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What Is Context Marketing, and Why It Matters [Quick Guide]

Marketing Strategy
June 24, 2020/by
What Is Context Marketing, and Why It Matters In 2020, it's undeniable how powerful content marketing has become for businesses of all sizes. In fact, content marketing brings in 3X as many leads as traditional marketing — and costs 62% less. But, while it's fair to say most marketers are on-board with the importance of content marketing, there's still an aspect of marketing that doesn't get as much love: context marketing. Whether you know what context marketing means or not, I'm willing to bet you've dabbled or wanted to dabble in context marketing for some time. Here, we're going to introduce the concept of context marketing and dive into strategies you can use to implement context marketing into your overall marketing strategy. What Is Context Marketing? At the most basic level, context marketing is ... well, using context in your marketing. Since that just sounds like circular reasoning though, let's dive into the definition a little further. My favorite definition of context marketing is delivering the right content, to the right people, at the right time. Let me explain what I mean by context a little more, though. Context marketing is like a spelling bee ... When you have context around something, you have a larger, more telling picture — you know, those little details that help lend more clarity to things that would otherwise be pretty general, unspecific, and, well, uninteresting. Let's use a spelling bee as an analogy here. If a judge asks...
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10 VR Marketing Examples to Inspire You in 2020

Marketing Trends
June 23, 2020/by
10 VR Marketing Examples to Inspire You in 2020 I won't lecture you on the importance of incorporating virtual reality (VR) into your marketing strategy. What I will do, however, is share a few fun facts about VR and show you nine examples of this technology used for marketing a product or a brand. This year, the economic impact of virtual and augmented reality is predicted to reach $29.5 billion. By the end of 2017, the number of shipped units of VR software and hardware from Sony, Oculus, HTC, and others totaled $2.4 million, up from $1.7 million in 2016. By the end of 2020, the number of VR headsets sold is predicted to reach 82 million -- a 1,507% increase from 2017 predicted totals. VR is being adopted quickly, and adding it to your marketing channels is something you should definitely think about for the coming year. What Is VR? VR, short for virtual reality, is a form of interactive software that immerses users in a three-dimensional environment -- usually by way of a headset with special lenses -- to simulate a real experience. Ideally, VR allows people to simulate the experience in 360 degrees. Numerous industries are now finding uses for VR in order to transport people to places they might otherwise have to travel to, or simply imagine. While movie companies, for example, are giving audiences the opportunity to experience the movie as if they're a character in the scene, conventional businesses are now...
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Everything You Need to Write a Marketing Plan [+ Examples]

Marketing Strategy
June 23, 2020/by
Everything You Need to Write a Marketing Plan You did it. You've been spearheading your organization's content marketing efforts for a while now, and your team's performance has convinced your boss to fully adopt content marketing. There's one small problem, though. Your boss wants you to write and present a content marketing plan to them, but you've never done something like that before. You don't even know where to start. Fortunately, we've curated the best content marketing plans to help you write a concrete marketing plan that's rooted in data and produces real results. In this post, we'll discuss what a marketing plan is and how some of the best marketing plans implement strategies that serve their respective businesses. Featured Resource: Free Marketing Plan Template Looking to develop a marketing plan for your business? Click here to download HubSpot's free Marketing Plan Template to get started. Types of Marketing Plans Depending on the company you work at, you might want to leverage a variety of different marketing plans. Here are just a few: Quarterly or Annual Marketing Plans: These plans highlight the strategies or campaigns you'll take on in a certain period of time. Paid Marketing Plan: This plan could highlight paid strategies, such as native advertising, PPC, or paid social media promotions. Social Media Marketing Plan: This plan could highlight the channels, tactics, and campaigns you intend to accomplish specifically on social media. Content Marketing Plan: This plan could highlight different strategies, tactics,...
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Can B2C Marketing Succeed on LinkedIn?

LinkedIn Marketing
June 23, 2020/by
Can B2C Marketing Succeed on LinkedIn? Almost every morning, I log onto LinkedIn. I like to stay updated about the changes in the marketing industry and congratulate my peers on their recent accomplishments. And, of course, I love looking at the new and exciting marketing campaigns brands roll out. Traditionally, LinkedIn is a place for B2B marketing. The unique user base of professionals and students makes the social networking service a hub for business and networking. Plus, four out of five LinkedIn users hold decision-making positions within their company. Naturally, a professional audience is going to be a great fit for B2B marketing. Recently, however, LinkedIn has become the home of B2C marketing as well. So now, every morning I log into LinkedIn, I'm greeted with a mix of company types advertising their brands and offers. Let's talk about how — and why — B2C marketing can fit into LinkedIn, and other reasons why the channel is usually known as a place for B2B marketing. For instance, I spend a lot of time in marketing groups on LinkedIn and tend to engage with content that relates to marketing topics. Earlier, I came across an ad for a video marketing business: LinkedIn's native and video ads, like the one above, allow advertisers to reach a large target audience by putting it on the news feed of their preferred target segment. An ad like this is something I'd expect to see based on my LinkedIn behavior. Because I...
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8 of the Top Marketing Challenges Faced Globally [New Data]

Marketing Strategy
June 22, 2020/by
8 of the Top Marketing Challenges Faced Globally Every marketer faces different challenges. Although we typically share similar goals, some teams are stuck on hiring top talent, while others are having trouble finding the right technology for their needs. Whatever the case may be, there’s always at least one area that you can stand to improve. In other words, there’s always room to optimize the various components of your strategy and turn your marketing into an even more effective revenue generator. Throughout the past few years, HubSpot has kept up with a number of global marketing challenge trends. We've also polled thousands of marketers on the challenges they face, as well as the tactics they’ve used to meet those challenges head-on. While you might think that global marketing issues have changed drastically in past years due to evolving media platforms and emerging technology, you might be surprised by the trends research has actually shown. In fact, we've found that today's most common global marketing struggles haven't actually changed much in the past few years. In 2019, when we dug into the research of global marketing challenges, such as this survey from Attest, many of the results we found were fairly similar to what we found back in 2017 and 2018, when we surveyed thousands of marketers for our State of Inbound Reports. Between 2017 and 2018, our State of Inbound Reports found that the top five challenges continued to stay the same, with some slight...
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6 Easy Ways to Help Reduce Your Website’s Page Load Time

Site Performance
June 19, 2020/by
6 Easy Ways to Help Reduce Your Website’s Page Load Time The adage “patience is a virtue” doesn’t apply online. Even a one-second delay can drastically reduce pageviews, customer satisfaction and drop conversions. The speed of your site even affects your organic search rankings. So what’s the biggest factor contributing to your page speed? Size. It takes browsers time to download the code that makes up your page. It has to download your HTML, your stylesheets, your scripts and your images. It can take a while to download all that data. As web users expect more engaging site designs, the size of a site’s resource files will continue to grow. Each new feature requires a new script or stylesheet that weighs down your site just a little more. How do you make sure your site is up to speed? There are some great resources for analyzing this. Google’s PageSpeed Insights, HubSpot’s Website Grader, and GTMetrix are some of the most popular. Both services will analyze your site and tell you where you’re falling behind. A little warning: the results can be a bit daunting sometimes, but most fixes are relatively quick and easy. You might not fix everything the speed service recommends, but you should fix enough to make the site experience better for your visitors. Let’s learn how to speed up things. While a few modern content management systems like HubSpot implement speed-enhancing options out-of-the-box, more common systems, like WordPress and Joomla, require a little manual labor to...
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A Beginner’s Guide to SSL: What It is & Why It Makes Your Website More Secure

Daily, Site Performance
June 19, 2020/by
A Beginner's Guide to SSL: What It is & Why It Makes Your Website More Secure Have you ever noticed that some URLs start with "http://", while others start with "https://"? Maybe you noticed that extra "s" when you were browsing websites that require giving over sensitive information, like when you were paying bills online. But where'd that extra "s" come from, and what does it mean? To put it simply, the extra "s" means your connection to that website is secure and encrypted; Any data you enter is safely shared with that website. The technology that powers that little "s" is called SSL, which stands for “Secure Sockets Layer.” As a consumer, you always want to see https:// when visiting any site you trust with your essential information. As a marketer, you'll want to make sure you have an SSL or two for your audience. So let's talk about why SSL is a big deal. What is an SSL Certificate? Let's define an SSL. This definition comes straight from SSL.com: When you land on a page that has a form you filled in and hit "submit" for, the information you entered can be intercepted by a hacker on an unsecure website. This information could be anything from details on a bank transaction to what you enter to register for an offer. In hacker lingo, this "interception" is often referred to as a "man-in-the-middle attack." One of the most common ways an attack happens is this: A hacker places...
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