Ten Online Tools for Improving Your Content Marketing

Content marketing has quickly become a priority for startups and small businesses, who rarely have the budgets to rely on expensive advertising campaigns.

But while your marketing plan may be elaborate, creating the content you need to achieve your goals is becoming increasingly difficult.

There is plenty of competition around, and that can make life difficult for marketers.

Fortunately, these eight tools should ease the burden on marketers, designers, and CEOs so your marketing team can create top-quality content without working too hard.

1. App Institute

For startups and small businesses, trying to capitalize on the popularity of mobile marketing can be a massive challenge.

As most marketers know, apps can’t be just mobile versions of your website—they need to have unique functionality and add value to users’ lives.

Until recently, app development required external agencies’ assistance and coding knowledge.

But online tools have come a long way, making it much easier for small businesses to build high-quality apps without breaking the budget.

App Institute is an app creator that helps you build an app in a few quick steps. You can create the app yourself using App Institute’s tools or have them develop it for you.

Pricing for the app builder starts at $42 a month up to $340 a month—which isn’t too bad considering the content marketing opportunities a new app will afford your company.

2. Chanty

Not so long ago, email was the primary mode of correspondence within the corporate sphere. But that has been changing steadily in the past few years.

Companies increasingly rely on chats and messengers to get real work done.

One can see why. Far from dying out with AOL, instant messaging has moved into the corporate realm, making it easier for teams to communicate efficiently.

This is particularly necessary in the working environments we now find ourselves in—remote teams are becoming far more popular.

A team chat tool such as Chanty is ideal to ensure communication between team members, departments, and managers remains steady and productive.

Chanty is an app on desktop and mobile, so you can communicate with your team wherever you are.

What makes Chanty stand out from the growing crowd of team chat tools is its simple interface—you don’t need to spend time onboarding users for it.

For smaller startups, Chanty has another plus—a free plan that allows up to 10 members in a team. Even the business plan isn’t hard on the budget—$3 per user monthly.

When your content team is spread out around the globe, a user-friendly tool like Chanty is just what you need to get your content marketing on track.

3. Hotjar

One of the primary goals of content marketing is driving traffic to the company website and selecting landing pages to maximize conversions and sales. Landing page services can help you achieve this goal by providing high-converting landing pages tailored to your needs.

While Google Analytics can give you the information you need about who is coming to your site, from where, and for how long, you also need to know ‘why’ they visited your site.

What makes people stay on one page longer than another? Which sections of your page are they most attracted to?

This information is crucial to how you create and place your content. And how do you find this out? By using heatmaps.

Hotjar’s heatmaps are graphic representations of how users interact with your website—they show you which areas gain the most attention and which the least.

You can also track user behavior through recordings of site visitors—these tell you exactly how users navigate your pages and site and what they click on.

All of which can be used to gain insights into your audience and to improve your content.

Hotjar is available with free and paid packages depending on the number of visits you want to record.

4. Podcastle

Another way to successfully market your brand and reach new audiences is by diversifying your content, and what better way to do it than podcasts?

If you have already tapped into the world of audio content, using this platform will make things even more accessible. If not, this is an excellent place to start (and stay)!

Creating your branded podcast will engage your audience, drive more traffic to your website, and become a medium through which you can utilize the content marketing tools and tips listed below.

Podcastle offers many AI-powered features to help you create effortlessly and with minimum technical skills or equipment needed. You can also record videos, interview episodes, and edit into a publication-ready show without switching to another tab.

Repurposing your audio content into blog and social media posts is an excellent example of working smart, not hard. Podcastle’s speech-to-text tool will allow you to get audio transcripts in seconds. You can do the opposite by cloning your voice or using Podcastle’s human-like voice skins to generate audio from text.

Podcastle offers a free package and several paid plans that come with a range of advanced tools.

5. HubSpot

If your website doesn’t yet have an integrated chatbot, you may be missing an essential ingredient of your content marketing recipe.

Chatbots and live chat were a bit of a disaster a while ago—the often unhelpful automated responses to the user’s questions became a joke, leading many to believe that chatbots were dead.

But chatbots have evolved considerably in the last few years—mainly because of AI and machine learning improvements.

Chatbots are now more intelligent and adaptable, which helps save on customer service teams while ensuring that customers are engaged.

HubSpot’s live chat software is well worth the investment for startups and small businesses.

Plus, HubSpot’s sophisticated chatbot and live chat feature can be seamlessly integrated into your site to ensure that your audience gets the information they need when they need it.

Pricing starts at $50 monthly in the starter pack, climbing to $3,200 for the enterprise package. All packages include many features in addition to live chat.

6. Moosend

Email marketing has been shown to have some of the best ROI—better than social media, organic search, and digital advertising.

At the same time, creating emails and newsletters that are attractive enough to be opened and lead to website visits is a challenge.

But designing great emails doesn’t have to be a chore anymore. Many online resources have made creating and distributing emails much more manageable.

Startups can use email marketing software like Moosend, which has a simple drag-and-drop email template creator that allows you to slot visuals and content into your emails with ease.

Moosend also sends emails to your subscriber list and collects real-time data you can analyze later.

For startups, Moosend has a free package for up to 1,000 subscribers. Above that, you pay in monthly increments, which is a great way to build your email marketing system.

7. Poptin

A significant first step in your email marketing campaign is capturing email addresses of potential customers.

This is a challenge for startups constantly looking for new ways to get subscribers without being intrusive or aggressive.

A great way to build your email list is by using attractive contact forms on your website or creating WordPress and Shopify popups, which is precisely what Poptin does well.

Poptin easily integrates with various website and newsletter management tools, making it easier for small businesses to gather email lists and engage with potential customers.

Businesses can start with a free package and later upgrade to the Pro package of $49 per month or the Agency package of $99 for unlimited popups and forms.

8. Venngage

Creating beautiful content that will capture a reader’s attention in the ocean of online content is a significant hurdle for small businesses.

It isn’t always possible to take in-house photographs—many companies do not have the human resources for this. Additionally, getting outside resources isn’t a budget-friendly option.

So, how does one create attractive visual content without breaking the bank or working overtime?

An online resource like Venngage, which offers everything from PowerPoint design ideas to infographics, white papers, and posters, is ideal for startups and small businesses.

Venngage has a variety of free templates on offer that are easily customizable.

It includes a ‘My Brand Kit’ section where you can upload your organization’s logo, colors, and fonts to apply to all your designs.

And Venngage isn’t hard on the pocket either—it has a free package and goes up to $49 per month for the business package.

For a small amount of money, you can make stunning graphics that will transform your content marketing and boost your views and sales.

9. Vyper

To grow your brand and awareness, you need to keep audiences engaged.

With gamification becoming a popular method of engagement, running contests may be a viable way to boost your digital presence.

This is why a giveaway app like Vyper is an essential tool in a content marketer’s arsenal.

Vyper allows you to create referral campaigns and giveaways, and they have plenty of use cases that demonstrate how their tools have grown their clients’ customer bases.

The great thing about Vyper is that it can be customized to match your brand identity and has several modern designs that you can use to create high-quality content.

With a pricing scheme that starts from free up to $299 a month for agencies, Vyper is an excellent resource for building your clientele and community.

10. Visme

Visual communication is essential because it increases user engagement and makes the long-form text more appealing. Visme is a visual content creation platform that lets you add movement to your brand strategy, creating visual communication content like videos, infographics, presentations, and animation in minutes. The best thing is that Visme has a great variety of templates, so it’s straightforward to use, yet it can be used to create professional-looking assets. Plus, it has a collection of native integrations, so you can connect Visme to other tools you already use.

Conclusion

Content marketing is all the rage, but keeping the content engine running can be a challenge.

These ten tools will make creating and distributing amazing content easier without breaking the bank or putting in too many extra hours.