be very useful in this process. Use online surveys to support your content marketing plans with your own research.
Pricing: SurveyMonkey offers a free trial and paid plans. The paid plans start from $25 per feature per month.
7. SocialBakers – Social Media Analytics
This AI-powered tool can be used to manage your content marketing efforts on social media channels. SocialBakers comes with a range of features, like:
- Social media monitoring
- Trend tracking
- Influencer tracking
- Content management
- Reporting/analytics
- Brand tracking and analytics
- Posts scheduling, and more.
Pricing: SocialBakers offers three plans – Professional ($20/profile), Business, and Enterprise.
8. Raven Tools – SEO Analytics Tool
SEO is widely considered to be the most important part of your content marketing strategy as it allows you to reach out to a wider audience. This all-in-one SEO tool comes with a range of features like backlink explorer, keywords research, and site-auditor, which can help you produce content that converts. Raven Tools can also be used to conduct an in-depth analysis of your competition through features like site performance, rank checker, competitor manager, and more.
Pricing: Raven Tools offers both a free 70-day trial and paid plans. The paid plans start from $49 per month.
Wrapping Up
With this, we have listed some of the best content marketing tools which can help you deliver quality content that converts. Integrating these content marketing software and tools will help you achieve your marketing objectives. Before you implement these tools, it’s important to get a few basic things out of the way:
- Defining content processes and building internal support
- Developing a content marketing supply chain
- Consolidating and integrating marketing applications
Author Bio
Akshita is a content creator with Godot Media – a leading content marketing service. She has a penchant for turning complex topics into engaging and informative articles.
