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The Content Collaboration Framework That Earned HubSpot 6 Million Views

Content Strategy
February 4, 2025/by
The Content Collaboration Framework That Earned HubSpot 6 Million Views It wasn't too long ago that we weren’t collaborating much across Marketing. If I published a blog post on “SEO strategy”, it became a happy coincidence if the YouTube team had covered anything similar that I could use in my post. Teams just weren't creating content cohesively across different verticals. Let’s be honest: We'd grown too large. On the Blog team, this also meant we had limited non-organic channels to use to get our posts in front of the right audiences. Today, I'm going to pull back the curtain (sorry, I just saw Wicked) on how HubSpot's Blog team reimagined our approach to content — transforming what used to be a siloed blog strategy into a dynamic, multi-channel storytelling machine. (Psst: Curious what else is happening in the world of blogging? Check out our brand-new 2025 State of Blogging report with data from 500+ marketers — the first time we've ever run such a comprehensive audit on what's happening across the blogging landscape.) Why We Launched Our Media Narratives Program When we first started our Original Research program in 2017, something became immediately clear: our blog readers are absolutely obsessed with data. Like, Taylor-Swift-friendship-bracelets-level obsessed. In our first full year, we drove over 1.4 million views through original research. Turns out, people love data — regardless of platform. The challenge? Quality research is pricey and time-consuming. We needed a more strategic approach to not just create research, but...
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Chubbies Co-founder Warns: Don’t Get Hooked on the Performance Marketing Drug

Uncategorized
February 4, 2025/by
Chubbies Co-founder Warns: Don’t Get Hooked on the Performance Marketing Drug Any time an interviewee makes me ask my boss, “Can we say that in a newsletter?” you know it’s gonna be a good day. Today, we’ve got spicy takes and spicy language from a master of marketing who made his fortune selling spicy shorts. Lesson 1: Don’t get hooked on the performance marketing drug. Preston Rutherford openly admits that he made every mistake in the book when co-founding the shorts company Chubbies. So I kick off our chat by copping a line from Sheryl Crow: “What’s your favorite mistake?” “Favorite mista-a-ake.” He sings, then laughs. “Favorite. Obviously a euphemism for gut-wrenching and sleep-depriving mistake. But, just to honor Sheryl…” He thinks a moment: “Getting hooked on the drug that is short-term performance marketing — and in particular return on ad spend (or ROAS), where effectively all of our marketing investments were evaluated on that basis.” My eyebrow goes up. Most marketing leaders want to see a measurable, proven return, right? How else do you know what’s working? Rutherford says that exact sentiment is why he (and so many marketers) over-rotated toward performance marketing. That drive to make all of your marketing efforts systematic, measurable, and scalable. “ We're so used to a certain feedback loop on the data side, right? If I'm spending dollars, I'm only measuring success by who clicked on my ad and purchased in a 24-hour period.” But that feedback loop incentivizes marketing efforts that produce...
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Jaguar’s Rebrand: Bold Move or Costly Mistake?

Branding
February 1, 2025/by
Jaguar's Rebrand: Bold Move or Costly Mistake? Welcome to Creator Columns, where we bring expert HubSpot Creator voices to the Blogs that inspire and help you grow better. Jaguar’s recent rebrand has people talking, but not in the way most marketers hope for. Gone are the classic cues of British elegance. In their place is minimalism and “modernist exuberance.” Their rebrand campaigns involve cryptic videos, high-fashion models, and a new mantra: “Copy nothing. Delete ordinary.” Reactions have been mixed. Marketing legend Mark Ritson called it “f---ing lunacy,” while Rory Sutherland is reserving judgment, saying, “It’s too early to call.” So, what’s Jaguar playing at? What has Jaguar done? The historic British car manufacturer has gone for a new look. The leaping cat has been removed from the logo. In its place is a minimalist wordmark that now reads “JaGUar.” Yes… with that random capitalization. Jaguar launched this rebrand by wiping their social media profiles clean and replacing their branding with car-free visuals. This prompted Elon Musk to ask, “Do you sell cars?”. But the change is part of a broader strategy. Jaguar’s sales have been falling, and there’s a real fear that the brand can’t rely on its existing customer base. To cope, Jaguar is repositioning as a £100k+ luxury EV brand to rival Porsche and Bentley. Rather than targeting an older generation who adore its British roots, Jaguar plans to target “cash-rich, time-poor” millennials and Gen Z. But will it work? The Tropicana Effect Most marketers can recount a long...
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HubSpot’s 2025 State of Blogging Report [Data from 500+ Marketers]

Blogging
January 27, 2025/by
HubSpot's 2025 State of Blogging Report Full disclosure, I think my team and I are a little embarrassed. Believe it or not, blogging is kind of our main thing here at The HubSpot BLOG — so the fact that it‘s taken over a decade for us to put together our first-ever report on the state of blogging isn’t the best look. But hey! As that Chinese proverb says, “The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is right now.” That's why we surveyed over 500 marketers across various industries and company scales to get a pulse on the current state and future fate of blogging. We covered all of the big bases, including: Do companies still publish blog content? Why do companies blog? What kind of content are companies publishing? Where does blog traffic come from? How is AI transforming the practice? How are blogs adjusting in the era of E-E-A-T? Where is blogging headed? So much more! Check it out! Yeah! Do companies still publish blog content? Short answer? Yeah, they do — for good reason. Our survey indicates that 65% of marketers are employed by companies that maintain blogs, and they generally post pretty diligently. Our research found that: 22% of businesses that maintain blogs publish content on a daily basis. 37% publish two to three times per week. 30% publish weekly. ...
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How Much Does a Super Bowl Ad Cost [& Does It Get ROI]? A Data-Backed Deep Dive

Advertising
January 27, 2025/by
How Much Does a Super Bowl Ad Cost ? A Data-Backed Deep Dive Whether you’re a diehard Super Bowl fan or, like me, prefer watching superb owls, you gotta admit: Super Bowl commercials are pretty great. They’re also pretty expensive. And still, Fox, which holds the rights to Super Bowl LIX, easily sold all the ad spots for the big game on February 9, 2025. Let’s take a look at what goes into the most expensive TV ads in the world, how much they’ve cost throughout the history of the big game, and what brands are really getting out of them. Table of Contents How much does a Super Bowl ad cost? How Super Bowl Ad Prices Have Changed Over Time Is a Super Bowl ad worth the cost? How much does a Super Bowl ad cost? It’s a little tricky to put a number to the cost of an average, non-Super Bowl TV ad, since the numbers can vary from a couple hundred thousand to several million dollars. But let’s give this question some context: In 2024 (Kansas City Chiefs 25 - San Francisco 49ers 22), U.S. and Canadian advertisers spent an estimated $69 billion on TV advertising. That’s the GDP of Costa Rica. The top 10 TV advertisers in the U.S. — we’re talking brands like Geico, Burger King, and T-Mobile — spent an average of nearly $7.5 million every...
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How Content Audits Help The HubSpot Blog Age Backwards — A Peek Into Our Process

Content Strategy, SEO
January 26, 2025/by
How Content Audits Help The HubSpot Blog Age Backwards — A Peek Into Our Process In 2023, my team and I began working on perhaps one of the most ambitious content audits ever conducted on the HubSpot Blog. We’ve run content audits in the past — but not like this. We ran the audit in three phases: Phase 1 addressed our oldest content. Phase 2 evaluated our lowest-performing content. Phase 3 assessed the value of our topic clusters. When it was all said and done, we audited over 10,000 blog post URLs and over 450 topic clusters. In this post, I’m going to focus on phase one of our audit. I’ll walk you through how we audited our oldest content and how we took action. Plus, I’ll share the results we found. But first, let me give you some background on why we decided to run an audit of this magnitude. Why We Audited It all started in early 2023. At the time, my team was called the Historical Optimization team and we sat at the intersection of HubSpot’s SEO and Blog teams. We were responsible for updating and optimizing our existing blog posts and finding growth opportunities within our library. (We’ve since evolved into what is now the EN Blog Strategy team.) In case you’re new here, the HubSpot Blog is HUGE. For context, the blog was home to 13,822 pages in February of 2023, the month we began our audit. While...
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Embark on Your SEO Treasure Hunt With Keyword Mapping

Keyword Research
January 26, 2025/by
Embark on Your SEO Treasure Hunt With Keyword Mapping Who’s up for a treasure hunt? No, we’re not after gold doubloons, but something equally valuable: top rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs). Keyword mapping will show us where X marks the spot. Your site’s content is the key to climbing SERPs and reaching your users where they are. An important element for effective content is assigning the right keywords. A keyword map helps you do just that. And what fun would a treasure hunt be without friends? To help chart our course through keyword mapping, I sought insights from Nicole MacLean, head of marketing and sales at Compose.ly. Table of Contents What is keyword mapping anyway? The Importance of Keyword Mapping: SEO and Beyond How to Map Keywords: A Guide to Start Your Keyword Mapping Journey What is keyword mapping anyway? “At its core, keyword mapping is the process of assigning specific target keywords to the most relevant pages on your site so that your content meets searchers’ needs throughout the funnel,” said MacLean. “Whether the intent behind a search is informational (to learn something) or transactional (to take action), keyword mapping makes sure your pages are positioned to rank, convert, and answer the users’ needs. Think of it as the roadmap connecting user intent to your site’s content.” Keywords help optimize your site for search engines. The right keywords help your users...
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Gen Z is turning this CEO’s business model upside down

Uncategorized
January 23, 2025/by
Gen Z is turning this CEO's business model upside down "This whole entire generation is about to turn all of our business models on its head." I'm a consumer who falls somewhere between baby millennial and geriatric Gen Zer, and after hearing Hootsuite CEO Irina Novoselsky talk about my generation — she gets it. I’m sure her being a millennial, thus closer to Gen Z than the average CEO, helps her keep in step with younger consumers, but I also think how intentional she is as a marketer sets her apart. She's even gone as far as to speak with 500 Gen Zers to understand their consumer and social media habits.   "What pushed me to do that is I came across the stat that over 65% of all business decision-makers are going to be Gen Zers or millennials starting next year," Novoselsky says. "The fun fact is that 2024 was already the first year that there are more Gen Zers in the workplace than boomers." Here's what Novoselsky discovered: 1. Gen Z is a generation of contradictions. "They grew up with a phone in their pocket but don't want it to talk, they don't want it to be sold to, and they don't want our push model today," she explains. And she's right. My inbox is full, and I don't like companies playing on my phone, so I'd rather find my next favorite lip liner-gloss-combo on my own terms before giving any brand my money. Novoselsky says...
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