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Marketing Guest Blogging Guidelines [2020 Edition]

Uncategorized
April 21, 2020/by
Marketing Guest Blogging Guidelines Hi there! Thanks for your interest in writing a guest blog for HubSpot. We're glad you're here. The award-winning HubSpot Blogs have over 7 million monthly visits, and we're always looking for more brilliant contributors to join our ranks. If you have exceptional writing and/or design skills and would like to share your expertise with a large audience of marketers, growth hackers, and business owners, we'd love to hear from you. Please take some time to review this entire page — it should answer any questions you have about what kind of content we're looking for and how the submission process works. Also, we value your pitch, but due to the volume of requests we receive, we cannot respond to all submissions. The Bare Essentials for Every Post We Publish Successful guest contributions are comprehensive, data-driven, and interesting posts that teach our readers something new about the world of business. While we tend to skew toward content about specific marketing tactics, that's not all we talk about. We're also interested in publishing any topic that marketers care about, which includes things like hiring, team development, job hunting, writing, design, math, and larger internet trends, among other things. We also look for a few things in everything we publish: Original concepts, compelling arguments, and high-quality writing. We will not republish anything that's been published elsewhere. Article reflects the writing style/tone of the Marketing Blog. We aim to be casual, yet helpful, and typically we...
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How to Create a Remote Work Schedule that Works for You

Remote Working
April 20, 2020/by
How to Create a Remote Work Schedule that Works for You Whether you're a new or experienced remote employee, you've probably realized how hard it can be to stay on a proper schedule. In the morning, you might wake up drowsy with no commute or morning team chats to put you in the work mindset. Then, when you finally feel like you're on a roll and about to get everything on your to-do list done, you might look out the window, realize how dark it is, and discover that you've worked straight through dinner. At HubSpot, where we have a fleet of over 300 full-time remote employees, we hear about the above scenario a lot. And, we've also seen that remote workers across companies share the same struggles. Although the schedule mishap I noted above is fairly common, you definitely don't want it to become a regular part of your lifestyle. While working late at night occasionally can help you get ahead in your career, doing so regularly can harm your mental health, happiness at work, and your work-life balance. When it comes to remote work, the stakes of poor scheduling impacting you might be even higher. Research shows that remote employees tend to work longer hours than in-office employees. Remote work can also result in feelings of disconnection, isolation, and loneliness. If you've fallen for numerous scheduling traps as a remote marketer, it doesn't mean you're a bad employee or going downhill in your career. A scheduling mishap...
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HubSpot Content Marketers Note Their Favorite Content Marketing Campaigns

Content Planning
April 20, 2020/by
HubSpot Content Marketers Note Their Favorite Content Marketing Campaigns As marketers, we probably all have that one campaign that we can note as a favorite. Stunning campaigns are striking and evoke emotion: Joy, inspiration, liberation, excitement … the list goes on and on. For me, when I think of incredible content marketing campaigns, I turn to fast food. Fast food marketers have a history of successfully building massive interest for new menu items or poking fun at competitors via social media. If enough people participate in the exchanges, a campaign can go viral. Thus, the summer of the chicken sandwich, led by fast food chain Popeye's, takes the cake for my favorite campaign. When Popeyes' chicken sandwich appeared on menus, what ensued was a slew of positive tweets, which escalated into a phenomenon. I love this campaign because the response came as a surprise — such a surprise, in fact, that less than two weeks later, the Popeye's team had to officially declare they'd run out of chicken: Y’all. We love that you love The Sandwich. Unfortunately we’re sold out (for now). pic.twitter.com/Askp7aH5Rr — Popeyes Chicken (@PopeyesChicken) August 27, 2019 … And then, the sandwich returned a mere month later in a 30-second announcement. An announcement that, in true fast-food wars fashion, took a moment to jab at competitor, Chick-fil-A: Y’all…the sandwich is back Sunday, November 3rd. Then every day. 🤯🔥 pic.twitter.com/JDxyCIv0zz — Popeyes Chicken (@PopeyesChicken) October 28, 2019 Viral...
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The Ultimate Guide to Marketing Strategies & How to Improve Your Digital Presence

Marketing Strategy
April 17, 2020/by
The Ultimate Guide to Marketing Strategies & How to Improve Your Digital Presence It's probably safe to assume a major part of your marketing strategy today is digital. Consumers and businesses alike are almost always online and on-the-go — and you want to be able to reach them and observe their behavior where they spend their time. But when you're growing a business, it may seem as though this ever-changing digital landscape can quickly become an overwhelming one. With a number of other responsibilities and tasks that need to get done, how can you also efficiently create, fine-tune, and maintain an agile digital marketing strategy? We've put together this guide about marketing strategies to help you improve your digital presence and grow better. What is a marketing strategy? It's important to understand how a marketing strategy differs from a digital marketing strategy before implementing one or both at your company. A marketing strategy is a plan for reaching a specific marketing-related goal (or goals) in a focused and achievable way. It takes into consideration what your business is currently doing well and what you're missing in regards to the objective you set, so you're more likely to accomplish it. But what's the difference between a marketing strategy and marketing tactics — two terms often used interchangeably? Marketing Strategy vs. Tactics As we mentioned above, a strategy is an achievable and focused set of steps used to help you reach a specific goal. Marketing or not,...
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Attraction Marketing: What It is & How to Master It

Marketing Strategy
April 17, 2020/by
Attraction Marketing: What It is & How to Master It Have you ever come across a post on LinkedIn or Instagram from your favorite celebrity or influencer, explaining how they use their own brand's services or products? You know what I'm talking about. Maybe your favorite Instagram influencer just posted a photo, with the caption explaining how the photo editing packs she curates have helped her become a better photographer. Or, perhaps it's famous chef Gordon Ramsay, with a new YouTube tutorial on how to make Holiday-themed classics — complete with expert tips — which persuades you to Google his corresponding cookbooks for more insight on how to cook like a pro. Regardless of the situation, you can probably recall a recent time in which your attention was drawn to a product because someone you respect has exhibited high praise about it. That person has explained how the product makes their life better or easier. And now, they can't live without it, so why should you? This form of marketing is called attraction marketing. Let's explore what attraction marketing is, and how to do it for your own brand, next. Ultimately, instead of marketing messages taking the angle of "This is why you need this," attraction marketing tends to take the angle of "This is why I need this." It's a technique that gives companies a knowledgeable reputation that...
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How to Align with Your Sales Team, According to HubSpot Marketers

Sales Alignment with Marketing
April 16, 2020/by
How to Align with Your Sales Team, According to HubSpot Marketers Throughout the history of business, marketing and sales teams have repeatedly run into the same problem: misalignment. Although both departments share one overall goal of generating revenue for their company, the strategies and success metrics they use are often quite different. Marketers fuel the lead pipelines and build the brand messaging that enables salespeople to close deals and generate revenue for the company. Despite how linked the two departments are and how much they depend on each other, it can be difficult for salespeople and marketers to have insight into each other's unique challenges -- which can result in disconnection.Although both roles are vital to company growth, it can be difficult for salespeople to keep up with what marketers are doing, and vice versa. These perceived differences often lead to miscommunication, friction, and other issues related to sales and marketing misalignment. According to Demand Gen, misalignment is a common struggle throughout workplaces. Nearly half of B2B employees say that the biggest issues with their company's sales and marketing alignment are poor communication, broken processes, and different department-wide KPIs. If misalignment isn't handled properly, it could cost your company time, money, and customers in the long run. According to a Forrester study, 43% of CEOs say that misalignment has cost them sales. It's not surprising that friction between marketing and sales can cost a company money. If a sales team is unaware of how they can work with...
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Deal Volume and Sales Response Rates Drop to New Lows [COVID-19 Benchmark Data, Updated Weekly]

COVID-19 Benchmark Data
April 16, 2020/by
Deal Volume and Sales Response Rates Drop to New Lows The economic impact of COVID-19 is undeniable. Businesses all across the globe are learning how to adapt to these new circumstances. We’re all learning how to operate in a “new normal” that’s constantly changing. That’s why from now until the end of June, we will be publishing week-over-week trend data for core business metrics including such as website traffic, email send and open rates, sales engagements, close rates and more. We plan to add additional cuts, like channel and region, over time. This week, we’ve added an additional dimension to our dataset -- company size. You can explore all the data we’re publishing here. About the Data These insights are based on aggregated data from over 70,000 HubSpot customers globally. The dataset includes weekly trend data for core business metrics in 2020, focusing on changes occurring during and after March 2020.* Charts in this post are measured against a  benchmark on the y-axis. The benchmark for each metric was calculated by taking weekly averages from January 20, 2020 through March 9, 2020.  The data from HubSpot’s customer base reflects benchmarks for companies that have invested in an online presence and use inbound as a key part of their growth strategy. *The spread of COVID-19 has had a different timeline in different regions, so we are using the World Health Organization's declaration of a global pandemic on March 11, 2020 as our “official” start date. NOTE:...
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