My Blog My Blog

Do AR Product Previews Actually Lead to Purchases [New Research]

Product Marketing
August 19, 2020/by
Do AR Product Previews Actually Lead to Purchases According to a recent Retail Dive survey, 55% of consumers still prefer to shop in stores because they like to see or test out products before they buy them. But, if consumers could see or try products virtually from home, would they still need to go to the store before making a purchase? This question has been asked by companies like Amazon, Warby Parker, and IKEA which have embraced AR product reviews. With these previews, ecommerce visitors can see an item of clothing on a photo of their body, preview what furniture will look like in their bedroom, and even size themselves to ensure they're buying a product with the best fit. But is this virtual experience really as effective as a traditional store or fitting room at getting people to buy? Skeptics might say no. With AR being costly to implement and product viewings only requiring a physical store location, many marketers think that this technology isn't worth the fuss. However, as the world grows more and more digital, each new generation is making even more online purchases. They're also embracing technologies like AR/VR for entertainment or retail purposes. Not to mention, while holidays like Black Friday cause a burst in foot-traffic, retail businesses are finding it more challenging to keep people coming into stores throughout the rest of the year. While AR might have been inaccessible to retail marketers in the past, could it be a revenue-generating...
Read Full Story

How to Optimize Your Content for Google’s Featured Snippet Box

Technical SEO
August 18, 2020/by
How to Optimize Your Content for Google's Featured Snippet Box In the past few years Google have been refining the way that it displays results to users. In particular, Google has been increasing the number of Featured Snippets that it displays for queries. This actually pushes organic results further down the page. So what does that mean for SEOs? Well, that's what I set out to explore. Naturally, ranking in the Featured Snippet itself remedies the problem of positioning, but is this strategy something worth doing? What is a Featured Snippet, anyway? And more importantly, what do you have to do to appear there? What Is a Featured Snippet? Featured Snippets — also known as answer boxes — are selections of content displayed on the search engine results page (SERP) without the user having to visit the page where the content lives. Google puts these snippets above regular SERP results but below the ads in an effort of serving the user better. For example, the Featured Snippet below displays the direct instructions pulled from the tasteofhome.com web page. There are no ads for this query, so the Featured Snippet shown in the answer box is above position 1 of the SERPs for "how to make bread." The directions are shown in four steps before the user has to click a single link. Types of Featured Snippet Paragraph List Table Video Accordion Rich Answer...
Read Full Story

How to Find Your Business’s White Space Opportunities

Business Growth
August 18, 2020/by
How to Find Your Business's White Space Opportunities When McDonald's first opened its doors, they had two items on the menu: burgers and fries. After surveying competitors, the founders saw that in order to stand out as a food company, they had to be different. Instead of offering a multitude of menu options, they decided to hyper-focus on the bestsellers, which catapulted their customer satisfaction. What McDonalds' founders did was find white space opportunities in their industry. While other fast food restaurants at the time were offering a diverse menu but lacking in customer service — the McDonald's team decided to focus on two items so customer service would be at the forefront. By surveying what was missing from the market, McDonald's was able to grow into a billion-dollar empire. The founders saw what customers were lacking and turned that industry gap into a success. But what exactly are white space opportunities, and how can they be an asset to your company? Let's find out below. Sometimes, consumers don't know what they need until, well, they need it, so it's up to companies to be proactive. White space opportunities help marketers uncover customer needs that haven't yet been met. It's a useful tactic when identifying how to provide the most value to customers. But, because white space opportunities aren't as obvious as, say, keyword opportunities, it can be hard to know where to start. Sounds pretty taboo, right? How can businesses uncover value customers are looking for when...
Read Full Story

Instagram Influencer Marketing Myths, Debunked

Instagram Marketing
August 17, 2020/by
Instagram Influencer Marketing Myths, Debunked Growing up for me, becoming an influencer wasn't a job someone could aspire to be. But nowadays, it's a job that kids dream of and an industry that impacts young adults purchasing decisions. In fact, in 2019 22% of Gen Z, 20% of millennials, and 16% of Gen X have made a purchase inspired by an influencer post on social media. At this point, you might be wondering, "What's an influencer?" According to Influencer Marketing Hub, "An influencer is someone who has the power to affect the purchasing decisions of others because of their authority, knowledge, position, or relationship with their audience." On the other hand, Andrew Delaney, a senior manager on the HubSpot social media team, says, "We are all influencers every time we choose to post. We could be suggesting or recommending a location, a business, an item, or another person by taking the action of sharing that content in the first place. In each of these instances, we are influential, even when we are not trying to directly influence." The influencer industry has been around for over a decade now, and a lot of myths about the industry have circulated in that time. In this post, let's review the top influencer marketing myths that have been debunked. 1. Influencer marketing is diminishing in popularity. When social media first came on the scene, a lot of old-school businesses were hesitant to adopt it as a major marketing tactic. The influencer industry...
Read Full Story

How to Design Content Remarketing Campaigns That Actually Work

Advertising Best Practices
August 15, 2020/by
How to Design Content Remarketing Campaigns That Actually Work You know content marketing works, so you've been plugging away at blog posts, ebooks, and other valuable, educational content for your potential customers. And people come -- they find your content in search results and in their social media feeds. But they may not fill out a form and become a lead right then and there. It's not always because they're not interested in your message -- so how do you recapture those viewers who left your site? Recapturing audience attention to turn lookers into leads is an effective marketing tactic, and if you're not doing it, you're leaving money on the table. Let me outline for you the sections I'm going to cover in this post: What the Heck is Remarketing? What Is the Google Display Network? Remarketing Campaign Examples How to Set Up a Remarketing Campaign What the Heck Is Remarketing? At its core, remarketing is the process of tagging your site visitors and targeting them with content after they leave your site in an effort to reengage them and bring them back to your site. Remarketing gives you the opportunity to appear in front of people who have already expressed an interest in your website. They could be checking their email, reading the news, watching a YouTube video… and there you are, with something new and awesome to show them. It could be a reminder to complete an...
Read Full Story

How to Use Instagram Insights (in 9 Easy Steps)

Instagram Marketing
August 14, 2020/by
How to Use Instagram Insights (in 9 Easy Steps) It's no secret that we love data. Data helps you understand your audience. It tells you how they do things, what they prefer, and who they are. And when it comes to social media, our love for data doesn't fade. That's why we love analytics and insights. They help you measure the impact of your marketing efforts across different channels to see if there's something you need to do differently -- like target a different audience, post at a certain time of day, or experiment with a new content format. Instagram Insights are no exception. Here are the analytics on this channel that marketers need to know and understand -- and how to use them. To use Instagram Insights, you must first have a business profile. If you're already using a personal account, you can switch to a business profile. In order to have a Business Account, you must also have a Facebook Page for your brand. Instagram will give you the option to create a new one during this process if you don't already have one. Here's how to convert your account in a few simple steps. Once your set up as a Business Account, you can begin to use Instagram Insights. Here's how to get started. 1. Click the insights icon. To view insights into your overall Instagram account, start by visiting your profile. Then, at the top, click the icon of a bar chart, which...
Read Full Story

What is a Business Plan? Definition, Tips, and Templates

Business Tools
August 14, 2020/by
What is a Business Plan? Definition, Tips, and Templates The business plan is an undeniably critical component to getting any company off the ground. It's key to securing financing, documenting your business model, outlining your financial projections, and turning that nugget of a business idea into a reality. In an era where more than 50% of small enterprises fail in their first year, having a clear, defined, and well thought-out business plan is a crucial first step for setting up a business for long-term success. Business plans are a required tool for all entrepreneurs, business owners, business acquirers, and even business school students. But … what exactly is a business plan? In this post, we'll explain what a business plan is, list the reasons why you'd need one, and identify different types of business plans. What is a Business Plan? A business plan is a documented strategy for a business that highlights its goals and its plans for achieving them. Business plans outline a company's go-to-market strategy, financial projections, market research, business purpose, and mission. The business plan is also a prominent tool used to secure investors and financing for a business. Business Plan Template Working on your business plan? Try using our Business Plan Template. Pre-filled with the sections a great business plan needs, the template will give aspiring entrepreneurs a feel for what a business plan is, what should be in it, and how it can be used to establish and grow a business from the ground up....
Read Full Story

How 3 HubSpot Managers Found Strong Co-Marketing Partnerships [+How You Can, Too]

Co-Marketing
August 13, 2020/by
How 3 HubSpot Managers Found Strong Co-Marketing Partnerships A solid co-marketing partnership is one of the better ways to reach a previously untapped audience, generate positive publicity, and create a wealth of valuable marketing collateral. When done right, it's a mutually beneficial, thoroughly productive way to boost your marketing efforts as a whole. Aligning yourself with an industry peer can pay off in spades, but these kinds of relationships aren't easy to start and sustain. Your partner's interests and qualities need to complement yours, and the companies you work with have to be reliable enough to consistently pull their weight. Finding a company that fits that bill is hard in its own right, but once you've identified one you want to work with, you're faced with the challenges of successfully contacting them, corresponding with them, and convincing them to work with you. Those processes can be hard to figure out on your own, so to offer you some help, we spoke with three HubSpot experts about how they found strong co-marketing partnerships and the steps you need to take to do the same. What do you look for in a co-marketing partner? When asked about what they look for in a co-marketing partner, our experts all seemed to agree that the number one priority is alignment in audience, messaging, and image. As HubSpot Senior Marketing Manager, Margot Mazur, put it, "We look for partners who speak to similar personas and address their needs. Specifically, we want to...
Read Full Story

The Plain-English Guide to Data Deduplication

Marketing Data
August 13, 2020/by
The Plain-English Guide to Data Deduplication Nowadays, with so much critical information saved on our computer systems, we've learned to backup data regularly -- including our email inboxes, our Word documents, our photos, and entire folders of old work. It's typically a ton of data. And, since we usually backup and save our data on auto-pilot, we might not realize just how much has been re-copied and re-saved, time and time again. Unfortunately, over time, our data storage becomes unnecessarily burdened with redundant copies of data -- this could cost your company money, as data requirements become larger, or time, as processing time becomes slower. This is where data deduplication comes in. Andrew Le, an IT Helpdesk Technician at HubSpot, further explains the importance of data deduplication for a business looking to grow -- " really improves scaling and efficiency when pulling data from one source. If you have lots of the same data in different spaces, your entire system can be slowed down." So, you might be wondering, "How does this work?" Let's dive into it below. How does data deduplication work? The data deduplication process might seem intimidating, but it's actually a simple process. You can use data deduplication software when you backup your computer. Additionally, some marketing automation software, like HubSpot, might have a deduplication feature to keep track of your marketing contacts. To ensure you're optimizing your data backup storage, we've cultivated a list of the best data deduplication software you can use to minimize unnecessary...
Read Full Story