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How to Nail Interactive Presentations, According to HubSpot Experts

Presentations
December 8, 2020/by
How to Nail Interactive Presentations, According to HubSpot Experts I can distinctly remember being extremely excited to attend a presentation from a speaker whose book I had read and loved in class. Unfortunately, the speaker was not as engaging as I’d hoped, and I found myself getting bored and distracted. Marketers know better than anyone that capturing audience attention goes hand in hand with keeping people engaged. If people are bored, their thoughts will drift somewhere else, and you’ll miss out on the opportunity to impact their behavior. This is true regardless of the marketing medium, from advertisements to presentations. That being said, marketers need to create effective ways to gain audience attention during their presentations — one of those is interactivity. According to the Oxford Dictionary, interactivity is defined as how two people work together and influence each other. Therefore, creating interactive presentations means using strategies that will capture and hold audience attention. It makes it easier to leave lasting, meaningful impressions about the content you’re sharing with them. This post will outline the importance of interactive presentations and share tips from HubSpot experts for giving engaging, interactive presentations. Why are interactive presentations important? Interactive presentations are those where audience members and presenters feel like they’re in conversation with each other. It’s a pivot away from the lecture and listeners feel, as presenters entice audiences to participate and interact with them. The reason for creating interactive presentations is simple: marketers who make a connection with their audience are...
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How COVID-19 Changed the Way We Think About Office Technology [New Research]

Office Culture
December 8, 2020/by
How COVID-19 Changed the Way We Think About Office Technology The recent COVID-19 pandemic has changed how we think about a lot of things. From the size of our weddings and special events to the comfort level of our pajamas and stay-at-home clothes, we’ve reconsidered the size, shape, and necessity of many, many elements in our lives. Work is one of these elements, if not the main one. We’ve asked ourselves (and our employers) questions like: “Can I get as much done at home as I would in the office?” “How do I stay connected to my team if we’re all remote?”, and “Is it really necessary to have as many meetings as I did before?” While we’ve all found different answers to these questions, one thing is consistent: COVID-19 has forced us to learn how to stay connected, motivated, and productive in new ways. Canva + HubSpot Marketing Survey In October, we teamed up with Canva to better understand how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected marketing leaders, their resources, and their teams. We surveyed 502 marketing leaders (mostly senior-level marketing managers, directors, VPs, and CMOs) from across the United States and asked them how COVID-19 has affected their teams, processes, and priorities. The results are in, and our findings are pointing towards a new way of thinking about work — especially the tools and technologies we use to get stuff done. Download the research here, and keep reading to unpack some of...
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Removing Gatekeepers From Your Marketing

Marketing Strategy
December 8, 2020/by
Removing Gatekeepers From Your Marketing Every marketer has run into one of these roadblocks before: They wanted to create an ads audience off of recently closed lost deals, but didn't have access to the customer data in their CRM. They needed to change some of the copy on their homepage, but their developers couldn't fit it into their next sprint. They needed a quick graphic to illustrate a point they were making in a blog post, but their design team was wrapped up in other projects. In these scenarios, marketers aren't held back by a lack of good ideas. Instead, marketers are struggling with gatekeepers. Gatekeepers are unnecessary areas of friction within your growth machine that prevent marketers from providing customers with the best experience possible. Gatekeepers can be anything from unusable data that's spread across different tools, to a CMS or design solution that's powerful but requires technical expertise to use. When marketers encounter a gatekeeper, the customer experience inevitably suffers. Take your website, for instance. HubSpot research shows that a business website is the most used distribution channel for marketers today. When trying to provide your customers with an amazing experience, nothing is more important than your website. But when asked who is responsible for keeping a website up to date, many marketers pointed to their IT team as owners of their company's site. This is a classic example of gatekeepers inserting unnecessary friction into your marketing. Your IT team isn't goaled...
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Rethinking Your Premium Content: How to Build a Guided Learning Course

Content Marketing Strategy
December 4, 2020/by
Rethinking Your Premium Content: How to Build a Guided Learning Course Are you seeing a lower return of effort for traditional premium content like whitepapers, webinars, ebooks and more? Alternatively, do you find the biggest results just aren't there for the amount of work you put into the creation? If so, you're not alone. While these offers can provide in-depth insights for prospects, not every prospect sees the value in them. Still, we continue offering premium content to build trust throughout the buyer's journey and learn information about prospects along the way. And yet, the problem remains: Where do you draw the line between offering free, useful content and charging for your expert knowledge and insight? Some brands are beginning to define this blurry line by developing their own learning management systems (LMS), as a private hub for paid access to their best educational resources. And yes, you can even build an LMS in HubSpot. Here, we'll explore what a learning management system is, the benefits of using one, and how you can repurpose content into your own guided learning course.  Let's dive in.  What's a learning management system (LMS)? First, let's first make sure we're on the same page with a definition. A learning management system (LMS) is a software application to administer, document, track, report on and deliver educational courses, training programs, or learning and development programs. It's a portal that users can log into to exclusively access the premium content you develop specifically for your paid...
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9 Custom Reporting Tools For Your Marketing Team

Marketing Reporting
December 4, 2020/by
9 Custom Reporting Tools For Your Marketing Team When it comes to creating reports for your data, sometimes a pre-built dashboard, table, or template will do the trick. But what happens when your current tool doesn’t have a pre-built report that meets your needs or includes the metrics and dimensions you want to use? Well, that’s when a custom reporting tool comes in handy. What are custom reporting tools? Custom reporting tools provide the ability to create personalized and unique (or customized) reports for your data. In addition to selecting the data you’ll display in your report, you can also customize a report’s metrics, dimensions, appearance, and more. There are a number of custom reporting tools available today including options that come with other perks like no necessary coding, easy installation, different pricing plans, support, and integrations (e.g. for data analysis and one-click sharing). Many custom reporting tools, like HubSpot, often come with pre-built templates and dashboards as well for instances in which you don’t need or want to customize your report. Here are 9 custom reporting tools to help get you started. 1. HubSpot Marketing Analytics Software Source HubSpot helps marketers surface a combination of customer insights and data to better understand what’s working and what’s not among target audience members. All of these insights and reports are available at your fingertips — alongside your CRM — without SQL. The custom report builder offers access to all of your data in a single location...
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How to Use Pinterest Advertising to Promote Products and Attract Customers

Pinterest Marketing
December 4, 2020/by
How to Use Pinterest Advertising to Promote Products and Attract Customers Pinterest is often undervalued by social media marketers and considered an unnecessary component of a marketing strategy -- unfortunately, if this isn't the case for your team, you could be missing out on a major source of traffic and income. Pinterest offers plenty of unique opportunities for marketers to reach leads and influence consumer purchasing behavior. In fact, Pinners are more likely to grocery shop online. If you're interested in exploring how Pinterest advertising can help you attract customers, keep reading. Pinterest Advertising With over 442 million monthly active users, Pinterest is a great place for businesses to advertise products. Ads show up on users' feeds and searches in the same format as a regular Pin, making the experience unobtrusive for users while putting your content right in front of them. There is a large potential reach when you create ads for Pinterest audiences -- and, best of all, users are also actively searching the site for products like yours to buy. Why Advertise on Pinterest The reach can be incredible. If your content is engaging and valuable, it can be re-pinned again and again to different users' boards and continue to drive consumers back to your website. Pins have a much longer lifespan than Tweets or Instagram posts. This longevity makes them a particularly powerful asset. Pins can show up in a user's feed months after initially posted. ...
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The Ultimate Collection of Free Content Marketing Templates

Design Templates
December 3, 2020/by
The Ultimate Collection of Free Content Marketing Templates Does any aspect of your job intimidate you? For content creators, sometimes the most stressful part of the role can be opening a completely blank document to start a new project. Whether it's writing a blog post, designing an infographic, or creating an ebook, it's challenging to start creating a new piece of content from scratch, especially if you've never done it before. Here in the HubSpot content shop, we want to take the work out of it for you. Instead of trying to master how to create every type of content in existence, cut down on the stress and inefficiency and read about our collection of nearly 400 free, customizable content creation templates. We've broken this list down by each type of content marketing template represented. Jump ahead if you specifically want: Content Management & Calendar Templates Written & Editorial Content Templates Design Content Templates Social Media Content Templates Email Content Templates Content Management & Calendar Templates A Content Planning/Goal-Setting Template (Download the content planning template here.) HubSpot teamed up with Smart Insights to create a content planning template that will help you put together an effective content marketing plan for either your business or those of your clients. These templates will help you complete a SWOT analysis on your content marketing efforts (and develop a plan to improve them), define the right objectives and KPIs for that plan, brainstorm content ideas and map these across...
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The Ultimate Guide to Marketing Campaigns

Marketing Campaigns
December 3, 2020/by
The Ultimate Guide to Marketing Campaigns From P&G’s “Thank You, Mom” to American Express’s “Small Business Saturday” to Dos Equis’s “Most Interesting Man in the World,” marketing campaigns have a way of sticking with us long after an impression or purchase. Why is that? Well, campaigns make companies memorable. They promote a focused effort that guides consumers towards a desired action. They also give brands identity, personality, and emotion. Marketing campaigns can do the same for your business. That’s why we’ve compiled this guide — to provide a clear, concise approach to your next campaign. Keep reading to get started or use the links below to jump ahead. Marketing campaigns don’t include all marketing efforts for a brand. In fact, the word “campaign” is defined as “a connected series of operations designed to bring about a particular result.” That’s why politicians campaign for a specific election and militaries campaign for a specific battle. Great marketing campaigns follow a consistent theme and promote a single or focused idea or goal (as we’ll discuss.) For example, every Nike advertisement you see or hear on the way to work probably isn’t part of a campaign. But, if you see a Nike billboard, scroll past a Nike sponsored Instagram post, and receive a Nike email all promoting the same product … you’ve definitely witnessed a marketing campaign. You’ve also probably heard the word “campaign” used for both marketing and advertising. What’s the difference? Advertising is a component of marketing. Marketing...
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Everything You Need to Know About Landing Page Design

Landing Page Design
December 3, 2020/by
Everything You Need to Know About Landing Page Design Whoever said “You never have a second chance to make a great first impression,” makes a valid point. You only get one opportunity to have your first interaction with another person … and the last thing you want is for that first interaction to be a bad one. After all, humans are known to remember negative experiences more vividly than positive ones. Great first impressions matter when meeting someone, going to a new place, and even visiting a website. In a world where virtually every business has a website, creating a positive first impression when your target audience members click on your site via the search engine results page (SERP) is critical. That’s because your landing page is your site’s “destination page”, or the first page that visitors land on when they open your site. Also, to really put the pressure on, you only have about 7 seconds to make that great first impression with your website before the average visitor decides whether or not they’re going to stay or bounce elsewhere. So, how do you ensure that the first interaction your target audience has with your website is a positive one? The answer: Great landing page design. Landing Page Design Landing page design is the process of creating an enticing site page for your target audience and website visitors. It should encourage them to convert from leads into subscribers or customers. Effective landing page design is...
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How Brands Can Nurture and Develop Emotional Intelligence (and Why It Matters)

Emotional Intelligence
December 2, 2020/by
How Brands Can Nurture and Develop Emotional Intelligence (and Why It Matters) Emotional intelligence has long been discussed as a critical component of leadership. The ability to regulate your own emotions — as well as the emotions of others' — has proven invaluable on an individual level. Consider, for instance, the supreme importance of having a boss who doesn't cry or yell every time a meeting doesn't go her way. Alternatively, think about how important it is to have a leader who encourages positive, effective conflict resolution between teams when misalignment or miscommunication occurs. All of which is to say: emotional intelligence matters. But Kristin Harper, CEO of Driven to Succeed and author of The Heart of a Leader: 52 Emotional Intelligence Insights to Advance Your Career, takes it one step further, arguing that emotional intelligence can (and should) be fostered by brands, not just individuals. Here, let's dive into how you can nurture and develop emotional intelligence for your brand as a whole — and why it matters in the first place. 1. How can brands nurture and develop emotional intelligence? Let's start first with the definition of emotional intelligence for individuals, which is the capacity to be aware of, control, and express one's emotions, and to handle interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically. EI is a combination of self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. For brands, I define EI using four pillars: Brand Consciousness: Defining the brand identity including its attributes, values, heritage, tone of...
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