My Blog My Blog

What’s a Competitive Analysis & How Do You Conduct One?

Conducting Market Research
November 18, 2020/by
What's a Competitive Analysis & How Do You Conduct One? When was the last time you ran a competitive analysis for your brand? And most importantly, do you know how to do one efficiently? If you're not sure, or if the last "analysis" you ran was a quick perusal of a competitor's website and social media presence, you're likely missing out on important intelligence that could help your brand grow. A competitive analysis can help you learn the ins and outs of how your competition works, and identify potential opportunities where you can out-perform them. It also enables you to stay atop of industry trends and ensure your product is consistently meeting — and exceeding — industry standards. Let's dive into a few more benefits of conducting competitive analyses: Helps you identify your product's unique value proposition and what makes your product different from competitors', which can inform future marketing efforts. Enables you to identify what your competitor is doing right. This information is critical for staying relevant and ensuring both your product and your marketing campaigns are outperforming industry standards. Tells you where your competitors are falling short — which helps you identify areas of opportunities in the marketplace, and test out new, unique marketing strategies they haven't taken advantage of. Learn through customer reviews what's missing in a competitor's product, and consider how you might add features to your own product to meet those needs. Provides you with a benchmark against which you can...
Read Full Story

Blog vs. Podcast: Which Is the Best Choice for Your Business?

Blogging
November 18, 2020/by
Blog vs. Podcast: Which Is the Best Choice for Your Business? Blogs and podcasts are both powerhouse marketing tools. Company blogs are well-established inbound marketing channels, while business podcasts are the up-and-comers garnering a lot of excitement in the industry. A few stats in the blog corner: 59% of marketers find business blogging valuable. (DemandMetric) Prioritizing blogging gave companies 13X the ROI compared with companies that did not prioritize their blogs. (HubSpot) About 70 million new blog posts are published each month on WordPress alone, with 77 million comments added per month. (WordPress) And in the podcast corner: 37% of Americans ages 12 and older listened to a podcast in the previous month. (Edison Research) Podcast listening is more prevalent among younger Americans. 49% of people aged 12 to 34 listened to a podcast in the previous month, followed by 40% of people ages 35 to 54, and 22% of people aged 55 and above. (Edison Research) The heaviest podcasts users listen while they are away from home; often while at work. (Nielson) Both blogs and podcasts nurture customer relationships, validate expertise, deepen brand loyalty, capture search, and generate leads. But each tool has benefits and drawbacks, and you probably wonder which will offer your business the most significant ROI. Let’s take a closer look at the pros and cons of blogs and podcasts, the audiences for each — and when offering both is best. Podcast Benefits and Drawbacks The Pros of Podcasting 1....
Read Full Story

9 Business Challenges Every Small Business Struggles With (And How to Fix Them)

Marketing Strategy
November 17, 2020/by
9 Business Challenges Every Small Business Struggles With (And How to Fix Them) In the first few years of business, small companies come up against a lot of different challenges. Some are harder than others to overcome -- and according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 20% of small businesses fail by the end of their first year. By the end of their fifth year, 50% go under; and by the tenth year, that number rises to 80%. With survival rates like that, it's easy to understand why folks face the first few years of business with trepidation. But in fact, many common business problems and challenges are actually fixable. Many times, you'll find you need to take a step back, take the time to understand the pain points you're feeling, and re-think your strategy. Here are several challenges every small business faces, along with some tactical advice about how to fix them. 1. Finding Customers This first one isn't just a small business problem. The marketers at well-known companies like Apple and Toyota and McDonald's don't just sit around waiting for the leads to come in: Even the biggest, most successful companies have people working hard every single day to find new customers. But for small businesses that aren't a household name, finding customers can be particularly difficult. For example, there seem to be so many channels you can choose to focus on... How do you know what to prioritize and where to allocate resources? How to Fix It: Finding customers...
Read Full Story

How monday.com Uses Data-driven Marketing to Guide Strategy

Marketing Analytics
November 17, 2020/by
How monday.com Uses Data-driven Marketing to Guide Strategy As any marketer will tell you, there are a myriad of benefits to using data to inform your marketing decisions. For instance, data can help marketers learn from past mistakes and pivot to create increasingly effective campaigns over time. Additionally, data can provide marketers with insights about their audience and what matters most to both prospects and customers. It also helps marketers earn buy-in from leadership to experiment and test new, innovative strategies for increasing brand awareness and ROI. Monday.com knows the importance of data all too well. The work OS — used by major brands including Uber, Hulu, and Coca-Cola — has seen incredible growth over the past year, reaching $100 million in revenue and surpassing 100,000 customers. And, as Rotem Shay, Head of User Acquisition and SEO, told me: "We strongly believe in data-driven decisions for everything we do, from the day-to-day to planning future campaigns." Keep reading to learn more from Shay about how monday.com uses data-driven marketing to guide its powerful, effective marketing strategy – and how you might use data in new, unique ways, as well. Additionally — If you're a HubSpot customer, take a look at the new powerful integration between HubSpot and monday.com. 4 Tips on Data-Driven Marketing from monday.com 1. Get creative when it comes to the analytics tools your team uses. Ultimately, data-driven marketing can't happen without robust analytics tools that enable you to properly measure campaign performance and create A/B...
Read Full Story

The Ultimate Guide to B2B Marketing in 2020

B2B marketing
November 14, 2020/by
The Ultimate Guide to B2B Marketing in 2020 Effective marketing is difficult to get right. Between creative demands, budget limits, and channel decisions, marketers have a lot to juggle when developing their marketing strategy. The biggest determinant of effective marketing, however, is your audience. If you’re not properly targeting your buyer persona, your promotions and advertisements will likely fall on deaf ears. You might as well not be marketing at all. Where target audiences vary the most, though, is between individual consumers and businesses. Some companies serve individual shoppers, while others cater to companies and organizations. Marketing to businesses is very different than marketing to individual consumers. That’s why an entirely different marketing method — B2B marketing — exists, and that’s why we built this guide. By the end of this article, you’ll have a better understanding of B2B marketing, the most effective B2B marketing strategies, and how you can tap into and convert your business audience. HubSpot is an example of a company that engages in B2B marketing. HubSpot’s customers are other businesses, not individual consumers. Therefore, all of our marketing efforts can be classified as B2B. B2B vs B2C Marketing B2B and B2C (business-to-consumer) marketing are very different. B2B and B2C marketing differ in their respective strategies and applications, as well as in their audiences and how they communicate to them. B2B marketing targets the needs, interests, and challenges of individuals who are making purchases on behalf of, or for, their organization (rather than...
Read Full Story

13 Great Landing Page Examples You’ll Want to Copy in 2020

Landing Page Design
November 14, 2020/by
13 Great Landing Page Examples You'll Want to Copy in 2020 While many landing pages look different and use a variety of interesting strategies to pull in audiences, they all serve one major purpose. These pages get website visitors to convert to the next stage in the buyer's journey. Rather than serving as a basic advertisement that shows a customer a product, a landing page aims to engage and delight a customer by offering them something that relates to the product or the company's industry. When they fill out the form and receive a reward of interesting content, they might be even more likely to trust your brand and become a customer.Quick tip: Want an easy way to add a form to your landing page? HubSpot’s free form builder tool can help you fill your CRM with leads from your website. Let’s talk through an example of when a landing page can be especially effective. If a business wants to sell an AI product that helps salespeople, they might create a landing page that offers audiences a free video on how to use AI in the sales industry. Interested audiences might offer their contact information in exchange for the valuable information. If they enjoy the video they've received, they might be more likely to respond to or purchase a product from a company rep who calls them. In another scenario, a publishing company that targets an audience of chief executives might create a landing page that invites...
Read Full Story

The Ultimate Guide to Brand Awareness

Brand Awareness
November 14, 2020/by
The Ultimate Guide to Brand Awareness Have you ever heard people refer to themselves as “Apple people,” “Nike people,” or “Trader Joe’s” people? This is what brand awareness can do for a brand: embed itself into consumer lifestyles and purchase habits so that they don’t have to think twice before becoming a customer — time and time again. This guide will help you better understand brand awareness, establish it among your audience, and build campaigns that allow it to continually grow and morph with your business. Let’s dive in. Brand awareness might seem like a vague concept, and in truth, it is. For those marketers and business owners out there who like to gauge success with neat and tidy numbers, brand awareness will likely ruffle your feathers. But just because it isn’t a metric that can be perfectly determined doesn’t mean it doesn’t carry value. Brand awareness is incredibly important for business success and overall marketing goals. Here’s why. Brand awareness fosters trust. In a world where consumers rely on extensive research and others’ opinions before making a purchase, brand trust is everything. Once a consumer bonds to your brand, they’re more likely to make repeat purchases with little to no forethought –– which then bridges the gap between trust and loyalty. Brand awareness establishes that brand trust. When you put a proverbial face to your brand name, consumers can trust easier. Brand awareness efforts give your brand a personality and outlet to...
Read Full Story

The Ultimate Guide to Landing Pages

Landing Pages
November 12, 2020/by
The Ultimate Guide to Landing Pages As you browse and maneuver around the internet, you visit landing pages all the time. A landing page can be the designated page you’re taken to when you click on an ad. It can also be the page that follows a call-to-action button or serve as the homepage of a website. Regardless of how you "land" on a landing page, its purpose is to encourage you to convert to a lead or customer. For that reason, landing pages are uniquely powerful components of a business's digital marketing strategy. What is a landing page? A landing page is a website page with a specific purpose — the objective of a landing page is to convert visitors into leads. While there are many types of landing pages the intent the same — get more leads. Landing pages contain lead forms that ask visitors for their contact information in exchange for something of value, otherwise known as an offer. The video below will help drive that definition home. Now, think about how protective you are of your personal information. What would make a person want to give up their contact information over the internet? Well, that’s where landing page best practices come in. A targeted, well-crafted landing page with a solid format and sound copy will get almost anyone to submit their information. First, why do you need a landing page? Why would you create a special...
Read Full Story