Monthly Archives: May 2023

 

 

Many marketers don’t take advantage of competitor audits, so we have to ask: When was the last time you performed a competitor analysis for your brand? If it’s been a while or you aren’t sure how to do a competitor analysis, we can help you through the process.

Too often, a competitor analysis is reserved for the early days of a company or the launch of a new product. But knowing how your competitors are positioning their products is key to ensuring that your content remains relevant.

In this post, you’ll learn the benefits of revisiting your competitor analysis, as well as tips to get it right.

Table of Contents

• What is a competitor analysis?
• Benefits of Competitor Analysis
• How to Conduct a Competitive Analysis
• Competitive Analysis Template
• Competitive Analysis Example

Benefits of Competitor Analysis

The first and most obvious benefit of a competitor analysis is understanding your position in the market. You can understand where your peers are excelling whether or not you are keeping up.

If the honest answer is that you’re not — that’s okay! Now you know. After the analysis, you can begin an open conversation about how to improve.

1. You can grow your business.

Marketers and competitive research professionals agree that staying on top of your competitor leads to more success. HubSpot research found 90% of marketers report positive impacts on their business from using competitive research as part of their strategy.

2. You’ll see more revenue.

The benefits of competitor analysis can be financial as well. In fact, 68% of marketers see positive revenue impacts with a weekly evaluation of competitive research.

Consistency here is key. Competitor analysis has proven to be most valuable when firms ditch the inconsistent drop-ins and incorporate the practice into their scheduled marketing operations.

3. You’ll find new opportunities.

A thorough analysis of your competition could reveal opportunities — like gaps in your competitor’s offerings. Identifying missing functionality is an opportunity to meet buyer demands that your rivals overlook.

4. Your business can maintain relevance.

With a competitor analysis, you can note what your peers are doing really well. You can then emulate their successful strategies to catch the attention of more buyers.

How to Conduct a Competitive Analysis

So, how do you start? Follow the steps below to evaluate your competitor, learn from your buyers, and then curate your information.

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1. Understand your industry.

The first step is to complete Porter’s Five Forces analysis. It’s a way of determining the level of competitive rivalry in your industry. This framework prompts you to start thinking about how to be more competitive within your market — or if you are more or less likely to find success in a new market.

You’ll evaluate the threat of new entrants, the strength of buyer power, the threat of substitution, and how supplier power affects your ability to be competitive in the niche you want to occupy.

2. Understand your competition.

Doing a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) on your competitor is the next step. This is invaluable research specifically focused on one rival at a time, and it’s where you’ll start looking for trends in their content strategy and investigating their SEO results.

Proactively seek these out so you can start creating solutions to be more competitive.

3. Understand your buyers.

There are various ways to conduct surveys and perform focus groups, but at the heart of it is getting information straight from the source. Your buyers understand their needs, wants, and what impedes them. It is imperative to consult them.

4. Present your findings.

There’s a reason that Scientist and Science Communicator are different job titles. You can do all the research in the world, but it won’t make an impact until the people in the trenches understand and can make use of the information.

PowerPoint is still very prevalent in big business, so putting forward a focused and concise slide presentation with infographics is the way to go.

Our Market Research Kit includes a resource for getting started with data visualization for marketers.

Competitive Analysis Templates

So you’re ready to conduct a competitive analysis. These templates can help you get started.

1. HubSpot’s Marketing Strategy Kit

Our Marketing Strategy Kit includes resources for getting started with your competitive analysis, including Porter’s five forces analysis and a SWOT analysis template.

You’ll also find guidance on conducting fact-finding surveys and focus groups, creating buyer personas, and a plug-and-play PowerPoint presentation to help you share your findings.

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This is the empty SWOT template we provide inside the Market Research Kit. Here you can gather your findings and keep them organized on one sheet. This chart can easily be plugged into the provided PowerPoint presentation, making sharing findings a breeze.

2. MECLABS

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The MECLABS Institute has a series of competitive analysis documents. If you’re looking to understand the forces shaping your industry, MECLABS’ resources can help you compile the research.

All of the charts that you complete can easily be turned into slides. The visuals make your analysis easy to understand.

3. Semrush Market Explorer

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You may feel overwhelmed about starting your research from scratch. Semrush can help. Before you start surveying the marketplace on foot, you can assess your competition entirely online.

Semrush offers a free trial that includes market research tools. Here you can see the size of your industry, available niches for your business to fill, and your competitors’ market potential.

You’ll also see how well your business can position itself with online search engines.

Competitive Analysis Example: The Coffee Shop

Let’s say you want to start a new coffee shop in Boston that specializes in making Asian-inspired lattes. To see the viability of your new business, you would start with the following competitive analysis.

Porter’s Five Forces Analysis

Let’s start by determining the level of competitive rivalry for your business. We’ll explore how the business compares to other coffee shops using Porter’s Five Forces.

1. Competition in the Industry

• Boston has a large number of coffee shops, including large chains. Your business will need to compete with large players like Dunkin’ and Starbucks.
• Coffee companies Jaho and Ogawa also serve Asian-inspired drinks. You’ll want to make sure that your shop is in a different neighborhood to avoid competition.
• While many Asian restaurants sell coffee, they also sell full meals. Your coffee shop offers a different type of experience, so you are less likely to compete with these establishments.

2. Potential of New Entrants

• As a drink company, you’re not just competing with coffee shops. Boston’s budding boba scene may distract from your business.

3. Power of Suppliers

• If you’re using imported ingredients at your shop, you’ll rely on suppliers to run your business. How reliable is your supplier? Do you have a backup if your primary supplier cannot complete an order?
• Instead of having a logo custom printed on your cups, you have a stamp that you can use on your items. You can then use any supplier for cups and sleeves, allowing you to secure the best price.

4. Power of Customers

• Let’s say your storefront is near a local college campus. You’ll have a continuous flow of customers as students come in and out to study.
• However, these customers have tight budgets. You may need to lower your prices to keep these college students coming back multiple times a week, instead of once a month.

5. Threat of Substitute Products

• Coffee has gotten more expensive in recent years. Customers may be more likely to make their own coffee at home.
• Larger players have rewards apps, which offer perks like free drinks. You may lose customers to these players that offer free products.

Running a SWOT Analysis

A SWOT analysis can help you better position your brand in your market. For our coffee shop, let’s run a SWOT analysis on Jaho, another Asian-inspired coffee joint in Boston.

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From this SWOT analysis, we learned the following:

• The location of your store will be beneficial for the business. Your coffee shop will be in a neighborhood that Jaho does not currently serve.
• Having a nice seating area will be essential. You want to make sure your shop has the same cozy atmosphere.
• Your menu should include flavors that Jaho does not. This allows your lattes to stand out.

Customer Research

To understand how your potential customers interact with coffee shops, you’ll need to conduct additional research.

Let’s say you’re not ready to interview potential customers. Instead, you can research the demographics of your area. That includes the age and income breakdowns of your customers.

You can also review the Yelp pages of nearby coffee shops. This will help you understand what makes for a good or bad experience in your customers’ eyes.

After this research has been compiled, it’s time to present your findings to your business partner. Then you can make sure your insights are incorporated into your business.

Making the Most of a Competitive Analysis

As you conduct competitor research, make sure you understand how findings affect your business. Pull in relevant statistics to show how you compare. This allows you to make the most of your research and helps demonstrate your points to stakeholders.

Creating as much context around your research as possible is the best way to make connections and find novel solutions. So get digging, get visual, and get more competitive!

Whether you’re already using AI in your role or still on the fence, there’s no denying that the way we work is about to change drastically.

Just like computers revolutionized the workplace in the late 1900s, AI’s ushering in a new era that not only makes us more productive, but maybe even happier.

AI isn’t here to take over our jobs, but by saving the average professional a whopping 2.5 hours a day, AI helps us spend more time on the most impactful, creative, and enjoyable parts of our roles.

We surveyed 1,350 professionals across business departments to learn more about attitudes towards AI, how it’s already used, and the impact it will have in the future.

Key AI Survey Findings

1. AI unlocks growth — even in a tough economic climate. 

AI became accessible to the masses just as businesses started to struggle to keep up with inflation and budgetary pressures.

By boosting employee productivity and effectiveness, AI allows companies to do more with less.

Marketers using generative AI save an average of at least three hours on each piece of content they make.

Across the wider business, sales professionals save two hours and 15 minutes a day using AI to automate manual tasks, while service professionals save more than 2 hours a day using generative AI for rocket responses.

This makes business leaders highly optimistic about AI, with 68% saying it can help their company scale in a way that would be impossible without it.

65% think if it was fully implemented, their business would see unprecedented growth, and another 65% see AI having a similar impact on productivity as the industrial revolution had.

About 62% of leaders have already invested in AI for their employees to use. 71% of them report a positive ROI and 72% say it makes their workers more productive.

2. AI enables more time for the most impactful work.

95% of professionals using AI say it helps them spend less time on manual tasks, spend more time on the most important parts of their role (88%), the parts of their job they enjoy most (85%), and on the creative aspects of their role (83%).

Our marketing trends 2023 survey shows that marketers spend an average of five hours a day on manual, administrative, or operational tasks.

AI allows us to stop doing those tedious tasks and spend more time on high-impact activities we actually enjoy.

3. AI is highly effective across industries.

It’s not just about saving time — business professionals using AI are more effective at their jobs.

For marketers, generative AI enables them to create significantly more content, and that content performs better.

63% of marketers using generative AI to make content say it performs better than content made without generative AI.

Meanwhile, 89% say it improves the quality of their content and 83% say it helps them create significantly more content than they could without it.

When it comes to marketing content specifically, AI can also streamline processes.

A whopping 84% of bloggers using AI and/or automation say it’s effective at aligning web content with search intent. Additionally, 80% say it can help improve user experience, 74% believe it benefits their SERP ranking, and 80% say it can help boost SEO.

Outside of marketing, 85% of salespeople using AI say it makes their prospecting efforts more effective, allows them to spend more time selling (79%), and helps build rapport faster (72%).

Lastly, 84% of customer service reps who use AI say it makes it easier for them to respond to tickets, and 64% say generative AI makes their correspondences more personalized.

4. AI isn’t taking over jobs.

41% of professionals in our survey are concerned about AI taking over their jobs.

But when we look at how people are actually using generative AI, it’s mainly to get ideas, outlines, and first drafts.

And, if you’ve ever tried to get AI to write a publish-ready article or social post, you know it just isn’t quite good enough.

When using generative AI to write copy, just 5% of marketers use it to write entire pieces of content for them.

While one-third (35%) of generative AI users lean on it to get ideas or inspiration, another third use it to get an outline down. Meanwhile, just 25% use it to write a few paragraphs that they’ll then need to expand on.

Additionally, 96% of marketers using generative AI to write copy say the need to make some level of edits to the text before it’s publish-ready.

Still, people are cautious when it comes to generative AI, with 76% of professionals saying employees should use AI or automation at work — but avoid becoming overly reliant on it.

Aside from job fears, there’s another big reason not to lean on generative AI too much.

The biggest challenge marketers face with generative AI is that it sometimes provides incorrect information. Without doing deep research, there’s really no way to know when it’s making something up.

For example, almost half of marketers using generative AI say they’ve received information that they know is incorrect. To make matters worse, only 27% are very confident they’d know if the information was wrong.

This highlights the importance of having a knowledgeable (human) expert working with AI to ensure information is accurate and guide it in the right direction.

Another major challenge with using AI is knowing where and when to use it. Which tasks should be automated and which require the human touch? Let’s get practical and take a look at specific use cases for AI across marketing, sales, service, and SEO.

How AI’s Used in the Workplace

Right now, one in five business professionals use AI and/or automation in their role. And, this percentage gets bigger when diving into certain fields — like marketing.

Since this is all so new, the question of what counts as AI or automation is still loosely defined, so actual usage is probably much higher. Let’s take a look at specific use cases for each role to get a better idea of how AI is being used at work.

AI in Marketing

Whether or not they use it, 82% of marketers say generative AI has impacted the way they plan to create content in 2023 and 69% say it is important to their overall content strategy.

The biggest benefits of generative AI are that it allows marketers to make content faster. It also increases the quality and personalization of their content, and offers inspiration.

How Marketers Use Generative AI

The most popular use cases for generative AI among marketers are conducting research (48%), creating content (45%), analyzing and reporting on data (45%), and learning how to do things (32%).

When it comes to content creation, marketers use generative AI to get ideas/inspiration (22%), summarize text into key points (21%), write copy for marketing content (20%), create images (20%), and create outlines (18%).

31% of marketers use generative AI to help them make social media posts, while 28% use it for emails, product descriptions (25%), images (22%), and blog posts (19%).

Marketers say generative AI is most helpful for creating social media posts, product descriptions, and responding to emails.

Common Generative AI Tools in Marketing

Chatbots like GhatGPT are the most popular, followed by text generation tools, visual tools, and audio tools.

How Bloggers & SEOs Use AI

84% of bloggers and SEOs say AI’s impacted their SEO strategy for 2023.

The biggest benefits of using AI are that it helps bloggers optimize their website for SEO, improves the user experience, helps create an SEO-driven content strategy, and saves time by automating manual tasks.

The three most popular use cases for AI/automation when it comes to websites are analyzing blogs to provide actionable insights (37%), automating time-consuming SEO tasks (35%), and leveraging AI to help create an SEO-driven content strategy (34%).

Bloggers also say these are the most helpful AI use cases for optimizing their website for SEO.

When it comes to chatbots like ChatGPT, 44% of bloggers predict a positive impact on their SEO strategy. 51% see no impact at all, and just 5% see a negative impact.

Prompting Generative AI

If you find yourself prompting AI over and over to get your desired result, that’s totally normal. It’s a brand new skill we’re all learning in real time.

For example, 95% of marketers using generative AI to write copy say they prompt it two-to-four times to reach their intended goal — just 4% reach their intended result in a single prompt.

The most effective strategies for prompting generative AI are experimenting with different prompts to see what works best, offering relevant context or background info, providing highly specific prompts, and using follow-up prompts to expand on previous ones.

AI Across Business

AI in Sales

Marketing isn’t the only area of business evolving with AI.

71% of sales professionals say AI/automation tools have impacted the way they plan to sell in 2023, and 60% say these tools are important to their overall sales strategy.

The three most popular use cases for AI/automation in sales are automating manual tasks (35%), offering data-driven insights (34%), and helping write sales content or prospect outreach messages (31%). Sales pros also say these AI use cases are the most helpful for reaching their goals.

How Sales Teams Use Generative AI

86% of sales professionals using generative AI to write messages to prospects say it is effective.

The most popular use cases for generative AI among sales pros are content creation, prospect outreach, research, to learn how to do things, and data analysis/reporting.

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When it comes to prospect outreach, generative AI is most useful for re-purposing messages to prospects by adapting them to a different audience, writing messages to prospects, and getting ideas/inspiration for prospect outreach messages.

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AI in Service

The biggest benefits of using AI/automation tools for customer service are that they make customer service available 24/7, automate manual tasks, and help respond to customer service requests faster, allowing reps to spend time solving more complex tasks.

61% of customer service professionals say most reps will use AI/automation in their role by 2024.

The three most popular use cases for service AI/automation are routing requests to reps (29%), collecting and analyzing customer feedback (28%), and enabling chatbots or self-service tools to answer customer questions (26%). These are also the most effective AI use cases in the service field.

Want a deep dive into how AI is changing the overall business-world? Check out this post from The Hustle.

The Future of AI

While we don’t know exactly what will happen next with AI, there’s no doubt that the cat’s out of the bag, and there’s no going back. Here are some predictions from the business professionals in our survey to consider:

• 64% say AI/automation tools will make a significant impact on how they do their job in 2023
• 57% say most software they use will have AI or automation capabilities built in by 2024
• 56% say most people will use a generative AI tool like ChatGPT to assist them in their jobs by 2024

As the landscape changes, we’ll keep tabs on how AI evolves and the ways it’s being used in the workplace. Keep an eye out for more articles with the insights you need to use AI to unleash your human potential, while leaving the busy work to the robots.

Do you sigh internally when you open a cluttered and chaotic spreadsheet?

Same. Spreadsheets can be complex to navigate — even for experienced pros — and an unformatted one just worsens things.

But there’s an easy way to spruce things up a bit — wrapping text. And we’ve got you covered with simple step-by-step instructions on how to wrap text in Google Sheets. This blog will look at the following:

• The Benefits of Wrapping Text in Google Sheets
• How to Wrap Text in Google Sheets from the Format Menu
• How to Wrap Text in Google Sheets from the Toolbar
• How to Wrap Text in Google Sheets on Mobile

The Benefits of Wrapping Text in Google Sheets

Let’s illustrate the advantages of wrapping text with the help of an example. Imagine you’re tasked with creating social media posts using a content calendar spreadsheet.

Would you prefer to receive this spreadsheet (look closely and try to make sense of everything):

Or this one:

You likely chose the second option — where the wrap text feature is enabled for all cells.

But why’s that? Let’s break down the reasons why many probably prefer the second option, or in other words, the pros of wrapping text in Google Sheets:

• It provides a neat, tidy, and uncluttered appearance and formatting.
• Wrapping text offers much-needed whitespace, an important design element.
• There’s no hidden or run-off text where the next column partially covers content or spills into other cells.
• Wrapping text keeps information more streamlined, making it easier for the eye to navigate and read, thus allowing you to run smoothly through the spreadsheet without visual disruptions.

Next, we’ll dive deep into three text-wrapping approaches in Google Sheets. Before we do that, here’s a quick overview of one of the methods, in case you don’t want to scroll further to find the answer:

How to Wrap Text in Google Sheets from the Format Menu

Step 1: Choose the cells you’d like to wrap text in.

Here’s a quick trick to select all cells in a spreadsheet, which is especially useful when you have dozens of rows or columns — click on the outlined gray box in the extreme left, just above the row numbers (look at the image below).

Step 2: Click the “Format” tab from the menu bar. Then, pick the “Wrapping” option from the drop-down menu.

Step 3: Finally, click on “Wrap.”

Step 4: You’re all set! There’s nothing else to do. The wrap text feature will be applied to all the chosen cells, providing a more organized view of the content.

How to Wrap Text in Google Sheets from the Toolbar

Step 1: The first step is similar to the previous section. Simply pick the cells you want to format.

Step 2: Next, select the “text wrapping” icon in the toolbar, which can be found to the right of the alignment buttons.

Step 3: Choose the middle icon that looks like an upside-down undo button from the three options that pop up, and you’re good to go.

Quick hint: If you hover over the icon in the center, a small-pop up will appear with the word “Wrap.” This will help you identify the right option to click on.

How to Wrap Text in Google Sheets on Mobile

Step 1: First, install the Google Sheets mobile application. Next, open the file you want to work on from the mobile app and select the cells that require text wrapping.

Then, click the “Format” icon near the top of the page to the right of the redo button (see the arrow below).

Step 2: A box will pop up. Click on the “Cell” option, which will allow you to edit different elements of the selected cells (note: the default is the “text” option).

Step 3: Scroll down until you find the “Wrap text” option. Slide the switch to the on position, and you’re done. So, there it is — a simple tutorial on how to make the text fit on Google Sheets from your mobile device.

Does wrapping text make a difference?

Direct answer: Yes, it does.

Remember the 5 Cs: clean, clear, consistent, clutter-free, and no cut-off text. Your Google Sheet will be much more organized and easily read with wrapped text. So get rapping (err, I mean wrapping).

A writer at heart, Meghan Keaney Anderson centered her career around content creation.

So, when pivoting her career into the world of generative AI, which could supposedly replace writers, Meghan received one resounding question from peers: Why?

Her answer? “[Generative AI] is here, and we need to steer it in the right direction to reach its potential. I hope that we as creators and marketers and business leaders will take the reigns of this technology and bend the arc of its use towards something positive.”

In this series, we’ll explore some of the strongest opportunities for AI in the marketing world today and in the near future, backed by HubSpot Original Research from our State of AI Survey, and expert perspectives from major brands including Jasper, ZoomInfo, and Mention.com.

Editor’s Note: This data is from our March 2023 survey of 1,350+ business professionals in the U.S., including marketers, sales pros, bloggers, and customer support specialists on AI/automation. Read the full data report here.

Top Generative AI Marketing Findings for 2023 [New Data]

1. 90% of marketers who use AI say it’s effective for content creation.

It’s no question that AI is poised to revolutionize the marketing industry. But how is a different story.

So we asked marketers: In which aspects of your role do you already leverage AI?

For starters, one of the biggest benefits of AI is that it speeds up the content creation process.

A whopping 67% of marketers who use AI use it to create content faster — like writing quicker copy, conducting faster research, or generating ideas — and 50% also believe it makes their content better.

Here are a few other ways marketers are currently using AI:

• 37% use it to write copy, including blogs, marketing emails, etc.
• 36% use it to create images for marketing content with AI art tools.
• 35% use it to get ideas/inspiration for marketing content (for instance, asking AI for “5 social media post ideas for a brand selling sunglasses to Gen Z”).

As a blogger, one of the primary use cases for AI that I’ve heard about has been blog creation. However, it’s not the only use case — or even necessarily the most effective one.

In fact, almost 60% of marketers say generative AI has been most helpful for creating social media posts, followed by product descriptions (50%), and emails (43%).

Creating AI tools themselves is also an incredibly effective lead generation strategy. As Amilah Ali, Mention.com’s Content Marketing Manager, told me, “Creating free AI tools has helped our brand with both brand awareness and lead generation, as individuals who use these tools are more likely to remember the Mention brand, and may also become potential customers in the future.”

If you don’t have the time or resources to create your own branded AI tools, there are plenty that can help you deliver more value in your work.

For instance, Mention.com, a social media listening and monitoring tool, used OpenAI’s GPT-3 capabilities to create an Instagram Caption Generator and Instagram Hashtag Generator. They’ve also created AI tools that help users generate social media bios across popular platforms like Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok.

Corresponding Content:

• AI in Content Creation: How Creators and Marketers are Using It [Data]
• How to Fit AI Into Your Content Marketing Strategy [+ Its Biggest Pitfalls], According to Jasper’s Head of Enterprise Marketing
• AI Images in Marketing: What to Consider Before Leveraging Them

2. 85% of marketing AI users say it boosts content personalization.

As a writer, I was hesitant to believe that a robot could do my job better than I could.

And, in truth, it can’t do my job alone. But it can greatly supercharge my own productivity and even upscale my content.

In fact, 85% of marketers believe generative AI is effective at making their marketing content more personalized, and 45% say that content made with generative AI performs somewhat better than content created without the help of AI.

(An additional 18% say content made with generative AI performs much better than content without it.)

This makes sense: Generative AI is a powerful tool for generating strong ideas, brainstorming more unique angles for your content, and researching topics more in-depth than you otherwise could.

As Samyutha Reddy, Jasper’s Head of Enterprise Marketing, told me recently, “AI augments the human experience, but it doesn’t replace the human within that experience. We value writers in our society because they’re able to give us a thought-provoking human perspective on the world.”

She adds, “It isn’t just about summarizing facts that are out there. It’s about humans sharing opinions on very real topics that help build your perspective on how you feel about something. So an AI could really never replace that human perspective.”

Corresponding Content:

• 15 AI SEO Tools and How to Use AI in 2023 [New Data]
• Why AI Isn’t Replacing Our Jobs — Or Search Engines — According to Jasper’s Head of Enterprise Marketing

3. Generative AI saves marketers 3+ hours on a single piece of content.

One of the most important benefits of generative AI is how much time it can save for your team.

On average, marketers told us they save three hours and 10 minutes when using generative AI to complete a single piece of marketing content.

Wow. Let that sink in.

For a writer who needs to complete four posts a week, that translates to over 12 hours — more than a full work day! — that you can now spend up-leveling your career, seeking out more interesting angles for your topics, or focusing on other aspects of your role.

As HubSpot’s CMO Kipp Bodnar puts it, “[AI] gives you the time to obsess over your customers again.”

He goes on to provide a few examples: “It gives your sales team time to genuinely connect with customers and work with them to identify how your products can solve for their unique needs. It gives your support team the ability to focus on complex customer challenges rather than being bogged down by tickets that could be answered by a chatbot.”

He adds, “It also gives your leaders the insights they need to make more high-impact, powerful decisions that align with what matters most to your customers.”

Interested in how AI will impact businesses at-large? Check out The Hustle’s corresponding post, The New Frontier: How AI Will Impact Businesses in 2023.

Corresponding Content:

• How AI Will Revolutionize the Future of Business, According to HubSpot’s CMO
• 10 Affordable AI Tools for Businesses (+ How to Implement Affordable AI)

4. Marketers who don’t use AI are worried about over-reliance.

While generative AI poses many benefits, some companies still don’t plan to use it just yet. Let’s dig into the top reasons why.

The number one: 43% of marketers who don’t use AI are worried they’ll become overly reliant on AI tools.

HubSpot’s Senior Director of Content, Brad Wolverton, understands that marketers might feel an initial temptation to rely heavily on AI — but he believes that most marketers will quickly determine that AI alone doesn’t enable them to produce the type of high-quality content they need to stand out. 

As Wolverton puts it, “The more reliant marketers become on AI to produce content, the less differentiated that content will feel, which will put a premium on higher-quality research and writing.”

He adds, “AI-generated sites will further erode the trust people have in what they hear and view online, creating opportunities for the companies willing to double down on creative talent.”

Other concerns? 30% who are worried AI provides inaccurate information, and 30% don’t believe generative AI content is as good as content made exclusively by a human.

And, finally, 26% are worried that using generative AI puts them at risk of plagiarism.

Fortunately, these concerns don’t mean you need to forgo leveraging AI entirely — they’re just valid reasons for practicing smart, responsible behaviors when you begin implementing AI at your company.

A few tips:

• Be transparent with your audiences when you’re using AI. Let them know, ‘This blog post was written with the help of ChatGPT’. Whenever possible, being honest with your customers helps foster a sense of trust, and could also provide helpful context for areas your own customers could practice AI.
• Don’t consider AI as a human replacement. AI is meant to replace menial, tedious tasks like data collection, reporting, and research – but it shouldn’t steer the ship. As a writer, for instance, you still want to check the facts behind each article generated by AI, and edit it for your own tone, voice, and perspective.
• Start small. AI can feel daunting and overwhelming, so identify a few tasks on your team that could potentially benefit from AI, and test out a few tools specifically designed to help you complete those tasks before thinking bigger.

It’s equally helpful to check out how other businesses are leveraging AI, and use them as inspiration.

Corresponding Content:

• How Far Are We from AI Singularity? What It Means & Implications
• How Marketers Can Use AI Assistants [+12 Best Tools]

5. The most popular type of AI used by marketers is chatbots.

You’re probably thinking — Okay, okay, I get it. AI is great. But what types of tools specifically should I be using in my role as a marketer?

For starters, the clear winner here is AI-powered chatbots. A full 66% of marketers who currently use AI are using chatbots as their preferred AI tool.

And chatbots, including ChatGPT, Bing AI, and Google Bard, are rated most effective for creating marketing content.

Prefer to make your own? Check out HubSpot’s Free Chatbot Builder, which enables you to create chatbot sequences without any coding and personalize chat replies with contact data pulled from HubSpot’s CRM.

Besides chatbots, marketers said other commonly used AI tools include visual AI tools (57%), and text generation tools (56%).

Unsure which tools are right for you? Take a look at 18 of the Best AI Chatbots for 2023.

Convinced generative AI is going to supercharge your own role? Keep reading to learn how to properly harness AI as your new superpower.

Corresponding Content:

• 4 Types of Arificial Intelligence & What Marketers Are Using Most (Research)
• 18 of the Best AI Chatbots for 2023
• What Marketers Need to Know About ChatGPT, Google’s Bard, and Microsoft’s Bing Chatbot
• 190 ChatGPT Prompts Marketers Should Use
• Making the Most of ChatGPT [+10 Examples]

How Marketers Can Harness AI As Their Superpower

1. Become an AI prompt and AI editing superstar.

As you begin dipping your toes into the waters of generative AI, you’ll want to ensure you read up on best practices when prompting AI.

A few tips:

• Be clear, concise, and specific in your prompts.
• Request structured data, such as tables or lists, which helps the AI provide a more accurate response.
• Test out different types of prompts, such as open-ended questions or X
• Test out different prompt lengths. Sometimes, shorter is better. Other times, more details are needed.
• Be careful when prompting to ensure you’re being safe with internal customer data.
• Use actionable words in your prompts, like “Write”, “Summarize,” or “Translate”.
• Be specific on how you want the AI tool to present its output to your prompt.

Take a look at the following examples of weak versus strong prompts:

Why is the first one weak? Well, imagine if you told a junior associate at your marketing firm the same thing.

I’d imagine she’d look up at you and say, “Okay … But how long should the social media post be? Do you want me to use emojis? Which social platform are you going to post this on? And is there anything important from the introduction that you definitely want me to include?”

Treat your AI chatbot the same way you’d treat a junior associate. Provide specific, actionable prompting to get the most out of the tool.

And, if you’re curious … Here’s ChatSpot’s response:

Impressive, huh?

Similar to prompting, you’ll want to become adept at scoping out prompt responses and editing for consistency across your content, tone of voice, and always double-checking that the information is accurate.

As Ben Salzman, SVP, GTM Strategy & ZI Labs at ZoomInfo, which launched a GTM Playbook with AI tips for sales teams, puts it, “In our sales AI prompts, we include a specific person that the communication would come from, along with details about the prospect who will receive the outreach, including title and company. We also add tone guidance and constraints around how the outreach should sound, and of course, the scenario of the play.”

He adds, “We found that the more information we gave, the more time we saved when it came to editing and iteration.”

Ultimately, AI won’t replace humans — but the humans who know how to properly leverage AI will replace the humans who don’t.

2. Learn how to use AI to scale marketing campaigns.

It’s vital you take a multi-channel approach when creating content to attract prospects and engage with leads.

But that can be exhausting and time-intensive — which is where AI becomes your most beloved confidant.

As a marketer, it’s critical you learn how to leverage AI to get more bang for your buck from one single piece of content.

For instance, let’s say you start with a blog post. You might use an AI-powered chatbot to create social media and email copy to distribute that content. Additionally, you might convert the blog post into a video script so you can create an AI-powered YouTube video that revolves around the same topic.

You might even ask AI to help you turn that blog post into sales enablement materials.

AI can ultimately help you amplify your messaging across channels and distribution engines without requiring hours of coordination with other teams to create brand-new copy for various channels.

And that’s a huge win.

3. Prepare to re-evaluate your SEO strategy.

As more marketers — and consumers — begin leveraging chatbots to ask questions and seek out information rather than search engines, it stands to reason that the search landscape will change drastically. 

To ensure your website is in the best position possible, it’s vital you re-evaluate your long-term SEO strategy. 

Aja Frost, HubSpot’s Director of English Growth, told me, “SEOs have been fighting declining click-through-rates from Google since the introduction of the first search features. With the addition of AI-powered chat on the SERPs, it’s very possible Position 1 will become the only result that gets traffic. Bard shifts positions 2-10 below the fold (depending on the length of the Bard-generated answer, even the first position might be!).”

She advises, “In the short term, SEOs should evaluate which terms their websites are ranking for that are most likely to see Bard on the SERPs (likely “how” and “why” queries) and what percentage of their traffic that puts at risk. The answers will help them develop a longer-term plan — investing in ranking for lower-risk queries, finding unique ways to enrich their content that AI can’t replicate, and more.”

4. Become an explorer.

AI is still relatively new, and it can be scary to test out how you might leverage AI in your role. It might even be tempting to say, “I’ll just keep doing it the old way. Why fix what isn’t broken?”

But it’s equally risky to avoid AI, which will continue to change the way other marketers create, engage, and sell. You could be left behind if you don’t learn to leverage it for your own gain.

As HubSpot’s Bodnar puts it, “AI is going to commoditize and disrupt so many businesses that the way to prevent that is to be very bold and move forward to embrace AI as quickly as possible.”

Fortunately, this can become a fun aspect of your role. Start testing out new AI tools (a list of those can be found below). Find out which tools are most effective for your team, and share them widely across the organization. Become an explorer who is willing to slow down your current processes to test, iterate, and learn.

Trust me – in the long run, it’s worth it.

The Top AI Tools to Consider Leveraging Right Now

Here’s a quick and handy list of various AI tools suited for different needs.

AI Content Writing Tools	AI Image Generation Tools	AI Chatbots	AI SEO Tools
Content Assistant (in Beta)	DALL-E 2	ChatSpot	HubSpot AI Tools
GetGenie	Jasper Art	HubSpot Chatbot Builder	AlliAI
Writesonic	Dream by WOMBO	ChatGPT	Pro Rank Tracker
Jasper	Craiyon	Bing Chat	RankIQ
Writer	NightCafe	Google’s Bard	INK
Rytr		Intercom	Jasper
		Watson Assistant	10Web

Ultimately, the power of AI begins and ends with your own imagination: In what ways can you imagine AI supercharging your work, now and in the future?

Writing compelling emails is a superpower that most professionals would love to have. Email is the most common form of professional communication, and sending bad emails can make or break your career.

This article will provide some tips on how to write effective emails. Once you’ve applied these simple strategies, you should be able to confidently send emails to anyone and get rid of that post-send anxiety.

Here, we’ll discuss:

How to Define Your Email Goals

How To Write An Email

Email Writing Tips for International Teams

How to Define Your Email Goals

Writing an email is like creating a meal. Just as a chef needs to carefully select and prepare ingredients to create a delicious dish, you need to carefully choose your words and organize your thoughts to create a clear and effective email.

Before you start writing the email, it might help to define your email goals first. Ask yourself the following questions:

• What purpose do you want to achieve with this email?
• What are the main points you want the reader to understand?
• How can you get readers to understand those points concisely?
• What is the appropriate email etiquette or tone for this recipient?

Defining these elements can help you write quick, effective, and compelling emails.

Think about the last time you received a poorly written email. You might have had to read it a few times to understand it. The message then kicks off a long back-and-forth email thread that could have been avoided if the first email had been properly planned.

That is why we recommend taking the time to plan your communications goals first. It helps you, the sender, come across as a strong communicator while saving the reader’s time.

When you have defined your goals, then you can start crafting the email.

Writing an effective email hinges on many factors:

• You have to get the recipient to open the email.
• Your email must make the intended impression on the reader while successfully relaying the intended message.
• It must drive the recipient to take the desired action.

Failure at any point could hurt the email’s effectiveness. So, how can you prevent this? Let’s dive in.

1. Use a professional email address.

The first thing the recipient sees is your email address. First impressions matter. Sending an email from “[email protected]” to a hiring manager might give them the wrong impression about you and might create a bias against you. Always ensure that you send professional emails from a professional email address.

2. Have a compelling subject line.

Subject lines can make or break your email’s success. It’s often the deciding factor on whether someone will open your email.

Unfortunately, a lot of people struggle with this part.

Take a look at this example.

This particular subject line (real-life example by the way) is vague, indirect, and does not hint to me at all what the content of the email will be about.

The result? I might delete or ignore it altogether.

Here’s a better option.

It’s descriptive, specific, and tells me that this is an introduction.

Subject lines are especially important if you’re reaching out to someone for the first time. The recipient doesn’t know who you are, and can only judge you from your subject line.

Even if you’re sending emails internally at your company, it still pays to write a great subject line so your recipient has an idea of what to expect. Like any busy person, your teammates receive a ton of emails every day, and would certainly appreciate the extra effort of a descriptive subject line.

So, how do you write a good subject line?

Be clear, direct, and describe the content of your email. Don’t be afraid to take up the whole subject line. Here are some great examples of subject lines.

• [Action Required] Monthly Marketing Meeting
• FYI/Informational
• Request for [Insert here]
• [Reminder] Survey to Complete | Will Take 2 Minutes
• [Name] suggested I reach out to you
• I’m going to be in town next Tues — are you available?

If you’re sending a promotional email, avoid deceptive subject lines like:

• RE:
• FWD:
• Urgent
• Order confirmation
• Account Status

There’s no need to resort to sneaky tricks or clickbait titles just to induce an open. They make recipients feel cheated and tricked, according to a Litmus survey. You’ll lose trust and may end up in their junk mail as a result.

You want to associate positive feelings with your email, not anger and disappointment.

If you are sending promotional emails or newsletters, we recommend that you test different subject lines with HubSpot’s email marketing tools to see what works best for your audience. This can help you fine-tune your email strategy and improve your results over time.

3. Start with an appropriate greeting.

To kick off the email, you should begin with an appropriate greeting. There are two components to the greeting: the salutation and the opening sentence.

The appropriate salutation actually depends on the situation. If you’re writing a formal email to a bank or government institution, it would be better to start off with “Dear [X].”

If you’re sending an email to someone you know, or work in a casual environment, then it is perfectly fine to go with a “Hi [Name]” or “Hello [Name].”

There’s also “To Whom It May Concern,” when you’re sending an email to a group email and not sure who will be reading it.

One thing you want to avoid is using gendered and non-inclusive terms like “Hi guys” and “Mr./Ms/Mrs.” in your salutation.

To help you out, here is a list of salutations you can use in your emails.

• Dear [First Name]
• [Name]
• Good morning/afternoon
• Hi team
• Hey
• Hi there

Pro tip: When you are sending an email to a person for the first time, we recommend personalizing the email by addressing the recipient by name. Also, include specific details about their company and make sure to introduce yourself.

This shows that you have done your research and are genuinely interested in them. It can also help you build rapport with them and set the tone for future interactions.

4. Have a strong attention grabber.

Once you’ve gotten the salutation out of the way, it’s time to start your email.

While the subject line determines whether your email is opened, your opening sentence determines whether your email is read till the end.

Author and business coach Daniel Pink recommends using the “20-second rule” when writing emails. This means that you should try to make your main point within the first 20 seconds of the email, as this is the amount of time many people will spend reading it.

If it’s an introduction, you can open with something you know will interest your recipient. You can find this out through a little research on their social media profiles. Perhaps they Tweeted something interesting or recently posted something on LinkedIn you can reference.

This will help you build rapport and show that you’re not sending a generic email to multiple people.

Of course, this is not necessary if you’re emailing a colleague or someone you know. Instead, establish some kind of context so that they know what’s happening.

With a colleague, start with the “why.”

No one has the time (and patience) to guess what an email is about. The sooner you answer the “why,” the faster you’ll capture their attention.

Quick tip: If you’re sending out sales emails and need inspiration on exactly what to say, take a look at HubSpot’s free email templates. With this tool, you can access a library of built-in templates designed for each stage of the customer journey.

5. Keep your message concise.

We send and receive roughly 347 billion emails a day worldwide, according to Statista.

This statistic makes one thing very clear: We spend a lot of time reading emails. And because of this, many people simply scan emails to get the essence of the message and move on to the next.

With this in mind, you want to optimize your email for readability and scannability. This includes:

• Keeping paragraphs short.
• Adding bullet points.
• Using visuals to break up the text.
• Utilizing formatting tools, such as bolding or italicizing, to help draw the reader’s attention to important points.
• Using active language and avoiding jargon or technical terms that may not be familiar to the reader.

No one is eagerly awaiting a three-page essay to arrive in their inbox. Think about it this way: What’s the main takeaway from your email and is there a particular action you want your recipient to take?

From there, draft your email and when you re-read it, make sure every line you add is helping you meet this goal. If it’s not, remove it.

When you need to include a lot of information in an email, it’s probably better to suggest a phone call or a meeting instead. You can use HubSpot’s free meeting scheduler to book your meetings faster.

6. Be consistent with your font.

If I get an email like this, I’m immediately deleting or assuming it’s a scam.

This is an example of what not to do. There are several fonts used in the email, different font sizes along with different colors. As a result, the eye doesn’t know where to go and it’s a bit overwhelming.

Furthermore, the message gets lost, as your recipient is too distracted by all these elements fighting for their attention.

So, as a rule of thumb: Stick to one font. If you want to use a secondary one, use it sparingly. Follow the same rule for color.

If you’re using a non-English keyboard, your fonts may not show up properly on the other person’s device. Instead, use web-safe email fonts like:

• Arial.
• Courier.
• Georgia.
• Helvetica.
• Lucida Sans.
• Tahoma.
• Times New Roman.
• Trebuchet MS.
• Verdana.

In fact, this is the exact list Gmail gives.

This will ensure that your recipient will receive your message in a regular font, regardless of device or operating system.

7. Check the tone of your message.

The tone is an essential element of a professional email. It’s always helpful to start the email off in a friendly, positive tone. Here are some examples:

• “It was a pleasure meeting you at [X event].”
• “I hope you had a great weekend.”
• “Thanks for your contributions today in [X meeting].”

However, you will also want to avoid overuse of things like exclamations points and emojis, which can come across as unprofessional to certain audiences. It’s important to know the seriousness of the content and the person you are addressing to decide the tone of your email.

For example, you’ll use different tones for a thank you email after a final interview versus a status update to a peer colleague.

By reading through your email before sending it, you can ensure that the tone of voice you have used fits with your message and intended audience.

8. Write a simple closing.

Once you’re done with the content of your email, it’s time to close it off.

You don’t have to make it fancy — just keep your closing simple and straightforward.

So, nothing like this.

Instead, stick to the safe, proven closing lines and you should be good.

You can choose from some of the most common closing lines below.

• Sincerely
• Best regards
• Best
• Warm regards
• Warm wishes
• Kind regards
• Kind wishes
• Thank you
• Take care

Make sure to use a strong call-to-action (CTA) to clearly convey what you want the recipient to do next. This could be scheduling a call, filling out a form, or visiting a specific webpage.

9. Use a professional signature

Try to add a professional signature to the end of your email. Use an email signature that specifies your full name, your role, and the company you work for. You can include your company’s website and social media links.

For example, see the email signature below.

Make sure that you use simple signatures when the initial email turns into a long thread.

If you are sending an email to a coworker you should probably skip the company website and social media handles. You can make it easy on yourself by saving 2 or 3 signature templates and using the relevant ones in the emails you send.

10. Practice email etiquette for each work situation.

Different work situations require different types of correspondence. Yes, all of the other rules still apply, but every situation is different.

For example, let’s say you interviewed for a job and you want to send a follow-up email after the interview. How do you go about it?

First, you personalize the email by addressing the recipient by their first name, then you express your gratitude for their time, put some emphasis on your interest in the job, and ask about the next steps in the hiring process. For instance:

Dear [interviewer’s name],

I hope your day is going well. Thank you again for the opportunity to interview for [ job title] with [ company name]. It was a pleasure to meet you and the team.

I’m following up to see if there are any updates regarding [ job title] from my interview on [date]. I’m really excited about the opportunity. If you need any more information, please let me know.

Thank you again for your time and consideration. I hope to hear from you soon!

Best regards,

[Your name]

This outline works great after an interview. However, the format would change for a different request. For example, you would use a different tone if you were asking your boss for some time off.

Be sure to familiarize yourself with professional email etiquette to help you craft the perfect message each time.

11. Use CC and BCC fields wisely.

The more people that get added to an email chain, the more complex and tricky it can be to navigate. Remember proper etiquette when using CC and BCC fields in an email. Here’s a quick reminder:

• If you want a contact to view and respond to an email, use the CC field.
• If you are sending an email that doesn’t need a response to a wide list, use the BCC field.
• Use can also use BCC if you think the recipient won’t need to be involved in future conversations.

The main thing to consider when using these fields is the relevance to the recipient. You want to ensure that the proper stakeholders have the information they need without overwhelming them with email communications.

12. Schedule your emails.

A survey by Sleep Advisor found that around 78% of Americans check their email before they go into work each day.

Another study by Litmus on the State of Email Engagement in the United States supports this. In fact, the most popular time for reading emails is in the morning. Open rates start around 6 a.m. but usually peak between 9 a.m. and noon local time.

Given this information, you can follow one of two strategies: Send your email in the morning when you know they’re scrolling, or wait for a less busy time.

On one hand, your email runs the risk of being buried if you send it in the morning. However, if you wait for a later time, your email may never get opened.

It takes trial and error to figure out what works best when emailing your team.

If you’re writing an email to someone in another state or country, factor in time zones. Noon for you may be 7 pm for someone else. As such, keep in mind who your recipient is and when they would be most receptive to your email.

Pro tip: You can use our free email scheduling tool to ensure that your emails are sent at the right time.

13. Do a final spelling and grammar check.

You’re almost there. Don’t fumble in the home stretch.

Imagine spending time crafting a perfect message, only to be ignored because the email is riddled with spelling and grammar errors.

Once you finish drafting your email, copy and paste it into Microsoft Word or Google Docs to give it a quick grammar, phrasing, and spelling check.

Alternatively, you can also use free checkers like Grammarly to automate the process while you’re drafting.

Image Source

Next, read the message out loud to make sure the sentences aren’t too long, sound clunky, or robotic. You want your email copy to sound human.

All of these tips help the reader focus on your message, not the other elements of your email.

Pro tip: Change the “undo send” option to 30 seconds. We tend to catch our mistakes seconds after the email is already sent. Extending the “undo send” option time helps to eliminate the possibility of sending a bad email.

This is a standard setting that you can change in all of the email apps. Instead of the default time period, update to 30 seconds to minimize risk.

14. Schedule a follow-up reminder.

A thoughtful follow-up email can help make sure your email gets read. Working professionals are often very busy juggling a variety of meetings, deadlines, and obligations. It’s not abnormal to forget to respond to an email promptly.

However, don’t follow up too soon. Wait a few days unless the message is urgent.

That’s it! To make writing emails even easier and quicker, use HubSpot’s drag and drop email builder.

Email Writing Tips for International Teams

Most people won’t tell you this, but crafting a good email begins even before you put down a single word. It starts with your mindset.

When you’re in the correct frame of mind, you’ll be able to write effective emails that communicate and persuade.

Sounds logical … but how do you enter the “correct frame of mind”? Well, there are two ways: Put yourself in the recipient’s shoes and write the way you talk.

More on that below.

Imagine receiving the email you’re writing.

Have you ever received an email that was so incoherent you couldn’t even finish reading it, let alone even consider replying? Or included a completely irrelevant proposition?

One of the biggest problems when it comes to email writing is the lack of empathy for the recipient. Ask yourself these questions:

• Why am I emailing this person?
• Is this the right person to contact, considering what I’m trying to achieve?
• Is my message clear and to the point?
• Would this be better discussed in a meeting?
• Does each line help or hurt my goal?

This is especially important when emailing someone new but still valuable when contacting a colleague.

Write like you talk.

If you’re not a native English speaker, it’s normal to feel like you should be more formal when it comes to your email writing.

However, this results in emails that are too formal, and come off as awkward or stiff. For example:

Native English speakers write more informally. Their writing sounds like one person talking to another.

Here is a quick grammar tip that will always help you sound more native: Write in an active voice and avoid the passive voice.

An “active voice” shows that a subject is performing the verb’s action. For example, “Marilyn mailed the letter.”

In contrast, the “passive voice” shows that the verb is acted upon by the subject. In this case, “The letter was mailed by Marilyn.”

Instead of writing “your feedback would be much appreciated”, try saying “I would appreciate your feedback.” Instead of writing “your request has been received”, try “I received your request.”

Notice how writing in an active voice sounds more human.

Composing an email is like having a conversation. Just as you would consider the tone in a face-to-face conversation, you should consider the tone and style of your emails to make sure they are respectful and appropriate for the recipient.

Be an Expert Email Writer

Writing an email shouldn’t be daunting. By following these simple tips, more of your messages will get read. Soon, you’ll gain more confidence as an email writer and have a reputation as a top communicator at work.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in July 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

If you’re reading this, you likely want to ask for a promotion but are unsure how to approach the topic. It makes sense because asking for a promotion can be nerve-wracking, but it’s necessary for career growth.

If you want to know how to ask for a promotion, you’ve come to the right blog. Here’s how you can prepare for the conversation beforehand and how to discuss it with your superiors.

When to Ask for a Promotion

How to Ask for a Promotion at Work

When to Ask for a Promotion

Before asking your superiors about a promotion, ask yourself if now is the time. Below are a few cases where it’s most likely time to ask for a promotion.

Your work has positively impacted the business.

All your work in your current position is necessary for pushing the business forward. Still, if you notice your work is making a measurable difference — you could have an excellent case for a promotion.

Keep a log of all your accomplishments, such as revenue-boosting projects or highly successful campaigns. Furthermore, ask your manager if you have any other opportunities to impact the business more.

You’ve taken on more responsibilities.

Look at your job description and assess whether your current responsibilities go beyond the initial scope of your job.

It’s normal for a job’s duties to evolve, but if you notice your position is growing into more of a leadership or management role — it could be time for a promotion.

Discuss with your manager the expectations for your current position and how they can fit into a higher role.

You’re ready to grow within the company.

If you’ve been in your current role for at least a year or two, you may feel ready to move and apply the experience you’ve acquired to a more significant role. It’s common for companies to hire internally to save time and resources.

So, if you notice a position in your company is open and think you’d be a great fit, speak to your manager about the opportunity.

You may have a greater advantage than other candidates due to your experience and familiarity with the company.

How to Ask for a Promotion at Work

Before asking for a promotion, research the skills necessary for the role you wish to assume and try to have early conversations with your manager about your career trajectory.

Once you feel like you’re ready to take your career to the next level with a promotion, keep the following tips in mind:

Consider your relationship with your manager.

If you’re on good terms then you can likely have a candid talk with you manager about your career trajectory.

The best managers are the ones who know how to create or find opportunities that combine your skills, interests, and challenges, so these are some things to outline before the conversation.

However, if your relationship with your boss isn’t so splendid, or they are not in a decision-making position, look higher. Figure out who the best person is to speak with, even if they work in a different department.

Be aware of the promotion process.

Before you can ask, you must check to see if there is a formal process you and your manager must follow when handling promotions. Do you have to be at the company for a specific time?

Is there a particular way you need to communicate about promotions?

If you need to figure out your company’s formal procedure regarding promotion, or if it has one at all, then you need to ask your manager.

If you’re nervous about asking your manager about the formal process before discussing a promotion, career strategist Jennifer Brick says to remember one thing:

“If you’re not having an open and candid conversation with your boss about your career ambition and the fact that you want to get a promotion, you’re not putting them into a position where they’re going to be able to help you get it.”

Brick says your manager will be best poised to give you the support and guidance you need to advance within the company.

“[Having that discussion] will make your life so much easier,” she says. “And it’s going to increase your likelihood of getting the promotion and a pay increase, whether you have a formal process or don’t.”

Approach a promotion as an investment.

“In essence, you are asking the company to invest in you,” says Patrick Barr, owner and managing partner of Barr Performance Coaching.

“Therefore, we need to see it as an investment decision, and therefore we need to think about it as a business case,” he says.

Barr says that while job promotions impact the individual, taking the “personal” and emotions out of the question and approaching the topic from a strictly business stance is essential.

“The first thing you need to think about is your impact on the company,” explains Barr. “What is it that you deliver? What is it that you bring in terms of value to the organization that makes it appropriate for the organization to pay you more?”

Barr also suggests making the decision easy for your boss because your boss still has to make a case to their superiors for why you should get a pay raise or promotion.

“The best way to do that is to write out, very clearly, the improvements you have made over the last 12 months in your role and the improvement you plan to drive in the future,” he said.

Align your promotion with the company’s success.

Career Coach Brittany Hayles of Hayles Consulting agrees with keeping a highlight reel of your progress and achievement within your role to present to your manager when you’re ready for a promotion.

Hayles also suggests highlighting how a promotion benefits the company and your team.

She explains:

“In addition to talking about those career highlights and how amazing you are, now align it to say, ‘Because I’ve done all these amazing things when I get promoted, it’s going to give me more autonomy to do even more amazing things.”

Hayles says to focus on autonomy.

“A promotion is supposed to lead to more autonomy,” she says. “It’s supposed to lead to the opportunity to have more control over leadership — whether you’re leading more people or leading more processes.”

So, emphasize moments where you took the initiative alone without being told what to do. This will show that you can be trusted to be more autonomous in your next role.

Essentially, you want to keep your manager in the loop of your career aspirations, and you’ll need to pitch your promotion as something that will benefit the company and not just yourself.

To do this, start keeping track of your progress and achievement as soon as possible, so you can make your case that a promotion will bring the company closer to its goals.

And no matter what — be confident! If you want the company to believe in your promotion, you must first believe in yourself.

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Hollywood screenwriters are now two weeks into their strike against major networks and streaming companies.

The strike, which is expected to last well into summer, began on May 2 after six weeks of failed negotiations between the Writers Guild of America (WGA) which represents over 11,000 working screenwriters, and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) which negotiates on behalf of major entertainment companies including Disney, Paramount, and Amazon.  

According to the WGA, median weekly writer-producer pay has dropped by 23% over the past decade. A major contributor to this drop is the rise of streaming platforms that call for shorter seasons for shows and less job security for writers compared to network television.

Demands of the strike include increased pay, job stability, and considerations around the use of artificial intelligence.

Networks Are Bracing for Impact

Live shows including Saturday Night Live and late-night talk shows were immediately impacted by the strike, airing reruns or going off the air completely. The strike has also delayed production for many scripted shows.

Beyond production, this strike could have a major impact on the TV industry’s bottom line.

Many television networks and streaming platforms rely on advertising for revenue, which could be threatened if there’s no fresh content to air. While some streaming services have a backlog of content to release, they could run out or see an influx of canceled subscriptions depending on how long the strike lasts.

If networks and streaming services are unable to air new content, advertisers could be looking to shift dollars elsewhere.

Sounds Familiar…

This isn’t the first time screenwriters have walked out.

In 1988, members of the WGA went on strike for 153 days due to disagreements with the AMPTP over residual payments, creative rights, and production cost cuts. Most recently, from 2007-08, WGA writers went on strike for 14 weeks demanding compensation for new media (mainly online content) and residuals from DVD sales.

The latter strike resulted in the disruption and cancellation of a number of popular scripted shows and cost the California economy $2.1 billion. During this period, networks leaned into the production of nonscripted reality TV shows to keep advertising dollars rolling in and audiences engaged.

This time around, advertisers and audiences have more options.

Other forms of media have debuted and become widely adopted since the last strike ended in 2008. Between social media ads, podcast placements, and influencer marketing, advertisers have plenty of other places to spend their budgets if the current strike persists.

And with apps like TikTok and YouTube vying to be top entertainment platforms, audiences have other places to give their attention.

Elsewhere in Marketing

The latest marketing news and strategy insights.

Twitter has a new boss. Former NBCUniversal executive Linda Yaccarino is the app’s new CEO.

Meta just introduced a new advertising tool that enlists AI to run more efficient campaigns.

Google lifted the waitlist for its AI chatbot Bard and introduced new features including multi-language support, and export capabilities.

European Union considers implementing stricter cybersecurity protections for non-EU companies including Amazon, Google, and Microsoft.

ByteDance is slowing down the rollout of TikTok’s in-app shopping platform.

Have you ever spoken with customer service via a chatbot? If you’re like me, you sometimes wonder if the other voice is a human or an astute AI assistant.

An AI assistant mimics human-like interactions and can assist in various activities — from organizing your inbox to responding to customer queries.

But how can AI assistants help marketers? Here, we’ll cover a variety of use cases, along with 12 AI tools for productivity, time management, and more.

Where Marketers Can Best Use AI Assistants

Personalizing customer support.

Increasingly, consumers want personalized support at all hours of the day. However, many customer service teams don’t have the bandwidth to provide round-the-clock assistance.

Manav Monga, Co-Founder and Head of Product Management at Heymarket, believes AI can give customer service teams a huge lift. For instance, AI assistants — like chatbots — can quickly retrieve relevant information, guide customers through common issues, and provide accurate answers, all without human intervention.

However, Monga warns that chatbots are only as good as the information you give them. “You should give it detailed scripts with information from help articles, templates, and your knowledge base. That way, it can give relevant and actionable responses to your customers,” he advises.

Managing your calendar and inbox.

Email is a common time sink for marketers. On average, working professionals spend 28% of the day reading and replying to emails. However, depending on the volume of emails you get, this percentage could skyrocket.

Luckily, marketers now have powerful AI tools at their disposal to help manage their inbox and calendar. For instance, these tools can prioritize incoming emails, flag urgent messages, and filter spam.

Another time sink is scheduling meetings. Marketers must manage their calendar, schedule meetings, work around conflicts, and provide reminders — which can become a full-time job in itself.

AI assistants have powerful capabilities in calendar management. They can suggest suitable meeting times, send invitations (and reminders) to participants, and seamlessly handle rescheduling requests.

Creating content.

Many marketers are starting to use AI to streamline the creative process. For instance, if you’re a video marketer, you can generate video scripts, create B-roll footage, add music, and even generate a talking head — all using AI-powered tools like Runway AI and Descript.

Whether you need to create videos, blog posts, email copy, or social media content, AI can help expedite parts of the creation process. That said, AI can lay the groundwork for creating content, but you still need to add your own human touch, perspective, and brand voice to the final product.

Getting a fuller understanding of your customers.

Many AI assistants become more effective over time. For instance, every time you interact with ChatGPT, it learns from your responses.

In Monga’s words: “AI assistants continuously monitor conversations and update their training dataset to give more refined responses. As these bots continue to gather valuable information, they offer a fuller understanding of customers.”

For marketers, these conversations can paint a more detailed picture of their customers, revealing deeper insight into their demographics, buying behavior, and intent.

Automating tedious tasks.

AI assistants can take many tedious and repetitive tasks off the hands of marketers, freeing up more time to focus on higher-level strategy and planning.

For instance, a marketer can create a piece of content — like a blog post — in a fraction of the time using AI-powered writing tools. With that extra time, she can focus on distributing that content across social media or converting it into another piece of content (e.g., a LinkedIn post or a YouTube video script).

12 Best AI Assistants

Best AI Assistants for Managing Calendars and Inboxes

Best AI Assistants for Writing

Best AI Assistants for Meetings

Best AI Assistants for Boosting Productivity

Best AI Assistants for Managing Calendars and Inboxes

Clockwise

Do you struggle to find uninterrupted time to work between meetings? For instance, you may have 15 minutes of “heads down” work in the morning, 30 minutes in the afternoon, and a solid hour in the evening. What you really need is dedicated time to focus, create, and innovate.

Clockwise combines all these moments of uninterrupted time into “blocks” on your calendar (fittingly titled “Focus Time”). In addition, you can mark certain meetings as “Flexible” and Clockwise will find the best time for participants to meet. As a result, each day is designed with your productivity in mind.

Superhuman

As the workplace mantra goes, “A clear mind starts with a clear inbox.” But if your inbox has a life of its own, Superhuman is here to help. It divides your inbox in half (called “Split Inbox”) and organizes your emails based on priority. That way, you can see the most important emails in one place.

If you want to follow up on a specific email in a few days or weeks, you can set a reminder for Superhuman to notify you. Or, you can hit “Snooze,” which temporarily removes the email from your inbox for a set period.

Another great feature is “Read Status,” which signals when someone has read your email and on which device. This enables you to follow up with the right message at the right time.

Motion

Motion puts the traditional to-do list to shame. Simply input all your tasks and Motion will build a schedule to get it all done. It automatically prioritizes tasks, re-schedules them, and guards time for uninterrupted work.

Motion also doubles as a project management tool, helping teams manage deadlines and stay on track. After inputting the project tasks, Motion will create an optimized schedule for each team member. You can also organize any notes, sub-tasks, and comments from your team in one central location.

Best AI Assistants for Writing

Jasper

Jasper is a copywriter’s best friend. It can generate social media posts, blogs, articles, and email copy in a matter of seconds. All you need is a well-written prompt (e.g., “Tell me the benefits of TikTok marketing in the style of a LinkedIn post.”).

Jasper takes it one step further by helping marketers with technical SEO. It can write keyword-optimized content, fix duplicate text, and suggest the best headers, meta tags, and descriptions.

Genei

If you get bogged down in the research phase, Genei can do the heavy lifting for you.

Genei analyzes large amounts of information – like research papers, blogs, e-books, and articles — and summarizes the key takeaways and identifies the most prominent keywords. This speeds up the writing process, helping you move one step closer to putting pen to paper.

Cohesive

AI-powered writing tools are only as good as the prompts you give them. Of course, writing the perfect prompt is challenging, and Cohesive wants to eliminate that struggle. It does this by offering a variety of templates that fit different content needs.

For instance, Cohesive has a template for Instagram captions, Facebook posts, and YouTube videos. Pick a template, input your information, and Cohesive will take care of the rest.

Best AI Assistants for Meetings

Beautiful AI

Do your presentations need a makeover? Or do you feel tired of the same old PowerPoint templates? Beautiful AI could be the solution.

Beautiful AI is a presentation software that enables you to create attractive and impactful presentations and reports. You can hit the ground running by choosing from hundreds of pre-built slides. Once you start adding images and text, Beautiful AI will automatically reformat these elements on the slide in real-time. Plus, you can unlock millions of icons and images when you sign up.

Grain

With Grain, you never have to take notes during a meeting again. This handy tool automatically records and transcribes meetings – and conveniently excludes any “ums,” “ahs,” and other filler words.

What’s more, Grain will automatically highlight, clip, and summarize key moments during the meeting that you (and your team) can revisit later.

Krisp

Picture this: you’re about to give an important presentation during a video call. Suddenly, your neighbor starts mowing their lawn – and now you have to speak over the persistent hum of the lawn mower.

While we can’t anticipate every possible interruption, Krisp can alleviate most of them during audio and video calls.

Krisp is a useful tool that mutes background noise and boosts voice clarity. Whether working from home, the office, or in a busy coffee shop, you can guarantee professional sound quality.

Best AI Assistants for Boosting Productivity

ChatSpot

ChatSpot harnesses the power of Generative AI with your HubSpot CRM. Combined, HubSpot users can save a lot of time.

You can think of ChatSpot as a handy virtual assistant. You can ask it to draft an email, add a contact to your CRM, create a report, and more. Simply put, this tool reduces the steps needed to get your job done.

To learn more about the tool, check out this helpful guide.

Notion AI

Notion is a popular productivity app that recently introduced a suite of AI-powered tools to take your work to the next level. If you already have a Notion account, these tools are baked right into the app.

With Notion AI, you can complete a number of tasks in a fraction of the time. For instance, it can take your messy notes and summarize them, outline key takeaways, and even populate a list of action items from the information. On top of that, it offers powerful writing, researching, and editing tools.

Trevor AI

Between meetings, deadlines, and unexpected interruptions, it can be easy to lose track of time at work. This is where Trevor AI can help.

This tool makes time blocking easy. Simply write out a list of tasks and drag-and-drop them into your calendar. Over time, Trevor AI learns and adapts to your scheduling patterns. For instance, it will start estimating how long certain tasks will take. It can also find available time on your calendar and make overdue tasks visible.

The best part? Trevor AI syncs with Google Calendar, Outlook/Office365, and Todolist.

Back to You

AI assistants have emerged as powerful tools to revolutionize the way marketers work. By incorporating these tools into your workflow, you can boost your productivity, save time, streamline processes, and gain valuable insights into your customers.

When ChatGPT came on the scene last year, it changed the entire artificial intelligence industry. This generative AI tool produces answers to almost any question it’s asked.

And it’s already considered one of the best chatbots ever created.

Generative AI is the newest form of artificial intelligence that’s making headlines. While the technology isn’t new, AI can now create authentic content that’s usable in marketing.

In this post, we’ll review what generative AI is, its benefits, limitations, use cases, and tools to add to your marketing stack.

What is generative AI?

Benefits of Using Generative AI

Limitations of Using Generative AI

When to Use Generative AI

Generative AI Tools

How does it work? Generative AI starts with a prompt. Write instructions for what you’d like the AI to create. Then, you can customize the results with feedback on style or tone.

Benefits of Using Generative AI

With proper usage, AI can yield amazing results. We’ll discuss the benefits of using AI below.

1. Generative AI can create marketing content.

Generative AI can help create content, including blogs, images, emails for a lead nurturing sequence, and more. This will reduce the amount of time marketers spend creating.

Ultimately, it will simplify their process so they can spend more time strategizing.

These tools can also help marketers summarize complex information and create images for their marketing assets.

If you’re wary about having AI generate all of your work, tools like HubSpot’s content assistant can assist more broadly in the content creation process.

The content assistant can generate outlines for your posts or offer suggestions when you face writer’s block.

Start using content assistant today.

2. Generative AI can assist sales reps.

Generative can reduce the amount of effort a sales rep has to put into responding to client emails by writing the emails for them.

You can even specify the tone of your message. Perhaps you’d like something formal for new prospects and informal for long-held contacts. AI can help you appeal to both audiences.

3. Generative AI can improve responses to queries.

Distilling information is made much easier with generative AI. Many tools write responses to general queries. You can then quickly deliver complex information in an easier-to-understand way.

This can be especially useful for your service team. Let’s say it’s after hours, and your support staff has already clocked out. Generative AI can help answer simple questions that aren’t already pre-loaded in your chatbot.

Limitations of Using Generative AI

While generative AI is an interesting tactic for marketers to consider, you’ll want to keep these factors top of mind:

• Accuracy of results. Results should be reviewed to see whether the information is accurate and what source was used to create the content.
• Cybersecurity. New technology opens the door to new and unknown threats from bad actors. Avoid putting sensitive data or information directly into AI channels.

Beyond that, there are three major AI limitations that your marketing should know.

1. Copyright Infringement

Generative AI uses data (meaning other content) to help inform its output. These tools can promote plagiarism by ignoring the original content’s creators. You won’t find proper backlinking and sourcing in this content.

Plagiarism damages trust in your brand. And, you may also face copyright claims. Without proper attribution, you may infringe upon someone else’s work.

2. Quality.

Generative AI requires a lot of data to produce authentic, quality content. Human editors are still needed to review AI-generated content before publication.

Additionally, even if the content is high-quality, generative AI makes it harder to identify accurate or inaccurate information.

You’ll want fact-checkers to ensure all of the information from AI is true. Plus, it’s easier to create deep fakes (here’s photographic evidence).

3. Content Bias

The content generative AI produces may use biased original sources. That means the output may have a certain lean, even if that’s not your intention.

Without knowing where the information comes from, you’ll have a harder time assessing bias or accuracy in a piece of writing.

When to Use Generative AI

1. Creating Marketing Content

Generative AI can create marketing content, including text, images, videos, and audio. If you ever get stuck finding the right words, AI can become a handy assistant.

For example, AI can create a blog post, a photo caption, an email, social media copy, or product descriptions. Plus, it can help create photorealistic art and graphics to include in your marketing campaigns.

You’ll want to make sure a member of your team reviews the content made by AI. This human editor can make sure the output matches your brand’s voice. They should also check for factual clarity and bias.

2. Customer Service and Technical Support Chatbots

This type of artificial intelligence can be used for customer support chatbots, whether that’s on your website or via SMS text support.

This can speed up response time to customer inquiries and free up reps to address more complex issues.

3. Writing Email Responses

Sales reps can also benefit from using generative AI to write email responses. If your reps are tired of writing messages in bulk, generative AI can create custom messages with specific tones — all in seconds.

Further, AI can help pull data from your CRM to ensure personalized messaging. If you’re looking to get started, dive into ChatSpot.

This AI bot uses chat-based commands to interact with your CRM data, so you know the full history of any client you contact.

4. Product demonstrations.

Generative AI can be particularly useful for product demonstrations as well. For example, if you want to create a demo video, you can use generative AI tools to make it for you.

AI can also make suggestions to help you improve the user experience. You can have AI write you a script or answer any questions you have during the post-production process.

Generative AI Tools

Now we know about generative AI and how to use it in marketing, but what specific tools can you use? Let’s dive in below.

1. Content Assistant From HubSpot

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Content assistant tools from HubSpot can help you craft copy of any length in seconds. You can easily switch between manual and AI content creation to write posts, landing pages, marketing emails, and more.

Content assistant can help you throughout the writing process. The tool can generate ideas for blog posts and create an outline to help guide you.

Price: Free

Best for: Marketers and copywriters

What we love: Content assistant can help you optimize your text for SEO.

2. ChatSpot

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ChatSpot is a conversational CRM bot that you can connect to HubSpot. With chat-based commands, you can interact with your CRM data. You can also send emails or pull insights by entering a text prompt.

ChatSpot also has the ability to write long-form content. You can use this tool to generate drafts for your blog.

Price: Free

Best for: Marketers and sales teams

What we love: ChatSpot can help you research the topics you’ll cover in your blog posts.

3. Writesonic

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Writesonic is one of the best generative AI tools for creating any type of creative copy. This tool can help you create SEO-optimized content for your blogs, ads, emails, and website 10 times faster.

Start by inputting the topic you’d like to cover and the language you’re writing in. From there, Writesonic can generate ideas for your post in the form of suggested titles. Then, you can prompt AI to write you an intro, an outline, or the full article.

Price: Plans start at $12.67 per month annually. Custom plans are available.

Best for: Marketers and agencies

What we like: Writesonic offers integrations with WordPress, Zapier, and SEMrush.

4. Jasper

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If your team is looking for an AI solution, consider Jasper. This generative AI offers a wide range of services that can benefit multiple members of your team.

Jasper can help craft emails, social messaging, and blog posts. You can even prompt the AI to make art.

Let’s say you want to write a blog post. Just open a new document in Jasper’s interface. You can input the topic, a content brief, your desired tone, and relevant keywords. Text appears once you press generate.

If you keep clicking “generate,” AI will base additional text on what’s already been written in the document.

Jasper uses a similar process when generating art. You can describe your ideal image, the style of the piece, and the artistic medium. From there, AI does the rest.

Price: A starter plan costs $40 per month annually. Boss Mode plans cost $82 per month annually. Custom pricing is available for businesses.

Best for: Teams

What we like: Jasper integrates with Chrome and emphasizes collaborating with team members in real time.

5. Synthesia

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Synthesia is one of the best options for AI-driven video content. The platform uses AI to create realistic AI avatars with voiceover capabilities. You can customize your avatars’ appearances, voices, and languages.

Then, all you need to do is upload your script.

Soon, you’ll have a life-like video without hours spent on production. With, Synthesia you can easily create both training and product marketing videos.

Price: Personal plans start at $30 per month annually. Enterprise pricing is available upon request.

Best for: Marketing teams producing video content

What we like: The platform comes with a free media library, and you can upload your media brand guidelines.

6. Bardeen

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If you’re looking to automate away time-intensive tasks, Bardeen is here to help. This AI-powered tool integrates with your email, calendars, messaging, apps, and more so you can work more efficiently.

Users can ask Bardeen to automate email scheduling, manage tasks, or make smart recommendations for text.

Bardeen is also an excellent option for analyzing data from a variety of sites. Its scraper lets you extract website data directly into web apps and sheets.

Price: Free plans are available. Professional plans start at $10 a month.

Best for: Recruiters, sales, and marketing teams

What we like: Bardeen allows AI to automate manual workflows to increase productivity.

7. Copy.ai

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If you have writer’s block or are just tired of rephrasing the same message for different tweets, Copy.ai can help. This platform can help you write long-form content and social media messages optimized for different platforms.

Start by specifying the platform you’re writing for. Then, give the AI context for your post. That could be a topic and keyword or, for social media, a section of a report. Then, Copy.ai can generate text.

If you’re creating social copy, Copy.ai will generate multiple options for you to use. You can choose which works best or schedule them all.

Price: Plans start at $36 per month annually.

Best for: Teams, bloggers

What We Like: Copy.ai is a great option for those that are just getting started with artificial intelligence. It can help you write blog posts, high-converting social media posts, and engaging emails.

8. ChatGPT

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ChatGPT is a conversational artificial intelligence that can help with a variety of tasks. You can use ChatGPT to compose emails and create any type of marketing copy.

Just type a command into the platform’s interface, and you’ll get a response. You can ask ChatGPT to help you research different topics, create new copy, or paraphrase existing work.

Price: ChatGPT is currently free. Plus plans start at $20 per month.

Best for: Individual bloggers

What we like: ChatGPT is the first generative AI that’s seen high levels of success and adoption. This means it has a large dataset to learn from.

9. Rephrase.AI

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Rephrase.AI is another generative AI platform that focuses on providing personalized videos for your marketing needs. This tool can convert plain text, such as your blogs, into professional-quality videos in minutes.

The company emphasizes repurposing old content to improve the customer journey and your marketing campaigns.

Price: Personal plans start at $25 per month. Enterprise pricing is available upon request.

Best for: Teams creating videos

What we like: Not only does Rephrase.ai help make the videos, the tool can help you track and analyze the performance of your campaign.

10. Soundraw

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Soundraw is highly accessible and can quickly create high-quality music for a variety of marketing applications. You can use this tool to create a theme song for your company’s podcast or background music for an explainer video.

Price: Free; Personal, $16.99/month annually

Best for: Content and video creators, podcasters, streamers

What we like: Maybe you don’t know exactly what you want your song to sound like, but you have a general idea of the video’s atmosphere. Soundraw allows you to sort by mood.

11. Designs.ai

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Designs.ai is a generative AI platform that allows users to create, edit, and scale content. You can create logos, videos, voiceovers, visual designs, and marketing copy.

Our favorite element of this software is the ability to collaborate and share projects across teams.

Price: Basic plans cost $19 per month annually. Pro plans cost $49 per month annually. Enterprise pricing is available upon request.

Best for: Brand owners and teams

What we like: Designs.ai can make stunning visuals. However, it also has a text-to-speech feature that allows you to convert scripts to audio.

12. Easy Peasy AI Chat

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Easy Peasy AI Chat has templates for any type of marketing copy you need to create. It can also help you create images, podcast notes, and social media posts.

Price: Free; Basic, $4.99/month annually; Starter, $8/month annually; Pro, $18/month annually

Best for: Teams

What we like: We love the “write like a native speaker” option. This can keep your brand conversational no matter where in the world you operate.

Using Generative AI

Generative AI may be new on the scene, but it’s not going anywhere anytime soon. While it can be particularly useful for marketing teams, it’s important to be aware of the limitations of the technology.

Find the tools to help your marketing team save time and optimize resources to make the most of how AI can improve your productivity.

Ah, AI. It’s quickly become one of the buzziest words of 2023, akin to the popularity of the phrase “new normal” in 2022.

And for good reason. AI is poised to completely revolutionize the ways in which we work, interact, and even play.

I’ve been on the HubSpot Blog team for over five years, and in that time, I’ve seen plenty of changes. Back in 2017, for instance, we completely upended our blog infrastructure with the introduction of the pillar-cluster model.

And then, in 2018, we ditched our weekly “throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks” brainstorming process in favor of something a little more, well, efficient: the Search Insights Reports, which we still use today.

But none of these changes seem to compare to what’s coming with AI. Here, I’ll explain how HubSpot’s Blog team plans to leverage AI without sacrificing the “human element” that makes our content successful in the first place.

(P.S. We’re still figuring this out just like you are, so think of this as a working doc that I’ll update periodically as we shift our AI strategies in the future.)

How the HubSpot Blog Team Leverages AI 

1. The HubSpot Blog Team Will Use Generative AI to Learn About Topics Faster — But We Won’t Use AI Alone to Create Content.

One of the strongest benefits of generative AI is its ability to scan the web and provide concise, helpful responses based on vast sources of information.

In other words: As a writer, I don’t turn to Google first anymore for information. Instead, I turn to AI.

For instance, the other day I needed to write a post about — ironically — the differences between ChatGPT, Google’s Bard, and Bing’s new AI-powered search engine.

So I asked ChatGPT: “Can you tell me the differences between ChatGPT, Google’s Bard, and Bing’s AI-powered search engine? Please put the pros and cons in a table format.”

Here’s what I got back:

Notice I didn’t ask ChatGPT to write the post for me.

On our team, we are not using AI to write full posts. Instead, our criteria is as follows:

• We will never use generative AI to write a full blog post, start-to-finish, without any editing for voice, accuracy, or adding a unique, human perspective.
• We will typically use AI more for cut-and-dry, straightforward, tactical posts. Topics like “The 11 Best Ways to Send Large Files” perform particularly well using AI; but more complex, trendy, or thought leadership-type content do not.
• We will use AI to brainstorm topics or research ideas, but we will always do our own follow-up research to ensure the information is accurate, and to limit potential biases.

As Kaitlin Milliken, HubSpot Blog’s Program Manager & Content Editor, shares: “AI is a big part of my research process. Certain product descriptions are vague or don’t offer enough information about what makes the software stand out. In these cases, I’ll ask AI what makes a certain product unique. It will give me a list of features that can then help inform my writing/editing.”

Simply put, human beings read HubSpot blog posts to learn how other human beings are selling, marketing, or servicing their customers. We want to respect that trust by continuing to create content that is meant to educate, engage, and delight.

When we can use AI to speed up the time it takes us to research topics or create outlines, that’s great — that means more time to spend on voice, tone, and perspective.

But we will never use AI to replace what humans have always done best: Storytelling.

2. The HubSpot Blog Team Will Leverage Generative AI to Create Outlines … But Not Full Posts.

As previously mentioned, our Blog team will not be using generative AI to create full blog posts.

That doesn’t mean we won’t leverage the power of AI to greatly cut down the time we spend writing. It simply means we’ll treat AI outputs similar to how we might treat outlines or freelance drafts.

Namely: AI outputs can act as the first draft of an article, but not the final copy.

Consider, for instance, a post that provides 34 definitions of SQL keywords, operators, and statements, which HubSpot Blog Manager, Marketing Clint Fontanella recently wrote for the Website Blog. A post of that length would typically require weeks of research and writing.

With AI, Fontanella told me it took roughly 40% of the time to create it.

As he puts it, “AI is going to remove the manual process of content creation so writers can become marketers again and focus more on the creative process. AI copywriting will eliminate tedious tasks like writing definitions and creating outlines, so writers can spend more time on optimizing the post (likely using AI tools) with things like custom multimedia, interactive modules, high-intent internal linking, and more.”

Click here to set a Google Calendar Reminder for The State of Generative AI & How It Will Revolutionize Marketing [New Data + Expert Insights], coming May 17, 2023.

Particularly for more cut-and-dry topics like lengthy listicles, it’s imperative our writers lean into AI to save their time for more complex pieces, or to up-level the multimedia elements included in their posts.

Additionally, many of our writers use AI to write sections of blog posts.

For instance, Tristen Taylor, HubSpot Blog team’s Associate Marketing Manager, told me, “Before using AI, I often found myself rewriting introductions and conclusion paragraphs in blog posts. Now that I have access to these tools, my time needed for completing blog posts or articles has been cut down tremendously because it can capture the tone, intent, and targeted keywords I need through refined AI prompts.”

She adds, “It also allows me to refocus my work more on the content or information of value that readers are looking for, instead of ruminating over small details at the beginning or end.”

3. The HubSpot Blog Team Will Take Advantage of Generative AI as Our New, Trusty Brainstorming Sidekick.

I’ve been reading a lot about how live shopping is going to become the new “norm” in retail, and I knew there could be an interesting angle to write. But I couldn’t fully flesh one out.

So I turned to ChatSpot, HubSpot’s new AI-powered chatbot, and asked, “Please provide me with seven blog post ideas based on the concept of live shopping becoming the status quo for the retail industry.”

Here’s its response:

Not too shabby, huh? From there, I can workshop by myself or with a colleague to formulate the final topic. But in this case, ChatSpot didn’t just save me time — it also introduced a new perspective and more creative, interesting ideas that I hadn’t previously considered.

In other words, one of the biggest benefits of generative AI is its ability to act as your new, always-available, infinitely-creative colleague.

And this makes all of HubSpot Blog team’s in-person brainstorming sessions much more effective and compelling.

4. The HubSpot Blog Team Will Experiment with AI-Generated Videos for Our Blog Posts.

Video is more important than ever. In fact, our 2023 State of Marketing report found that video is the most popular and effective media format for the fourth year in a row.

But creating videos takes time and resources. And there are some topics, like CSS Grid Layouts, that were previously not worth the effort it took in terms of potential video MSV.

This left some major gaps in our content strategy. While CSS Grid Layouts might not be the snazziest YouTube video (I get it … it’s probably not going to go viral), it is a topic that is complex and potentially confusing — making it an ideal candidate for a quick, easy how-to video for our readers who are interested in learning more about CSS layouts.

Enter: Veed.io, a video editing software with AI tools built-in, such as their AI image generator and AI text reader. 

The Website Blog leveraged Veed to create their own CSS grid video with an AI-generated voice-over in less than an hour.

Plus, as our team leans into AI for brainstorming, outlining, and researching, we will be able to find more time to experiment with projects like this one.

For our team, this is just the beginning. We will continue to test and iterate on our AI-generated video strategy to expand videos across Blogs for greater impact in the months to come.

5. The HubSpot Blog Team Will Use Generative AI for Meta descriptions, Social Summaries, and Email Descriptions.

For some reason, I often hit the greatest writer’s block after I’ve finished a post and I’m asked by a social media manager or email manager to summarize it.

In some ways, perhaps it’s most difficult because I know the topic too well. Everything in my post seems important. How can I possibly pick what is most relevant to include?

Quickly figuring out the right messaging to promote your content is one of the most powerful opportunities with AI. In fact, I worked with ChatSpot to come up with the meta description for this post:

Jamie Juviler, Managing Editor of the Website Blog, also leverages AI for meta descriptions. He suggests feeding your introduction paragraph into an AI chatbot, and then asking it to produce a 100-150 character meta description.

Finding small ways to elevate your promotional copy by leveraging AI is key to harnessing its full potential.

HubSpot’s Blog Team Will Continue to Write Human-to-Human, First

One more thing — we want to lead with transparency for our audiences, so we do promise this: On any post we write that has been AI-supported (or AI-generated, even if it has been human-edited), we will be sure to leave a disclaimer that lets you know that we leveraged AI to complete the post.

It’s also important to note that our team is learning as we go. Similar to the advent of any new, exciting technology, AI comes with plenty of benefits … and plenty of drawbacks.

Learning how to mold AI into the type of tool that fits our existing priorities and quality metrics will be key to retaining the audiences we’ve worked so hard to build. At its core, we know AI can’t replace the humanity behind marketing. So we won’t try to.