The 20+ Best AI Marketing Tools Every Startup Should Know

You might be asking, where do I begin with Artificial Intelligence (AI) marketing tools? There are now hundreds of AI platforms available, and choosing the right tool for your small business or startup can be A LOT!

Thankfully, the right AI tools can help scale your startup by streamlining repetitive tasks, improving content and campaign output, and helping small teams operate faster and more efficiently. 

In this no-fluff blog, we’ve rounded up some of the most widely used AI marketing tools, organized by category to help you identify the platforms that best fit your marketing needs.

AI Writing & Content Creation

ChatGPT

ChatGPT is a general-purpose AI assistant that you can use for brainstorming campaign ideas, drafting blog posts, writing email copy, and refining messaging. Many teams use it as a starting point before editing content internally. When using ChatGPT or any AI writing tool, always remember to edit with your own unique point of view.

Claude

We’d recommend using Claude for longer-form writing and working with large blocks of text. It is often used for summarizing research, drafting strategy documents, or refining detailed written content.

Jasper

Jasper is a marketing-focused AI writing platform with templates for ads, emails, landing pages, and blog content. It’s great for teams that want structured workflows for content creation.

Grammarly

The Orchid team loves this tool. Grammarly helps us improve grammar, clarity, and tone across emails, documents, and marketing content. Think of it as a second set of eyes before publishing or sending content.

AI Research & Strategy

Perplexity

Perplexity is an AI search tool that provides summarized answers with cited sources. It is commonly used for quick research and competitive analysis. Think of it as the next generation of Google.

Google Gemini

Gemini supports research, writing, and productivity tasks, especially for teams already working within Google Workspace.

NotebookLM

With NotebookLM, you can upload documents and ask questions about your own materials, such as customer interviews or internal reports. Basically, it helps you synthesize your own documents.

AI Design & Creative

Canva Magic Studio

Canva Magic Studio is an Orchid Team favorite! This tool has AI features for creating presentations, social graphics, ads, and other marketing assets. It’s extremely easy to use and requires virtually no training at all. 

Gamma

Gamma is a great choice if you want to use AI to create beautiful investor presentations, sales collateral, or marketing materials without spending hours formatting slides.

DALL·E

DALL·E creates custom images from written descriptions and is commonly used for marketing visuals when stock images aren’t the best option. DALL·E integrates with ChatGPT.

AI Video Creation

Synthesia

With Synthesia, you can create videos using AI avatars and voiceovers. It can be useful for creating product demos, training videos, or marketing content without a video production team.

Runway

Runway is an AI video generation and editing platform that creates or modifies video content using text and image inputs. It can be helpful for experimenting with creative campaigns, social content, or visual concepts.

Descript

Descript combines transcription, video editing, and audio editing. It’s often used by startups repurposing webinars, podcasts, interviews, or recorded presentations into shorter marketing content.

AI SEO

Surfer SEO

Surfer SEO provides recommendations for optimizing content based on search engine results. It can help improve blog posts, landing pages, and other website content by identifying opportunities to better align with relevant search queries.

Semrush

Semrush supports keyword research, competitive analysis, and content optimization with AI-assisted features.

Clearscope

Clearscope helps improve content relevance and topic coverage based on SEO data.

AI Automation Workflows

Zapier AI

Zapier is an Orchid Team favorite because it’s so simple to work with. Zapier AI connects apps and automates workflows using AI-assisted setup.

Make

Make is a visual automation tool used to build and manage cross-platform workflows. If your resources are limited, it can help automate repetitive processes and improve efficiency across multiple tools and platforms.

AI CRM & Sales

HubSpot AI

HubSpot AI integrates AI into CRM, reporting, content creation, and sales workflows. It can be a good fit for startups looking to manage marketing, sales, and customer data in a single platform as you grow.

Salesforce Agentforce

Salesforce Agentforce provides AI tools for customer engagement, automation, and sales workflows. It is often considered by startups that need more advanced CRM capabilities or expect to manage increasingly complex sales processes.

Pipedrive AI

Pipedrive AI helps sales teams manage pipelines and prioritize deals based on activity and likelihood to close. It’s a practical option if you want a  straightforward CRM with AI features without the complexity of larger enterprise platforms.

3 Questions To Keep In Mind While Evaluating AI Tools

As you evaluate these AI tools, it’s worth stepping back and asking a few simple questions:

1. What specific problem am I trying to solve right now?
2. Will this tool actually fit into my current workflow and stack?
3. Does it save meaningful time or measurably improve output quality?

Answering these upfront helps ensure you’re not just adding more tools, but actually improving marketing functions day to day.

Let us know if you need help.