Every marketer should use an LLM (large language model) as a personal assistant in 2025 to be more creative, fast, and efficient with many everyday tasks.
I personally use ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini every day, so I was curious to find out how the well-known three AI search engines would answer this question: “What are the most used AI tools for marketing?”
Here are the answers:
1. ChatGPT
Content Creation & Copywriting
- ChatGPT – For generating blog posts, ad copy, and social media content.
- Jasper – AI-powered content generation for marketing teams.
- Copy.ai – Helps with writing product descriptions, emails, and social media posts.
SEO & Keyword Research
- SurferSEO – Optimizes content for search engines.
- SEMrush – AI-driven keyword research, backlink analysis, and content strategy.
- Clearscope – Helps improve content relevance for better search rankings.
Social Media Marketing
- Ocoya – Automates social media posts and content scheduling.
- Lately – AI-powered social media content repurposing.
- Hootsuite’s OwlyWriter AI – Generates social media captions and post ideas.
Email Marketing & Personalization
- HubSpot AI – Automates email personalization and segmentation.
- Seventh Sense – AI-driven email optimization for engagement.
- Drift – AI-powered chatbots for lead generation and email marketing.
Advertising & Campaign Optimization
- Adzooma – AI-based ad campaign management.
- Pattern89 – AI-powered ad performance analysis and recommendations.
- Persado – AI-generated ad copy and emotional intelligence marketing.
Customer Insights & Analytics
- Google Analytics (GA4) – AI-driven insights into user behavior.
- Crimson Hexagon – AI-powered consumer sentiment analysis.
- Brandwatch – AI social listening tool for brand monitoring.
2. Perplexity
Some of the most used AI tools for marketing in 2025:
- ChatGPT This tool can be used as a Swiss Army Knife for AI marketing.
- Jasper.ai AI content creation assistant for B2B marketers.
- Surfer SEO AI writing assistant that helps with on-page SEO optimization.
- HubSpot AI An all-in-one platform that adds AI to marketing automation, simplifying the creation of copy for landing pages, emails, or ads.
- Zapier Tool for AI-driven automation that automates time-intensive tasks.
- Grammarly AI tool for B2B marketers.
- AdCreative.ai AI ad assistant for digital marketers.
- Synthesia AI video generator for efficient video content creation.
- HeyGen AI video personalization tool for sales and marketing email campaigns.
- Seamless.AI AI tool for B2B lead generation.
- Albert.ai A “digital ally” that self-optimizes across channels and enhances digital advertising performance through advanced automation.
- Tidio An AI-powered chatbot platform that helps with conversion rate optimization through customer interactions.
- Particl Automates competitor intelligence for e-commerce brands.
- Arcads Generates ads with AI actors from a text script.
- Browse AI AI tool for scraping web pages.
3. Gemini
Content Creation & Optimization:
- Jasper: An AI writing generator that can create various marketing materials, from blog posts and website copy to social media captions and email newsletters. It offers a knowledge base to integrate your brand’s specific information for more authentic content.
- ChatGPT: This conversational AI chatbot can assist with brainstorming, content formatting, generating personalized marketing messages, and even conducting market research through dialogue. It can also be used to build custom bots for specific tasks.
- Clearscope: A content optimization tool that helps improve content quality and SEO rankings by analyzing and providing insights on keywords, readability, and other factors.
- Grammarly: While known for grammar checking, Grammarly also offers features like brand style guide configuration, helping ensure consistent and on-brand communication.
- Surfer SEO: This tool focuses on optimizing webpage content for better search engine rankings. It analyzes various factors, including keyword density, readability, and length, and provides recommendations for improvement.
Social Media Management:
- FeedHive: A social media management tool that uses AI to recycle content and schedule posts based on audience engagement patterns.
- Canva: While primarily a graphic design tool, Canva also offers AI-powered features like text-to-image generation and design templates, making it easier to create engaging social media visuals.
- Buffer: This social media management platform has an AI assistant that helps create more engaging content in less time.
- Quuu: This tool uses AI to curate and suggest relevant content for your social media feeds, saving you time on manual research.
Advertising & Targeting:
- Albert.ai: This platform enhances digital advertising performance through advanced automation, assisting with tasks like keyword research, ad spend optimization, and audience engagement.
- Prescient AI: This tool takes the guesswork out of budget allocation for paid ads by using predictive analytics to forecast campaign performance.
- Proxima: This tool helps you reach the right people with your ads by using AI to identify relevant audiences who are likely to be interested in your products or services.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM):
- Salesforce Einstein: This AI tool within Salesforce uses machine learning and predictive analytics to analyze customer data and identify patterns that can help with sales, customer service, and marketing automation.
- Optimove: This CRM platform provides insights into customer behavior, campaign performance, and segmentation, helping you personalize marketing efforts across channels.
Other AI Marketing Tools:
- Delve AI: This platform uses AI to create buyer personas for your business, providing valuable insights into your target audience.
- Zapier: This automation platform allows you to connect different tools and automate workflows, including marketing tasks.
- Descript: This video editing tool uses AI to transcribe and edit videos, making it easier to create and optimize video content for marketing purposes.
- ElevenLabs: This AI voice generator can turn text into audio tracks, which can be useful for creating voiceovers for videos or podcasts.
Even though many of these tools are repeated in the results given by these AI search engines in the example above, we can notice that there are some differences in the manner of presentation. For example, ChatGPT and Gemini grouped the most used AI tools by marketers in several similar categories (e.g. Content Creation, Social Media, etc.), while Perplexity listed all of them together.
When we do research with any AI search engine, it’s advisable not to count 100% on the answers given by just one search engine (be that AI or not) but rather use other search engines as well to compare results, like in the example above.
Just as we’ve read in the article on digital marketing trends in 2025, most experienced marketers recommend using AI tools to make our marketer jobs easier in 2025 and beyond.
In this article, 20+ experienced marketers tell us what AI tools dedicated to marketers are the most useful and used by them the most often.
I want to take this opportunity to thank all these digital marketing experts for taking the time to offer suggestions and recommendations to our HotinSocialMedia community.
If you find at least one useful AI marketer tool in this article, please share it on your social media accounts so that your colleagues and friends find out about it as well. Sharing is caring, right? 🙂
What AI Tools for marketers do you recommend in 2025?
Here is my shortlist of AI tools for marketers… keep in mind I have not tested every alternative, nor am I an expert in many of these categories. Most of these have been recommended by those I consider more knowledgeable, and who’s judgement I trust.
1. Content Creation & Optimization
ChatGPT – Best for AI-generated content, copywriting, and idea generation.
2. SEO & Keyword Research
Ahrefs – Best for keyword research, backlinks, and competitor analysis.
3. Social Media Management & Automation
Hootsuite – Best for scheduling, analytics, and AI-driven automation.
4. Email Marketing & Personalization
HubSpot – Best for AI-powered email automation and segmentation.
5. Chatbots & Customer Engagement
Drift – Best AI chatbot for lead generation and customer service.
6. Advertising & Performance Marketing
Revealbot – Best AI tool for automating Facebook & Google Ads.
7. Graphic Design & Video Editing
Canva – Best AI-powered tool for design and branding.
8. Analytics & Reporting
Google Analytics 4 (GA4) – Best for AI-driven insights and web analytics.
9. AI for Personalization & CRO
Optimizely – Best for A/B testing and conversion optimization.
10. AI for Market Research & Competitive Analysis
Brandwatch – Best for AI-powered social listening and trend analysis.
The foundation models (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini) are the most useful. Most AI tools are really just a thin layers of UX built on top of these. So with the right prompts, you can do what those tools do directly in the underlying LLM.
But here’s a tool that’s quite different and I use it all the time: Descript. Whenever I create a video, I upload it to this tool for final polishing.
- I can edit the timeline just by deleting text from the transcript.
- I can have it remove all of the “um’s” with two clicks.
- I can make my eyes face the camera.
- I can make it a bit faster or slower.
Disclaimer: Predictions are tricky. Choosing AI tools? Even trickier. But if I can narrow it down instead of drowning in buzzwords, I’ll call that a win. (And no, this text is not AI-generated—you’d be able to tell.)
AI promises to streamline workflows, optimize creativity, and make marketing effortless. The reality? Some tools genuinely help, others just add to the chaos. Here’s what I actually use:
- For organization: Notion keeps my thoughts in order, and Miro has me hooked on mind maps. My chaotic train of thoughts gets neatly mapped out before I have time to second-guess them.
- For content & copywriting: Claude & ChatGPT are my AI co-pilots (but not for this text, obviously). And Grammarly? Because no matter how careful I am, I always spot a typo after hitting publish.
- For social media: Since this is a social media article, I’d go with Hootsuite—a classic, though with Metricool and other new players gaining traction, I’m keeping an eye on the space.
- For ad creatives: Call me biased, but Creatopy makes life easier, whether you’re a designer or not. If you want dynamic ad visuals but aren’t an animation guru, this is your tool. If I can do it, so can you; there is an entire advertising playground out there from design to scale and serving.
- For collaboration & design: Figma & FigJam—because every brainstorm needs a whiteboard, it would be a lie not to have them here
- For SEO: SurferSEO—is great for aligning content with search intent, and their AI detector keeps things honest. Isn’t it ironic?
- For AI-generated video & audio: Still side-eyeing AI video (too much Black Mirror energy), but… ElevenLabs—we may or may not have cloned my voice.
- For video editing: CapCut works for now, but I’m watching to see what Edits will bring before committing.
- For something quirky: Riffusion & Suno—AI-generated music. Because sometimes, you just need AI to compose your brainstorming soundtrack.
Marketers need to use an LLM as an assistant, I’ve used Gemini, ChatGPT, and Grok, all are slightly different and sometimes it’s useful to use a couple of tools in parallel
The key thing is that people realize AI is an assistant and not the magic answer
Changing tack
With Forrester saying
“89% of B2B buyers have adopted generative AI (genAI), naming it one of the top sources of self-guided information in every phase of their buying process”
I highly recommend that marketers understand how the new world of AI buying works and how products like www.perplexity.ai impacts them. Marketers must understand how buyers are able to side-step, your website and your corporate content. And why they no longer need to come to your website. All the information on your products and services (if the AI Agents have found it) will come from AI agents.
This totally transforms marketing.
In 2025, OpenAI’s ChatGPT continues to be a leading AI tool, particularly for its capability of creating customized ChatGPT agents and models. For example, the Consensus Fact Checking Agent, developed by Steve Toth from SEO Notebook, evaluates how well your content aligns with E-E-A-T standards, which is essential for achieving high content and web development results in organic search.
Another tool to consider is the AI within Microsoft Clarity that effectively generates heatmap summaries, simplifying the page behaviour analysis and helping you plan improvements.
Lastly, if you use Grammarly for writing, its generative AI feature can quickly assess and improve your content. It eliminates the need to jump to another tab to use ChatGPT or Jasper AI for editing.
Grammarly is an essential AI tool for all marketers. It’s the first tool I recommend to clients because its writing assistance is incredibly accurate. BuzzSumo is perfect for researching popular topics and identifying relevant influencers. Surfer SEO is a great starting point for pinpointing areas that need improvement to boost SEO rankings.
I appreciate the workflow automation offered by both Zapier and HubSpot. These platforms continually update their AI workflows, ensuring clients receive top-tier service. DALL·E 2 is a decent image creation tool, especially once you master the art of crafting effective prompts.
I often recommend Descript to clients entering the podcasting or short video space. Descript’s AI transcription feature allows for seamless editing, which is invaluable. Canva has been a top recommendation of mine for years; we even set up templates within Canva for clients who want to tackle some graphic design tasks but need a bit of guidance. However, I must note that I am not a fan of their AI feature for generating images from text; I have yet to make that feature work effectively for me.
For larger businesses, Pipedrive offers useful tools for managing sales and CRM functions.
Like any AI tool, human editing and refinement are essential before any output is ready for the public market. Using AI without human oversight is comparable to having a car without a driver.
I also like to remind clients who are hesitant to embrace AI tools that they are already using AI without realizing it! Everything from Gmail to Google Drive to Facebook incorporates built-in AI to assist their users. They are already AI pros and don’t even know it!
My #1 recommended AI tool for marketers this year is Google’s Gemini and associated tools. While everyone’s minds were blown with ChatGPT when it dropped in 2022 and advanced throughout 2023 and 2024. But too many are sleeping on Gemini, which in many ways is superior to ChatGPT.
You can create Custom GPTs within Gemini – they’re called Gems. You can have even longer conversations with Gemini, and it’s integrated into the Google ecosystem, including YouTube and Maps.
And you can leverage incredible tools like Deep Research and NotebookLM to build even more robust solutions for your business or clients. For instance, you can use Deep Research to get Gemini to scan dozens of websites and build for you a comprehensive document on market or competitive research, then feed that back into Gemini as a strategic document for making business and marketing plans. Or use NotebookLM as a repository for vast collections of content or research that can be tapped for future campaigns.
My favorite tools for AI in 2025 have a theme … organisation and accessibility. I am not a fan of having to subscribe to multiple tools or clicking around on different tabs, so these tools provide multiple AI features in the one place, acting as a co-pilot while you work:
1. Magai – for being able to use one tool to replace dozens of tools. Magai lets you access everything from ChatGPT to Claude, Leonardo and Dall-E… all in the one place. But my favorite part is the organisation. With folders, chat histories and saved personas you can access everything, including your most powerful prompts. Another benefit is that Magai lets you read a website in real time so all you need to do is paste a link in your message and Magai can relay the contents to ChatGPT. And the image generation is fire … and easy to use!
2. Canva’s Magic Studio for an example of AI-features embedded into your work suite. Canva’s Visual Suite of tools have “Magic” AI embedded throughout, so that you can tap into AI-powered functionality without leaving Canva. From image editing tools while creating visual content, to using Magic Write (Canva’s AI powered writing tool) while you work on a whiteboard or presentation … AI is definitely your co-pilot in Canva. It’s no surprise that Canva has been using AI for years, right down to being shown templates based on your search and design history. You can play with some of the Canva Magic Studio features here.
3. Kittl is another design tool that includes a suite of AI Companion Tools to help you while you work creating visual content. From creating vector content in a single click to upscaling low resolution images and creating complete AI-generated image sets, Kittl is shaping up to be an AI-fueled powerhouse. I also love the AI powered design assistant which helps you to create faster with suggested tools for swapping graphics, exploring themed design packs and fine tuning your visuals. It’s a smart piece of software.
There is a wide range of AI tools specialized for every aspect of marketing. Here are three tools we use in Lensa’s marketing team to diversify and maximize every team member’s ability to make the most out of their work.
SEO: For keyword research and backlink profiling, we use Ahrefs quite a lot. But since it has also implemented an AI content helper, we don’t want to move away from it.
Content: When it comes to content publications, internally or externally, we use writesonic apart from ChatGPT plus. The reason for this is because at Lensa we try to cater to a wide range of job posts, company profiles and job search trends. We require a versatile tool on top of ChatGPT, that can support us with job descriptions that serve as landing pages that are not overly generalized since we serve millions of US-based jobs.
Social Media: Because we want to make our social media as passive as possible, we have created a social media content calendar. One social media AI tool we’re using is Buffer, which has an AI assistant for scheduling posts and tracking engagement. Since we like to A/B test different posts, to see what works, we need monthly feedback to see what gets the most impressions and clicks.
In conclusion, we don’t really use many unique AI software, but rather the old systems, which have adopted AI features and properties into their services.
In 2025, the power of AI continues to transform marketing workflows, and tools like Jasper, Surfer SEO, and Grammarly AI are essential for marketers aiming to scale their efforts.
Jasper helps streamline content creation with its AI-driven copywriting capabilities, while Surfer SEO ensures your content ranks effectively by optimizing for search intent.
Grammarly AI, now more robust than ever, ensures that your communication remains polished and professional.
These tools save time, improve quality, and allow marketers to focus on strategy rather than getting bogged down in execution.
Three tools immediately pop to mind:
1) Perplexity for search and summaries – by far the best AI search engine available today. It has saved me hundreds of hours of research and with proper prompting, it has close to 0 hallucinations. Referral code for $10 off Pro subscription for people that want to try it out: https://perplexity.ai/
2) Make.com – easy no-code tool to automate most workflows, if you’re a marketer that’s not automating his work in 2025, I feel sorry for you.
3) Relevance AI – works hand in hand with Make to automate the boring (but essential) parts of marketing.
The use of AI tools in marketing isn’t just about staying ahead, it’s about staying relevant in an increasingly automated and data-driven world. These tools are revolutionizing how marketers create, analyze, and deliver content while optimizing workflows.
- ChatGPT (Advanced Versions): An essential tool for generating engaging content, improving campaign performance, and automating customer interaction scripts.
- Claude AI: A robust tool for strategic planning and synthesizing large datasets into actionable insights.
- Harpa AI: A go-to solution for SEO professionals, offering real-time monitoring, keyword recommendations, and automation for search strategies.
- Jasper AI: A powerful content creation platform for marketers, ideal for crafting blogs, ads, and social media posts efficiently, with templates and AI-driven suggestions tailored to specific brand tones and goals.
- RivalFlow AI: Ideal for competitor analysis and uncovering untapped opportunities in your market.
- MidJourney & DALL-E: Transforming visual content creation with tools that allow marketers to create unique, campaign-specific creatives effortlessly.
- Gemini AI: This tool shows promise as a transformative asset for marketers with advanced generative capabilities.
- Fireflies AI: A highly efficient tool for capturing and summarizing key points during meetings, ensuring no critical details are overlooked.
- Otter.ai: Excellent for transcribing meetings, interviews, and brainstorming sessions into clear, searchable notes that enhance productivity.
For content writing and creation, I can’t recommend enough Claude.ai. The switch from ChatGPT was a game-changer for me and helped me save a lot of time. It can easily transform a rough draft into polished content. The suggested improvements are extremely helpful, and besides coming up with ideas for marketing campaigns, it can also analyze large datasets, customer surveys or feedback, and market trends to bring you valuable insights. No marketer should function without an AI assistant this year!
Hubspot has a wide range of AI tools that can give you a hand in your marketing campaigns, like writing emails, blog articles, a chatbot builder, and other useful options like conversation intelligence. It can be the go-to tool for covering a wide range of use cases, making it great for a marketing department.
Flipsnack is another helpful tool marketers must use in their campaigns, and its AI capabilities are expanding. For example, you can translate an entire flipbook or just a text box and make it available to a global audience. To make it accessible for everyone, you can add page summaries by generating text and image descriptions for each page, enhancing accessibility and helping screen readers communicate your publication’s content inclusively.
The real question isn’t which tools to use, it’s how we use them and for what. AI is no longer a technology. As Danny Hillis (via Naval Ravikant) said, “Technology is the set of things that don’t quite work yet.” But AI is clearly fully integrated, expected, and part of our daily lives. It’s become a way to amplify how we think, create, make decisions, and solve problems. So, before we choose, we need to understand what we’re truly looking for.
Sometimes, AI feels like a Prosthetic, stepping in where we’re stretched too thin. It takes over repetitive or time-consuming tasks, giving us the freedom to focus on strategy and creativity. From scheduling tools to automated reporting, this is where AI lightens the load and allows us to think bigger.
Other times, AI becomes a Collaborator, offering us ideas, insights, or creative prompts that we might not have reached on our own. Together, we can go further than we can alone.
Then there’s AI as a Mirror, reflecting back truths we might overlook. It shows us patterns in our audience behavior, highlights biases we didn’t realize were there, and sometimes even makes us pause to reflect on what we truly value in our work. It’s a tool for self-awareness as much as strategy. AI tools can also help us look forward: the Time Machine. They model future scenarios, predict trends, and give us the edge to adapt before any upcoming market disruptors. Not perfect, but pretty close to what might be, and sometimes that’s all we need to stay on course.
And perhaps the most exciting possibility: AI as a Philosopher’s Stone, turning random unconnected ideas into real, structured concepts. This is where innovation lives: taking something ordinary and making it extraordinary, whether that’s a campaign, a strategy, or even how we perceive the world.
The key to choosing the right tools isn’t in having the latest or greatest, it’s in knowing what we need. Whether we’re seeking efficiency, collaboration, insight, foresight, or transformation, there’s an AI for that. Literally, TAAFT is a genius filtering point. In 2025, the real opportunity is in how we adopt AI, not limited to the next best tool to use, as they all reach their capacity at one point or another, but how we integrate it into our thinking, our creativity and our humanity. The tools will follow, but the process starts with us.
Neal Schaffer
6x Marketing Author (Digital Threads, Maximizing LinkedIn for Business Growth)
In this market, everyone is following the lead of OpenAI, so I highly recommend that marketers go as deep as possible into ChatGPT and all of its functionality.
While there are a lot of other AI tools out there, I have been able to replicate what most of them can do through ChatGPT. So can you!
In 2025, ChatGPT stands out as the must-have marketing tool for its versatility. It’s a true standalone tool that is adaptable to a wide range of marketing challenges, regardless of the industry. My clients represent diverse industries, so I consider ChatGPT a collaborator I can trust for specialized domain expertise.
Most industry applications now have a built-in AI component. ChatGPT bridges the gaps left by other tools through its capabilities and integration with other platforms, plugins, or APIs. Since ChatGPT is responsible for most queries in its space, its value and adaptability continue to grow with use.
I love Claude and ChatGPT for marketers right now. Claude does a really great job with projects so you can use it to help you create in your voice and with brand personas in mind.
ChatGPT allows you to create your own GPTs so it’s extremely effective for those who work at agencies or with multiple brands.
We created a PESO Model© GPT that answer all of your questions about the framework.
Socialinsider’s AI content analysis tool is great for getting hidden insights into your social media data. Using AI, Socialinsider analyzes social media content performance across industries and provides insights that genuinely help brands connect with their audience.
Other AI tools that I have in my arsenal are:
- Grammarly for content writing
- ChatGPT and Claude for research
- Descript for video editing.
Call me old school, but my AI go-to is ChatGPT. I’ve used it for everything from recipes using ingredients I have on hand and workout suggestions to REALLY rough first drafts of articles on topics where I don’t know where to even start.
The important things to remember when using any AI tool are: (1) what you get back is only as good as the prompt you enter and (2) editing that output is not only recommended, it’s absolutely necessary.
Canva’s AI-powered features made creating and editing visuals even easier. It offers smart features like template suggestions and automatic resizing to speed up your process and create great visuals.
Favikon is an AI-powered influencer marketing platform. It’s the tool you’ll want to use to make your research and outreach process more efficient as it provides essential data (engagement rates, growth rates, etc.) all in all platforms.
SocialBee allows you to create, schedule, post, and analyze your social media content. With SocialBee’s AI assistant, you’ll receive personalized platform recommendations, content strategies and categories, and automatic scheduling with the best times to post. It’s the tool that will make social media management easy for marketers in 2025.
– Perplexity continues to be my research assistant. Highly recommend.
AI is increasingly integrated into many of the tools marketers are currently using.
Before switching tools or adding more tools to your tech stack, see what AI capabilities your current tool(s) already have and maximize its use to optimize your operations.
