Do you need to use a CMS like Hubspot to help manage your content? Can't you just create content and distribute it on your blog or via email? You don't really need to pay for a fancy system to do content marketing, right?
Yes, you can always create content and distribute it to your audiences.
But as Robert Rose recently pointed out in his great post, Want to prove content's success? Stop tracking it:
Many businesses simply define their content marketing as producing ad hoc assets and measuring them like any campaign-focused asset. The team is usually then stuck (or resolved) to use vanity metrics on the content itself such as clicks, shares, visits, etc. In other words, it’s cool to know the blog post or infographic was found and read, but what behavior did it change? You don’t know.
Content marketing on the face of it doesn't require a lot. You can even create amazing content that is perfectly what your audience needs and loves. But if you don't think through what it's doing for you, or how you'll measure it's effectiveness, you're probably doing a whole lot of work without driving any real value.