So in this post I’m going to show you how to use online marketing tools in the most cost-effective way and, above all, without having to invest excessive resources.<\/p>\n\n
\u00b7 How to access tools at the lowest cost<\/h2>\n
Before I tell you about my favorite tools, I’d like to give you some tips to get the most out of the options online marketing tools offer, always with a view to investing your resources as wisely as possible:<\/p>\n
\u25cf Make the most of free trial periods and demo versions.<\/strong> You’ll only get one chance to look inside the tool and put it to use, so when you sign up, make sure you have the time to get as much out of it as possible.<\/p>\n \u25cf Partner with brands by promoting them and through other actions.<\/strong> You can reach an agreement with the platforms themselves and help them reach more people in exchange for letting you use them. In this case, it will be essential that you deliver good results for them. Otherwise, the agreement may never be signed or may be suspended.<\/p>\n \u25cf Put affiliate marketing<\/a> into practice.<\/strong> Almost all of these tools have an affiliate program you can sign up for. For every customer they win through you, you’ll earn a commission. That way, you can increase your income and have the resources to invest in the most complete plan.<\/p>\n Most of the tools you’ll find on the market have a free option which, although its features are limited, will do the job if your business isn’t very big.<\/p>\n Regardless of the size of your business, or whether you’re just starting out or already well established in the market, you’re most likely already using online marketing tools.<\/p>\n But if not, it’s best to learn about their advantages and disadvantages before you start.<\/p>\n \u25cf Getting to know their features and how well they fit your company’s needs before making a bigger outlay.<\/p>\n \u25cf Comparing different alternatives to see which of the available tools has the most powerful features, and choosing the best one.<\/p>\n \u25cf Having some room to scale your business before investing in a higher plan.<\/p>\n \u25cf Automating some of the simplest tasks and actions you carry out in your business.<\/p>\n \u25cf Accessing relevant information about your business, since almost all online marketing tools have an option to display reports and statistics, albeit in a limited way.<\/p>\n \u25cf They offer less value than paid versions, because you can’t use all their features in full.<\/p>\n \u25cf They don’t cover all of your business’s needs, so you’ll have to look for alternative tools to cover more functions.<\/p>\n \u25cf They fall short when it comes to improving productivity, since certain tasks can’t be automated with them.<\/p>\n \u25cf Some expire and don’t let you access the data and information you worked with in the trial version.<\/p>\n \u25cf Only one user can access them, so if you have a larger team, you won’t be able to create more users.<\/p>\n There are plenty of online marketing tools out there: some for automating tasks, scheduling content, monitoring and tracking metrics, managing leads, sending emails, editing multimedia material…<\/p>\n In most cases, you’ll find a free version and a paid one. Others, instead of offering a free plan, offer a trial version in which you can enjoy all their features for a limited time (usually 7, 15 or 30 days).<\/p>\n Below, I’ll tell you which ones I consider essential:<\/p>\n This is Google’s paid option for managing several of its applications under a branded domain.<\/p>\n It’s very useful because it helps you simplify teamwork and scale your business, thanks to features such as unlimited storage, greater control over shared information and easy communication.<\/p>\n Prices are per month and per user, and are those in effect at the time of writing this article. Depending on the size of your company, you can choose between:<\/p>\n \u25cf Basic plan:<\/strong> with the most basic features (\u20ac5.20\/month\/user).<\/p>\n \u25cf Business plan:<\/strong> which includes the options most used by companies (\u20ac10.40\/month\/user).<\/p>\n \u25cf Enterprise plan:<\/strong> which has advanced features (\u20ac23\/month\/user).<\/p>\n This is one of the online marketing tools I consider essential, since every business has plenty of information to store and needs available space for it.<\/p>\n At the time of writing this article, the terms of its plans are:<\/p>\n \u25cf Basic plan:<\/strong> with 2 GB of storage (free).<\/p>\n \u25cf Plus plan:<\/strong> with 2 TB of storage (\u20ac9.99\/month).<\/p>\n \u25cf Professional plan:<\/strong> with 3 TB of available cloud space (\u20ac16.58\/month).<\/p>\n You can also get the same with Google Drive, but only if you sign up for one of the GSuite plans I mentioned earlier.<\/p>\n It’s a collaboration tool that lets you have organized conversations, send files, work with external people, and integrate it with other applications to improve your workflow.<\/p>\n This workspace is made up of channels where you can discuss specific topics for each project, which helps you keep all the information easy to find in one place and makes direct contact between all team members easier.<\/p>\n It has a free option, as well as plans for those who need other features. These are the terms at the time of writing this article:<\/p>\n \u25cf Standard plan:<\/strong> which lets you integrate Slack with other apps without limits, make group calls and add guests, among other features (\u20ac7.50\/month).<\/p>\n \u25cf Plus plan:<\/strong> which includes enterprise-grade features (\u20ac14.10\/month).<\/p>\n This is an application that helps you manage projects. It’s set up as a board, divided into columns or lists, where you can add the pending tasks for each one, along with documents, due dates, comments, checklists…<\/p>\n If you work with other people, Trello lets you add them to your boards so you can manage the project’s progress together. These are its current plans:<\/p>\n \u25cf Free plan:<\/strong> with limited boards, automations and features.<\/p>\n \u25cf Business Class plan:<\/strong> with unlimited boards (\u20ac9.99\/user\/month).<\/p>\n \u25cf Enterprise plan:<\/strong> which has more security and administration features (\u20ac20.83\/user\/month).<\/p>\n It’s software that analyzes thousands of URLs automatically. It crawls every URL on a website, regardless of its size, including links and content, and uses the information it gathers to generate a detailed report on the state of its on-page SEO.<\/p>\n Online marketing tools like this one are essential for SEO consultants. The reason is that, with the information it can gather, we can make decisions that improve a website’s rankings and spot the weak points that are holding back its growth.<\/p>\n Screaming Frog<\/a> has two versions at the time of writing this article:<\/p>\n \u25cf Free:<\/strong> With it, you can only analyze a maximum of 500 URLs.<\/p>\n \u25cf Paid:<\/strong> It gives you access to all the tool’s features and lets you crawl an unlimited number of URLs.<\/p>\n Another essential SEO tool is Google’s Keyword Planner which, in principle, is free (as long as you have an active campaign so you can get detailed results).<\/p>\n This application lets you create designs for your banners, infographics, presentations, charts, social media images… It includes many templates to make designing easier, which is especially useful if you’re not an expert.<\/p>\n It has different plans, depending on how you’ll use it: individual, business or education. And each of them has a free version and two paid ones.<\/p>\n It’s similar to Piktochart or Canva, but its Premium version lets you add interactive features to your designs, such as audio, videos, third-party content, animations…<\/p>\n You probably already know this social media manager, which lets us schedule content, track the interactions we receive and generate reports with valuable metrics.<\/p>\n You can use it for your LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube accounts (among others).<\/p>\n It has a free version, in which you can connect up to 3 social media profiles, and 4 paid options (prices at the time of writing this article):<\/p>\n \u25cf Professional plan:<\/strong> for 10 profiles and 1 user (\u20ac19\/month).<\/p>\n \u25cf Team plan:<\/strong> for 20 profiles and 3 users (\u20ac99\/month).<\/p>\n \u25cf Business plan:<\/strong> to manage 35 profiles with 5 to 10 users (\u20ac599\/month).<\/p>\n \u25cf Enterprise plan:<\/strong> for a more personalized service.<\/p>\n In this case, we’re looking at a video manager. This application lets you store and share this type of content from its platform.<\/p>\n It’s quite useful if your business sells training, uses video to communicate with customers, or regularly creates videos to share on social media or on your website.<\/p>\n It has 4 different plans, which differ mainly in total storage capacity (check current prices):<\/p>\n \u25cf Plus plan:<\/strong> which gives you 5 GB\/week (\u20ac6\/month).<\/p>\n \u25cf Pro plan:<\/strong> which gives you 20 GB\/week (\u20ac16\/month).<\/p>\n \u25cf Business plan:<\/strong> with no weekly storage limit (\u20ac40\/month).<\/p>\n \u25cf Premium plan:<\/strong> also with no weekly storage limit (\u20ac70\/month).<\/p>\n If your business needs to share video content privately, I recommend you go for this tool.<\/p>\n Unlike YouTube, Vimeo lets you embed videos anywhere without the possibility of them being shared on another site or by other means.<\/p>\n This is another of the online marketing tools you’ll use most in your business.<\/p>\n The reason is that when you work digitally, you’ll rarely have your coworker or client right next to you so you can turn around and discuss any matter with them.<\/p>\n Skype lets you make calls with and without video to keep communication with your team or clients flowing smoothly, send instant messages, share files… and you can have it on both your PC and your smartphone.<\/p>\n It’s an application that helps you analyze your competitors’ websites. It provides information such as global, country and category rankings, the percentage of visits, the time visitors spend on the site, the traffic it receives, its source, its geolocation, which keywords it uses…<\/p>\n All of this is essential to find out what strategy your competitors are following.<\/p>\n It has a free version, which is limited in the number of results it generates per metric and in the time period it can gather information from, and a paid version with all its features.<\/p>\n This is a tool that provides information about any audience on the Twitter platform.<\/p>\n It shows real-time information about users and lets you get data such as the time they spend on the network, their location, what device they used, when they go online…<\/p>\n All of this lets you optimize your strategy and your efforts. It also includes features such as sending bulk messages, creating automatic replies, monitoring hashtags or detecting profiles similar to yours.<\/p>\n It has 3 plans, with the following features at the time of writing:<\/p>\n \u25cf Free plan:<\/strong> which offers little information, and searches are limited to 200.<\/p>\n \u25cf Starter plan:<\/strong> which offers unlimited searches and features designed for small businesses (\u20ac9\/month).<\/p>\n \u25cf Standard plan:<\/strong> which is designed for companies and agencies and has all the most advanced features (\u20ac89\/month).<\/p>\n As a contributor and regular user of this tool, I couldn’t leave out Mailrelay as one of my favorite online tools. And not because it’s cheap, but because it’s cost-effective.<\/p>\n You probably already know that it’s an email marketing platform<\/a> whose free version lets you send up to 80,000 emails and store 20,000 contacts. The only requirement for this is to follow the brand on social media.<\/strong><\/p>\n![\"Free](\"https:\/\/mailrelay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/herramientas-para-crear-un-blog.png\" "\\"Free")
<\/p>\n\u00b7 Free marketing tools: Pros and cons<\/h2>\n
\u25ba Advantages of using more affordable (or free) tools<\/h3>\n
\u25ba Common drawbacks of free trials and free plans<\/a><\/h3>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/mailrelay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/herramientas-para-email-marketing.png\" "\\"The")
<\/p>\n\u00b7 The most affordable or cost-effective online marketing tools<\/h2>\n
\u25ba GSuite<\/h3>\n
\u25ba Dropbox<\/h3>\n
\u25ba Slack<\/h3>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/mailrelay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/herramientas-para-editar-online-tus-images.png\" "\\"The")
<\/p>\n\u25ba Trello<\/h3>\n
\u25ba Screaming Frog<\/h3>\n
\u25ba Visme<\/h3>\n
![\"Affordable](\"https:\/\/mailrelay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/que-es-remarketing.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n\u25ba Hootsuite<\/h3>\n
\u25ba Vimeo<\/h3>\n
\u25ba Skype<\/h3>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/mailrelay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/marketing-agresivo.png\" "\\"The")
<\/p>\n\u25ba Similarweb<\/h3>\n
\u25ba Audiense<\/h3>\n
![\"Mailrelay\"](\"https:\/\/mailrelay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/publicidad-digital.jpg\" "\\"Mailrelay\\"")
<\/p>\n\u00b7 Mailrelay<\/h2>\n