15 Content Marketing Tools to Boost Your Campaign ROI

Content marketing tools help you streamline your brand’s content production pipeline for better engagement, organization, and ROI.

Want more leads, engagement, and sustainable business growth? Content marketing delivers all three, which is why over 80% of marketers swear by it. But without the right content marketing tools to streamline your strategy, you might leave precious insights and ROI on the table.

Keyword research, blog schedules, and social media calendars take a tremendous amount of time to manage. That’s where quality content tools step in and take the load off your digital marketing team.

If there’s anybody who knows about content optimization, it’s Austin Lewis — a HawkSEM performance marketing strategist and data-driven marketing expert.

Ready to speed up and streamline your content marketing workflow? Keep reading for Lewis’s top 15 best content marketing tools and why they’re essential for a revenue-boosting strategy.

Top 15 content marketing tools

Content ideation & SEO tools:

1. Ahrefs
2. Surfer SEO
3. HubSpot Blog Ideas Generator

Project management tools:

4. Asana

Content production tools:

5. Google Docs
6. Canva
7. Grammarly
8. Mailchimp
9. Clearscope

Content management systems:

10. WordPress

Data analytics tools:

11. Semrush
12. Google Trends
13. Google Analytics
14. ConversionIQ

Social media content tools:

15. Hootsuite

Content ideation & SEO tools

1. Ahrefs

Every content marketing strategy should begin with research, and that’s what Ahrefs does exceptionally well. It identifies keywords your audience might type into search engines, along with specs like volume, difficulty, search intent, and historical trends.

Overall, Ahrefs is a search engine optimization (SEO) powerhouse that keeps your content, on-page, and technical SEO principles in check.

How does Ahrefs achieve all this? Decades of research that generate about 3.3 trillion indexed backlinks and over 20 billion keywords!

What’s not to love? Well, the cost may be high for small businesses, which drives some toward free keyword research tools like Google Search Console.

However, Lewis cautions that free tools don’t always deliver lasting SEO results:

“Many free topic ideation tools just show top search results for particular keywords,” explains Lewis. “You don’t need a tool for that — just run a query in your target search engine to find the top results. Then, use the free tools to dive beyond titles to identify subheading structures or other elements found in the top results.”

Features:

• Site audits: Identify technical SEO issues that might hurt your rankings
• Backlink analysis: See what content drives the most traffic from third-party sites and assess their quality
• Keyword research: Identify search terms to rank for and assess profitability based on metrics like keyword volume and density
• Competitor analysis: See what your competitors are doing and learn how to beat them
• Rank tracking: Monitor keyword rankings on your website and your competitors’
• Content marketing: Identify high-performing content and topics to create similar or better content

Pros:

• Comprehensive SEO and marketing toolkit
• Easy-to-use interface
• Provides actionable insights for improving website performance
• Excellent customer support

Cons:

• Expensive pricing for smaller businesses
• Steep learning curve to leverage all features

Price:

• Lite: $129/month
• Standard: $249/month
• Advanced: $499/month
• Enterprise: $14,990 per year

2. Surfer SEO

With its comprehensive keyword analysis and data, Surfer SEO generates topic clusters and shows you what your audience types into Google over certain periods.

This helps tremendously to create highly relevant content. You can even use its AI writer to get your content started, though Lewis advises against it as a sole strategy:

“Original copy with a fresh set of ideas is the best way to go, especially if you have an authoritative author,” says Lewis.

Beyond that?

“Focus on the target and semantic keyword placements, as well as on-page optimization practices,” he advises.

Surfer SEO’s interface is organized, user-friendly, and convenient. As you write, the software tracks how many suggested keywords you use and grades your content with an SEO score in real time. The higher your score, the more likely this piece of content is to rank high in Google.

Nail it, and you’ll surf to the top of the SERP.

Features:

• On-page optimization analysis
• Keyword research and analysis
• SEO graders
• Competitor analysis
• Content editor
• SERP tracker to monitor performance over time

Pros:

• AI writer and editor for quick content production and brainstorming
• Timely customer service
• Integrates with other marketing and customer relationship management (CRM) platforms
• Makes content optimization easy
• Keyword clusters and analysis for content ideation
• Detailed competitor analysis

Cons:

• Pricey for smaller businesses
• Limited functionality for off-page optimization and technical SEO

Price:

• Basic: $89/month
• Scale: $129/month
• Scale AI: $219/month
• Enterprise: Custom price

3. HubSpot Blog Ideas Generator

If anyone knows how to create a great headline, it’s HubSpot. So, it only makes sense that the leading CRM platform also created a topic ideation tool.

What makes HubSpot’s Blog Idea Generator unique is that it doesn’t just give you one title. It provides a week’s worth of topic ideas. And if you share your name, email, and more company details, you even get a month’s worth of topic ideas.

So if you have a weekly or monthly theme, type it into the generator and you’ll get enough ideas to fill your content calendar in minutes. Then, it will generate multiple title ideas based on themes, words, or keywords that you plug in.

Features:

• AI blog title generator
• Blog outlines
• CMS publishing functionality

Pros:

• Saves time with instant title outputs
• Improves content SEO with keyword-rich titles
• Gets the creative juices flowing when you’re stuck
• Easy to use without advanced technical knowledge

Cons:

• Output may not always be relevant or suitable for your specific piece of content or target audience

Price: Free

Project management tools

4. Asana

Does your blog calendar overwhelm you with endless keywords, briefs, and deadlines?

Take a breather with Asana, a project management tool that helps keep your marketing team members organized and efficient.

It has all the bells and whistles to manage complex projects.

Take it from a leading digital marketing agency like HawkSEM: without Asana, managing our endless pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns, blog calendars, and diverse client strategies would be impractical.

With features like task assignments, permissions, time tracking, and deadline reminders, we always know who’s working on what task.

We also love the subtasks, tags, and email notifications so no one ever misses a beat.

Features:

• Task assignments and project management for better team organization
• Permissions for clients or project collaborators
• Calendar and deadline management
• File sharing and storage
• Team communication within the tool
• Multiple project views (Task, Board, or Calendar)

Pros:

• Easy-to-use interface
• Comprehensive project management features
• Integrates with a variety of other tools (like Slack, Dropbox, and Google Drive)
• Excellent for team collaboration
• Free version

Cons:

• Potential learning curve if you’re used to other project management tools
• Limited time tracking and automated workflows with the free plan

Price:

• Personal: Free plan (forever)
• Starter price: $10.99 per person, per month
• Advanced price: $24.99 per person, per month
• Enterprise and Enterprise+: Contact sales department

Content production tools

5. Google Docs

Google Docs is a free, web-based writing tool where you can write and edit content in real-time. It also features easy access to different views from sister applications like Google Sheets and Slides to create diverse content formats.

Got collaborators? They can jump right into the doc, too. The only requirement is an active Gmail account.

We love Google Docs’ commenting features, which help us work collaboratively with members of our marketing team, including editors, writers, and subject matter experts.

Plus, you can access drafts in the Version History tab. This is ideal to keep track of content as it develops and from each collaborator.

The Suggesting mode makes it easy to track edits and polish content to its finest form.

Features:

• Table of contents
• Auto-saving
• Speech recognition
• Emoji reacts
• Suggesting, Editing, and Viewing modes
• Easy sharing to multiple collaborators
• In-platform chat

Pros:

• Live collaboration on content
• User-friendly interface
• Easy access to other Google apps
• Version history for accountability

Cons:

• Can take up lots of storage space
• Requires internet connection to edit and share docs (unless you manually make editing offline available for each document)
• Lacks the formatting of some offline word processors

Price:

• Free plan with limited storage
• From $3.99/month to increase storage

6. Canva

We know your audience craves more images and visual content, but not everyone has the time (or budget) to create infographics and visuals from scratch or hire a graphic designer.

With Canva, you can access thousands of customizable graphic design templates to create posters, brochures, blog images, social media posts, and endless other marketing designs — no design background necessary

Just select your favorite template, along with fonts, colors, filters, texts, images, and other elements to make it your own.

One recent development is that Canva unveiled new AI capabilities that let you generate images via text prompts (e.g., “writer with red curly hair and glasses working on a deadline at laptop”).

(Image: Canva Magic Studio AI-generated image)

It might not be my best look, and I certainly don’t need two laptops, but it’s a neat tool to play around with for your designs.

Features:

• Magic Studio (AI-powered tool to create images, presentations, graphics, videos, and designs).
• Real-time collaboration
• Thousands of templates for various content formats (posters, social media posts, invitations, ads, etc.)
• Image enhancer
• Video trimmer
• Photo effects

Pros:

• Wide range of design templates and tools
• Easy-to-use interface
• Branded templates to reinforce brand image and identity
• Affordable pricing for advanced features
• Integrates with a variety of other tools
• AI tools to speed up design workflows

Cons:

• Limited customizability for some templates
• Limited functionality for complex design needs

Price:

• Free
• Pro: $15/month per user
• Canva for Teams: $10/month with a minimum of three users
• Canva Enterprise: Contact sales

7. Grammarly

Ever cringe at a bunch of typos in a piece of content? We’ll bet that brand lost some credibility in your eyes. Thanks to tools like Grammarly, poorly-written content doesn’t have to be a turn-off for your audience.

Grammarly is an AI-powered writing and grammar checker that helps you avoid writing errors and create top-tier content.

You can paste your written content right onto the website. Better yet, add it as an extension to your desktop browser to refine any written content, like form submissions, emails, word processors, and more.

But it doesn’t just ensure your grammar is tip-top; Grammarly also checks for clarity, conciseness, tone, plagiarism, readability, vocabulary, engagement, and delivery.

Finally, it’ll rank your writing’s performance and suggest specific edits to elevate your content to superstar status. Typos in your content? Not a chance.

Features:

• Spelling and grammar checking
• Writing analysis and suggestions
• Plagiarism detection to ensure you’re not publishing duplicate content
• Tone detection and suggestions to write in the appropriate tone for your audience (casual, formal, professional)
• Vocabulary enhancement to make your content more readable and less repetitive
• Chrome extension and desktop app to use its features in your emails, word processors, social media, and wherever else you write

Pros:

• Highly accurate spelling and grammar checking
• Detailed writing suggestions
• Offers a plagiarism detection tool
• Integrates with a variety of other tools
• Social etiquette and diversity and inclusion suggestions

Cons:

• Limited functionality for non-English content
• Occasionally comes up in AI-detection software

Price:

• Free version: Limited functionality
• Premium: $12/month
• Business: $15/month
• Enterprise: Contact sales

8. Mailchimp

Mailchimp is an email marketing and automation software that helps you create email templates and newsletters. It also automates mass send-outs to your customers, whether you share brand updates, promotions, or even customer satisfaction surveys to help inform your products or marketing campaigns.

As for results?

People who use Mailchimp see an average of 25X ROI, and it’s easy to see why. Thanks to its robust AI automation and abundant behavior-based triggers, you can leverage remarking to convert high-quality leads.

You can also experiment with different campaign elements like a subject line or signature with its multi-variate testing feature.

Features:

• Audience segmentation
• Branded content creation
• AI writer
• 130+ email templates
• Campaign manager
• Customer journey builder

Pros:

• Multivariate A/B testing tools to optimize performance
• Free forever plan
• Detailed analytics and real-time reporting
• Proven conversion boosts
• Detailed behavioral targeting for remarketing

Cons:

• Expensive if you have a large mailing list (15,000+ recipients)
• Limited templates with the free plan

Price:

• Free plan for one month
• Essentials: $13/month for 500 contacts
• Standard: $20/month for 500 contacts
• Premium: $350/month for 10,000 contacts

9. Clearscope

Ever felt overwhelmed by a blank Google Doc? Clearscope fires up the brainstorming machine by giving you a solid SEO outline.

This AI-driven writing tool populates your screen with outlines from top SERP results for whatever target keyword you have in mind, along with links to those pages for inspiration and a list of additional related keywords to include.

You can write your content directly on the platform while its AI algorithms tick off keywords that increase your SEO grade. In the left-hand sidebar, you’ll also notice a readability score that speaks to user experience — another important aspect of SEO.

We love using Clearscope to create content for our blog. While we conduct our own keyword research to inform our topics, the guidance and efficiency that come with Clearscope’s platform are unmatched.

Features:

• Readability score
• Keyword suggestions
• AI-generated outlines
• SEO score
• Sharing and exporting
• Plugins and integrations to other software
• SERP outlines to scope out competitors’ content

Pros:

• Free training and onboarding
• Priority support no matter your subscription
• Accessible way to write SEO content
• Easy measures of success with readability and SEO grades

Cons:

• Expensive, with basic plan starting at $189/month

Price:

• Essentials: $189/month
• Business: $399/month
• Enterprise: Custom pricing

Content management systems

10. WordPress

Once you write your content, how do you get it on your website?

You’ll need a content management system likeWordPress to paste your copy, add images, optimize for SEO and keywords, and publish.

We like WordPress as a CMS because it consistently updates its features to enhance functionality and site optimization.

There’s a reason why this is the most popular CMS out there.

The WordPress community is very active, with countless forums and groups to talk programming and design with fellow experts. Plus, you can find thousands of themes and templates to jumpstart web page creation without coding knowledge.

Features:

• Blog creation and management
• Website design and customization apt for programming experts and non-coders alike
• Content creation templates and management to simplify editing, optimizing, and uploading
• SEO optimization via Yoast
• WordPress plugin integrations for better functionality (like WooCommerce and Xero)

Pros:

• Easy-to-use interface
• Highly customizable design options
• Thousands of professional, pre-made, third-party templates and themes
• Large community and support resources

Cons:

• Requires some technical knowledge, although hosts have gotten around this through one-click installers
• Limited design options without knowledge of CSS and HTML (some themes have drag-and-drop builders to help)
• Vulnerable to security risks without proper maintenance (which you must do yourself or hire a pro to manage it for you)

Price: Free, outside of associated costs like web hosting, premium themes, and domain purchases

Data analytics tools

11. Semrush

Semrush goes the extra mile if you want to dive deeper into SEO and PPC analytics. It also offers market research and traffic analytics to help you spot industry trends.

For example, Semrush analyzes over 1 billion global events per day, both big and small, to give you deeper insights into new markets or competitors.

Like Ahrefs, it covers keyword research, backlink analysis, and site audits. However, Semrush kicks things up a notch and includes tracking and insights into PPC performance and social media management.

What do we love most about Semrush? It offers a wide suite of tools and in-depth keyword analysis to help you avoid what Lewis calls KWTV (Keyword Volume Tunnel Vision):

“Oftentimes, the first step of the content ideation process (keyword research and mapping) is too hyper-focused on keyword volume, instead of looking for paths of least resistance,” explains Lewis. “[These] can be found by inspecting other keyword metrics besides just search volume.”

In Semrush, for example, there are alternative metrics like:

• Keyword Difficulty: A measure from 0 to 100, with 100 representing the most difficult keywords to rank for organically in SERP.
• Competitive Density (CD): Measures the competition for paid ads in the SERP for a particular keyword. It ranges from 0 to 1, with 1 having the highest level of paid media competition.

“When keywords come with a high CD, you can expect to have the SERP littered with ads, which could make this keyword more difficult to convert, even if you have the number one organic position,” says Lewis.

Additional content tools with Semrush

With Semrush, you also access content creation and analysis tools such as:

• AdClarity: Analyzes competitor PPC ads
• Brand Monitoring: Tracks company mentions and engagement on social media
• AI Social Content Generator: Generates social and video content at fast speeds

Just remember that while the tools above are part of Semrush’s suite, they have separate costs that can quickly add up.

Features:

• Keyword research
• On-page SEO
• Competitive analysis
• Rank tracking
• Content optimization
• PPC keyword research

Pros:

• Comprehensive SEO and marketing toolkit
• Easy-to-use interface
• Provides actionable insights for improving website performance
• Excellent customer support

Cons:

• Expensive pricing for smaller businesses and solopreneurs
• Some features can be overwhelming for beginners

Price:

• Pro Plan: $129.95/month
• Guru Plan: $249.95/month
• Business Plan: Custom; contact Semrush

12. Google Trends

What should your blog posts cover next month? Rather than guessing what your audience wants to read, you can analyze what they’re currently looking up.

Google Trends offers a peek into the thoughts your readers have about a given keyword or topic. While it’s not real-time, it’s pretty up-to-date.

You can go as far back as a few months or several years to see the overall trend of a given topic. Just type in a search term and you’ll see whether it’s trending. Along the way, you’ll discover related topics and terms you might’ve missed.

Features:

• Trends Explore by topic
• Multiple graph views (region, over time, etc.)
• Related queries and topics
• Daily trends newsletter

Pros:

• Helps identify popular topics and keywords
• Provides data to support content ideas and decision-making
• Geographic and demographic data to better understand audience interests
• Free and user-friendly interface with no subscription required

Cons:

• Being limited to search data may not provide a complete picture of audience interests
• Can be difficult to interpret data without a background in data analysis or marketing research

Price:

• Free

13. Google Analytics

The best content strategy pairs seamlessly with PPC to convert high-intent leads to customers once they’re engaged with your content. Google Analytics supports both efforts with its conversion tracking, audience segment analysis, and other key metrics like:

• Session time
• Organic traffic
• Social shares
• Conversion rate
• Engagement rate
• Bounce rate
• Number of users

We love Google Analytics for its bird’s eye views of content across multiple platforms. You can easily see data for social media, display campaigns, website pages, and PPC campaigns all in separate tabs.

Features

• Predictive capabilities
• Acquisition and monetization reports
• Conversion paths report
• Free-form exploration
• Data overlap

Pros:

• Robust insights into conversions and revenue attribution
• Integrations with the rest of Google’s suite, along with Salesforce
• Free with your Google account (pay for ad campaigns, however)

Cons

• The steep learning curve to leverage all features properly

Price

• Free

14. ConversionIQ

Want to dive even deeper into revenue attribution? We leverage our proprietary tech, ConversionIQ, which uses machine learning to uncover connections between performance data points.

The software collects thousands of pieces of data across multiple marketing channels like LinkedIn, Google Ads, or TikTok, and analyzes everything in real-time.

The result? Actionable insights on where your revenue comes from, all in an easy-to-use dashboard.

Pros:

• Accessible reporting dashboard
• Insights to improve your content marketing strategy
• Accurate revenue attribution

Cons

• Only available to HawkSEM clients

Cost: 

• Free for HawkSEM clients

Social media content tools

15. Hootsuite

Do reach and revenue sound appealing? Hootsuite is a social media management tool that can help you boost each by 636% and 250%, respectively.

It gives you eyes on organic and paid social media campaign results, along with web analytics to assess multichannel ROI. LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook — see which channels work best for your audience.

The platform’s algorithms work in the background to analyze your social media posts. But it doesn’t stop there. It’ll also scope out your competitors’ to determine which posting times generate the most buzz and revenue.

As for content creation? Hootsuite’s OwlyWriter AI helps you generate captions when you hit writer’s block, with a customizable tone of voice.

Features: 

• Social media analytics
• AI content creation
• Social listening and brand monitoring
• Best times to post
• Engagement tools

Pros:

• Canva and Grammarly integration
• Optimized scheduling
• Brand monitoring and reputation management from social listening

Cons:

• Expensive, with no free version

Price:

• Professional: $99/month
• Team: $249/month
• Enterprise: Custom

What are content marketing tools?

Content marketing tools are software programs and sites that help you organize, execute, and monitor your content marketing efforts.

Some tools focus on one area of your content marketing strategy, like marketing analytics or proofreading. Others offer multiple features like keyword research, design, and project management.

These tools are ideal for all business types, including B2B, B2C, service companies, and ecommerce.

Why you need content marketing tools: key benefits

Brands that use content marketing tools see increased revenue, engagement, and reach. Take any on our list as an example:

•  Asana generated a 437% boost in ROI.
• Hubspot users see a 129% increase in leads and 114% increase in web traffic.

We’ve seen similar results using these tools.

Here’s how content marketing platforms take your strategy to the next level:

Top-notch content quality

With the right tools, all your content will be error-free and accurate before you publish it on the web or social media platforms.

Stronger SEO

Learn which keywords drive higher rankings and quality traffic to inform your content calendar and optimize your SEO content strategy.

Deeper analytics

Understand who your audience is, what they want, and what makes them click or buy, so you can tailor your content accordingly.

A/B testing

A/B test different content elements like headlines, calls to action (CTAs), or graphics to identify which content resonates best with your target audience.

Improved brand awareness

Keep a close ear on audience conversations and harness those insights in your content to grow your brand’s visibility.

Higher engagement

Identify high-performing posts on your blog or social media accounts to understand what your audience desires and tailor your content accordingly.

Cost and time savings

Reduce or eliminate repetitive, manual tasks and replace them with AI and marketing automation.

Better lead generation

The better your content, the higher your odds of attracting the right prospects to landing pages and other relevant content.

Competitive edge

Lewis says content marketing tools is a way to reverse-engineer what works for competitors:

“By understanding what content works for competitors, you can create a similar but improved version of any high-performing copy, potentially taking SERP positions from the comp,” he says.

The bottom line: Content marketing software is vital to boost your business’s performance and revenue. It saves time by eliminating time-consuming tasks, so your team can focus on what really matters: driving up profits.

How we use tools and software for content at HawkSEM

At HawkSEM, our teams use many of the tools we have on this list.

For example, we might lean more heavily on Google Analytics for ecommerce clients with Shopping campaigns, but more on Semrush for a SaaS client.

Here’s how we put these tools to work to create high-converting content briefs for our content writers:

• Ahrefs (Keywords Explorer) & Semrush (Keyword Magic Tool): Identify target keywords and construct keyword maps to guide topic brainstorming.
• Ahrefs (Content Explorer) & Semrush (Topic Research): Identify potential topics that align with the business goals and our identified target keywords.
• Google Trends: Determine which of our identified topics are trending the most.
• Semrush (Content outline builder): Create content outlines for our topics that currently work in SERP.
• Clearscope: Create content outlines for our topics that are currently working in SERP, find semantic keywords in top SERP results, and identify citations (external links) in top SERP results.

The takeaway

Your content creation, management, and optimization are a lot easier with content management tools. They’re more lucrative, too. The efficiency they offer saves you precious time while their optimization features make your content campaigns more impactful, and therefore, more profitable.

That said, we know that all these tools can seem overwhelming. And their combined cost isn’t exactly budget-friendly.

We’d recommend you start with a few tools that directly meet your marketing goals and budget. And if you need help choosing the right ones to optimize ROI, we’ve got you covered.

Our skilled SEO strategists are experts in all things content management and can help you brainstorm, create, launch, and monitor your content with the right tools in your arsenal.

Ready to hang your DIY content creation hat and elevate your brand’s strategy? Let’s talk.

This blog has been updated and was originally published in June 2023.