Top 20+ Must-Have Content Marketing Tools To Scale

With 82% of marketers actively investing in content marketing, its importance can’t be denied. If you are already using content marketing, you will be aware of the numerous benefits it offers.

However, creating, optimizing, and managing content without the right set of tools can be a tough task.

I’ve personally experienced how the right set of content marketing tools saved me hours and improved content quality.

Tools like Jasper AI helped me draft social media posts, while Canva helped in designing professional graphics and so on.

To simplify it for you as well, I have listed a handful of content marketing tools for every step. You can use these tools to research, create content, design, distribute, and track results.

Whether you create blogs, social media, email campaigns, or any other form of content, these tools can be your best partner. Let’s start.

Types of Content Marketing Tools:

1. Content Creation Tools: Create High-Quality Content Faster

2. SEO Tools: Boost on Visibility to Attract Customers

3. Content Automation Tools: Automate Repetitive Tasks to Save Time

4. Content Frameworks: Structure & Distribute Your Content

5. Content Distribution Tools: Reach to Right Audience with the Right Content

6. Content Analytics Tools: Analyze and Optimize Your Efforts

1. Content Creation Tools:

For a perfect content marketing strategy, the first thing you need is great content. Content creation tools like Jasper AI, ChatGPT, Canva, etc can help you make this process faster. You can use them to generate ideas, produce content, and design social media posts.

BuzzSumo: Find Popular Content Topics (Paid)

BuzzSumo is one of the best tools to find trending topics by analyzing the top-performing ones. It helps you understand which type of content can work for your industry. You can use the tool to generate content topic ideas and create a social media marketing strategy.

Pricing: BuzzSumo doesn’t offer a free plan. It offers various paid subscriptions starting at $199 per month.

Google Trends: Track Search Trends & Popular Topics (Free)

If you want to use a free alternative to BuzzSumo, you can use Google Trends. It allows you to track the popularity of keywords with real-time data. It can help you plan your blog topics, social media posts, YouTube videos, and other marketing campaigns.

ChatGPT: Create High-Quality Content Faster with ChatGPT (Free)

AI content generation tools like ChatGPT have become a great friend of writers. They can help in each step of content creation. You can use them to generate ideas, create an outline, and refine the content.

You just need to provide them with a basic text-based input called a prompt. It can even match your brand's tone and create relevant content faster. It's a perfect tool to improve your content creation speed while maintaining the quality.

Pricing: ChatGPT offers a free plan and a basic plan starting at $20 per month.

Jasper AI: Enhance Your Content Quality

If you want to write more personalized content, adjusted to your brand's tone, you can use Jasper AI. This tool offers templates for all types of content, like blog posts, articles, product descriptions, or even an ad copy.

You just need to enter a few basic details about your business and topic. It will automatically generate content that resonates with your target audience.

Pricing: Jasper AI offers a 7-day free trial, and the pricing starts at $49 per month.

Canva: Design Stunning Visuals Using Existing Templates

Great content is incomplete without eye-catching graphics. If you want to create catchy social media posts that go viral or simply want to build basic infographics for your blog posts, you can create them with Canva.

You don’t need to be a designer. You can simply pick a template and create whatever you want with a drag-and-drop editor. In fact, with its latest AI-powered design features, you can directly type what kind of image you want, and Canva will generate it for you in seconds.

Pricing: You can start a free trial of Canva or buy a basic plan starting at $15 per month.

Abode Express: Create Professional Graphics

If you want to create advanced designs without the complexity of Photoshop, you can use tools like Adobe Express. This tool allows you to design beautiful web pages, high-quality graphics, and short videos using templates.

You can even make a promotional video or a marketing flyer in minutes. This tool can help you to level up your visual branding without hiring a graphic designer.

Pricing: Abode Express provides a free trial with limited credits, while a paid plan starts at just $10 per month.

Pro Tip: In order to save time and make writing easier, you can use different templates for blogs, emails, landing pages, and social media posts. These templates can be found in tools like Notion, Canva, HubSpot, Mailchimp, and Google Docs.

2. SEO Tools

Creating great content is just the first step. The target is to get it discovered by the right audience. To do so, you need the best SEO tools. These tools can help you find the best keywords, rank for them, track rankings, and improve your website’s visibility on popular search engines like Google.

Semrush: Keyword Research, SEO, and Content Marketing Toolkit

Semrush is one of the marketers’ favorite SEO toolkits that helps in improving search engine rankings. It allows you to do keyword research, competitor analysis, and regular site audits. You can use the tool to analyze your backlinks and find relevant keywords to use in your website content.

Pricing: Semrush has a free plan with limited daily credits. It also offers various paid plans, starting at $139 per month.

Pro Tip: If you run a small business, you can consider alternatives like Moz or Ahrefs, which offer affordable SEO tools.

Screaming Frog SEO Spider: Conduct a Site Audit

Screaming Frog SEO Spider is a desktop application that helps in analyzing any technical SEO issues in the website, like broken links, duplicate content, or missing metadata. You can use the tool to conduct a comprehensive site audit to optimize your website for search engines.

Pricing: Screaming Frog’s free version allows you to crawl 500 URLs. You can get a paid license to crawl more at $239 per year.

BrightLocal: Specialized Local SEO Solutions

If you want to improve your local search visibility, BrightLocal is a good tool. It allows you to target a geographical area, track local rankings, and manage reviews. This allows you to enhance and improve your presence in local search results.

Pricing: The pricing for the tools starts at $39 per month.

3. Content Automation Tools

Creating multiple content tasks manually can be time-consuming and repetitive. To save time, you can automate tasks like sending emails, publishing content, scheduling social media posts, and tracking audience engagement. Content automation tools like SocialPilot, HubSpot, Zapier, etc can help you automate these tasks.

SocialPilot: Automate Social Media Posting

As a business, you might have to manage multiple social media platforms like Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and more. You can use tools like Social Pilot to automate social media scheduling and analyze your performance. You can schedule a week’s post in advance and even collaborate with your team.

Pricing: SocialPilot offers a free trial plan along with various paid plans starting at $30 per month.

HubSpot CMS: All-in-One Marketing Automation

If you want to use a complete all-in-one content marketing tool, you must try Hubspot. HubSpot helps to automate email marketing, manage content, and schedule social media posts. You can even use its built-in CRM to track leads and manage customer relationships. The platform offers a free plan with limited features, while you can avail the benefits of a paid plan starting at $800 per month.

Zapier: Automate Your Workflows

Are you tired of managing multiple apps and tools? If so, you can use Zapier to connect all the apps like Google Docs, Slack, Mailchimp, HubSpot, and more together. Then, you can automate tasks like sharing blogs on social media, sending follow-up emails, or updating spreadsheets.

Pricing: Zapier offers a free plan with basic automation. You can also buy an advanced plan starting at $16 per month for professionals.

4. Content Distribution Tool

Once your content is optimized for search engines, you can’t wait for it to organically reach your audience. You need to distribute it across different platforms to maximize its reach. You can share your content on social media channels, and emails, or promote it through paid ads.

Mailchimp: Distribute Your Content & Simplify Your Email Marketing

You can use MailChimp to distribute your content (articles, blogs, and guides). Mailchimp has a drag-and-drop editor and various templates that allow you to create professional emails.

You can use the platform to create emails, newsletters, or even landing pages. It is one of the best email marketing platforms to create, schedule, and automate emails.

Pricing: Mailchimp has a free plan for up to 500 contacts, while paid plans start at $139 per month.

Buffer: Easy Social Media Content Distribution

If you are tired of managing multiple social media accounts, you can use Buffer to share your content. Buffer helps you to organize and distribute content on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter.

It allows you to schedule your posts in advance, manage all the platforms in one place, and track engagement. If you want an advanced platform where you can manage your engagement with followers, you can try Hootsuite, costing  $19 per month.

Pricing: Buffer has a free plan for up to three social media accounts, with paid plans starting at $6 per month per channel.

StoryChief: Multi-Channel Content Publishing

Storychief is an all-in-one content distribution channel. You can use it to manage blogs, social media, email marketing, and even SEO in one place. The tools help you to distribute content across all the channels, collaborate with the teams, and optimize the content for SEO.

Pricing: Storychief offers a free plan with limited features, while paid plans start at $90 per month.

5. Content Marketing Frameworks:

The content marketing framework helps in planning, creating, and distributing the content across different channels properly. It helps you to create structured content that aligns with your business goals. There are a few popular content marketing and distribution frameworks, like:

Hero-Hub-Help Framework: This framework helps you create different types of content for different goals. Hero is the main content that grabs the attention of the audience. It is used for product launches. Hub is the content posted regularly, like blog series or newsletters. Help answer customer questions through FAQs.

TOFU-MOFU-BOFU Framework: This framework is designed for the buyer’s journey. TOFU content attracts new leads. MOFU content nurtures them, and BOFU content converts them into customers.

PESO Model (Paid, Earned, Shared, Owned): PESO is a content distribution framework. It combines paid ads, media coverage, social sharing, and owned content like blogs and emails.

Notion: Organize Your Content and Workflow

If you want to plan, write, and organize your content marketing efforts in one place, you can use notion. Notion is a free-to-use workspace. It helps to manage content calendars, track tasks, and collaborate with teams all in one place. You can use it to-do lists, notes, databases, and even project boards to stay organized. The best part? It’s fully customizable.

Pricing: Notion has a free plan for individuals. Organizations can buy paid plans that start at just $8 per month.

6. Content Analytics Tools

Content marketing tools can help you to create and market the content, but without tracking performance, you can’t measure its success.

There are various content analytics tools that help you measure the KPIs of your website content like traffic, conversions, and audience behaviors.

You can get valuable insights from these tools into what’s working and what needs improvement. It will help you in optimizing your content marketing strategy and improve search engine rankings to maximize ROI.

Yoast SEO: Optimize Your WordPress Website for Search Engines

If you use WordPress, you can use tools like Yoast SEO to optimize your content for search engines. This too helps you improve on-page SEO by providing major recommendations for meta description, keyword usage, and internal linking.

You can use it to analyze the content and XML sitemaps in real-time. It is a perfect tool for bloggers or businesses who want to improve rankings but don’t have technical expertise. The tool offers a free with basic features, while it has a premium version starting at $99 per year.

Pro Tip💡: If you're looking for a more budget-friendly alternative to Yoast SEO, you can consider using Rank Math. It offers similar features for free, and you can try its pro for just $6 per month.

Google Search Console: Track and Improve Website’s Visibility

If you want to track how your website appears in the search results. You can use Google Search Console, a free tool from Google. It provides data on search traffic, keyword/page rankings, crawl errors, and mobile usability.

You can use the tool to submit your sitemap, monitor backlinks, and fix indexing problems. This tool helps to understand and analyze the performance of the website. It is freely available for all website owners.

Google Analytics: Gain Detailed Insights into Your Website Traffic

Google Analytics is another free content marketing tool that helps in analyzing the website. It provides detailed information about the website’s traffic and source. It tells how many visitors are visiting your website based on different categories like location, age etc.

It also tracks their behavior, like how long they interact with your website, how they navigate, etc.  It helps in making data-driven decisions for the website.

Final Insights: Choosing the Best Content Marketing Tools

Content marketing tools can make your work easier. They help you in each step from content creation to marketing, distribution, and tracking progress.

The right tools can save you time and improve results. To find the best tools for your content marketing strategy, you can test different tools to know what works best for you.

However, you must remember content marketing tools alone can’t guarantee good results; you need a good marketing strategy and consistent efforts to get the best outcomes.

At Better Marketing, we help businesses craft high-impact content strategies that drive higher visibility, engagement, and conversions. Ready to grow your brand? Let’s talk!

FAQs

1. What Are Content Marketing Tools?

Content marketing tools are software or platforms that help businesses create, distribute, and track content more efficiently. They save you from manual efforts and help in improving the content quality.

For example, if you’re writing a blog, you might use Grammarly to check grammar, Canva to design images, and Yoast SEO to optimize it for search engines.

2. Are there free content marketing tools available?

Yes, many content marketing tools offer free plans with limited features, such as:

• Google Analytics helps track website traffic for free.

• Yoast SEO improves search optimization for WordPress websites for free.

• Canva allows you to design marketing graphics for free.

• Buffer and Hootsuite also have free plans for scheduling social media posts.

3. What features should I look for in a content marketing tool?

A good content marketing tool should have SEO optimization (keyword research, on-page SEO, and rank tracking), content creation support (AI writing assistance, templates, and design tools), and automation (social media scheduling, email marketing, and workflow management). It should include analytics and reporting to track performance.

4. Can content marketing tools help with social media management?

Yes, many content marketing tools include social media scheduling, analytics, and automation features. Tools like Buffer, Hootsuite, and SocialPilot allow you to schedule posts, track engagement, and manage multiple social media accounts in one place. They help save time by automating posts and analyzing what works best, ensuring you reach the right audience at the right time.

5. How do I choose the right content marketing tool for my business?

To choose the right content marketing tools for your business, you need to first identify your goals and budget. If you want to improve SEO, look for tools like Semrush or Ahrefs. If social media is your focus, Hootsuite or Buffer might be best. For overall content planning and automation, HubSpot or Trello are great options. You can test their free trials before committing to a paid plan.

6. How do content marketing tools improve SEO?

Content marketing tools improve SEO by helping you find the right keywords, optimize content, and track rankings. Tools like Semrush and Ahrefs show which keywords to target, while Yoast SEO helps optimize content with meta tags, readability checks, and internal linking suggestions. Some tools also analyze backlinks, fix technical issues, and monitor search engine performance, ensuring your content ranks higher on Google.