How to optimise your content budget with just 1 tool

Investment in content marketing continues to grow and one of the resources to which most of the budget is allocated are the tools. Many of them are free, others are small software or microsaas and a few are content management platforms or suites.

The latter are the big bet of many companies because they allow them to work on all the phases of a content strategy, save time dedicated to each one and optimise the budget to the maximum.

But how extensive is the content marketing workflow, isn’t a few free tools or scripts enough, and how exactly does a content suite help me to streamline my work and save money?

Today we’re here to make you see the reality of all the phases involved in content marketing and how choosing the right tool can be a before and after in optimising any company’s budget.

More and more is being invested in content marketing and tools

58% of B2B companies have increased their content marketing budget in 2023. Among some of the reasons are that:

☑ Content marketing generates up to 62% more leads than any other digital strategy.

☑ 62% of B2B buying decisions are driven by content such as use cases or webinars.

☑ There is more documentation of all content processes and more strategies are created.

Of this budget, a large part is dedicated to tools, software or content suites. According to this 2023 study, a marketer manages between 8 and 12 tools on a daily basis. Of these, at least 3-4 are paid software, in combination with other free tools.

Why do we use so many tools in content marketing?

The creation of content strategies and the writing itself requires different phases and in them several tasks that also have to do with other areas of digital marketing such as SEO or analytics:

• Topic and keyword research to define the strategy
• Content planning
• Research for a specific publication
• The writing and editing of each publication
• Measurement of published content

Of these 5 major phases, there are two that are gaining importance year after year: the research of topics and keywords to create the content that the user needs at each stage of the buying process, and the analysis of content data to measure the objectives achieved, positioning and profitability or ROI.

So much so that the percentage of tools used for these tasks already exceeds those used in the writing, editing or content management process, according to this graph from Referral Rock:

This explains the number of tools that need to be used in content marketing, which, depending on the size and needs of the company, can cost anywhere from a few tens to hundreds or thousands of euros per year in content creation resources.

From microSaaS to suites: advantages of using a content marketing platform

This need has generated two different situations:

The advantages and disadvantages of one option or another will always depend on the team of professionals, their needs, the size of the company and the budget available, but there is no doubt that content marketing suites or platforms offer two main advantages:

1. Optimisation of time and tasks, which are centralised in a single place and can be accessed by all team members. It eliminates jumping from one tool to another, having to cross and/or transfer data, the configuration of several projects in several tools and the continuous change of context that this produces in the professional. It increases the quantity and speed of content production.
2. The optimisation of software expenditure and of the final budget for content, which in many cases is reduced or at least equalised, but gaining in convenience and in being able to cover more (and even all) content phases in a single tool.

One example that we really like is Holded, a comprehensive business management software for SMEs and entrepreneurs that allows 360º monitoring of all aspects of a company: stock, sales, accounting and invoicing, customer management and even people management.

A simile to this, but in the world of marketing? Hubspot, a global digital marketing suite with a focus on inbound for content strategy management, customer and sales tracking, and the generation of complete websites, sales landings and blog articles. In addition, it also includes operations software with data and business process automation.

Is it worth using scripts for SEO and content marketing?

We want to stop here for a moment before we continue talking about tools because the use of scripts is very common in all kinds of areas of digital marketing and, although they are very useful to customise the automation of many tasks, they have some drawbacks and problems in relation to their use:

• High development and implementation cost: scripts are code created by programmers and, although you can find free scripts online, they are not adapted to the specific workflow of each company. For this, it is often necessary to have a professional to adapt it to our use case. The cost of a developer to adapt these scripts is sometimes higher in the short term than hiring a solution.
• Lack of support: if we opt for freely downloadable versions, created altruistically by a developer, we will normally not get any support if it fails because the developer does not usually provide such support, or at least not in a smooth way. Errors can also arise, when we are talking in many cases about large amounts of data we can make biased decisions.
• Long legal and validation process: any script to be implemented in a company must be authorised by the legal, IT and security departments. Especially if it is a free script, it is essential to verify that it is secure, that there are no code incompatibilities and that it does not violate any regulations (both internal and external). Furthermore, it should be borne in mind that in the case of free scripts, the company does not own the original code and cannot modify or adapt it to each use case.
• Lack of optimisation and scalability: Scripts are code that needs to be maintained and optimised often, especially because they are generally slow to execute. On the other hand, they require an infrastructure to scale from small tasks to larger and more complex ones. Again, it is important to have a programmer to help us and to assess whether it is worth the investment when specialised software and suites already exist (as they are already developed, the subscription cost will always be much lower than custom programming fees).

These disadvantages can not only hinder the workflow due to bugs or changes in scripts, but also increase the cost of resources for content development by requiring a technical implementation (which is not affordable for all companies).

Therefore, a good alternative are content marketing platforms, which combine several already optimised functionalities and are easy to integrate into any workflow and with other tools used.

With these platforms, you can be sure that everything works right from the start, and support is provided by developers, which depending on the fee is already included. And of course, the security of the tool and our data is guaranteed.

How to choose a content platform to maximise budget optimisation

OK: now let’s imagine that we need to choose a content marketing platform. In 2023 we already have to take into account something very important: the integration of AI (artificial intelligence) in the tools we use to speed up content creation.

In addition, we want it to allow us to work on all phases of the content, including analytics, and to allow us to work in teams so that we can have not only a calendar, but also assigned tasks.

We do a brief research and this would be the picture today of the most used microSaaS and suites or platforms for global content management:

And as you can see, we have indicated the fundamental tasks of each phase of the content that we must be able to work on with the chosen tool.

¡Attention! DISCLAIMER In this article we have analysed some of the main digital marketing tools that are most commonly used for content marketing. We have studied them very exhaustively but we know that they are constantly changing, improving or adding new features. If you detect that the information shown here is not correct, please leave us a comment or send us an e-mail. We want our contents to be always up to date and to contribute to provide truthful and 100% objective information. Thank you for taking this into account!

What reading can we make of this image?

To date, SEMrush has two drawbacks: it does not incorporate ChatGPT to speed up tasks and maximise results, and its high price ($119 for its basic plan).

👉 Then there is us, Keytrends, who do cover each of the phases and their tasks including measurement, management and AI support and we do it from €59.

Keytrends: plataforma de contenido para empresas con IA y datos de Trends

We realised all of the above when we started to develop Keytrends. Offering a tool that fits the workflow of content marketers and also incorporates the technology of the future, artificial intelligence, was one of the triggers.

The other was to offer a software that would automatically detect Google Trends trends and gather the valuable data that this tool offers us and that is so difficult to exploit because its process is mostly manual.

At the same time, we had (and still have) an obsession: to automate as much as possible each content task in order to streamline teamwork, optimise time and save money. Not only in the processes, but also in the budget allocated to tools; we set out to be the only tool that a content team might need to do everything and, moreover, at a very competitive price (€59 for the basic plan).

And that’s how we’ve managed to cover all the processes, many of which until now have always been manual:

We do so with (among others) these 6 functionalities:

Feature and price comparison: Keytrends vs. other microSaas and content suites

Our tool has the usability and ease of use of small tools but with many more features, automation of all tasks, integration with AI and the possibility to work in teams with both internal and external members and an available API. It optimises workflow and budgets to the maximum.

Are you considering combining other, cheaper but process-focused microSaaS with other, cheaper microSaaS? Take a look at this table because for less and with a basic plan you can have it all:

FUNCTION	SEMrush	Sistrix	Keytrends	Marketmuse	Keyword insights	Neuraltext
Keyword research	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
Entities research	❌	❌	✔	❌	❌	❌
Trend detection	❌	❌	✔	❌	❌	❌
Content planning	✔	❌	✔	✔	❌	❌
User research	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
Competitors research	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
Content briefs	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
AI writing assistant	✔	❌	✔	❌	✔	✔
AI chat	❌	❌	✔	❌	✔	❌
Content indexing	✔	✔	✔	❌	❌	❌
Traffic & ranking data	✔	✔	✔	❌	❌	❌
Cannibalizations	✔	✔	✔	❌	❌	❌
BASIC PLAN PRICE	$119,95	99€	59€	$149	$49	$49

These are the essential functionalities to generate content strategies, and as you can see, not all microSaaS and large suites incorporate them. Be careful! With Sistrix, for example, you have other facilities to work on technical SEO, for example. Just as with SEMrush you can go deeper into the implementation of PPC or Social Media campaigns.

But as you can see, with Keytrends you get it all at a very competitive price. Why? Because we focus on the necessary phases and tasks and base the tool on the data and functions you need. That’s why our tool is so intuitive and easy to use despite offering so much.

Are you unsure if Keytrends fits your type of project, your business goals, or the size of your team?

The best thing to do is to see it live by signing up or, even better, by scheduling a demo with us so that we can show you how you could use it in your day-to-day work and ask us all the questions you need.

Do you have doubts about how to implement a content strategy? Check out our complete guide to Content Marketing: