The Best Marketing Blogs Worth Following

Author
Recent Posts

I'm a marketing guy, a pizza enthusiast and San Francisco resident. Also, I started this blog, Growth Marketing Pro and built it into a 6-figure passive income business in just 18 months. Before that, I was the Head of Marketing for a startup called PlushCare, which sold for $450 million.

Best Marketing Blogs

Growth Marketing Pro

Go no further for the best tips on growth marketing! Subscribe to us and get your first growth hack pro-tip. It will be good.

We aren’t just pros at growth marketing though. We love to post product reviews, how-to’s, and roundups that get straight to the point. No need to scan through long-form content to find the answer you’re looking for. We tell you our best pick right away (like that wiggly button at the top of the screen).

We know that our best pick isn’t right for everybody though, so we always get into details and compare options so that you can choose the best option for your business.

Maybe next year we will highlight your new blog as one of the best. If you haven’t started a blog before we have lots of resources and how-to’s that will get you going.

Smart Passive Income

Who isn’t interested in setting up an income stream that doesn’t require active work? Nobody. That is why everybody should follow the Smart Passive Income blog.

The Smart Passive Income blog is done by Pat Flynn, who strives towards transparent information. His income reports make Smart Passive income unique. While he has several passive income streams, the majority of his income comes from affiliate marketing, so his blog is particularly useful for people interested in affiliate marketing.

Topics on the Smart Passive Income blog include generating business ideas, work optimization, and creating websites or products. There is also a wealth of content related to business growth and marketing. He posts articles and podcasts as well.

In a recent podcast episode from Smart Passive Income, Pat interviews Paul Jarvis. They discuss intentionally keeping a business small and taking the focus off of growth, which is particularly interesting for the work-to-live sort, a group naturally intrigued by passive income.

Moz

As of this writing, Moz is ranked #1 for Google searches of “SEO.” They are a definitive player in the blogosphere when it comes to educational marketing content.

If you haven’t heard of them, check them out. They have a very excellent series of introductory SEO material called “The Beginner’s Guide to SEO.”

The excellent content goes well beyond the beginner level. Moz offers in-depth content that is an essential asset to any professional marketer. The game is always changing!

Moz posts articles authored by a variety of experts. There are multiple new articles posted every week, sometimes they post numerous articles per day. With so many professionals writing articles for Moz, you can find anything under the sun (they have 39 categories to browse by!).

Do you prefer videos or other types of content? Moz has a popular series posted weekly called “Whiteboard Friday” where a marketing expert takes you through a concept using a whiteboard, colorful markers and all.

Neil Patel / Quick Sprout

Neil Patel is one of the most successful digital marketers out there, and with over 1 million monthly readers, his blog is no different. He invented the Hello Bar and has founded several very successful marketing businesses.

Neil provides a wealth of free educational content through two blogs, Neil Patel (formerly KISSmetrics) and Quick Sprout. With both blogs, Neil writes an article inspired by his personal experience and what he’s learned from it.

Quick Sprout articles are designed to get to the point. This blog is about trimming down unnecessary filler text in the introduction and ensuring that the article contains nothing but “meat and potatoes.” That means you get dense information from a truly expert source. Even though this blog is intended to be to-the-point, it comes as long-form content so it isn’t necessarily a quick read. They post beginner to advanced content about SEO, online marketing, and a wealth of other topics.

The Neil Patel blog has a “Marketing School” podcast that you can listen to through the blog. These podcasts are approximately 5 minutes and are a great way to get a quick-tip in a short period of time. On top of the written articles and podcasts, Neil Patel also posts videos and infographics. No matter how you like to consume content, you can find it on Neil Patel’s blogs.

Backlinko

Brian Dean failed at his first 5 online businesses. He learned a lot along the way and ‘struck gold’ with his 6th one. Now he uses Backlinko to share his wealth of knowledge. He has a fairly specific focus on SEO, and he has a reputation for high-quality content with a detailed approach.

As the name suggests, Brian is particularly good at backlinking. Even Neil Patel says, “When it comes to link building, Brian Dean is the best in the business.”

Community engagement is one of the signs of an excellent blog. Backlinko posts have huge community engagement, sometimes exceeding thousands of comments.

Small Business Trends

Small business owners might be specialized in a particular product or service, but most likely if you own a small business you have to do it all. Small businesses often don’t hire big teams, and business owners take care of their own marketing. If that sounds like you then the Small Business Trends blog you should follow.

Small Business Trends has an excellent blog with several sections on marketing, like local marketing and social media. The Small Business Trends blog can help business owners develop not only their marketing, but their management, tools, and finances too. For more on finance, try this list of finance blogs.

Best Marketing Blogs by Marketing Tools

Instapage and Unbounce

These tools are two of the best landing page creators available (but Instapage takes the cake)! Their value doesn’t stop at making awesome landing pages though, they both provide excellent content via their blogs.

Instapage and Unbounce are very specialized as landing page creators, so their blogs are pretty specialized too. They post content on topics such as A/B testing, landing page examples, accelerated mobile pages, and more.

There are definitely reasons to use a landing page creator other than Instapage or Unbounce. For a cheaper option, check out Leadpages. For an all-in-one solution, check out GetResponse or Hubspot. If you choose a different landing page creator, then check out their blog too.

HubSpot

HubSpot is not just an excellent option for creating landing pages (#3 on my “Landing Page Software Reviews”). They offer a suite of products including free customer relationship management (!), and their free content doesn’t stop there. They have extensive free educational resources like in house research reports, ebooks, templates, courses and certifications.

The HubSpot blog is broad but generally focused on marketing, sales, tools, news, and trends. They have “Most Popular” and “Editor’s Picks” sections, so it is easy to find some of their best content.

Need a smile on your face? HubSpot’s blog has a “Sales Humor” category that includes articles with jokes, memes, gift ideas, and funny email subject lines.

Shopify

E-commerce and online marketing go hand in hand. Yet the world of e-commerce has some specific tools. Shopify is the best website builder for online stores (check out this article for our ranking of website builders for different types of businesses). If you want to read a marketing blog to benefit your online store, follow Shopify.

If you haven’t started your business yet, take a look at one of their recent articles, “How to Start a Business: 13 Steps to Get Your Business Up and Running”.

Best Marketing Blogs from Online Institutes

ConversionXL

In a recent post on Growth Marketing Pro, “The Best Digital Marketing Courses Online” we highlight ConversionXL. They are an online institute that focuses on the education of marketing, analytics, CRO, and UX topics. They have mini-degree programs and online courses that cost money, but they also have an excellent blog.

Some of the categories that ConversionXL post are pretty unique. This recent post talks about modern neuromarketing research and the real-world takeaways (for example, podcasts can have a higher connective power with consumers compared to video, even if a person reports that the prefer the video!).

On top of posting synthesis roundups of marketing psychology, the blog also publishes really amazing articles that summarize original research conducted by ConversionXL. These include details on the study such as how data was collected, quantitative results, limitations, and their conclusions.

Not into the technical stuff? On the ConversionXL blog, you can always find high-quality content related to standard marketing topics such as copywriting and business building, readable for all levels of interest.

Reforge

This one is good for those of you who are definitely interested in technical stuff, particularly on the subject of growth marketing.

Reforge was founded by Brian Balfour who used to be the VP of Growth at HubSpot. Reforge is a company that offers high-end training for experienced professionals.

Like the training courses, this blog is targeted towards those who already have extensive experience. So if the type of attention grabber you are looking for is something like “The AARRR funnel framework has been the dominant guiding framework to metrics, goal setting, and strategic growth conversions…” then check out this Reforge blog article “Growth Loops are the New Funnels”. It is an excellent article and an excellent blog.

Content Marketing Institute

This one is similar to ConversionXL, they are an online institute that is built on the education of marketing topics. The Content Marketing Institute, however, is specialized in… you guessed it… content marketing.

They have a nice set of how-to guides like “Content Marketing 101” and a recent infographic “The easy A-to-Z Guide to Writing Great Headlines”.

The Weekly Wrap is a podcast hosted by the Chief Strategy Advisor of Content Marketing Institute (Robert Rose). In a brief 10 minutes, you get a deep thought, a new take, and one great idea.

Aside from their blog, the Content Marketing Institute has numerous other resources like an eBook library, career resources, original research reports, webinars, training, consulting, and a magazine.

Other Great Marketing Blogs

Smarp

There is so much research on this it is becoming old news: happy employees are more productive. Not only are happy employees more productive, but they also become company advocates and natural influencers.

Smarp provides business solutions to help develop employee advocacy and improve company culture. Their blog reflects that goal. Following Smarp can keep you posted on big picture tips on company culture and how it relates to marketing.

Costs of online advertisements like Google Ads and Facebook have been steadily increasing over time. Employees who have positive outlooks on their company are more likely to share content through their own social media profiles. They can reach thousands through Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook for the discount price of $0. Smarp discusses this in the recent post “How Employee Advocacy Delivered a Higher ROI than Ad campaigns”.

ProBlogger

All of the blogs listed here use their blog towards marketing purposes. So, if you are interested In marketing, you should also be interested in learning how to create a successful blog. To this purpose, get key insights from the blog about blogs – ProBlogger.

If you don’t want to write your own blog posts, you can use ProBlogger to hire a freelancer instead. Either way, ProBlogger is an excellent tool for marketers.

Conclusion

There are so many marketing blogs out there! Do you have a favorite marketing blog that you follow? Post a comment and let us know if we missed your personal favorite.