My Blog My Blog

Your CMS Is NSFW

Content Management System
May 6, 2020/by
Your CMS Is NSFW Marketers have a secret -- we hate our CMSes. Research from HubSpot found that the vast majority of marketers are unhappy with their CMS, with an NPS of -65. No, that’s not a typo. Let that sink in -- negative 65. What’s going on? When businesses are just starting out, website management isn’t prohibitively difficult. CMSes designed for very small businesses allow marketers to own their company’s online experience without a developer or IT team’s help. But as businesses grow, our needs -- and our organizations -- change. As we expand into new markets, launch new products, and introduce new brands, new challenges emerge. Marketing leaders must coordinate with developers and IT teams to manage their website’s ecosystem, while ensuring frontline teams can make content updates and build pages. Layered on top of these considerations are a plethora of new technical requirements: We need to connect our website with an ever-growing array of tools and technologies, via integrations, plugins, and custom development. We need to use roles, permissions, and content partitioning to create clean workspaces for our teams as they become more specialized. We need to ensure that site performance does not degrade as more visitors and more content expand our website’s footprint. We need to personalize a rich end-to-end online experience for all of our website visitors, with capabilities like membership logins for customers, contextual content for leads, and ungated content for customers. We need to be confident in...
Read Full Story

19 SEO Tips Straight From the Mouths of HubSpot’s SEO Team

SEO Strategy
May 5, 2020/by
19 SEO Tips Straight From the Mouths of HubSpot's SEO Team Throughout all of 2017, HubSpot experienced something that had never happened before -- our blog's monthly traffic flattened. Even worse, it started to decline. So after months of stressing over the mysterious cause of our blog's traffic plateau, we decided to sit down, chug a bunch of coffee, and find the culprit. What we discovered is that our editorial strategy of brainstorming topics and relying on our intuition to determine our audience's content preferences didn't suffice anymore. Coupled with almost every social media platforms' unwillingness to direct users off their website and the ever-growing mountain of emails piling up in people's inboxes, we decided to pivot and focus our energies on the channel that has consistently generated the majority of our blog's traffic for its entire existence -- organic search. Today, years after we adjusted our organic strategy, we've exceeded the majority of our monthly traffic goals and even broke some monthly traffic records. Needless to say, we're thrilled (and relieved) that our organic strategy fueled our traffic boost and shattered the great traffic plateau of 2017 -- and we'd love to share the essential SEO tips that helped us devise this strategy. 1. Spend as much time on the SERPs as you do in tools. Even though an algorithm dictates the rankings of a search engine's results page (SERPs), the algorithm is meant to reward web publishers that craft the best content on the internet. That's...
Read Full Story

19 Lead Nurturing Email Examples You’ll Want to Steal

Uncategorized
May 5, 2020/by
19 Lead Nurturing Email Examples You'll Want to Steal You've done it. You provided valuable content to your readers and they've converted into leads. Now, it's time to nurture these leads into opportunities for your sales team. Trouble is, cutting through the inbox clutter isn't an easy feat. And many of these folks just aren't ready to buy yet. That's where lead nurturing comes in: It's a way to stay connected to the leads you collect that aren't ready to buy from you yet, and build up trust until they are ready. If you want to learn more about lead nurturing in general, you can check out this guide. But for the sake of this post, we're going to dive deep into one of the best channels for carrying out your lead nurturing efforts: email. To help you better understand how to pair the two concepts, check out the lead nurturing email examples below. From ecommerce to product marketing, there's something for everyone — no matter what industry you operate in.  Pro tip: Use the following anchor links to jump to examples within the industries that interest you most: Ecommerce, B2B, Retail, Travel, Food & Beverage, Services, Product Marketing. 19 Lead Nurturing Email Examples to Inspire Your Strategy Here are the top lead nurturing examples that you can refer to and review while developing your emails.  Ecommerce Lead Nurturing Email Examples 1. Framebridge Not all lead nurturing emails need to be strictly promotional. Engagement will lead to sales,...
Read Full Story

How to Run LinkedIn Ad Campaigns: A Beginner’s Guide

LinkedIn Advertising
May 4, 2020/by
How to Run LinkedIn Ad Campaigns: A Beginner's Guide LinkedIn is a highly valuable tool to network with like-minded professionals. But here's something we don't talk about as much as we should: LinkedIn is also a highly useful inbound marketing platform. It might seem a little bit intimidating. You have enough on your plate … do you really need to figure out another way to create targeted content? Actually, yes. You have more power at your disposal with LinkedIn than you might realize. That's because LinkedIn has a powerful ads platform. If you're already using pay-per-click (PPC) techniques to power your presence on Facebook, Twitter, or Google, consider yourself lucky — you can add LinkedIn to that list, too. This is especially easy to do if you're using the HubSpot ads tool. But if you're new to LinkedIn ads, fear not — we've put together a step-by-step guide to setting up your first LinkedIn ad campaign. Bookmark this post and refer to it when you're ready to get started.   Advertising on LinkedIn is a two-step process: 1) setting up your LinkedIn campaign, and 2) creating your LinkedIn ad(s). In this section, we walk through how to set up a campaign and build your ad(s) — plus some best practices and tips for each. 1. Create your LinkedIn ad campaign. Your LinkedIn advertising campaigns will live on a platform separate from the LinkedIn you see every day — the LinkedIn Marketing Solutions platform. Visit this page...
Read Full Story

6 Instagram Managers Share Their Trade Secrets

Instagram Marketing
May 4, 2020/by
6 Instagram Managers Share Their Trade Secrets The first thing I do when I wake up is turn off the alarm on my phone and then scroll through Instagram. While I wish I was kidding, I'm definitely not. As a consumer, Instagram is one of my favorite platforms. I get to see fun and inspiring content that's also helpful and entertaining. However, as a marketer, nailing Instagram isn't as easy as waking up and being inspired. That's why we talked to six Instagram managers to give us their best tips and tricks on managing an Instagram account. Below, let's dive into trade secrets that Instagram managers swear by. Instagram Managers Share Their Top Tips and Tricks 1. Focus on engagement. Instagram's main value proposition is that the platform brings people and things they love together. That's why engagement is a top metric for this platform. According to Vana Korrapati, a digital marketing strategist and social media manager, "I always try to engage my audience by including some of them in my posts. This brings my audience together for a meaningful conversation." I love this tip because Korrapati uses a specific tactic for a specific goal. This means that she's created a SMART goal — one that's specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. You're more likely to attain goals with those qualities. For example, your goal on Instagram can't just be to raise awareness. You need to know what tactics you're going to use and how you're going to...
Read Full Story

How to Improve Your Corporate Marketing Strategies [+ Examples]

Marketing Strategy
May 1, 2020/by
How to Improve Your Corporate Marketing Strategies I know I've talked about this before (if you've read some of my other blog posts, you might know this already), but I love Taco Bell's marketing. The quick-wit on Twitter, the upheaval in their branding a few years ago … I love it all. The main reason I admire their corporate marketing is because it has a real brand story that I can relate to as a customer. As a marketer, we should all strive to achieve that result from our messaging. That's why we're going to discuss corporate marketing today. Below, let's review what corporate marketing is and how to improve your strategy. When corporate marketing is working correctly, it'll keep the flywheel spinning. It should attract new customers, while engaging leads, and delighting current customers. Usually, the corporate marketing team will decide what type of messaging tactics to use to appeal to your target audience. Those tactics could include a corporate newsletter, blog, email campaign, ad, radio spot, direct mail campaign, or even just your social media channels. Ultimately, the main goal of corporate marketing is to improve your brand image, while strengthening relationships with your customers so they become brand advocates. To be successful, your messaging should clearly communicate your unique value proposition. For example, brands like Tesla have a strong, recognizable brand that differentiates the company from its competitors. Now that we know more about corporate marketing, let's dive into eight tactics you can use...
Read Full Story

25 Live Video Stats Marketers Need to Know in 2020

Video Marketing
May 1, 2020/by
25 Live Video Stats Marketers Need to Know in 2020 In the past year or so, live video has quickly become one of the most popular types of online content, especially on social media. Not only is Facebook Live thriving, with one in five videos being live streams, but other major platforms like Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and -- most recently -- LinkedIn, have embraced similar features. Aside from the older social media platforms allowing live streams, some emerging platforms, like Twitch.tv, now cater specifically to live stream viewers. While people find live streams entertaining because they offer them a chance to see raw, authentic footage, view behind-the-scenes video from their favorite influencers, or interact in live Q&As with industry experts, brands also find this content beneficial for boosting awareness. For example, many companies have sponsored or hosted the live Q&As I noted above. Alternatively, they've also sponsored live product tutorials from social media influencers. Aside from smaller Q&As and tutorials, some brands have even created entire virtual events that rely on live streams. When it comes to live video, there are many creative opportunities that could allow brands to reach and interact with their audiences. But, because this tactic is still somewhat new, many companies might not know where to start when brainstorming live content. Like with any new trend, brands might also wonder, "Is streaming live video worth my time, or is this strategy just built on hype?" To give you a bird's eye view of the...
Read Full Story

How to Drive Traffic with Content Amplification

Content Distribution
May 1, 2020/by
How to Drive Traffic with Content Amplification 61% of marketers say that generating leads and traffic is their biggest challenge. It can be frustrating — when you post that amazing blog that took hours, or finally finish a product page, you can't wait to see the engagement you earn from your audience. And then … you don't get much. We've all been there, and the feeling of not connecting to your customers isn't great. So, what do you do when you create content you know your audience wants to see, but they aren't finding it? How do you raise traffic organically? The answer may be a method that you're most likely already using, but with a more expansive lens — content amplification. If you've shared a blog post on social media, or have done an ad campaign for your new product launch, then you're already familiar with content amplification. The strategy is used to raise traffic to your content. But how does content amplification work? Here, we're going to discuss everything you need to know. How to Use Content Amplification Before we get into the full details of content amplification, let's put some description to the phrase. Content amplification describes the method for using online platforms or channels to promote content. Marketers can use content amplification to boost ROI and brand awareness. Amplifying content is especially useful if one of your current goals is to boost the session times on your website or lower the bounce rate. When...
Read Full Story

50 Visual Content Marketing Statistics You Should Know in 2020

Visual Content
April 30, 2020/by
50 Visual Content Marketing Statistics You Should Know in 2020 At the end of every year, we like to read through some of the major reports on inbound marketing, content marketing, social media, and online behavior. It's amazing how fast things can change in just one or two years, and this year has a breadth of surprising statistics to reflect on. This year, we've seen the continued importance of visual content emphasized by the changes that occurred across almost every major social network, including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. At the same time, videos continued to grow as powerful tools for brands looking to communicate more easily with their readers, and virtual reality (VR) is finding its place as a marketing tool in numerous businesses.  To help you keep pace with these trends, let's take a look at some visual content marketing statistics that demonstrate the impact visual content has on reach, engagement, and sales. You can jump to the following categories to see statistics related to that category: General Visual Content Stats Video Marketing Stats Emerging Visual Marketing Stats Infographic Stats Social Media Stats 50 Visual Content Marketing Statistics You Should Know General Visual Content Statistics 70% of companies invest in content marketing, which could include visual marketing strategies. (HubSpot) The primary form of media used in content marketing is video. (HubSpot) One fourth of marketers are investing in content marketing related to product promotions while just over 20% of investing in...
Read Full Story