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5 Remote Work Myths to Leave Behind in 2020

Office Culture
March 11, 2020/by
5 Remote Work Myths to Leave Behind in 2020 When you Google image search remote work, you'll find photos that tell fascinating stories about the work style. For example, you might find a relaxing image of a woman working with her laptop on the beach -- without a care that sand or water could destroy her hard drive. Or, you might discover a scene where a man logs into a team video chat after a treacherous climb to the top of a mountain. As you get deeper into the results, the visual narrative gets more mystifying. You might even find a scene from sci-fi drama where a remote employee ventures to the moon just to avoid his colleagues. But, as HubSpot Marketing VP Kieran Flanagan likes to point out in his tweets -- this is not the reality of remote work: While some stock image companies might like to assume that all remote employees are introverts who work antisocially from the Moon, this is far from the truth. And although more traditional employers might worry that remote employees aren't as productive as their in-office counterparts, this work style is being implemented more heavily around the world because it provides so many benefits to employees and companies. Not only do remote workers save companies money, but remote work opportunities increase job retention and allow employers to globally hire diverse or innovative employees that they couldn't have otherwise due to location limitations. Not to...
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How To Promote Your Business

Brand Awareness
March 11, 2020/by
How To Promote Your Business Okay, okay, I'll admit it — to waste time, I start a Google search query and let the suggestions do the rest, hoping to fall into a rabbit hole of interesting facts. For instance, today's lucky search query was "How many businesses", and I ended up going with "...does Shaq own" (let's just say, I was shocked to see the result.) Here's what I figured out: Shaquille O'Neal is the joint owner of over 150 Five Guys restaurants, 17 Auntie Annie's Pretzels restaurants, over 100 car washes, 40 fitness centers, a mall, a movie theater, and a few Vegas nightclubs. With over 30 million businesses just in the United States (and 300 owned by Shaq alone), it's easy to slip into panic mode if you work for a small start-up. How are you supposed to attract customers when there's so much competition? You might feel like you're constantly throwing darts at the wall and seeing what sticks in the realm of business promotion. Or, perhaps you've hit a plateau with traffic and you're wondering how you can boost lead generation. Let's talk about how to promote your business. Regardless of the motivation, we've provided some tools and tips to help you reach new customers and expand brand awareness. In the next section, we're going to provide some tips you can use to promote your business. 1. Craft a brand image to stick out among the crowd. Seth Godin once said, "A brand is...
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How to Promote Your Local Business

local marketing
March 11, 2020/by
How to Promote Your Local Business Last year, I decided that I wanted to invest in personal training. As a lifelong sedentary person, I realized that I didn't know how to start, so I went to the almighty Google machine. I typed in "personal trainers Orange County," looked at the top results, and examined the reviews. Before scheduling any consultations, I narrowed down the options based on their fitness philosophy (seen on their website) and the most highly rated. When searching for a local business, this approach and process isn't unique. In fact, 90% of consumers used the internet to find a local business in the last year. That's why, as marketers, our businesses have to show up when people are searching for local companies online. Below, let's review the top strategies to promote your business locally. 1. Advertise with local audience targeting. Online advertising is one of the main ways to show up in local searches. In fact, you should use both social media and search engine advertising to promote your business locally. With local advertising, you'll have to set up location targeting and write copy that uses specific language targeted to your local audience. And with marketing tools like HubSpot, you can use local audience targeting directly in your software. With local audience targeting, you can choose a specific location to show your ad. This means using zip codes or geographic regions. However, local audience targeting isn't just about selecting a certain location. It's also about...
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Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram? Which Platform(s) You Should Be On

Integrated Marketing
March 9, 2020/by
Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram? Which Platform(s) You Should Be On When you begin implementing a social media strategy for your business, one of the first questions you'll ask yourself is this one -- Should my business be on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram? Those three social media sites offer considerable opportunities to connect and engage with a network, increase brand awareness, and drive traffic to your site. But they're also incredibly different in terms of purpose. Ultimately, Facebook's purpose is to connect people with their friends and family. People use Facebook to share photos, videos, and general updates on their lives. Twitter, on the other hand, is used to share ideas, real-time information, and trending news. While people may also use Twitter to connect with friends and family, they largely use it for a bigger purpose -- to connect to the wider world as a whole, and hear what's happening (in 140 characters or less). And then, Instagram is used to share photos and videos. People mainly use this app to post their "highlight reel" and follow influencers. This is where people become a part of a social media community. Of course, this still begs the question -- where does your business fit into all this? To explore the pros and cons of Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, we've created a comprehensive breakdown of the three platforms. Keep reading to figure out which platform is a better business investment for your company. Twitter vs Facebook vs Instagram...
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Gen Z is Entering The Workforce: 30 Stats Marketing Managers Need to Know

Office Culture
March 9, 2020/by
Gen Z is Entering The Workforce: 30 Stats Marketing Managers Need to Know It's hard to believe Gen Z is already old enough to start working. It seems like just yesterday that business experts were writing about how my own generation -- millennials -- was about to completely upend the workforce. As I've watched journalists, researchers, and general social media users write about millennials and now Gen Z, I've found that they often say similar things. For example, although researchers have identified that each generation was more tech-savvy and career motivated than the last, we still hear myths saying that both age groups are "entitled and less motivated to earn money.' At this point, millennials have generally disproved the worst stereotypes related to our (lack of) ambition by becoming more educated than some generations before us, growing more frugal about our finances, and having higher expectations for our customer experiences. Gen Z is falling within a similar cycle of critique as they prepare to enter the workforce. Just like with millennials, internet chatter argues that they're "spoiled," "dependent on their parents," and "terrible with money." As a future Gen Z manager or colleague, it's important for you to separate myth from reality. If you've heard some of the more negative the rumors about Gen Z, you might be worried that their attitudes around work will hinder your company in the future. However, taking the time to research the generation will help you realize that -- like most generational...
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25 of the Best Form Builder Tools for 2020

Forms
March 9, 2020/by
25 of the Best Form Builder Tools for 2020 You’ve heard it before -- forms are the gold standard when it comes to capturing leads, learning about industry trends, doing market research, and even just getting some customer feedback. It might be one of the older methods in the book, but old is gold. Before we dive into the best form builder tools for 2020, though, let’s talk about what a form builder exactly is. With no shortage of options, the best form builder apps tend to be quite similar and user-friendly. Whether you want to make a contact form, a sign-up form, or a survey, form tools are the easiest way to create web forms, with drag and drop questions, multiple form fields, and different color and structure options. Once your responses start coming in, most forms will also import each entry into a spreadsheet or centralized database and send you notifications when people complete them. Regardless of the form builder you choose, there are a few key steps you'll want to follow when creating a form for the purpose of lead generation: 1. Identify goals of the form. Are you aiming to generate sales leads, or are you merely planning to add contacts to your email list. Once you identify what you're looking for from your prospects, you'll be able to determine what information you'll need to get from them on the form. 2. Pick a form builder tool. Many online form builders are...
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5 Ways 5G Will Impact Marketers

Marketing Trends
March 5, 2020/by
5 Ways 5G Will Impact Marketers By the end of 2019, the four biggest U.S. cellular carriers rolled out 5G across the country. With the rollout of this new high-speed network comes a number of news articles, commercials, and promotional content explaining how 5G will dramatically change the world. Despite all the 5G hype, you might still be asking yourself, "What the heck is 5G and how will it impact my business?" What makes 5G so revolutionary? While wireless networks of the past could only really power mobile devices up to the size of a tablet, 5G will be strong enough and fast enough to smoothly power computers, televisions, and even smart devices. This networking power has led tech bloggers to suggest that 5G will compete with -- or potentially limit the need for -- the Wi-Fi we currently use today. At this point, you might still be asking, "If 5G is wireless internet and Wi-Fi is wireless internet, what's the difference?" The Difference Between 5G and Wi-Fi Wireless internet, Wi-Fi is unlicensed internet while 5G is a licensed cellular network. While you pay internet providers like Comcast to amplify your home's Wi-Fi signal so that it's useable, you'll pay cellular providers -- such as AT&T -- for 5G, which relies on signals from cell towers. When it comes to infrastructure, 5G signals will come from one main 5G tower in a centralized location, such as the middle of a city. Then, that signal will be amplified...
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6 Brands That Used Social Media to Boost Their Subscriber List

Marketing Strategy
March 5, 2020/by
6 Brands That Used Social Media to Boost Their Subscriber List More than likely, you've heard the debate on whether it's more worthwhile to invest in email marketing, or social media marketing, to turn leads into customers. Of course, ultimately, the most effective approach to marketing would be to integrate both social media and email marketing, so you can make the most of your email subscribers as well as social media followers. With intense competition in the digital marketplace, it isn't enough to follow the email marketing tips and simply include social media links in the emails — on the other hand, it also isn't enough to create a newsletter CTA in your Instagram profile. To get the most out of social media and email marketing, you'll want to fully integrate the two. Of course, that's easier said than done. Here, we're going to explore six brands that correctly integrated social media and email marketing to increase conversions for both. 1. Typo Typo, an Australian ecommerce company, sent this attention-grabbing email, which promoted their 40% off sitewide sale for Christmas. Additionally, if a user clicked on their Facebook link, they'd see the same promotion. Ultimately, the brand harnessed the power of repetition to bring higher conversions. 2. McDonald's A dedicated email that asks subscribers to follow the brand on social media goes a long way for enhancing subscriber engagement and garnering more social media followers. For instance, take a look at this email...
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Media Planning: The Ultimate Guide

Media Planning
March 5, 2020/by
Media Planning: The Ultimate Guide For any business to be successful today — no matter the type, size, or industry — it must create and share media content (images, videos, infographics, social media posts, podcasts, etc.) with its target audience members. This is a large part of how you boost brand awareness, engagements, conversions, and revenue (among other things) for your business. Not to mention, media content helps you stand out from competitors and other businesses. Here's the issue: The sheer amount of media content most businesses produce and share on a regular basis to stay relevant among audience members can become confusing to keep track of, plan, organize, distribute, and analyze for them. The best way to combat these issues is through media planning. Based on this definition, it’s clear media planning has many moving parts — this is why the process can be difficult to get right. By working through the media planning steps (which we’ll cover below) as well as implementing templates (we’ll discuss those shortly, too), you’ll keep any media planning challenges at bay. But first, in case you need further convincing media planning is a worthwhile investment, let’s cover some of the specific benefits of the process. Benefits of Media Planning Media planning helps you with different parts of content creation and distribution including (but not limited to): Getting to know your target audience on a deeper level so you can effectively reach them through your media content Deciding which...
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How 6 Social Media Networks Have Changed in the Last Decade

Marketing Trends
March 3, 2020/by
How 6 Social Media Networks Have Changed in the Last Decade At the beginning of 2020, millions of social media users took part in a #TenYearChallenge which encouraged them to post one photo of themselves from ten years ago up against a photo of themselves today. But while the #TenYearChallenge showed us how much our friends have changed, have you ever wondered how much your favorite brands have changed? As a social media user, looking back to see how the platforms you've used every day have changed can feel fun and nostalgic. As a marketer, looking at the evolution of these platforms can also give you insight into how the overall social media industry and internet trends have matured and how they might continue to pivot in the future. In this blog post, we're going to mark the beginning of a new decade by venturing back in time to 2010 and showing you ten-year comparisons of six of the oldest and most popular social media platforms. While this post might be a blast from the past, it will also show you just how much the way we connect and share online has changed, and give you hints about where it might go next. 6 Social Media Platforms in 2010 vs. 2020 Facebook 2010 At the dawn of the 2010s, Facebook positioned itself as the next big social media platform following the MySpace era. The network, which originally targeted college students, had already reached millions of users in young...
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