Content marketing is crucial for companies wanting to break through the barriers so many consumers have built to screen out traditional advertisements. Rather than relying on traditional tactics, effective marketers today are storytellers, using narrative content to increase brand awareness, boost lead generation, and grow customer loyalty. Creating and distributing innovative and engaging content isn’t easy, so content marketing tools make a big difference.

Seventy-five percent of marketers are increasing their investment in content marketing, making it more important than ever to find the right software to execute your strategy. Content marketing software streamlines the processes of content curation, editorial planning, content development, and distribution. Benefits of content marketing tools include: mobilizing marketing teams around a set strategy, centralizing content, increasing communication between contributors and editors, and facilitating the creation of interactive and captivating content, amongst others.

Now who better to tell you about the strengths and weaknesses of content marketing tools than the marketers actually using them? At G2 Crowd, we aggregate real-user reviews of the software they use at work. Over 400 content marketers have weighed in on the content marketing tools they’ve used; sharing likes, dislikes, and invaluable insights that can only come with hands-on experience. Below I’ve summarized overall user sentiment regarding the nine content marketing tools that received the highest user satisfaction ratings in our most recent content marketing report.*

9 Top Content Marketing Tools

Uberflip

Number of Reviews: 28
Satisfaction Rating: 96

Uberflip is a content marketing tool that allows users to create, manage, and optimize content experiences geared toward different stages in the buyer journey. The program aggregates marketing content such as blogs, whitepapers, videos, and social content so marketers can create content experiences targeting specific viewers. Uberflip also provides content performance analytics.

Strengths

• Ease of use: Users say Uberflip is easy to use, noting that the program requires no coding skills to create and publish dynamic content. Reviewers on G2 Crowd also mention the interface is clean and straightforward to navigate.
• Features: Flipbooks, which are Uberflip’s answer to eBooks. Users appreciate being able to easily upload PDFs and edit content to create interactive marketing pieces in the style of eBooks.
• Quality of support: Users called Uberflip’s support team helpful, noting they are quick to add new features to enhance the product.

Areas for Improvement

• Integrations: Reviewers reported issues with Uberflip’s integrations with marketing automation tools, citing complicated setups or a lack of detail in reporting.
• Metrics: Some users would like to receive more helpful metrics and analytics from the Uberflip platform, mentioning that they would benefit from being able to save report views.

Curata

Number of Reviews: 18
Satisfaction Rating: 88

Curata CMP is a content marketing platform with features for planning, producing, and measuring the impact of content marketing. The product features editorial planning tools and a built-in content framework, as well as analytics related to content performance such as leads and revenue generated by a specific piece of content.

Strengths

• Quality of support: Reviewers of Curata consistently discussed the product’s customer service and customer success teams, which users found to be consistently available and collaborative.
• Depth of metrics tracked thanks to integrations: Users cited Curata’s many integrations with other CRM and marketing tools (think Hubspot, Marketo, and Salesforce, to name a few) as a benefit, and said Curata makes it easy to track all the metrics that matter most when it comes to content marketing.
• Features: reviewers said Curata CCS, a content curation platform, helps them easily and quickly find targeted content to share with their audiences.

Areas for Improvement

• Learning curve: Some reviewers felt Curata is not as intuitive as they would like and mentioned there are some quirks to get used to when using the product.
• Admin and organization features: A few users noted there are features—such as advanced sorting or specific notifications, that could be improved.

Contently

Number of Reviews: 12

Satisfaction Rating: 85

Contently is an enterprise content marketing tool for creating, distributing, and optimizing content. Contently also provides analytics to help track, manage, and visualize content performance.

Strengths

• Engagement metrics: Users appreciated being able to see exactly how readers are interacting with content, including clicks, shares, and downloads.
• Quality of support: Users found Contently’s support team to be attentive and responsive to help requests.

Areas for Improvement

• Analytics views: While Contently provides users with robust analytics, some reviewers experienced difficulties accessing necessary data and wanted greater ability to customize reporting.

Ceros

Number of Reviews: 43
Satisfaction Rating: 81

Ceros is a content creation platform that enables the development of collateral such as infographics, eBooks, microsites, and sales assets. Ceros helps marketers design and create content without requiring coding, designers, or developers. The product also provides users with viewer engagement analytics.

Strengths

• Ease of use: This was the most frequently mentioned strength among users. Reviewers noted Ceros has a low learning curve and intuitive features, making it easy for marketers to make changes without the need for assistance from developers or designers.

• Quality of support: Users called Ceros’ support team helpful and responsive.
• Design experience: Users appreciated being able to create beautiful, interactive content using Ceros, and said the process of designing collateral was straightforward.

Areas for Improvement

• Price: Some reviewers called Ceros expensive, especially for smaller agencies.
• Load times: According to reviewers, Ceros’ content is heavy and can lead to long load times on web pages.
• Mobile-optimized content: Users mentioned limits to the responsiveness of mobile content created with Ceros.

Scoop.it

Number of Reviews: 14
Satisfaction Rating: 80

Scoop.it is a content curation software product that automates content discovery, enables users to edit and customize content, and facilitates the distribution of content across social networks, blogs, newsletters, and websites.

Strengths

• Curation tools: Users frequently call Scoop.it a powerful tool for content curation and note the product helps streamline the process of handpicking, customizing, and sharing content.
• Integrations: Reviewers appreciate that Scoop.it easily integrates with tools for email marketing, content management, and social sharing, amongst others.

Areas for Improvement

• Search functionality: Users consistently mention issues with Scoop.it’s search, noting it can be difficult to produce focused results when searching for content. Users recommend improvements such as negative keyword functionality and more organized result pages.
• Learning curve: While users appreciated Scoop.it’s power, some users feel there is a steep learning curve associated with the product’s toolset.

SnapApp

Number of Reviews: 33
Satisfaction Rating: 72

SnapApp is a drag-and-drop content marketing platform allowing users to create, publish, and manage content such as interactive infographics, quizzes, contests, and calculators. SnapApp also provides analytics to measure audience interactions with content.

Strengths

• Variety of content: Users appreciate that SnapApp offers a wide variety of interactive content types including quizzes, interactive white papers, infographics, and contests.
• Quality of support: Reviewers note SnapApp’s customer support team wants to see users succeed.
• Customizations: According to users, the content created with SnapApp is fully customizable without assistance from a development team, making it easy for marketers to create content on their own.

Areas for Improvement

• Learning curve: A handful of users say SnapApp can be difficult to learn to use.
• Editing process: Users said it can be hard to edit content with SnapApp due to it sometimes requiring HTML knowledge.

Skyword

Number of Reviews: 18
Satisfaction Rating: 57

The Skyword Platform helps marketers assemble a team of content creators, plan and schedule project timelines, create and edit content, and promote content to multiple channels. Skyword also provides analytics for metrics such as channel, acquisition, and engagement.

Strengths

• Content quality: Users like that Skyword helps them create customized, professional looking, engaging content.
• Ease of use: Users find Skyword intuitive and easy to use. Some mention the program simplifies the process of managing content.

Areas for Improvement

• Technical issues: A few users mentioned experiencing technical bugs and glitches while using Skyword.
• Workflow: Users note this could be streamlined. Users reported shortcomings with approval processes as well as editing and exporting content.

ion Interactive

Number of Reviews: 40
Satisfaction Rating: 56

ion is an interactive marketing platform that helps marketers create, test, and measure dynamic content marketing experiences without the need for developers. Content types include quizzes, calculators, assessments, whitepapers, and infographics. Ion also provides real-time analytics.

Strengths

• Customizable content: Users say ion offers a wide variety of templates to streamline the content creation process, giving marketers the power to customize landing pages without coding.
• Content preview: According to users, ion allows marketers to preview content on multiple devices to ensure compatibility.
• Functionality: Users find ion’s drag-and-drop interface and WYSIWYG functionality makes it easy to create content without HTML skills.

Areas for Improvement

• Lack of undo functionality: The most frequent dislike among users is ion’s lack of an undo button, which makes it difficult to back out of changes or revert to an older version of a document.
• User interface: Users called the interface dated and confusing.
• Learning curve: Users say ion has a steep learning curve, and the product is not intuitive and difficult to grasp.

Kapost

Number of Reviews: 21
Satisfaction Rating: 53

Kapost is a content marketing suite that allows marketers to handle the entire content lifecycle from a single platform. The suite features tools to manage contributors, create collaborative content, distribute marketing content, and score content.

Strengths

• Collaboration tools: Users enjoy being able to have multiple users collaborate on one document simultaneously without versioning. Users also like receiving notifications when team members contribute to shared documents.
• Insights: Users appreciate Kapost’s analytics dashboard, Insights, which provides content scoring to help connect content to ROI. Users also find the feature helpful for tracking content engagement across multiple channels.
• Centralization of content: Users like that Kapost helps them create a repository of all marketing content, allowing them to organize their content in one place.

Areas for Improvement

• Lack of customization: Users would like to see more customization options in different areas of Kapost, including in reporting and the gallery.
• Notifications: Some users feel the frequency of notifications is distracting and the platform is too noisy. Others want to be able to create different types of notifications for different situations.
• Search functionality: Some users find this functionality to be limited.

There are benefits and disadvantages to using each of these products—or potentially a combination of products, depending on your content marketing strategy—but there are a few common threads that ran through reviews of all of the products included in the report.

Reviewers appreciate content marketing tools that enable the creation of a wide variety of content formats to better capture the attention of readers. From infographics to interactive quizzes and blog posts, variety was key for marketers looking to diversify their content offerings and create a unique story for their readers. Even products that users find more difficult to use are rated favorably when the products have multiple content types available.

Marketers also like content marketing tools that promote collaboration amongst their teams. The products with the highest satisfaction ratings in the report were lauded for connecting writers, designers, and editors in an easy and collaborative way. Team-related benefits include simple content tracking, feedback, note-giving tools, and allowing multiple users to work on a single piece of content at the same time.

Content marketing tools can help companies create and distribute the stories that keep stakeholders engaged and convert casual readers into committed fans. Good content is powerful. Make sure you get the most out of your team and content by utilizing these content marketing tools to keep your content engine running as efficiently as possible.

*All data and reviews referenced in this post were gathered by G2 Crowd as of November 21, 2016 and this information is featured in G2 Crowd’s Grid℠ for Content Marketing | Winter 2017 report. The ratings come solely from users of the content marketing tools, and G2 Crowd staff do not add any subjective input to the ratings, which are determined algorithmically. All Satisfaction ratings are normalized and calculated out of a maximum score of 100.

As products receive additional reviews, their ratings may change. Please refer to G2 Crowd’s Content Marketing category for the most up-to-date reviews on the products listed above.

One SaaS tool popular with marketers of all descriptions is Marketo, the marketing automation platform. For content marketers who want to get the most out of Marketo, Curata CEO Pawan Deshpande has authored the eBook Marketo “Secret Menu”: 6 Marketo Hacks for Content Marketing. It addresses the most prominent gaps in Marketo’s usefulness for content marketing with detailed, actionable tips—download it today!