Content marketing management involves the creation, publishing, and distribution of useful content that proffers certain solutions in order to captivate a target audience. As a content creator and/or marketer, you will be engaged in this practice regularly in order to ensure that your potential customers will take actions that are profitable to your business. The strategy enables you to indirectly pitch your products or services to your target audience.
An effective content marketing manager can help your business to generate more leads. This assertion is supported by some recent studies. One of them (from CMI) revealed that over 70% of marketers stated that the practice leads to an increase in customer engagement. With that in mind, it is only right that small businesses should be encouraged to make use of the best content marketing management tools that their budget can handle.
In this guide, you will be learning about some top content marketing platforms. A comparison table and answers to some frequently asked questions (FAQs) will also be given. Take your time to digest each piece of information as you read through it.
Top Content Marketing Management Tools
Here, we will be looking at some of the best content marketing tools for businesses. Learning about them will make your search for specific content strategy tools to be faster. Five of them have been given below.
1. Canva
It can be difficult to create visual content on some apps. However, Canva is one of the best content marketing tools for such tasks. You can learn to use this content marketing software on your own, or hire a professional graphic designer to do the job. The process of working with this application is easy and fast due to its well-designed interface that allows users to drag and drop effects.
With Canva; you can design photos, social media posts, documents, presentations, and posters in less than a minute! Users can also choose from a wide variety of templates that are compatible with popular online social platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.
Pros
- The app is easy to use.
- It is intuitive.
- Thousands of pre-designed templates are available.
- The free version has many features.
- Design processes are streamlined.
- Team participation is enabled.
- Connects to your social media accounts.
Cons
- Canva is not as good as Photoshop when it comes to photo editing.
- It is hard to use on mobile devices with small screens.
- Templates are not unique.
- The creation of unique elements from scratch is disabled.
2. SEMrush
Search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO) are important for business growth via search engines like Google. The two practices help business sites to rank higher on search engine pages. SEMrush is a content planning tool that helps SEO and SEM experts to keep track of engagement data so that they can perform their duties effectively.
This content planning tool is important for optimizing content or sites for search engine results pages (SERPs). It has a huge database of over 70 million domains and more than 100 million keywords!
Pros
- It has a great site audit tool.
- Tracks keywords based on all the important metrics.
- Users can prepare recommendations for new content quickly.
- The app has tools for almost every aspect of digital marketing.
- Availability of tools that can help users to generate ideas for content.
Cons
- No small plan for the sake of affordability.
- It can only accommodate one user in every plan.
- The dashboard is usually complicated.
3. Tailwind
Tailwind is one of the very useful content strategy tools that can aid your marketing campaign on Pinterest and Instagram. It is a very relevant content marketing software application for content creators and businesses. Users can easily manage their social media accounts, discover content, schedule posts, and increase customer engagement on the app.
Social media management is fast and easy provided you have learned how to use the app well. With this automated content marketing tool, users will have access to help-chat features, affiliate programs, and other benefits. Check the pros below to see more advantages.
Pros
- Tailwind has a scheduling feature.
- Hashtag suggestions are offered.
- It is great for batch work.
Cons
- The pricing structure may cause shoppers to lose interest.
- It loads slowly.
4. Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a content marketing software application that content creators use to boost engagement on online social platforms. Businesses can utilize this content marketing automation tool for their social media marketing campaigns. You can manage many social media accounts on the app while tracking engagement—including contact and sales activities.
Pros
- Hootsuite allows users to manage all their social media accounts from one intuitive interface.
- It is the only content planning tool for social media that has a free plan.
- Updates can be scheduled.
- Team participation is enabled.
- It offers customized reports.
- It features RSS integration.
Cons
- The dashboard may come off as outdated.
- Team subscriptions are expensive.
- Custom URL shorteners are costly.
- It is not easy to manage your social messages, mentions, and comments.
- Reports and analytics are expensive.
- Poor customer support.
5. ClickFunnels
This is the last content marketing software application on the list. ClickFunnels is a great tool for automated content marketing when it comes to boosting sales. Businesses are able to create sales and marketing funnels afresh with this application. Marketers can select sales funnels based on the needs of their companies. The app comes with a great number of pre-designed templates that help to optimize and speed things up.
Pros
- A landing page creator is available with a drag-and-drop editing feature.
- Direct split testing of landing pages (A/B) is enabled.
- The sales funnels help users to earn more money.
- Facilitates API integrations with a great number of third-party software applications.
- Good customer service.
- It is an all-in-one sales funnel designer that comprises many tools that users do not need to configure separately.
Cons
- It may come off as simplistic.
- The pricing may discourage shoppers.
- Occasional incidences of software downtime happen which leads to the obstruction of user progress.
Case Study
If you are not yet convinced about the possible growth that these top content marketing platforms can help your business to achieve, you may want to take a look at the 2 case studies of content marketing automation below.
Case Study 1: Revenue Growth of over $550K at Crain’s Business Insurance through Content Marketing Automation and Integration
Many insurance companies face the problem of declining revenue even when they embark on many advertising campaigns. However, Crain’s Business Insurance was able to tackle this problem and attain revenue growth of $550K. How did they pull it off? The company simply did away with its old marketing strategies and adopted automated content marketing methods.
How did Crain’s Business Insurance realize that this was the way forward? The company discovered that customers were making purchases based on the value that the products offered. Customers were able to ascertain the value of products through research. They were not relying only on the information they got from advertisements.
The company made use of this important insight to restructure and integrate its entire database. Various target audiences were also catered for. Apart from significant revenue growth, the result of the use of content strategy tools also included a significant increase in newsletter subscribers by over 40%.
Case Study 2: Revenue Growth of over $1.5 million at CentricsIT through Content Marketing Automation via Email
At a point in the past, CentricsIT, a business-to-business company that offers data-centered solutions, was facing issues as regards its ROI (return-on-investment) rate. However, once they decided to adopt automated content marketing with targeted email, they were able to generate more leads and boost revenue. The company did not have an efficient way to track leads before the new strategies were implemented.
The adoption of content marketing solutions enabled them to track leads better and make smarter moves as regards the data generated. The new methods helped to boost lead generation by almost 60%.
Comparison
The table below compares some features of the 5 best content marketing tools that were listed in this guide. This will give you a quick general insight into the content strategy tools concerned.
| Key Features | Canva | ClickFunnels | Tailwind | SEMrush | Hootsuite |
| Free Plan | Yes | No | No | No | Yes |
| Free Trial | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Integration Range | Wide | Wide | Narrow (only 2 online social platforms) | Wide | Wide |
| Ease of Use | Very easy | Very easy | Easy | Dashboard can be complicated | Dashboard can be complicated |
| Pricing | Starts at $9.99 per month | Starts at $97 per month | Starts at $14.99 per month | Starts at $119.95 per month | Starts at $49 per month |
| Strengths | Quick graphic designing of social media posts | Creation of well-structured sales funnels | Stronger marketing campaigns on Instagram and Pinterest | Specializes in improving SEO and SEM strategies | Works well with the most popular online social platforms |
FAQs
Obviously; Canva, SEMrush, Tailwind, Hootsuite, and ClickFunnels are some of the best content marketing tools you will find on the market. There are many other good tools, but the aforementioned ones will help you narrow your search.
Content marketing is a broad concept under the broader area of digital marketing which in turn is a type of marketing. This means that there are various forms of content marketing. A long list of them has been given below.
– Blogs
– Checklists
– Courses
– Ebooks
– Free apps
– Emails
– Lead magnets
– Infographics
– Phone books
– Physical leaflets
– Product demos
– Podcasts
– Quizzes/tools
– Seminars
– Slide decks
– Slideshare presentations
– Social media posts
– Videos
– Visual content
– Webinars
– Whitepapers
You can refer to the result of your content marketing management strategy as good when it is able to convert your target audience into potential customers, and in turn, convert your potential customers into paying customers. Another way to look at it is in a scenario where you are able to increase your customer base through the leads generated from a particular content marketing management plan for a definite period.
Based on the CMI study mentioned earlier, it is clear to see that content marketing solutions can be really effective. However, you should ensure that your content marketing management plan is properly executed for the campaign to be successful. In other words, this type of marketing can drive sales for your business. Measure the effectiveness of your content marketing management plan by looking at the right metrics.
How do you ensure that your content planning tool will be put to good use? By making good content borne of unique ideas that are well-organized. Content strategy tools should be able to lead your target audience to a point where they will want to take an action. For example, Your automated content marketing strategy may be aimed at making potential customers buy a product, subscribe to your company’s newsletter, or other indirect goals.
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Conclusion
The importance of content marketing solutions cannot be overemphasized. For example, your company needs content marketing software and content marketing automation in order to thrive in the modern business world. As an entrepreneur, you will lag behind in your industry if you do not invest in content strategy tools, while your competitors are using the top content marketing platforms to get more market share.
When you consider the features, pricing, ratings, pros, and cons of the content strategy tools described in this guide; you will be able to make a good decision about which of them you want to adopt for your business based on your content marketing management needs.
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