Monthly Archives: May 2023

If your website is structured like a house, then your website’s URL is like that house’s address. It defines where your website lives online, similar to how your home address determines where you live in a neighborhood, helping your visitors easily find your site. URLs also help Google understand what your website’s pages are about.

There are several URL parts, and they’re discreetly important for optimizing your site’s user experience (UX) and SEO. To help you develop a concrete understanding of every part of a URL, let’s explore each of them in detail.

Below is an illustration of the basic parts of a URL. A URL will always have a scheme or protocol, a domain name, and path.

However, URLs may contain more attributes than the basic components listed above. Let’s take a comprehensive look at URL structure below.

URL Structure

1. Scheme

The scheme (also called protocol) tells web servers which protocol to use when it accesses a page on your website.

Nowadays, HTTPS — which stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure — is the most common scheme. It tells your web browser to encrypt any information you enter onto the page, like your passwords or credit card information, so cybercriminals can’t access it. This security protocol protects your website visitors and implementing it will help your site rank better on Google. That’s why implementing SSL is a must-do on any technical SEO guide.

Other schemes you might see are mailto://, which can open your computer’s default email service provider to help you draft an email to the email address you entered in the URL, and ftp://, which is a standard protocol for transferring computer files between a client and server on a computer network.

2. Subdomain

If your website is like a house, your subdomains are like specific rooms in that house. A subdomain in a URL indicates which particular page of your website the web browser should serve up. For instance, subdomains like “blog” or “offers” will provide your website’s blog page or offers page.

Subdomains also bucket your website into its main content categories and shows Google and your visitors that there’s more information on your site than just a homepage.

3. Second-level Domain

Your second-level domain (SLD) is the name of your website. It helps people know they’re visiting a certain brand’s site. For instance, people who visit “mlb.com” know they’re on Major League Baseball’s website, without needing any more information.

4. Top-level Domain

The top-level domain (TLD) specifies what type of entity your organization registers as on the internet.

For example, “.com” is intended for commercial entities in the United States, so a lot of American businesses register with a top-level domain of “.com”. Similarly “.edu” is intended for academic institutions in the United States, so a lot of American colleges and universities register with a top-level domain of “.edu”.

5. Subdirectory

A subdirectory — also known as a subfolder — helps people as well as web crawlers understand which particular section of a webpage they’re on.

For instance, if you own an online store that sells t-shirts, hats, and mugs, one of your website’s URLs could look like “https://shop.yourstore.com/hats”. Notice that the subdomain is “shop” and the subdirectory is “hats.” That means this URL would serve up the “Hats” page, which is a subfolder of the “Shop” page. T-shirts and mugs would be other subfolders of this page.

6. Port

The port is a number used to specify a connection endpoint and to direct data to a specific service. Different servers will use different port numbers. This number is always associated with a host network address, like an IP address. For example an HTTP server is identified using 80, while an HTTPS server uses 443 as its port number.

7. Path

The path specifies the location of the file or resource that the user wants to access. In the example below, the specified path would be the article “parth-url.”

8. Query

Ever noticed a question mark displayed in some URLs when Google displays your search results? That question mark says that a specific query is being performed and is used to precede a query string. A query string specifies the parameters of the data being asked from a website’s database. We’ll dig into parameters next.

9. Parameters

Parameters are the values being queried during a search. The parameter can be a number, encrypted value, search term or other data that can be found on the website. URL parameters contain a key and value, separated by an equal sign (=). A URL can contain multiple parameters, which are then each separated with an ampersand (&).

Written out, the structure would look like this:

https//www.hubspotexample.com/page?key1=value1&key2=value2

UTM parameters are used to track your marketing or promotional efforts. Added to the ends of URLs these parameters can track how visitors are coming to your site and if they’re interacting with an associated marketing campaign.

10. Fragments

Fragments are an optional component of URLs that are typically placed at the end with a hash (#). They indicate a specific location on the webpage like an ID or name attribute, but can also direct to other resources like a footer, or sidebar.

URL Structure: Subtle Yet Essential

Even though URLs might seem simple and arbitrary, they’re actually important for your website’s UX and SEO. And now that you understand each of the URL parts, check out the blog posts below to learn more about technical SEO.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in October 2021 and has been updated for comprehensiveness. 

Welcome to HubSpot Marketing News! Tap in for campaign deep dives, the latest marketing industry news, and tried-and-true insights from HubSpot’s media team.

Is there anything more satisfying than getting a great deal on a more affordable version of a popular product? Fans of the beauty company e.l.f. don’t seem to think so.

Founded in 2004, e.l.f. (an acronym for eyes, lips, and face) was created to offer high-quality cosmetics at a low cost. At the time of its launch, most of e.l.f.’s products cost between $1 to $3.

In its first decade, the company experienced a period of steady growth, expanding its product line, opening its own retail spaces, and finding some success in digital marketing. But by 2018, e.l.f. was experiencing a plateau in sales, and closed its standing retail stores, priming the brand for a marketing pivot.

E.l.f.’s shift to TikTok

In 2019, the hashtag #elfcosmetics had over 3 million views on TikTok before e.l.f. even had its own presence on the platform. With this in mind, the company shifted its marketing strategy to focus on TikTok’s user base (which was overwhelmingly Gen Z), leveraging short-form video and user-generated content in its #EyesLipsFace campaign.

Alongside Brooklyn-based agency Movers + Shakers, e.l.f. commissioned an original song that was catchy enough to go viral and encouraged TikTok users to feature the song and the hashtag #EyesLipsFace. The campaign was among TikTok’s most viral and cemented e.l.f.’s newfound focus on a Gen Z audience.

To keep the buzz going, e.l.f. centered its messaging on key points that Gen Z values when making purchasing decisions:

• Social responsibility: 50% of Gen Z consumers won’t purchase products from beauty brands that aren’t cruelty-free.
• Affordability: Gen Z may also be more frugal than other generations. 80% of Gen Z consumers will wait until an item goes on sale to buy it, and 60% of Gen Z buyers said the price of a product was the number one factor they consider when making purchasing decisions.

These are two areas e.l.f. cosmetics can deliver on. Since its founding, e.l.f. has been cruelty-free and continues to center this point in its messaging. Compared to other beauty brands, e.l.f. continues to be among the most affordable options.

Bring on the dupes

Capitalizing on its reputation as an affordable brand, e.l.f. began introducing more budget-friendly alternatives to viral beauty products, also known as dupes. 

Some of e.l.f.’s dupes that have gone viral on social media include:

• Halo Glow Liquid Filter ($14): a popular dupe for Charlotte Tilbury’s Flawless Filter ($49)
• Power Grip Primer ($10): a makeup primer that has drawn comparisons to the Hydro Grip Primer by Milk Makeup ($38)
• Hydrating Camo Concealer ($7): a concealer product that users have compared to Tarte’s Shape Tape ($31)
• Halo Glow Beauty Wands ($9): blush, highlighter, and contour sticks that are reminiscent of Charlotte Tilbury’s Beauty Light Wands ($42)
• Brow Lift ($6): an eyebrow gel that’s considered a dupe of the Brow Freeze product by Anastasia Beverly Hills ($23)
• Whoa Glow ($14): a tinted facial sunscreen that is similar to Supergoop’s popular Glow Screen product ($38)

From the packaging to the formulations, it’s clear that e.l.f. is hoping to capture budget-conscious customers who are looking for affordable alternatives to these higher-end products. When these customers share their findings, it often results in user-generated content that has high reach and engagement potential.

In addition to creating dupes of popular high-end products, e.l.f. has also launched a series of high-profile collaborations designed to catch the attention of Gen Z including:

• A December 2022 holiday-themed campaign starring singer Meghan Trainor in collaboration with The Weather Channel.
• A 2023 denim-themed collection in partnership with American Eagle Outfitters (which is also a popular brand among Gen Z shoppers).

How effective was e.l.f.’s pivot to focus on Gen Z?

Based on the information available, these tactics have certainly been effective. According to Piper Sandler’s spring 2023 survey, e.l.f. is the generation’s top cosmetics brand, and this finding is reflected in the sales numbers.

E.l.f. reported a 49% increase in sales from 2021 to 2022. Furthermore, e.l.f.’s growth outpaced the overall growth of the cosmetics industry. In 2021, the cosmetics industry saw an 8% year-over-year increase, while e.l.f. grew by 36% and the momentum is expected to continue. Earlier this year, e.l.f. raised its 2023 outlook by nearly $100 million.

That’s a lot of concealer.

Elsewhere in Marketing

The latest marketing news and strategy insights.

Google announces plans to include conversational AI elements in its search results.

Gone sour: makeup company Tarte is making headlines again for its latest influencer trip.

Microsoft introduced a new API that would allow companies to run ads in AI chat experiences.

Amazon recently launched Inspire, its TikTok-inspired shopping platform.

As artificial intelligence advances, more businesses are interested in AI-powered solutions to improve their marketing efforts. One of the keys to making the most of the tech in marketing is to write effective AI prompts to generate the desired outcomes.

Marketers need to know how to communicate their goals effectively to AI systems. It’s a new skill that requires an understanding of how to write clear, concise, and effective instructions that a machine can understand.

In this article, we’ll share AI prompts marketers can use to optimize their generated results and better meet their marketing needs. If you’re short on time, jump to the topic you need.

• AI Prompts for Lead Generation
• AI Prompts for Drafting Social Media Posts
• AI Prompts to Create Podcast or Video Content
• AI Prompts for Content Promotion
• AI Prompts for Repurposing Outdated Content

AI Prompts for Marketers

Marketers can use AI for more than one purpose. They can use it to brainstorm entire processes or series if done correctly. So as you find inspiration for your own AI prompts, feel free to try them out in HubSpot’s content assistant.

Join the waitlist for HubSpot’s content assistant today

This content assistant tool natively integrates with the HubSpot products you know and love, allowing you to toggle between manual and AI content creation to generate copy for blogs, emails, and more. Now let’s get into the different prompts you can use for your marketing strategy.

AI Prompts for Lead Generation

Lead generation is the process of attracting prospects to your business and increasing their interest from prospect to customer. AI can empower marketers to attract more potential customers based on buyer persona characteristics if specified in the AI prompt. The following examples showcase how to get those customized results.

1. Generate ideas for a new product launch in [month] that incorporates the theme of [season] and [tone].

2. Brainstorm content ideas for a blog post about [topic] in [number] of words or less that is search engine optimized in formatting using H2s and H3s accordingly.

3. Suggest high-volume keyword clusters for [topic] to optimize search engine rankings.

4. Identify popular trends in the industry of [product or service] that an audience of [target audience] will be interested in this [upcoming season].

5. Generate ideas for an upcoming marketing campaign about [new product] with a marketing mix consisting of [product] [price] [place] [promotion channels].

6. Suggest [number] ways to improve website traffic during [holiday season].

7. Identify potential target audiences in [location] that would be interested in buying [product] to solve [pain point].

8. Suggest new strategies for lead generation in [market] and [industry].

9. Generate ideas for creating a viral social media campaign using recent [social media platform] trending audios or popular memes from [month] [year].

10. Identify new channels for advertising [product] aside from [current platforms already in use].

AI Prompts for Drafting Social Media Posts

Did you know that AI can recognize different social media platforms from one another? Marketers benefit from using AI prompts for their preferred channels instead of basing strategy on generalizations. Here are some excellent examples to follow for social media drafts.

11. Write a tweet promoting a new product suited for a target audience in [industry] and [location].

12. Generate a post for Instagram featuring a customer testimonial about [product] in [number] words or less.

13. Write a Facebook post introducing a new product feature and rephrase its current description to sound more exciting and effective: [insert current product description text].

14. Create a LinkedIn post promoting a new job opening in [number] words or less with a strong call to action at the end.

15. Draft a Pinterest post featuring a new product line and provide tips on improving product photography for [type of aesthetic].

16. Write a YouTube video description for a new product review that links to [insert links] for viewers to go to the product landing page for more information.

17. Draft a TikTok video script showcasing a product demonstration for 2 minutes at maximum.

18. Create a Snapchat story promoting a limited-time offer and describe the type of stickers or filters that can improve it.

19. Write a blog post title to promote a new social media campaign in [number] characters or less.

20. Draft an email subject line to promote a new blog post that feels personal, enticing, and not spammy.

AI Prompts to Create Podcast or Video Content

Developing ideas for podcasts or videos on your own can be exhausting. Thankfully, AI can provide ideas for them and even walk you through the script and development process if you specify it in your prompt. See the different types of prompts that can help you create multimedia content.

21. Draft a podcast episode about the latest [industry] trends and innovations that contains [number] minutes of dialogue.

22. Produce [number] of topics for a video series featuring interviews with thought leaders in [industry].

23. Develop a podcast episode discussing the benefits of [products or services] divided into four chapters.

24. Create a video series that showcases customer success stories.

25. Produce a podcast episode on the history and evolution of [brand or industry].

26. Develop a video series on best practices for using [products or services] in [number] of different ways.

27. Create a podcast episode that features an expert roundtable discussion on [industry topics].

28. Produce ideas for a video series featuring a behind-the-scenes look at your company’s operations.

29. Develop a podcast episode that offers tips and advice on succeeding in [industry] as an entrepreneur.

30. Create a video series highlighting the impact of [products or services] on the lives of customers or clients in [demographic].

AI Prompts for Content Promotion

Marketers looking for more effective ways to promote their products or service can use AI for best practices. Explore the different channels, tips, and methods this technology can yield using solid AI prompts.

31. Suggest the best time and day of the week to publish a blog post about [topic].

32. Write a press release announcing a new product launch geared toward [target audience] that sounds confident, exciting, and interesting.

33. Generate ideas for outreach emails to promote a new product, including [number] of attention-grabbing subject lines and [number] of clear calls to action.

34. Write a guest post for a popular industry blog discussing the impact of [product] on [marketing strategy].

35. Suggest the [number] best hashtags for a social media campaign on [social media platform] to reach [target audience].

36. Draft a script for a 60-second podcast ad that has a friendly tone and witty humor fit for [target audience characteristics].

37. Create a landing page for a new product promotion divided into [number] sections about different benefits based on this description: [insert new product description].

38. Write a script for a TV commercial involving [number] actors in [setting] that promote [product].

39. Draft a product description for an e-commerce site that is [number] sentences long and enticing to [target audience].

40. Generate ideas for cross-promotion with other businesses in the [market], specifically with brands such as [brand names].

AI Prompts for Repurposing Content

AI can allow marketers to reuse and recycle outdated content into something new or more useful in the current year — a process known as historical optimization. When making AI prompts for content repurposing, think outside the box and see how you can transform your old work into something new.

41. Repurpose a blog post into a video script using this article: [insert old blog post].

42. Turn a webinar into a podcast episode using this pre-existing transcript: [insert old webinar transcript].

43. Repurpose an ebook into a series of [number] blog posts using this pre-existing text: [insert old e-book content].

44. Generate ideas for updating an outdated infographic on [topic] for 2023.

45. Rewrite a blog post into a social media post series of [number] posts on [social media platform of choice].

46. Turn an old product page into a landing page for a new product using this pre-existing copy: [insert old product page content].

47. Generate ideas for repurposing a white paper into a video series about [topic] using this pre-existing text: [insert old whitepaper content].

48. Rewrite an old email campaign into a new one with updated messaging suited for [season] [year].

49. Turn a research report into a series of social media posts using this information: [facts from research report].

50. Generate ideas for repurposing an old product demo into a webinar.

Use Thorough AI Prompts for Thorough Results

AI is becoming incredibly useful for marketers in more ways than one. When you leverage this technology, make sure you’re using specific and concise prompts to yield the results your team is looking for.

Artificial intelligence is being introduced to more users every day — using it to shuffle through music, write strategic plans, make images or art, and improve our lives and business.

But many people don’t entirely trust it. Lack of transparency and discrepancies in results could prevent the tech from improving, and the implementation of an AI ethical framework can reform that.

In this post, we’ll discuss AI ethics and how ethical decision-making can improve the technology. But if you’re in a pinch, jump to the information you need.

• What are AI ethics?
• Why are AI ethics important?
• Biggest AI Ethical Concerns
• Benefits of Ethical AI

It’s a system that AI developers should have in place to serve people better while minimizing negative consequences. Technology can only be as efficient as it’s built to be and should follow a universal guideline to benefit its user base.

Why are AI ethics important?

The use of ethics in AI is essential to prevent the misuse of technology. Without an ethical framework behind it, artificial intelligence can result in privacy invasion, unequal bias, and other risks many may not even consider when beginning to use it.

Let’s break down some of the biggest ethical focuses in AI that developers should prioritize as it evolves.

Biggest AI Ethical Concerns

AI is just like any other technological advancement in need of guidelines. Many professionals can already see the consequences of using the tool without moral consideration. HubSpot Product Manager Kevin Walsh and the founder of PR 20/20, Paul Roetzer, sat down to discuss ethical concerns for the future of AI.

Professionals from different backgrounds and industries have much to consider as they incorporate AI into their strategy, and we’ll discuss some of the biggest ethical concerns in AI.

1. Privacy and Security Concerns

We interviewed one of HubSpot’s marketing blog editors, Martina Bretous, to get her perspective on this concern, “It can impact the brand’s credibility but also bring legal ramifications. For content creators and artists, there is a real fear of intellectual property theft. How can I ensure that my content is protected from AI?”

AI is a valuable and time-saving tool, but the information it uses to improve isn’t guaranteed to be protected. The amount of personal data users unknowingly give away for AI solutions isn’t disclosed — and it could be using unauthorized intellectual property to work. Without ethical guidelines, it can lead to data breaches, legal conflict, and other misuses.

2. Social and Environmental Wellbeing Concerns

AI systems can have an impact on individual and environmental well-being. Developers of the technology should clearly outline the objectives of the tech they create to erase ambiguity. Additionally, they should ensure its use is for the benefit of everyone who uses it equally.

3. Reliability Concerns

According to the HubSpot State of AI survey, 30% of marketers don’t use AI because they believe it sometimes produces inaccurate information. Users of artificial intelligence rely on the tech to operate as advertised, but there are valid concerns about whether the results it generates are reliable.

Bretous builds on this point to say, “With AI, there’s no shortage of ethical implications – it just depends on whose lens you’re looking from. For brands, for instance, one ethical dilemma they may have to wrestle with is how they’ll disclose the use of generative AI in their content marketing. Does the audience deserve to know when something – say a blog post – has been AI-generated or should audiences just assume it’s the name of the game now?”

Typically, AI doesn’t disclose the exact sources of information it shares with users — much less a game plan for accident mitigation or investigation when information is false or leaked. To combat these concerns, AI ethics could change these doubts into real plans for beneficial change.

Benefits of Ethical AI

More trustworthiness and privacy protection.

AI ethics can change people’s perception of the technology if it becomes an industry standard to provide transparency and explainable disclosures to its users. Building confidence in the technology will likely increase its use and allow users to understand processes and how data is used.

Avoid unfair bias.

Bretous also said, “From a consumer’s perspective, bias is an incredibly important concern and this is where AI literacy will be key – just because AI said it, doesn’t mean it’s accurate or reliable. This is all to say that we’ve only scratched the surface of what’s possible but also what’s dangerous about AI.”

A benefit of AI ethics is that its use can become fairer. Many AIs have displayed an insensitive or unfair bias for certain individuals or groups using the technology, and adhering to ethical guidelines can help prevent these results. It provides equitable access and representation.

Universal value alignment.

People make decisions by considering universal values, a framework that can be forgotten if not included in artificial intelligence. While AI developers could gradually address individuals’ ethical issues, a universal code of ethics can set the standard for how humans use the technology and how AI evolves according to guidelines.

Ethics in AI are a Must

Just as humans have moral guidelines behind what they do, so should the technology we use. AI will become a standard tool across many industries, and to ensure it’s used equitably and safely, will benefit from ethical guidelines.

Rebranding can be daunting, but it can improve your brand recognition and help you gain a larger following — and we’ve seen it done right by some of the biggest names out there.

In this blog post, we will explore some of the most notable famous rebrands and what marketers can learn from them to apply to their own businesses. Whether you’re looking to rebrand your business or for inspiration to take your brand to the next level, these rebrands offer valuable insights into what it takes to refresh and modernize a brand successfully.

1. Meta

In October 2021, Facebook underwent a significant rebranding effort, changing its name to Meta. This change reflects the company’s shift in focus from being a social media platform to becoming a metaverse company. It now focuses on creating virtual reality experiences that allow users to interact in a more immersive and interconnected way. This rebranding effort also included a whole new visual identity and logo design.

One lesson marketers can learn from this rebranding effort is the importance of staying relevant and not shying away from innovation. Facebook recognized that the world is changing and that people are increasingly looking for new and creative ways to connect and engage with each other.

By shifting its focus to the metaverse, Meta is positioning itself as a leader in this emerging field and demonstrating a willingness to adapt and change in response to evolving consumer needs and preferences. Marketers could learn a thing about the importance of staying attuned to changes in the market and being willing to make bold moves to stay ahead of the competition.

2. Petco

In October 2020, Petco announced it would no longer sell electronic “shock” collars. The announcement highlighted the company’s rebranding efforts as a health and wellness company for pets.

The pet store redesigned Petco’s homepage, as well as the Petco app, to focus on their new initiatives — including health and wellness resources for pet parents, a “Right Food Finder” tool to help parents identify the healthiest foods for their pets and an extended range of pet healthcare and insurance offerings.

Nowadays, many American pet owners treat their animals as family members — so Petco’s rebranding makes a lot of sense. The new design better reflects the brand’s more holistic approach to animal wellness — including a dedicated landing page that outlines how to take care of your pet’s mental, physical, and social health, with a tagline, “We’re working with trusted experts to improve pet wellbeing by raising the standards of everything we do. Because it’s what we’d want if we were pets.”

Overall, this was an extremely successful rebrand as it focused on a shift in consumers’ lifestyles and ensured the company’s refreshed vision reflected those priorities.

3. Dunkin’

In 2019, Dunkin’ Donuts announced a rebranding effort, changing its name to “Dunkin’.” The move was designed to reflect the company’s expanding focus beyond donuts and towards a wider variety of food and drink options, including breakfast sandwiches, coffee, and other snacks. The rebrand also included a new visual identity and logo featuring a bold, modern font and an updated color scheme.

Dunkin’ recognized that consumer tastes and preferences were changing and wanted to rival the coffee giant Starbucks more than retain its identity as a donut shop. The brand knew it needed to adapt to remain competitive, and it was a successful rebrand that’s still going strong. By rebranding as “Dunkin”” and expanding its offerings, the company was able to position itself as a more modern, versatile brand that could meet the changing needs of its customers.

This highlights the importance of regularly reassessing your brand’s positioning and messaging and being willing to make bold moves to stay ahead of the curve. Additionally, it underscores the importance of keeping your brand consistent across all touchpoints, from visual identity to customer experience, maintaining a solid and cohesive brand identity.

4. Adobe Creative Cloud

In May 2020, Adobe released a blog post, “Evolving Our Brand Identity.” The article dives into the decisions behind Adobe Creative Cloud’s rebranding and states, “We’re making these branding changes to ensure our portfolio continues to be easy for our customers to navigate and understand, as well as maintain a fresh look and feel.”

Among other things, Adobe Creative Cloud redesigned its:

• Logo: The company redesigned the logo to an all-red logo with warmer hues.
• Creative Cloud logo: The new logo uses a colorful gradient to represent “the importance of creativity.” The colors in the logo are pulled together from various Adobe products and the latest Adobe red logo.
• Product logos: The company is adding 3-letter mnemonics to help viewers determine product families — like Adobe Photoshop (Ps) and Adobe Photoshop Camera (PsC). The designers also used colors to organize products into categories.

These redesigns successfully highlighted and organized the many product offerings of Adobe Creative Cloud. For instance, when you navigate to the “Video” product page on Adobe’s website, all apps within the Video category are similar shades of blues and purples.

While some designers have expressed frustration over the new logo color similarities, it makes sense that the brand needed to organize its products better — with a catalog of over 50 products, choosing the right ones for your needs can feel overwhelming. The updated logos should help make it easier to pick and choose.

5. Starbucks

Over the years, Starbucks — one of the most valuable brands in the world — has proven the true power of a good brand. And one of the telltale signs of a good brand is the ability to consistently innovate and push the boundaries rather than settling for what’s already working.

In 2020, Starbucks released its “Starbucks Creative Expression” brand expression guide. The site focuses on Starbucks’ defined voice, typography, and logo to create consistency across channels and Starbucks locations.

In a few words, Starbucks aims to create an open, creative, carefree, and modern brand. On the Voice page, for instance, it reads, “We’re confidently turning down the volume of competing messages to elevate experience, removing obstacles in the way of people finding exactly what they seek at Starbucks.” The guideline adds, “When we have the space, we tell a passionate coffee story. But even with just a few words, our copy can make you smile.”

Ultimately, this most recent Starbucks rebrand is simple and effective. Rather than moving too far in the opposite direction of the brand’s roots, the company sticks to its fundamental company vision while making slight alterations to continue serving the needs and preferences of its consumers.

6. GoDaddy

A web hosting service founded back in 1997, GoDaddy needed an upgrade. In early 2020, they created a brand-new logo, refreshed their website design, and created new marketing campaigns to match the new look. Their design page reads, “A new brand for a new era” and focuses on how GoDaddy’s users — the everyday entrepreneurs — inspired the new look.

One of GoDaddy’s most striking changes is the new logo, named the GO. GoDaddy believes the GO represents “the indomitable spirit of everyday entrepreneurs.” Its contemporary design uses colorful visuals, hand-drawn illustrations, and a bold, serif font to evoke a sense of inspiration and joy. GoDaddy’s brand voice, depicted in recent campaigns, aims to be casual, human, and friendly.

While some brands might need less of a makeover, GoDaddy’s older image felt outdated and less cohesive. Their rebranding reflects the modern tastes, personalities, and needs of the modern user.

7. Pottery Barn

Pottery Barn, a roughly 70-year-old home furnishing company, has now put sustainability as the central focus of their brand, promising consumers that what they purchase will be worthwhile — both in terms of quality and environmental impact.

Pottery Barn, named the most sustainable home furnishings retailer, has focused its efforts on sustainability with a dedicated landing page outlining its commitments:

• Plant a tree (with the Arbor Day Foundation) every time a consumer purchases a piece of indoor wood furniture.
• Use responsibly-sourced cotton.
• Keep products out of landfills by restoring items with a new Pottery Barn “Renewed” line.
• Contribute money for communities to invest in health clinics, water filtration systems, and more (the brand has currently contributed $3 million).

Ultimately, as your brand grows with your consumers, it’s essential to consider what matters to them today. Pottery Barn has done an excellent job identifying a sweet spot in the furniture marketplace: Sustainability. As consumers continue to use this value as a guiding light in their purchasing decisions, it makes sense for Pottery Barn to ensure all their updated marketing materials reflect its mission.

8. I❤️NY Logo

We’ve spoken about all these successful rebrands, but marketers have just as much to learn from famously failed rebrands.

On March 20th, 2023, the “We ❤️ NYC” logo by Graham Clifford was announced to be New York City’s new branding campaign to replace the iconic “I ❤️ NY” logo by Milton Glaser — but it failed to capture the same emotional connection and visual appeal that made the original so famous.

While the new logo featured a more modern font and a heart symbol made up of various New York City icons, it lacked the simplicity and elegance of the original design, which has become synonymous with the city itself. Additionally, the new logo failed to resonate with New Yorkers and visitors like the original, eventually abandoning it.

Marketers can learn from this failed rebrand attempt the importance of respecting and building upon existing brand equity. The “I ❤️ NY” logo had become an iconic symbol of New York City and its culture, and attempting to replace it with a new design was a risky move that ultimately backfired.

Marketers should carefully consider the existing brand equity of a company or product before making any significant changes and focus on building upon that equity rather than starting from scratch. Additionally, marketers should listen to the feedback of consumers and stakeholders before making any major branding decisions and be willing to pivot or change course if necessary.

Key Takeaways from Famous Rebrands

The above examples make it easy to spot some similarities that made them all strong contenders for best rebrands. But before you begin your rebrand for your own business, remember these takeaways:

1. Keep your audience at the forefront of your plans.

What tastes and preferences do they have? What inspires or excites them? How would they want your website designed? Identifying and catering to a specific audience or buyer persona will give you a better chance of succeeding through a rebrand than trying to appeal to the masses.

2. Use your consumers’ outside preferences to shape your rebranding.

Consider your consumers’ passions beyond your products or services and what they care most about — you can weave those into your brand story.

Like Petco and Pottery Barn’s successful rebrands, ethical or sustainable marketing can garner attention from those who want to see their money fuel a socially responsible business.

3. A rebrand is more than just a logo change.

You want your rebrand to be bold. Otherwise, it’s just a brand refresh.

To properly rebrand, you’ll want to conduct a content audit and analyze all your existing content to ensure each webpage, logo, graphic, and advertisement is updated to fit your new image.

4. A brand guideline page is critical for cohesion.

Most examples in this list have a dedicated brand guideline page for ensuring each employee is empowered with the right tools to create content that fits the new look.

Both GoDaddy and Starbucks, for instance, outline how the voice should sound, what fonts to use, and even what colors to include in any public-facing marketing materials.

Rebrand with your customers in mind.

Ultimately, a rebranding strategy can be an exciting and effective opportunity to delight existing customers while attracting new ones. We hope these famous rebrands inspire you to get started with your fresh look.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in May 2021 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

As algorithms and trends evolve, managing social platforms effectively has become one of the biggest challenges for marketers.

Fortunately, social media AI tools have emerged as powerful solutions that can streamline the process and enhance overall performance.

In this blog post, we’ll introduce you to 10 cutting-edge social media AI tools that can help you optimize your social media strategy, boost productivity, and drive positive ROI.

From social listening and analysis tools to AI-powered content creation platforms, these tools can help you gain deeper insights into your audience.

So, let’s dive in and discover how these innovative AI tools can transform your social media strategy.

3 Ways to Implement AI in Your Social Media Strategy

The 10 Best Social Media AI Tools

3 Ways to Implement AI in Your Social Media Strategy

As a social media marketer, you wear many hats. You’re a content creator, analytics expert, and advertiser. Luckily, AI can help with each of these roles. Below we’ll explore how AI can augment your work and free up your time.

1. Use AI software to create basic post content.

Are you stuck writing filler posts instead of filming viral videos and creating detailed Instagram stories? Creating the right captions and tweets uses brainpower that can be better spent elsewhere.

Many marketers are using generative AI like ChatGPT to write full blog posts. However, there are specialized AI tools that can help social media marketers create the content they share online.

So how can AI craft and suggest a tweet for you? One subset of AI is called natural language generation (NLG). It can be trained to create written narratives out of data, like simple reports or fact sheets.

So let’s say your department produced a huge, data-driven report, and you want to create a few high-impact social shares from it. You can put your copy into AI platforms, like Copy.ai, and make sort posts with your critical data.

2. Monitor and analyze your social media channels with AI.

Writing content and responses is only half the battle of social media management. A huge portion of social media marketing is managing and monitoring social channels.

Luckily, AI can shoulder data-heavy tasks and help you make better marketing decisions. That’s because AI tools can collect information from millions of posts at scale and use that data to make predictions.

“Managing” a channel is a loaded term. A few of those tasks, like discovering high-impact influencers, can be handled by tools like Emplifi.

3. Create, optimize, and manage paid social media advertising.

As mentioned above, AI is capable of developing social media posts. The same can be said for ad copy that resonates with different audiences. AI can help you write ads optimized for clicks and conversions using predictive technology.

The 10 Best Social Media AI Tools

1. Lately

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Lately makes generating posts easy. This tool can recognize context from a larger piece of content and create social media posts for promotion.

Within the Lately dashboard, you can use a simple form to generate a number of tweets at once related to a URL, document, or information posted in a text box.

You can also include campaign information and hashtags that you’d like to work into your social posts.

When you click “Generate Content,” the tool will create tweets related to it. Once your content is created, you can schedule your work and manage your projects.

Lately also analyzes the historical metrics of your pages to recommend the best posting times for maximum impact.

Best for: Creating post content.

What we like: Lately offers a standout AI feature that lets you quickly and easily generate social media by repurposing any long-form content.

Pricing: Lately offers three different plans. The Startly plan costs $29 per month. The Litely plan costs $49 per month, and you can opt for the Professional plan for $129 per month, which includes additional features.

Case Study

Erica Mitchell, the Director of Marketing at Supporting Strategies, has successfully used Lately’s dashboard to enhance the company’s online presence.

Initially, she faced the challenge of managing over 179 social media channels for her company, which provides outsourced bookkeeping services with over 90 locations in the United States.

To simplify her workflow while ensuring compliant messaging at scale, Erica implemented Lately.

By using 35 Lately dashboards linked to all 179 social media channels, Erica was able to amplify Supporting Strategies’ organic social content.

This effort yielded impressive results, with the company experiencing a remarkable 2x increase in web traffic within just one year.

2. Sprout Social

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If you use your social platforms for community management, Sprout Social’s automated technology can help you reply to fans, customers, or followers.

You can see and respond to posts directed at your company all through the Sprout Social dashboard. Sprout admins also have the power to manage direct messages through the platform.

In both the dashboard and direct message view, Sprout can analyze the wording and sentiment of a message and suggest an auto-response that you can use or tweak.

Although AI is not having a full conversation with all of your followers, automation makes the process faster.

Best for: Managing messages from customers.

What we like: Sprout Social’s Social Listening solution is a great feature that leverages the power of global conversations using AI-driven technology.

You can extract valuable insights from thousands of unfiltered thoughts, opinions, and feedback to enhance your strategy.

Pricing: Sprout Social’s Standard plan starts at $249 per month. The Professional plan is priced at $399 per month, and the Advanced plan is priced at $499 per month.

Case Study

Goally, a company that offers a skill-building app and electronic devices for kids, has experienced success with Sprout Social’s Smart Inbox.

By leveraging the personalized customer care and engagement features of Smart Inbox, Goally has been able to maintain a 100% action rate on TikTok content, ensuring a high level of responsiveness and satisfaction among their target audience.

3. HubSpot

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We can’t ignore HubSpot, either: HubSpot’s social media software is designed to simplify your social media content creation and posting process with the help of AI.

The software automatically creates engaging social media posts by analyzing the provided link’s metadata.

Anyone subscribed to HubSpot’s Marketing Hub or higher can use the tool, which can be found in the platform’s Social section.

Click “Create Post” and choose a social channel. Once the text box opens, attach a URL from your own site or another location.

Once you insert post attachments, like the URL, you’ll either see a short headline or a meta description of the page along with its link and a photo.

After the post copy is pulled and generated into the text box, you can tweak the copy to fit your social voice or add more depth or comprehensiveness to the overall post.

Best for: Creating post content.

What we like: HubSpot’s social media management tool facilitates seamless content publishing across LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Moreover, the software enables you to connect your social media accounts to your blog, automatically sharing content as it’s published.

Pricing: HubSpot’s pricing varies depending on how many users you have and whether you want to purchase just the Marketing or other Hubs.

However, HubSpot’s Starter pack begins at $50 per month and includes Marketing Hub functions plus the free features of HubSpot’s CRM.

Case Study

Aermec North America is a leading brand that offers innovative HVAC solutions in the North American market. However, despite their high-quality products, they struggled with low social media engagement and few followers.

The company’s marketing team leveraged HubSpot Marketing to enhance its social efforts to address this issue.

Over one year, the company saw a remarkable 44% increase in its collective followers across all social media and a significant 60% surge in social media shares.

4. Copy.ai

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Writing the perfect copy, with the right word count for each platform, can take hours of your day. Copy.ai helps automate the process. All you need to do is follow these three steps.

• Specify what platform the copy will be for, including Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
• Give the AI context for your post. That could be a command related to the topic of your post or a larger portion of text, like a section of a blog post.
• Choose from multiple options and make the tweaks you see fit.

Best for: Creating post content.

What we like: If you need to write multiple posts for the same campaign, Copy.ai gives you multiple options that you can choose from — or you can schedule them all.

Pricing: Pro plans start at $36 per month.

Case Study

Copy.ai can help you feature keywords that generate traffic and help your users find your posts.

Lucy Werner, PR and branding expert at The Wern Agency, is a frequent user of Copy.ai. She uses the rewrite with keyword function to help optimize her content for search.

“It will pop them in for you with a rejig at the click of a button,” she writes.

5. Emplifi

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Emplifi, previously known as Socialbakers, is an AI-driven social media management platform that provides advanced audience insights.

The platform includes a unified content feed, an analytics dashboard, and smart scheduling tools.

If you’ve found that it takes too much time and resources to find, vet, track, and keep up relationships with influencers, Emplifis’ AI-driven influencer dashboard will streamline the processes.

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When you click into the influencer dashboard, you can toggle between different social media platforms and categories, like “Food” or “Health.”

You can then see influencers that match the most with your audience, which Emplifi continuously analyzes.

Best for: Finding influencers to work with.

What we like: Emplifi Social Marketing Cloud offers top-of-the-line analytics and insights capabilities. The software allows you to generate custom reports to uncover actionable insights that drive real business results.

Pricing: Emplifi Social Marketing Cloud costs $200 per month, billed annually with a 10-profile limit. If you’d like to run 20 platforms, you can subscribe to Essential’s second tier for $400 per month, billed annually.

The Complete Social Marketing Cloud plan, which offers influencer tools, is available upon request.

Case Study

Organix, the UK’s premier baby and toddler finger food brand, collaborated with influencers for their WonderDen campaign. The goal was to establish authentic and trustworthy connections between the brand and its community.

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To manage the campaign, Organix leveraged the powerful Emplifi Social Marketing Cloud.

The software allowed the brand to track content performance across all social media touchpoints, including both influencer and brand-generated content.

As a result, Organix achieved a remarkable 34x engagement efficiency.

6. Cortex

When it comes to sharing content, you can use Cortex to receive recommendations on when and how often to post based on historical metrics. Cortex can also generate detailed analyses of your competitors.

Cortex has a dashboard that shows off your posts and your social schedule. When you create a post, Cortext uses data to suggest posting times.

If you upload one or more photos, the software will also note colors that are most engaging for your audience to help you pick the best image for the post.

Best for: Analyzing your social media performance.

What we like: Cortex’s ability to monitor content trends and identify emerging keywords and layouts can help you stay ahead of the curve.

Additionally, you can leverage their advanced analytics and insights to better understand your audience.

Pricing: Prices are available upon request.

Case Study

St. Regis, a luxury hospitality brand with a strong visual focus, recognized the need to improve their images to better connect with both existing and potential future guests.

By leveraging the advanced insights provided by Cortex, St. Regis saw an astounding 72x increase in engagement on Facebook. Their Instagram page also saw a significant 61% increase in followers on Instagram.

7. Linkfluence Radarly

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You can also use something like Linkfluence‘s Radarly software to assess the mountains of data social media audiences produce daily.

That means measuring your brand impact, detecting trends, and pulling specific insights on your most important target audience.

With Radarly, you’re able to log on and see a dashboard that connects data from all of your accounts. In the first column, you can see a live feed of posts and tweets that acknowledge your brand name or handle in some way.

Then in the next columns, you can see scoring that explains how negatively or positively people are talking about you on social.

You’ll also view which platforms people are discussing you most on and data about your audiences, such as interests, languages, or hashtags they’re using.

Best for: Analyzing your social media performance.

What we like: The social listening platform analyzes live streams of social data to give you a better understanding of your customers, including their behavior and sentiment.

Pricing: Prices are available upon request.

Case Study

Pernod Ricard, one of the world’s largest spirits brands, wanted to leverage social data and consumer insights to drive business decisions.

With the help of Linkfluence’s advanced social listening and contextual analysis platform, Pernod Ricard gained a comprehensive understanding of its target audience.

This enabled the company to tailor its products and marketing efforts accordingly. This customer-centric approach drove Pernod Ricard’s annual sales to a staggering €8,987 Million in 2018.

8. Phrasee

Phrasee pulls data from past marketing assets, including emails, social media copy, and other online posts, to determine the most and least effective.

From there, Phrasee can show you the weak or strong copy-related aspects of past ads. You can then draft prospective copy and test its effectiveness within the software. You can also use ad copy that the software suggests for you.

Best for: Optimizing social media advertising.

What we like: Phrasee’s AI-powered technology allows you to generate, optimize, automate, and analyze marketing messages in real time.

Pricing: Prices are available upon request.

Case Study

Wowcher, a prominent ecommerce brand in the UK, partnered with Phrasee to enhance its social media marketing.

Wowcher used Phrasee’s AI-driven content creation software to optimize its Facebook and Instagram ad campaigns. Within a few campaigns, the company achieved a remarkable 31.2% decrease in cost per lead (CPL).

9. Pattern89

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AI can tackle some of the nitty-gritty ad management tasks, like optimizing bids, divvying up a budget, and recommending channels to help your ad perform.

Pattern89 is an AI marketing tool that provides recommendations on almost every aspect of your ads, including recommendations for adjusting your spend and audience targeting to massively increase performance.

When you log into the tool, you’ll see a screen filled with alerts and suggestions related to improving your ad’s effectiveness. If you’d like to follow the platform’s suggestions, you can click “Show me how” to learn how to make ad adjustments.

If the platform shows you a “Do this automatically” button next to a suggestion, you can click that to have the platform make the adjustment.

Aside from allowing you to monitor live and completed ads, the tool also offers a Creative Ads Manager. This allows you to search and analyze past ads with filters including ad set, campaign objective, audience, and other ad targets.

Best for: Optimizing social media advertising.

What we like: Pattern89 is a top pick if you want to conduct in-depth analyses of customer behaviors on social media, particularly on platforms like Facebook and Instagram.

Pricing: Prices are available upon request.

Case Study

SnapShyft is a marketplace that offers flexible staffing solutions for the food service and hospitality industries. The company partnered with Pattern89 to enhance its marketing efforts and increase conversions.

Using Pattern89’s marketing AI, SnapShyft was able to analyze ad creative and audience engagement in real time, optimizing its in-flight campaigns for maximum impact.

In just four months, Pattern89 drove 75% of new add-to-carts and 96% of new checkout for SnapShyft.

10. LocaliQ

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LocaliQ, previously known as Wordstream, is an innovative social media marketing tool designed to help you reach potential customers through social ads.

With LocaliQ, you can collaborate with their team to create a tailored social ad strategy that aligns with your unique objectives.

The LocaliQ platform provides a unified lead dashboard, allowing you to monitor and analyze your campaign’s performance.

Additionally, you can use the platform to generate leads, connect with prospects, access reports, and automate your marketing initiatives with ease.

Best for: Optimizing social media advertising.

What we like: Using LocaliQ’s XMO technology, you can allocate one budget for your business objectives and automatically adjust spending across multiple channels based on real-time performance data.

Pricing: Pricing is available upon request.

Case Study

Aubuchon Homes is a leading luxury home design company based in Southwest Florida. Despite its reputation for exceptional design, the company faced challenges in generating new leads.

To address this issue, Aubuchon Homes sought the expertise of LocaliQ.

Leveraging LocaliQ’s Smart Social ads tools, Aubuchon Homes drove remarkable results quickly. The targeted advertising campaigns drove a 300% increase in leads, with the new leads being of higher quality.

As a result, the company saw a 42% increase in the average home sale price, leading to greater revenue and profitability.

AI for Every Social Media Marketer

If artificial intelligence still seems like an overwhelming topic, you’re not the only one who might be intimidated by it. After all, we’re marketers, not data scientists.

Good news: You don’t need to be a data scientist to understand, start using, and make a massive impact with the help of various AI. You just need to start using AI platforms for social media. Get started with these tools today.

Finding the right influencer for a brand campaign can feel like dating. You want someone who shares your values, aligns with your goals, and will make a great impression on your friends and family — or followers, in your brand’s case.

The same can be said if you’re an influencer looking for a brand that will take your career to the next level.

Whether you’re a brand or an influencer, this article will help you find the perfect match by showing you the top channels for influencer marketing.

Discover the best social media channels for your next influencer marketing campaign and what platforms to use to find a brand or creator to collaborate with.

Best Channels for Influencers

Influencer Platforms for Creators

10 Best Influencer Platforms

Best Channels for Influencers

Below are the channels marketers leverage the most in influencer marketing and where influencers achieve the highest ROI for the companies they work with.

1. Instagram

According to our survey, 72% of marketers listed Instagram among the social media platforms on which they work with influencers and creators.

Most marketers surveyed (30%) also said Instagram is the platform they get the biggest ROI when working with influencers and creators.

Furthermore, most marketers (32%) said Instagram is the easiest platform to work with influencers.

2. YouTube

58% of our survey’s marketers listed YouTube as a platform they leverage when working with creators and influencers. 20% of marketers said YouTube yields the highest ROI when working with influencers.

When asked which social media platform is the easiest to leverage when working with influencers, 20% of marketers pointed to YouTube. And 18% of marketers plan to use YouTube for influencer marketing.

3. TikTok

61% of marketers listed TikTok among the social media platforms on which they work with influencers and creators. However, only 14% said it results in the biggest ROI when leveraging influencer marketing.

14% also said TikTok is the easiest to work with when collaborating with influencers and creators.

4. Facebook

Finally, 57% of marketers listed Facebook as their platform of choice when working with creators and influencers.

It also ties with YouTube regarding ROI, with 20% of marketers saying it yields the highest ROI when leveraging influencer marketing.

18% of marketers said it’s the easiest platform to work with when collaborating with influencers and creators.

Influencer Platforms for Creators

If you’re an influencer or creator looking for a platform to help you connect with brands, expand your reach, and book paid campaigns — consider joining the platforms below.

1. Mavrck

Mavrck is an influencer marketing platform that connects brands with creators (and vice versa) for collaborations and marketing campaigns. Its influencer index is especially helpful for creators.

Through the influencers index, creators can make a profile on the site and make their accounts searchable. Brands can then reach out directly to the creators and influencers they want to work with.

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2. Activate

Influencers who want control over the campaigns and brands they work with get a lot of use out of Active.

The platform allows creators to scroll through partnership opportunities posted on the site, negotiate their rates, and submit partnership proposals.

Influencers can also filter campaigns based on compensation.

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3. #Paid

On #Paid, influencers can set their rates for their content posts and the custom content they create to be posted by brands. To see campaign opportunities, users must sign up.

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4. Clever

Clever is a full-service influencer marketing agency that connects creators with brands and brand campaigns. The agency works with influencers at every level but focuses primarily on micro-influencers.

Clever’s services include:

• Campaign designs
• Influencer profile definitions
• Influencer selection
• Influencer program management
• Reporting

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10 Best Influencer Platforms

Whether you’re a content creator, influencer, or brand — the platforms below are best if you want to collaborate and get the most out of your influencer marketing campaign.

1. Shopify Collabs

Shopify Collabs is free for anyone with an existing Shopify plan. The all-in-one tool allows brands to partner with influencers on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Twitch.

Marketers can create their brand’s custom application page, discover the right influencer for their next campaign, and manage affiliate payouts and special offers.

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2. YouTube BrandConnect

As mentioned earlier, YouTube is one of the best social media platforms to leverage when working with influencers and creators.

If you’re trying to find the right influencer for your next YouTube marketing campaign — YouTube BrandConnect is what you need.

With YouTube BrandConnect, companies can reach out to creators with a strong following to create innovative, authentic, and engaging branded content.

Furthermore, YouTube BrandConnect synchs with your Google Ads account and gives access to a suite of influencer marketing tools exclusive to Google.

With these tools, you can monitor your campaigns, find ways to increase engagement, and offer products in real time.

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3. Grin

If you like having a wide range of tools at your disposal, then you’ll enjoy Grin. The platform boasts a plethora of tools that support:

• Relationship management
• Discovery and recruitment
• Content management
• Product seeding
• Payments

Grin can also integrate with your marketing stack, including email providers and e-commerce solutions.

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4. Aspire

Aspire is an excellent platform if your goal is to build a unique influencer marketing program. The platform’s fully customizable relationship workflows make it easy for marketers to tailor their influencer marketing process to their needs.

Aspire also allows users to find and connect with influencers, brands, and industry experts. Additionally, Aspire has tools and dashboards to help you measure the ROI from your campaign.

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5. Creator.co

Creator.co offers tools for reporting, insights, and campaign execution. With Creator.co, you can search for creators, build your own creator community, and create a seamless onboarding process for the creators you wish to collaborate with.

Creator.co also offers tools such as:

• Creator CRM
• Campaign management
• Paid social and ad permissions
• API Integrations
• Reporting and insights
• Competitor benchmarking

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6. Open Influence

Open Influence calls itself your “campaign co-pilot” that will assist you from campaign ideation to creator selection to performance tracking.

If you want help with production, you’ll want to check out its studio feature. Open Influence’s studio provides video production, pre-production, and post-production tools.

It also offers services for live streaming, aerial videography, and virtual reality.

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7. Klear

Klear offers tools to connect brands and influencers; however, one of its main focuses is analytics. Its influencer analytics tool provides influencer insights, demographic data, trending data, and brand safety audits.

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8. Traackr

Traackr focuses on data-driven influencer marketing. With Traackr, you can find partners, collect addresses, create reports, monitor posts, and share briefs.

If you’re looking to run affiliate and paid programs, Traackr boasts tools to manage links, define attribution models, track conversions, and pay commissions.

And, of course, it allows users to sort and vet influencers for potential collaborations.

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9. Impact.com

If you’re a brand with multiple partnerships, Impact likely has the service you need. Impact helps users manage and optimize all of their partnerships through every stage.

Whether you’re a brand, affiliate, influencer, publisher, or sponsor — Impact is an excellent tool for building relationships and fostering successful collaborations.

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10. Influence.co

Influence.co is a directory and portfolio site where creators can network and showcase their work.

The platform’s pricing model focuses on helping creators promote their brand, which allows small businesses on a budget to use Influence.co for free to find relevant creators.

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If you’re a creator looking for your next paid brand collaboration or sponsorship, you know the platforms to help you find your perfect match.

The same goes for if you’re a brand looking for an influencer that shares your vision and aligns with your goals.

Now, go out there and find the best collaborator for your next big influencer marketing campaign!

In the last six months, economic trend surveys we’ve conducted revealed that 37% of marketers are reporting budget cuts – likely due to our changing economy.

As a marketer, knowing where your leadership team might need to cut can help you prepare to pivot to strategies with less resourcing. And, if you lead a team, you’re likely wondering how marketing leaders are navigating this time to make the best decisions for your staff and business in uncertain times.

To help you navigate reducing your marketing budget in 2023, we used tools like Glimpse to survey more than 500 marketing leaders on their top strategies for cutting costs. We also asked them which channels they plan to pull back on first, so you can get an idea of what to expect.

How Marketing Leaders Are Already Pivoting

Our full report, the Marketing Leader’s Playbook, revealed 80% of leaders have already taken steps to plan or prepare for a recession – so let’s dive right in and see what we can learn.

How Marketing Leaders Are Cutting Costs in 2023

Marketing leaders say leaning into earned media, leveraging automation or AI, looking for emerging marketing opportunities, using organic marketing channels, and optimizing your media mix are the top strategies for cutting costs, so let’s take a look at each in more detail below.

1. Tapping Into Earned Media over Paid Media

Tapping into earned media is a great (and free) opportunity to expand your reach when budget cuts are on the horizon.

Traditional examples of earned media include getting your brand spotlighted by a news publication or rated by a review site. Not only is it free, but the fact that it comes from an independent source adds credibility to your brand.

Another powerful earned media asset is content from your very own satisfied customers who might share their pleasant experiences on social media, review sites, or other channels.

Also known as user-generated content, assets created by happy customers are a great way to promote your brand in an authentic and credible way. Sharing and interacting with UGC on your official page will also deepen your connection with your customers and incentivize others to share their stories too!

2. Leveraging Affordable AI and Automation

Let’s have AI (courtesy of OpenGPT) write this section on how AI can help marketers:

“Marketers can use AI to cut costs in several ways. For instance, they can use AI to automate repetitive tasks such as data entry and analysis, which can save time and reduce the need for human labor.

Additionally, AI can be used to optimize marketing campaigns, helping to target the right audience and increase the effectiveness of marketing efforts, which can reduce the amount of money spent on marketing activities.

Furthermore, AI can be used to improve the customer experience, leading to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty, which can help to reduce the cost of acquiring new customers.”

Yes. The writing above isn’t perfect. But, it makes the necessary points and just needs a few tweaks to be great.

While AI isn’t ready to write intriguing full-fledged blog posts on its own, and we don’t condone replacing your team with AI, marketers and leaders can leverage automation, like HubSpot’s Content Assistant, to save time and money in a wide range of ways, like:

• Using AI for basic web research
• Generating post outlines
• Creating short meta or social media descriptions

Artificial intelligence could be such a major evolution in today’s economy and workplace, that it’s even the topic of our next research report and series, which will cover The State of AI in business. Bookmark this page to check out our survey’s marketing highlights.

3. Embracing Emerging Marketing Opportunities

From AI to social media, marketing is always evolving, with new apps and features popping up constantly.

These are often free to use and being among the first brands to hop on a new trend presents a massive opportunity.

For example, embracing BeReal, a new social media platform popular among Gen Z, can make a splash with that demographic in a space brands haven’t yet saturated. You can also try out new social media features, like Instagram’s shopping tools, which offer marketers a high ROI as Millennials and Gen Z continue discovering products (and buying them) through social media.

4. Leaning into Organic Social Media Content

Leveraging social media to gain organic, free awareness is a no-brainer in this day and age, especially for the leaders we surveyed. Rather than investing time and money into making paid ads, you can create great content tailored to the interests of your audience and let social algorithms do the targeting for you.

And as we’ll get into later, paid social media content is the first channel marketing leaders plan to cut in a recession, so organic may be more important than ever.

The good news is that you no longer need a professional camera and the perfect setup to win on social media. Nowadays, authenticity and relatability go much further, especially with Gen Z and Millennials.

Brainstorm a few ideas, grab your phone or pop open Canva, and hit the post button. Analyze your results, double down on what works, and watch your audience grow.

5. Optimizing Media Mixes

Optimizing your media mix is all about figuring out what works (and what doesn’t) and shifting your investment accordingly.

Analyze the performance of your marketing channels and amplify the ones giving you the best ROI. At the same time, you can either cut underperforming channels or switch up your strategy.

Speaking of cutting back on underperforming marketing channels, let’s take a look at where marketing leaders expect to see budget cuts if a recession were to happen.

Where Marketing Leaders Could Cut Costs

If our economy worsens, most marketing leaders expect to see budget cuts in their paid social media content, followed by organic social content, print ads, email marketing, and video content.

Since these are among the most popular marketing channels, it’s no surprise that budget cuts will affect them disproportionately, simply due to the fact more marketers use them in the first place.

With all of that said, one thing worth keeping in mind is that the data above doesn’t necessarily mean marketing leaders will get rid of things like social media or email completely: they just might invest in them differently and more conscientiously.

On the other hand, marketing leaders least expect virtual events, podcasts, SMS, and physical ads to see budget cuts in a recession – possibly because these are used least often. Still, around one in five leaders still think these channels would be on the chopping block.

One definitive finding is that blogs are also among the least likely to be cut, despite being the second most popular marketing channel. Based on that, we can assume blogs will see less of a pullback than other equally popular marketing channels like social media, email, and video.

Get Ahead With Key Economic Insights

With one in three marketers saying a recession will have an even bigger impact on their marketing activities than COVID-19, preparation and continuous monitoring will be key to success.

Now that you know how marketing leaders are planning to cut costs, dive into the full survey results by checking out the Marketing Leader’s Playbook.

We’re also regularly surveying marketers on how the recession is impacting them and the strategies they’re using to persevere.

After reading our blog content, learn about the latest trends, innovations, and other ongoing challenges in the marketing space today by downloading our free State of Marketing Report below.  

Optimizing your content to rank high in search engines can be tedious, especially when there are many factors to consider. Page load times, keywords, content quality, and videos are all things that can affect SEO.

Fortunately, AI SEO tools are available to streamline SEO optimization and boost your website’s rankings.

In this article, we’ll explore the various AI tools available to you, but first, let’s dive into how marketers use AI and the definition of AI SEO.

How Marketers Use AI

What is AI SEO?

15 AI SEO Tools Marketers Should Know

How Marketers Use AI

We surveyed more than 1,350 marketers to learn how they use AI. Here are some statistics we found:

• The majority of the marketers we surveyed (48%) reported using generative AI to conduct research.
• 45% of marketers use generative AI for content creation.
• When creating marketing content, most marketers surveyed (22%) said they use AI to generate ideas.
• 70% of marketers said generative AI is important to their content marketing strategy.

So, what do these statistics tell us? Essentially, AI plays a prominent role in the workflow of many marketers.

If you want to stay competitive as SEO continues to change the marketing landscape, then it’s time to consider how AI can help your brand.

One way to leverage AI is in SEO.

Many AI SEO tools can analyze your website’s performance and provide solutions to areas that need improvement. If you’re looking for AI SEO tools to help your site rank high in SERPs, here are some tools you should consider.

15 AI SEO Tools Marketers Should Know

From content writing to keyword searching to video creation, marketers should check out 20 AI SEO tools.

1. Jasper

Jasper is an AI writing assistant that can create SEO-optimized blog posts, emails, and other written marketing materials. All you have to do is provide the AI with seed words and clarify the tone of voice you desire.

From there, Jasper will analyze the information to create phrases, paragraphs, or full posts. Jasper has more than 50 templates users can choose from as well as other helpful features like:

• Auto-save,
• Plagiarism checker
• Brand voice customization
• Multi-user login

2. AlliAI

AlliAI allows users to optimize their website for SERPs in just minutes. A key feature is its Bulk Onpage Optimization, which creates site-wide optimization rules. The feature also deploys code changes down to individual pages.

AllAI also has a live editor that edits and optimizes text, content, and code within your page.

Furthermore, its Self-Optimizer for Traffic ROI automatically generates sitewide page titles with real-time focus keyword A/B testing to efficiently boost organic traffic.

3. Pro Rank Tracker

Getting real-time updates on where your content ranks in SERPs can be challenging. While it’s possible to assess your ranking by manually searching in Google, the process can be time-consuming.

Plus, personalized and localized results can cause you to miscalculate your ranking.

Fortunately, Pro Rank Tracker is an SEO tool that provides daily automatic updates as well as updates on demand. Furthermore, its international tracking feature can track your rankings worldwide and in multiple languages.

4. RankIQ

Created specifically for bloggers and businesses with a blog, RankIQ is an SEO toolset that helps users create SEO-optimized blog posts.

RankIQ provides SEO content briefs identifying topics that Google’s algorithm wants you to cover, allowing you to create a blog outline in minutes.

Its content-optimizing writing assistant even tells you what to add in your post to make it more comprehensive and likely to rank at the top of search engine results. You can even optimize older, underperforming posts in less than 30 minutes.

5. INK

INK is an AI writing tool that learns from your competition so you can write brand content that outranks your competitors. The tool also serves as an SEO assistant by finding the right keywords to enhance and further optimize your content.

Advanced users can also access keyword clustering. Other key features are:

• AI Writer, a long-form document editor
• SEO Optimizer to score content for SEO
• Fully automated keyword search

6. HubSpot AI Tools

Click here to learn more about HubSpot’s AI tools.

HubSpot has various AI tools that help you create optimized content that will rank high in SERPs. For example, our SEO suggestions tools can scan your website and automatically pinpoint opportunities for optimization.

Furthermore, our AI content assistant helps users to toggle between manual and AI content creation to generate copy for blog posts, landing pages, marketing emails, and more.

The content assistant can generate blog ideas, outlines, paragraphs, and email content.

7. NeuronWriter

This AI-powered optimization tool uses natural learning processing (NLP), Google SERPs data, and competition insights to help users create high-ranking, SEO-optimized articles and social media posts.

Key features are:

• AI Writer, which generates AI-written content.
• Internal Linking, which gives users recommendations for related sites — taking the guesswork out of link building.
• Competitor Analysis, which analyzes the high-performing content from your competitor to give insight into what drives their ranking.

8. OutRanking

OutRankning examines data from top-ranking sites and uses the information to find opportunities to help its users rank higher.

Using SERP data, the tool can create an automated draft quickly, allowing users to make edits, fact-check, or re-write wherever they feel it’s necessary.

OutRanking can generate SEO-optimized blog outlines, briefs, titles, and campaigns.

9. Diib

Diib uses SEO and traffic insights to foster business growth. The AI SEO tool provides you with a personalized growth plan that includes customized objectives alerts to help with SEO.

It includes features that help monitor SEO keywords and develop new ones.

It also monitors backlinks and tracks competitor rankings. Even better, Diibs provides a daily health score to stay on top of your website’s health.

10. Surfer SEO

Surfer SEO is an AI tool focusing heavily on SEO strategy to boost organic traffic, visibility, and rankings in SERPs.

One of the tool’s features, Grow Flow, provides weekly SEO insights to identify high-ranking keywords, research niche topics generate content ideas, and find relevant internal links.

You can also use its SEO Audit tool to pinpoint problems in your SEO. Other helpful features include:

• Content Editor
• Audit
• AI Outline Generator

11. PageSpeed Insights

Page speed plays a role in how high your website ranks in SERPs because search engines don’t want to send users to slow-loading platforms. In fact, page speed has played a role in Google’s rankings since 2017.

PageSpeed Insights is a free tool provided by Google for website owners to examine how Google assesses their page speed.

12. Scalenut

Scalenut is an all-in-one SEO marketing tool that includes a keyword planner, SERP analyzer, SEO article writer, and content optimizer. With Scalenut, you can analyze the search volume and relevance of potential keywords using AI.

Its article writer creates a guided workflow to automate outlines and create content based on SERP data. And its editor provides real-time feedback and recommendations to boost the visibility of your posts.

13. Pictory

Videos increase website retention time, which helps sites rank higher in SERPs. If you’re looking for a quicker, more efficient way to incorporate videos into your web content, then Pictory could be your tool.

Pictory is an AI video generator that allows you to easily create and edit high-quality videos. To get started, upload a script for your video, which will serve as the base of your video content.

You can also use Pictory to edit videos based on text, which is especially useful for webinars, podcasts, and Zoom recordings.

Furthermore, Pictory has a feature that automatically captions and summarizes videos.

14. Nitro Pack

As I mentioned earlier, page speed is important in how your content ranks. Similar to Page Speed Insights, Nitro Pack is an AI tool that optimizes your website page loading time.

Nitro Pack includes features such as image optimization, which sizes, compresses, and adapts your images to load faster.

Other features, such as automatic caching and code optimization, are also excellent for improving page load time.

15. Neuraltext

Neuraltext is a keyword research tool, AI copywriter, and content tool. The AI copywriting feature includes over 50 templates, such as Facebook ads, slogan ideas, blog ideas, and more.

Its content features use data from ranked pages on Google to help generate well-researched content.

To use its content features, type in a keyword, and the tool will pull from the top 20 results on Google along with data on suggested keywords, topics, questions, and statistics.

Now that you have a list of AI SEO tools to choose from, you’re ready to find the right one to address any pain points in your SEO strategy.

As customer behavior constantly changes, marketers face an ongoing challenge to keep up with their audiences. Personalization and need fulfillment are essential to the success of any marketing campaign, and failing to understand what your customers want could result in lost revenue for your business.

Marketers must stay in touch with evolving customer behavior and preferences to ensure their campaigns resonate with their customers. In this blog post, we’ll highlight the top challenges marketers face in understanding audiences from HubSpot’s very own 2023 State of Marketing Report to provide data-driven tips for overcoming them.

Challenges Marketers Face in Understanding Audiences

1. Identifying the target audience.

Surveyed marketers reported that their biggest social media challenges are consistently creating engaging content (22%), gaining and keeping followers (22%), and reaching their target audience (21%).

The special thing about these challenges is that the first two are contingent on the third.

Creating engaging content that grows your following is nearly impossible without understanding the target audience. Knowing exactly who you’re making content for is a foundational understanding marketers need.

Marketers can conduct more thorough market research to gather data on their target audience to gain a more concise understanding. They can use this data to create buyer personas and plan content for your ideal customer. These personas should be based on recent data and insights from trustworthy surveys, interviews, and other research methods.

2. Understanding customer behavior.

Another challenge that marketers face is understanding their customers’ behaviors. Understanding where they spend their time online, what they like, and what they don’t like is essential to creating effective marketing campaigns. You want to see how they prefer to view your content, the frequency with which they do it, and what will keep them returning to your business.

To overcome this challenge, marketers can use tools like Google Analytics or heat maps to gather data on customer behavior. They can use this data to analyze their customers’ website actions, track engagement, and identify areas for improvement. Marketers can also use social listening tools like Hootsuite to monitor conversations around their brand on social media.

3. Creating content that resonates with the audience.

Creating content that resonates with the audience is a significant challenge for many marketers. They may struggle to find topics their target audience is interested in or may not know how to write content that speaks to them.

For example, many customers in recent years have been looking for brands that share content that reflects corporate social responsibility on topics like social justice, sustainability, or ethical workplace practices. Current-day consumers, especially Millennials and Gen Z, want to buy from companies that display values and a purpose that resonates with them.

There’s proven potential in sharing values-based content with customers. According to HubSpot’s State of Marketing Report, 16% of marketers plan to get their company talking about values this year for the first time, and 89% of those who already do plan to increase or maintain their investment in this approach.

Marketers can use the data gathered on their target audience to better connect with the customer to create content that speaks to their interests and values. And to make things easier, they can also leverage tools like surveys or customer feedback to see what they want from your marketing content. Once you’ve identified topics your target audience is interested in, create high-quality content such as blog posts, videos, infographics, or ebooks based on the responses.

4. Measuring the success of marketing campaigns.

Measuring the success of marketing campaigns is another challenge faced by marketers. Without tracking the performance of their campaigns, it is impossible to know if they are effectively targeted towards their audience.

Marketers can set specific, measurable, and achievable campaign goals. They can use tools like HubSpot’s Marketing Analytics to track the performance of their campaigns and adjust them as necessary to achieve their goals. By monitoring key performance indicators (KPIs) like website traffic, lead conversions, click-through rates, and social media engagement, marketers can measure the success of their campaigns and optimize their strategies accordingly.

5. Keeping up with the latest marketing trends

Finally, keeping up with the latest marketing trends can be tedious for marketers. Digital marketing innovation and news is constantly changing, and marketers must keep up to ensure their campaigns are relevant and useful to the audience they’re trying to reach.

To keep up with these trends, marketers can follow industry blogs and social media accounts to stay informed of the latest developments in their niche. By keeping up-to-date on the latest marketing trends and implementing best practices, marketers can stay ahead of the competition.

Understanding your audience helps you cater to them.

Understanding the audience is critical to the success of any marketing campaign. By overcoming these roadblocks, marketers can create campaigns that resonate with their target audience and potentially drive engagement and conversions. Remember to conduct market research, monitor customer behavior, and stay up-to-date on the latest marketing trends. Marketers can overcome these challenges by following these best practices and achieving marketing success.