22 Cost-Effective Digital Marketing Tools to Get Your Business Through a Recession

Businesses that invest in the right digital marketing tools can effectively stand firm against any economic slump. 

These tools help companies deliver quality service without spending too much on production or employment. 

And if business owners play their cards right, they can even have a much higher return from a relatively small investment.

What are these tools exactly? Read on to find out and learn how they work.

Digital marketing tools businesses could use during a recession

We have compiled 21 of the hottest digital marketing tools online and organized them under eight categories to help you understand them better.

Email marketing

Email marketing is a surefire way to increase traffic, lead conversion rates, and boost product sales.

A catchy email template with meaningful content and a powerful email solution is an excellent formula for launching email marketing campaigns with high expected returns.

This strategy can help you reach many potential leads and convert them into clients without spending too much money, time, and effort.

1. Mailchimp

Such features include optimizable landing pages and embeddable signup forms. You can also use it for free, but it can get pricey as you expand your contact list.

With the free version, you can have 1,500 contacts max with a monthly email limit of 10,000 sends.

2. HubSpot

The tool has an easy-to-use email builder with creatively designed, ready-made templates. Its free plan offers you 2,000 email sends per month.

Its Starter plan starts at $45 per month, coming with 1,000 marketing contacts. The plan will increase by $45 per 1,000 additional contacts.

3. ActiveCampaign

It has a drag-and-drop email creator to let users easily create visually-pleasing campaign templates.

You can also select email types: broadcast, triggered, targeted, auto-respond, transactional, and scheduled.

Rates start at $30 for 1,000 contacts. It offers different features for B2C, B2B, and eCommerce businesses.

Data tracking

Companies should use data-tracking digital marketing tools to assess their previous campaigns and create more targeted ads.

These data analytics tools also help businesses monitor their campaigns in real-time, and in case of a performance declines, they can quickly fix or improve it.

This is one effective way to recession-proof businesses as they only spend money on effective and targeted campaigns. 

4. Google Analytics

You can also examine your campaigns and determine what to focus on. It’s one of the most reliable tools for assessing your performance metrics.

5. Similarweb

This tool helps companies see their competitors’ top traffic sources, which can help you find the sources you should focus on to improve online visibility and domain ranking.

You can also check your site’s engagement metrics, such as total page views and visits, average visit duration, and bounce rate.

SEO

SEO is an acronym for search engine optimization.

This strategy is of utmost importance to businesses today since the competition in the digital market is getting stiffer, especially in organic searches.

You may have over a thousand articles on your domain, but they’re all useless if they do not have the right keywords that will make them visible on search engines.

With the right SEO digital marketing tools (and intelligent use), your business can easily climb through search engine rankings and land on the top spot of the search engine results page (SERP).

6. Ahrefs

This tool can also help you build backlinks, analyze competitors, track SERP rankings, and audit your domain.

The cheapest Ahrefs plan only allows one user. It runs at $99 per month, but when billed annually, it costs $82 per month. They also offer a 7-day trial period for $7.

7. SEMrush

This tool lets you monitor the ranking of your main keywords in real-time and search for new keywords with ranking opportunities. 

Its keyword analysis also determines the search intent behind keywords to help you create accurate and helpful content.

Subscriptions start at $119.95/month, but you can save more when you go for their annual plans. They also offer free trials.

8. Moz

Its pro version provides helpful insights that let you better understand your target market’s behavior, which can help you create tailored campaigns.

Their service Moz Local is made for small and medium-sized enterprises having about ninety locations and for bigger businesses with over a hundred branches.

Moz Pro rates start at $99/month, while Moz Local comes in annual plans starting at $99 per year.

Content marketing

Content marketing is a strategy where companies produce value-added articles to market their product to a broad online audience.

The articles contain the high-ranking keywords you have searched using SEO tools, which will appear on SERPs once the search engine indexes them.

It convinces readers to purchase the marketed product or sign up for a subscription to the software or platform.

9. WordPress

It also comes with various plugins for added convenience. One such plugin is Yoast, a tool that helps with writing content optimized for SEO. It also checks how readable your article is.

WordPress also has a preview button that lets you see how your content will look once it’s published.

10. Grammarly

You can use it to check different content you use for your marketing, from articles to social media captions to email drafts.

The quality of your articles affects your SEO ranking, so it helps that you have Grammarly to help your editors proofread and improve your content.

It also has a browser extension so that you can edit your content on any browser tab.

Its premium version comes with a plagiarism checker, which is important in making sure your content is unique and will rank well on Google searches.

Grammarly rates start at $12 per month.

11. Google Docs

It also comes with a suggesting mode for easier editing or collaboration. Once the writer checks the draft, they can easily apply or comment on the suggestions.

Google Docs also offers a quick way to upload articles directly to a CMS. 

Social media marketing

Social media has eventually become a marketing platform due to its whopping number of global users.

A strong social media presence can significantly boost brand recognition and product sales.

Social media marketing connects you to your target audience and lets you interact with them through content or promos.

It’s also an effective tool for scouting customer data and behavior.

Every major social media platform now offers advertising options, which makes it more convenient for businesses to market their products and services.

12. Sprout Social

It enables you to post and schedule your content across numerous platforms, all perfectly timed to coincide with when your fans are most engaged. 

Subscription rates start at $99/month or $88/month when billed annually.

13. Meta Business Suite

It lets you develop and schedule content such as posts, stories, and reels, respond to user engagement, and assess insights. You can also use it to run advertisements.

You can do all these tasks in a single tab and quickly switch between accounts to manage the two social media platforms smoothly.

14. Hootsuite

Among the things you can do with it are monitor social pages, schedule content, and track performance.

It can also run thorough performance reports with its analytics feature.

Subscriptions start at $49/month. You can also opt for their 30-day free trial.

15. Social Champ

Social Champ is a social media automation tool packed with incredible features to help you boost your business integrity. 

This tool provides management services to social media platforms, including the creation and publishing of content through an all-in-one content calendar, engagement with the clients and customers with a single social inbox, tracking analytics and generating weekly and monthly progress reports, auto RSS feature to stay updated with the latest news, and many more. 

The pricing includes a free plan with unlimited post-scheduling on three social accounts, followed by $29/mo for the Champ Plan, supporting unlimited post-scheduling on twelve social media accounts. 

Business plans and Custom plans are also offered with varied pricing for those who require advanced features for their businesses. 

Advertising

Most companies tend to cut their advertising costs in a recession to avoid overspending.

When done right, targeted paid advertising can grow a business’ revenue exponentially. They don’t even have to go all out on the spending.

16. Google Ads

You can bid for a pay-per-click (PPC) ad for a particular keyword so that when an end-user searches for the said keyword, your ad will appear first, increasing the chances of visits to your domain.

What’s great about this is that you will only pay once an end-user clicks your ad. Google will not charge you unless the ad gets clicked.

But here’s the twist: other businesses can also bid for the top spot for the same keyword. The more competitors, the higher you’ll have to pay.

Retargeting

Retargeting is a strategy that helps increase your lead conversion by sending specific display ads to potential customers who visited your site but left without purchasing or subscribing.

17. AdRoll

It also provides a user-friendly interface to make it easier for companies to run retargeting campaigns, especially for those with no tech background.

AdRoll offers a pay-as-you-go plan for users who want to minimize expenses yet still get the work done and a Marketing & Ads Plus plan that starts at $40/month for a 1000-limit on monthly unique visitors.

18. Facebook Pixel ID

Companies use this tool to send specified ads to visitors on Facebook to convince and encourage them to purchase your product or avail of your service.

You can then use the code to track visitors’ behavior once they revisit your website.

19. Google Ads Remarketing Tag

The Google Ads remarketing tag adds your site’s visitors to a remarketing list. All you have to do is embed the tag on your website.

You can then monitor the data collected on the Google Tag Manager to analyze your site visitors’ behavior and activities.

Users on your remarketing list will receive or see targeted ads based on a specific search intent or keyword.

Feedback marketing

Feedback is vital for the growth and improvement of any business. But did you know that this can also boost a company’s sales by establishing transparency with consumers?

Users are more likely to patronize a product or service that has many positive reviews from actual consumers who have purchased or availed it themselves.

20. Qualaroo

You can create your questions or select from their ready-made templates. Subscription rates start at $100/month or $80 per month when billed annually.

21. Refiner

The tool offers in-app survey widgets, website popups, and email surveys. It can also host pages for survey forms.

Plans begin at $79/month with 5,000 monthly active users. It also offers a 14-day free trial that does not require a credit card.

22. Google Forms

Users can include multiple-choice questions, dropdown menus, and empty spaces where consumers can enter their comments and suggestions.

Related: How to make a QR code for a Google form and collect information

How a QR code generator can help businesses thrive during a recession

All these tools are excellent in their own right, but wouldn’t it be nice to have a single digital marketing tool that you can seamlessly integrate into your business to optimize all those strategies?

Here’s some good news: we have a digital marketing tool that can help you do that — QR TIGER, the best QR code generator online software.

Our multifunctional and customizable QR codes can help you boost your company’s performance, and we’ll show you how:

Email marketing

With a QR code, you can quickly redirect any scanning user to a signup form so that it’s easier for them to fill out.

And since most people now have smartphones, you can reach more potential users by placing your QR codes in physical locations with many people, such as malls and streets.

Related: Email QR Code & QR Code Solutions for Email Marketing

Data tracking

Did you know that you can track data from the scans on your QR code?

Our dynamic QR codes come with a tracking feature, and on your dashboard, you can monitor scan analytics of your dynamic QR code in real-time, such as:

• Number of scans
• Location of each scan
• Time of scanning
• The device or operating system used

This data will help you figure out the strengths and weaknesses of your QR code campaigns, and you can then improve the next campaigns you will launch.

SEO

One way to improve your site’s ranking on SERPs is to have more direct visits or organic traffic to your domain. Now, how can a QR code help with that?

Here’s the answer: you can create a URL QR code to bring scanning users to your website. The QR code now serves as a direct gateway to your domain.

And the more people are scanning, the more traffic your domain gets, which helps improve your search engine ranking.

To make this more effective, you can use a dynamic URL QR code to keep track of its total scans.

Content marketing

A well-written, informative article will do no good if people aren’t reading it.

Aside from using high-volume keywords on your articles, you can also use QR codes to increase their traffic and online visibility.

You can create a QR code that contains your article’s link, and with one scan, users can instantly access the content on their smartphones.

If you plan to do this, we highly suggest that you optimize your articles for mobile users.

Social media marketing

Having more followers on your social media pages means a lot for your business because it helps reach a wider audience.

You can generate a social media QR code to store all your handles if you have a business page on various social platforms.

The code will show all your socials on one landing page when scanned.

You can also integrate QR codes on the promotional content you post to redirect social media users to your website, which then increases traffic.

Advertising

A QR code SaaS can easily make it to the list of digital marketing tools for advertising. What’s great about them is that you can use them to create exciting advertisements.

For instance, you can place posters with an intriguing statement or question that leaves people hanging, and below it is a QR code that will redirect them to the explanation or answer.

This technique will tickle people’s imagination and curiosity, which is why this is one surefire way to get people to watch or listen to your campaign.

Another great solution is the POAP QR code for your event marketing. It promotes seamless check-in and grants access for exclusive access to your attendees. 

Retargeting

One advanced feature of our dynamic QR codes is retargeting. You can add your Facebook Pixel ID or Google Tags to your dynamic QR codes.

The pixel or tag will record every scanning user so you can retarget them with specified ads tailored to their preferences.

Feedback marketing

You can also create a feedback QR code for gathering user reviews, comments, and suggestions. This works well with Google Forms.

We recently added a Google Forms QR code solution to our software to make it more convenient to embed them.

Simply copy the link to your Google Forms survey or questionnaire and paste it into our Google Forms solution.

QR TIGER: The perfect digital marketing tool for businesses today

Today’s global growth moves at a slow pace, with high prices for fuel and food.

The vast inflation rates and the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war has led some to believe that a recession is coming.

While experts are yet to declare the recession’s certainty, businesses should always prepare themselves for the worst-case scenario so they wouldn’t go bankrupt.

But with today’s advanced digital marketing tools and their strategic use, any company can stand strong amid tough economic times.

QR TIGER is one tool that can allow businesses to continue performing well in the market, whether rain or shine.

Visit our website and become a QR TIGER subscriber today.