10 Paid Web-based Inbound Marketing Tools To Help You Grow
Following on from our 11 free web-based marketing tools to help get you started, we are going to look at paid-for web-based marketing tools you can use when you need to expand beyond the basics.
1) We started with https://www.google.co.uk/analytics/#/small-business in our free tools information, but it’s worth mentioning again here. Analytics is probably the most well-known tool of this type and it offers you detailed information about traffic to your website and which pages your visitors are spending time on. If you are ready to move on from the free version, then the premium version may be for you. This gives you much more scope to bring all of your data together and provides you with dedicated support.
2) A great web-based design tool is Adobe InDesign. Adobe InDesign has an industry-leading page design and layout toolset and lets you work across all platforms. Their plans start at £22.23 per month, per licence for the single app and go up in price from there. You can also add packages of stock images to your plan, making this a comprehensive design solution.
3) SumoMe’s Email Pro package which gives you everything in the free package; List Building, Heat Maps and Social Sharing Buttons, plus no SumoMe branding and VIP support, costs $40 a month, currently £27.75 a month. Or for their Pro account, which comes with a 14-day free trial, will cost you $100 a month, currently £69.31. The Pro package includes everything you get in the free and Email Pro packages, plus A/B Testing, enterprise integrations, pro templates etc.
4) Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is vital to your web-based marketing strategy. You can create great content, but it’s no use if your potential customers can’t find you. See our post on 8 Great SEO Tools to Boost Inbound Leads for some tools we have already suggested.
5) In our post on free web-based marketing tools, we recommended Unsplash for free stock photographs. This is a great site and there are other great stock photo sites out there, such as those listed on BootStrapBay’s blog post. This is one area where, unless you need something very specific that you cannot find on a free stock photo site, or you already have a design package that includes stock photos, you are better off saving your cash and sticking to what is freely available.
6) Video is an ever growing web-based marketing tool, and one of the best hosting platforms out there is Vimeo. They do have a free basic package which we discussed in our previous post, but for growing businesses their Pro Account for £159 a year gives you a huge 1TB of storage, plus a range of tools and VIP Support.
7) Wistia also offers a great video hosting tool, where package prices are based on the number of videos you want to create a month. Prices start at $25 a month for 25 videos whilst the maximum option is $100 a month for 500 videos. If you know you are going to be creating a lot of videos and you don’t want to worry about the file sizes using up all of your storage allowance, then Wistia is probably the one for you.
8) Blogging has become an essential part of web-based marketing. There are so many tools out there to help you with this. One of the most recognised is WordPress. WordPress is available to the public for free, but storage space and options are limited. With WordPress’s business package you get unlimited space, no WordPress branding, premium themes and lots of other tools for £20.83 a month.
9) Another well-known blogging tool is Ghost. Ghost is a publishing platform solely for professional bloggers. Thier Advanced package is $39 a month rising to their most expensive package, Business, at $199 a month, which is considerably more than WordPress. So why spend the extra? Ghost Business allows you to have unlimited blogs, which is great if you want different team members running different blogs on different areas. It also gives you an account manager, priority support and a host of other apps and tools. However, for most businesses, their Team package at $79 a month, would probably be the most suitable option. You can have 10 blogs, which is plenty for most people and whilst you don’t get an account manager, a dedicated environment or phone support, you do get pretty much everything else.
10) Social Media posting is a cornerstone of web-based inbound marketing and the ability to schedule multiple posts in advance is critical to business efficiency. There are now lots of tools out there that can help you do this, but one of the most recognised is Buffer. Their Business package offers 11-150 connected social accounts, for 1-25 team members and allows 2,000 posts per profile, plus other features. The Business package comes in at between $99 and $399 (£67.30-£271.21 at time of writing), depending on how many team members and accounts you have. For business who use social media for the majority of their marketing, Buffa’s Enterprise package may be more suitable. From $899 a month (£611.08), the Enterprise package starts at a minimum of 200 connected accounts and 25 team members and includes a dedicated Customer Success Team.
Whether you are just starting out and feel that free web-based marketing tools are what you need right now, or you are ready to grow your web-based marketing and are interested in some of the tools above, it is important to know who you are marketing to. Take a look at our articles on Buyer Personas and Audience Segmentation for more help with this.