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Why the Sephora x TikTok Incubator Program Is A Smart Partnership

Marketing News
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Why the Sephora x TikTok Incubator Program Is A Smart Partnership Welcome to HubSpot Marketing News! Tap in for campaign deep dives, the latest marketing industry news, and tried-and-true insights from HubSpot’s media team. Earlier this week, Sephora and TikTok announced a new joint venture with agency Digitas: an incubator program to help new beauty brands leverage creator content. As part of the Sephora x TikTok Incubator Program, TikTok creators will teach select brands how to implement creator-focused social media strategies to drive growth and engagement.   The first round of participating brands includes Hyper Skin, Topicals, and Eadem, selected from Sephora’s Accelerate program. These BIPOC-owned brands will learn from popular TikTok creators including Amy Chang (@bondenavant), Nyma Tang (@nymatang), and Rocio Lopez-Jimenez (@rocio.roses). Why the Sephora x TikTok Incubator Program Makes Sense For years, users have acknowledged the persuasive power TikTok has on their purchasing choices through the hashtag #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt, and few spaces have been as influential or lucrative as #BeautyTok. From 2020 to 2021 consumption of beauty-related content on TikTok grew by 1,000%, and beauty brands have benefitted from the surge. Beauty retailer Ulta reported an 18.2% increase in sales from 2021 to 2022 with annual revenue exceeding $10 billion for the first time in the company’s history. During this same time period, Sephra saw a 23% increase in sales earning a record-breaking $82.6 billion in revenue. Sephora acknowledges the success of its stores is dependent on the success of the brands it carries. And the success...

How to Build a Product Ecosystem Buyers Will Want to Be In

Product Marketing
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How to Build a Product Ecosystem Buyers Will Want to Be In A product ecosystem functions in a very similar way to an environmental ecosystem. Like the symbiotic relationship found in nature, a product ecosystem is when products can coexist in a way that’s beneficial for the customer (not to mention, brings in more revenue for the business). In this post, we’ll take a look at how to build successful product ecosystems and why buyers want to be a part of them. Skip to: What a product ecosystem is Importance of product ecoystems How to build a product ecosystem Product ecosystem examples Why is a product ecosystem valuable? The process of building a successful product ecosystem is valuable for businesses for numerous reasons — product ecosystems work ... To solve for all of the needs of your customers — which helps improve brand loyalty and advocacy. To boost revenue by making it easy for customers to expand their library of your products. To prevent your customers from having to invest in other products that are sold by your competitors and other brands. To make the lives of your customers easier by solving for a wide array of challenges within the system they’re already a part of. To create products that support each other and coexist in a way that makes them stronger and more useful for customers. To support the development of your...

The Top 12 Paid & Free Alternatives to Adobe Illustrator of 2023

User Experience
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The Top 12 Paid & Free Alternatives to Adobe Illustrator of 2023 Adobe Illustrator is a popular tool for designing vector graphics, logos, icons, and more. But when you’re a web or graphic designer with a small budget, you probably can’t afford Adobe Illustrator’s steep $239.88/yr pricing and want a cheaper or free alternative. Luckily, there are plenty of top-notch free and low-cost options on the market, some of which offer features unparalleled by Illustrator. In this post, we’re sharing the top twelve alternatives to Adobe Illustrator so you can produce beautiful designs on a budget. If you’re shopping for a program that offers features comparable in quality to Adobe’s product, check out our list of the top free alternatives to Illustrator. Best Free Adobe Illustrator Alternatives 1. Inkscape Image Source Best for: Pro and semi-pro illustrators and web designers Platform: Mac, Windows, Linux One of the most comparable substitutes to Adobe Illustrator, Inkscape has plenty of similar sketching, illustrating, and editing tools, including keys to move and rotate by screen pixels, bitmap tracing, color painting over objects, and edit gradients with handles. You can create complex textures and gradients in Inkscape, too. Unlike some free tools, this tool allows layering, grouping, and locking objects so you can completely customize the look and feel of a project while maintaining a streamlined workflow. Inkscape is a quality product for pro- or semi-pro web designers working within SVG file format. It also offers an open source vector graphics...

SERP Features and the Most Important to Leverage

Google, Google Local SEO, information, SEO, serp
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SERP Features and the Most Important to Leverage Marketers looking to increase their brand visibility should consider how Google crawls their websites. They have to think beyond the product and consider how prospects search for it — and the solution lies with a proper understanding of SEO and SERP features. Since 97% of people learn more about a local company online than anywhere else, marketers must ensure that prospects can find them conveniently — and Google has features to help you do that. In this post, we'll discuss how SERP features can help and the most important ones to leverage. These features appear on search engines like Google and provide a more unique and easy-to-interpret search result than your typical list of website links. And depending on the buyer persona you're trying to reach, your business can leverage Google's features to help attract more traffic to your website. 1. Featured Snippets Best for: Quickly providing the most helpful steps or sentences for a search query. Featured snippets are boxes that appear as the "first" search result, or as many call it, "position zero" before the actual organic results. Google will take the most relevant portion of text from a domain and place it above the link, typically with a featured image presented alongside. It provides a more concise answer to a search query without clicking through. 2. Image Packs Best for: Providing visual search results like images or GIFs without going to Google Images. Image...

Meta Is Ending Its Reels Play Bonus Program: What That Means for Creators

Marketing News
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Meta Is Ending Its Reels Play Bonus Program: What That Means for Creators Welcome to HubSpot Marketing News! Tap in for campaign deep dives, the latest marketing industry news, and tried-and-true insights from HubSpot’s media team. Last week, Meta announced plans to pause Reels Play Bonus payments — a monetization program that paid creators monthly based on the number of views their Reels received. While the program is on pause, Meta will focus on advertising within Reels with the hopes of developing a revenue share model which is currently being tested on Facebook. The program launched in late 2021 to incentivize Instagram and Facebook users to share short-form video content. Since its inception, creators report being offered between $100 to $35,000 to post Reels. Meta will continue honoring Reels bonus payments for those currently participating in the program for the next 30 days. Will the end of this program be a devastating blow to creators on Facebook and Instagram? Not necessarily.       ...

Conversational AI: What It Is and How To Use It

Artificial Intelligence
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Conversational AI: What It Is and How To Use It ChatGPT has skyrocketed in popularity — it grew to 1M users in just five days. ChatGPT is a conversational AI, and its celebrity comes at a time when many businesses are adopting similar time-saving tools into their marketing processes. This post will go over everything you need to know about conversational AI, including: What is conversational AI? Conversational AI vs. Chatbots How does conversational AI work? Examples of Conversational AI Benefits of Conversational AI Challenges of Conversational AI Conversational AI Statistics At its core, it applies artificial intelligence and machine learning. Common examples of conversational AI are virtual assistants and chatbots. Conversational AI vs. Chatbots Conversational AI and chatbots are often discussed together, so knowing how they relate is important. Chatbots are an application of conversational AI, but not all chatbots use conversational AI. Most chatbots are rule-based, where they’re preprogrammed with specific canned responses and scripts and can’t handle more complex conversations. AI chatbots can handle multiple types of conversations and topics and use data to give the most accurate response. How does conversational AI work? Conversational AI exists through machine learning, natural language processing (NLP), and natural language generation (NLG). Machine learning is how a conversational AI tool gets its intelligence. It begins with human input, where someone feeds a machine a unique data set to learn from. It studies the data,...

30 Best Bots for Marketers in 2023

Chatbots
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30 Best Bots for Marketers in 2023 A marketer's job can feel never-ending, especially when you have multiple daily tasks and campaigns to manage independently. Whether you have to guide a team, communicate with customers, or run a campaign — your to-do list can be exhausting. Fortunately, there's a way to automate some of your tasks — bots! Here's a list of bot software you can use to automate parts of the marketing process, so you can spend less time on repetitive tasks and more time running your business. Best Facebook Messenger Chatbots Here are the best chatbots available for Facebook messenger. 1. Boletia Boletia is a customer support tool that allows event planners to streamline their businesses. With Boletia, you can automate your ticket sales and make the purchasing process effortless for your customers. The Facebook integration lets you buy and sell event tickets through Facebook Messenger. Platforms: Messenger Functions: Customer Support Price: Free Language: Spanish Image source 2. BrighterMonday Uganda BrighterMonday is an online job search tool that helps jobseekers in Uganda find relevant local employment opportunities. The BrighterMonday Messenger integration allows you to speed up your job search by asking the BrighterMonday chatbot on Messenger. Platforms: Messenger Functions: HR Price: Free Language: English Image source 3. Dashbot.io Dashbot.io is a bot analytics platform that helps bot developers increase user engagement. Dashbot.io gathers information about your bot to help you create better, more discoverable bots. The Dashbot.io chatbot is a conversational bot directory that allows you...