Yearly Archives: 2023

Everyone who uses the internet knows the frustration of web spam, where you find a promising page in search results that is useless. And we all know Google hates spammy websites, probably even more than we do. 

But as a site owner, how do you know if your site visitors and Google consider your website spammy? And what should you do to ensure it isn’t considered *GULP* web spam?

If you have concerns about your website being considered spammy, here is helpful information to know when optimizing your website. As you read through these items, ask yourself, “Do I or has anyone working on my website ever employed these practices? Does this describe my business — even if it wasn’t intentional?”

In this post, we’ll cover:

• 8 Qualities of a Search Engine Web Spammer
• Spam Website Example
• What then, Does Google Care About?
• How do you track all this?
• Let’s say you did get penalized. How would you know?

8 Qualities of a Search Engine Web Spammer

Google’s overall goal is to help people find helpful content without any roadblocks, and its strict content and spam policies support that goal. 

It’s entirely possible that something you do accidentally, with no malicious intent, flags Google to investigate your site as spam. Because of this, it’s worth familiarizing yourself with what is considered spam to prevent any action by Google that could place your site lower in search results or stop it from showing up at all. 

Here are some examples of what Google considers spam:

1. They Rarely Use Social

Spammers simply don’t dedicate the time to build relationships with people and, thus, are rarely found in social networks. Help to distinguish your website and marketing from web spam by building relationships online in social media with prospects and customers.

2. They Over-Optimize

The repetitive use of keywords in content, where they unnaturally appear word after word … after word (you know what I’m talking about) — that’s referred to as keyword stuffing or, more innocently, over-optimization. 

Call it what you will; it’s not a good practice either way. Most frequently, you’ll see repetitive keywords in the following areas: page titles, on-page copy, and in domain names/URLs. To prevent keyword stuffing, follow best practices for optimizing your content, and aim to write as naturally as you would speak.

3. They Don’t Focus on Content

Spammers don’t care about creating quality content — or content that is unique in any way, for that matter. In fact, spammy sites will often consist of stolen content, content repeated again and again, or content pulled in via RSS feeds from other websites. Avoid this type of spammy behavior by ensuring all the content you publish is unique and compelling.

4. They Stuff Their Sites With Ads

Spammers create the type of websites where more than 50% of the content on any given page is advertisements. Remember, the spammer’s goal is to make a lot of money, and running a ton of ads will help get them to that goal. Don’t risk looking like a spammy site. Make sure to dedicate the top half of your web pages to content and calls to action. Don’t waste valuable website real estate with third-party advertisements that add no value to your business or its users. Google is not a fan of excessive ads on websites, and they’ll ding you for it.

5. Their Sites Have Lots of Dead Ends, Pages Not Found, and Broken Links

For a spammer, maintaining a legitimate website requires too much upkeep that they just let pages expire and neglect to make necessary updates and changes. As a marketer, commit to keeping your website fresh and up to date. It pays to do some housekeeping, so don’t let the cobwebs build up.

6. They Attract Lots of Low-Quality Inbound Links

Unfortunately, there is such a thing as bad, low-quality inbound links because, after all, who links to spam except for spam?

A great source of quality inbound links is high-quality content you create that naturally entices other websites to link back to it. 

Another great way to attract high-quality inbound links is through guest blogging, so leverage your networks to help build a stronger reputation and more powerful influence online. And if you have attracted some subpar inbound links in the past, consider using Google’s disavow tool to help clean up your online reputation.

7. They Own Lots of Domains or Microsites

Spammers are notorious for not only purchasing lots of domains, but also setting up site after site that consist of just one page each and never gets updated. Of course, there are some exceptions to this, but as a best practice, try to keep all your content on one primary, authoritative domain/website.

8. They Employ Other Traditionally Black-Hat Tactics

These tactics include things like doorway pages, text that matches the page’s background color (so the human eye can’t catch it, but search engines can index it), and the use of misspelled content and keywords intentionally used wrong just to rank. 

Some examples of black-hat tactics are: 

• Cloaking – Presenting different content to viewers and search engines to purposely manipulate rankings. 

• Hacked content – Any content placed within a compromised website or site pages by hackers, like malware.

• Malware and malicious behaviors – Google checks to see if there is content within sites that will cause a negative user experience, like malware that installs harmful software without user consent. 

• Scraped content – Any content taken directly from a site and put on another without explicit permission or transfer of rights. 

• Sneaky redirects – Bringing users to a different URL than what they originally clicked on.
• Spammy automatically-generated content – Auto-generated created for the sole purpose of manipulating search rankings because it doesn’t add any original insight or value to a user.

Spam Website Example

Below, we’ll review a few examples of website spam to give you an idea of what it can look like. 

1. Blue Nile 

Google says keyword stuffing is filling a page with keywords to manipulate search rankings, and the keywords often appear unnaturally. Blue Nile is a diamond jeweler selling rings for multiple occasions. Its blog post, Top 20 Engagement Rings, is an example of a practice that could be considered spammy. 

What went wrong: Keyword stuffing 

Repeated use of “engagement ring,” “top engagement ring,” and “ring” keywords and related keywords could be seen as keyword stuffing. While this brief section is not full of keywords, the words are used in close succession in one paragraph, and it sounds unnatural when reading the paragraph aloud. 

2. Petminderpro 

Scraped content on a website is copied and republished from another site without adding new content. Petmindperpro’s entire website is an excellent example of spammy website practices. 

What went wrong: Scraped content

Petminderpro’s entire website is content scraped from the HubSpot Blog. It doesn’t provide any added unique content or insight to add to the taken content, so it has essentially republished an entire website’s content. 

3. MyArea Network

Google defines doorway pages as intermediary pages a searcher lands on that aren’t as useful as the final destination page, like a site having multiple pages targeted at specific regions or cities and pages that funnel visitors into the actual usable portion of their site. MyArea Network is a great example of this. 

What went wrong: Doorway page

MyArea Network’s website is a doorway page because it features city or regional pages for 100+ cities in the United States. To find a city, a user lands on the initial intermediary doorway page with no helpful content. 

Yes, it is possible to innocently fall into the trap of some of Google’s spam triggers because you’re unfamiliar with SEO or haven’t monitored your website’s SEO activities. And while it sounds enticing to be on page one of the search results and generate a lot of traffic, you need to ask yourself: At what cost?

One of the best ways to ensure your site never receives a manual action because of spam is to optimize for what Google cares the most about.

What, Then, Does Google Care About?

Google wants you to create the best possible user experience for your site visitors by optimizing for on-page SEO (keywords) or off-page SEO (attracting inbound links). 

The websites that succeed at doing this are the ones that get rewarded with good rankings, traffic, and, ultimately, conversions. Those who fail or practice any of the spammy behaviors above either end up not appearing in search results (at best) or getting penalized by Google (at worst).

What Marketers Should Focus On

Focus your efforts on what’s best for the visitors of your website. They’re the main consumers of your content and use search engines to find your work. Rather than focusing on specific tweaks (AKA “gaming the system”) to gain rankings, focus on putting your site’s best foot forward and aim to please your ultimate consumers: your users, customers, and prospects…not search engines. 

The most important thing is aiming for consistent quality content that delivers clear value and shows attention to detail. Create content (with “content” being more than just text— think images, video, rich text, reviews, comments, etc.) that is innovative, unique, and inspiring — in other words, compelling.

To deliver the right results to searchers Google focuses on five main factors: meaning, relevance, quality, usability, and context.

• The meaning behind a searcher’s query (the most likely reason they’re searching). 
• The relevance between the search query and the content on a website or site page.
• The quality of the content on a page and whether it adheres to the E-E-A-T model (we’ll outline this below).
• The usability of a site, which considers technical aspects like page speed and mobile friendliness.
• The context of the search, like someone’s past search behavior or unique settings like location or language. 

You can use these factors as a guiding principle when optimizing your site. For example, when it comes to usability, focusing on the technical aspects of your site will help you meet that standard. 

When it comes to the content you house on your site, the E-E-A-T standard is the best model to follow. Here’s what it stands for: 

• Expertise: You’re a subject matter expert in the content of your website. With spammy sites, a website that features many unrelated topics could be seen as spammy because the likelihood of expertise in so many topics is low. 
• Experience: You have personal experience with the content you write about. You could be seen as spammy if there is no evidence of your expertise in the topics you write about. 
• Authoritativeness: You have backlinks from credible sites. You could be marked as spammy if you have backlinks from sites that Google has already deemed spammy. 
• Trustworthiness: Your website and its content are credible and current. Incorrect content and spammy practices (like the ones mentioned above) can strike against you. 

Designing your site around your visitors’ needs while ensuring it’s also easily accessible to search engines usually produces positive results. It helps users find the content they want faster and ultimately convert. It’s a win-win situation. 

If you want to check how your website currently measures up to optimization best practices, consider running an SEO audit. It’ll help you determine whether your site will help you achieve your goals or if you might risk being deemed spammy by Google. HubSpot’s free SEO Audit Kit includes 60+ tips for running an SEO audit and a step-by-step guide you can follow to run one for your site. 

Download HubSpot’s Free SEO Audit Kit

How Do You Track All This?

You’ll need to keep track of key metrics to determine whether your SEO efforts are paying off and whether your content aligns with your users and creates that desired user experience. Evaluate how users are consuming your content. Sure, you’ll want to look at pages visited, but think a little bit outside the box.

• Time on Site: Keeping track of time on site using a web analytics tool like Google Analytics is a good way to get insight about whether people like consuming your content. Now, depending on your type of content, users may not be spending that much time per page. Depending on the nature of your site, your target duration for a visit will vary.
• Bounce Rates: Google has publicly stated that bounce rate does not factor in as part of its ranking calculation; however, bounce rate (which a web analytics tool like Google Analytics can also report on) can give you some information about user experience. The average bounce rate for web analysts responding to our Web Traffic & Analytics Report is 37%. A healthy bounce rate for a site that produces a large volume of content is 70% or less. There are a few things to remember when looking at this metric. Look at it on a page-by-page basis, and consider that each page will have its own unique bounce rate. Some pages will naturally have higher rates than others, and that’s okay. You would expect that especially from something like your ‘Contact Us’ page, for example. There are additional ways to measure bounce rate, as discussed by Avinash Kaushik here.
• Clickthrough Rates (CTR): There are several different types of clickthrough rates you can look at, but I would recommend two types in particular. First, track the clickthrough rates of your search listings, which Google Analytics will provide to you if you have Webmaster Tools set up for your website. Generally speaking, you will have lower CTRs where you do a poor job of communicating what your site is about — meaning your Page Title, URL and description don’t align, or you have a poor site structure. Second, track the CTRs for your various calls-to-action (CTAs) on your web pages. Remember, one of the main goals for getting your web pages to rank well in search is to get people to click through to an offer. Therefore, your CTA clickthrough rates on those pages will tell you how effectively your traffic is getting routed to the landing pages for your offers.
• Conversion Rates: Once you get people from search engines to your landing pages, they still need to fill out the form and convert! Conversion rates should be tied directly to your business goals. A conversion might be completing a purchase, signing up for a mailing list, or downloading a whitepaper.
• Social Signals: Social media is about relationships, and your social signals are the metrics that help you determine whether your content is being shared on social media — and the impact it’s having. Beyond tracking the number of Likes and shares for your content, also consider the following (which you can track using a closed-loop marketing analytics tool like HubSpot): traffic from social media (and individual social networks), overall social media reach, and how many leads and customers you can attribute to your social media presence. Remember — social media influences SEO, so it’s important not to ignore that fact.

We have entire blog posts and ebooks dedicated to explaining and exploring SEO and marketing analytics, so you’ll excuse me if my explanations just scrape the surface. One way to improve your site is to look at it from the perspective of your users. What shows up in search results: is it enticing? Does it accurately represent the content of my website? Am I giving searchers a reason to click on my listings? And the same applies to content within your site, too. Give users the information they seek.

Let’s Say You Did Get Penalized. How Would You Know?

If you suspect you have been penalized in search engines for spammy behavior, there are a few things you can check. Start with the following:

• Do you show up in the search results? You can start by simply doing a search for your site. Searching for your site with the following command (search:domain.com) will give you a sense of what’s indexed.
• Check your traffic metrics — volume and sources. Has your traffic remained the same or at least steadily increased? If so, that’s good. If, however, your traffic shows any sudden drop-offs without a rebound, it’s an indication you may have been dinged.
• What types of links come in to your website? Take a look at the type of inbound links you’ve attracted for your site. Do any of them look suspicious?
• Are you still generating leads? Traffic alone isn’t the only factor to consider. If you’ve stopped getting conversions and leads without changing much or without reducing the volume of content and offers you produce, I would encourage you to look into it further.

While there are certain steps to take (like this one) if you feel you’ve been penalized by Google unecessarily, the best way to start reparing your search engine rankings is to clean up your black-hat SEO practices and move forward with a more white-hat approach.

Focusing on your users is the best protection against spam. 

In the end, you want to ask yourself, “What do my users care about?” If you can focus on creating content while keeping your users in mind, all of the above will be super simple. 

Do what’s in your audience’s best interest and write as though you’re having a conversation with that person. Use your website as a tool to communicate, engage, and build trust and authority. That’s all that Google expects of you. Web spammers, on the other hand, manipulate users and search engines, ultimately creating a less than optimal experience for them as a result. Don’t be that guy.

Are you optimizing your website and content with the user in mind?

Good writing matters in marketing. Being able to articulate ideas clearly is vital to capturing the attention of prospects. Let’s take a call-to-action (CTA) as an example.

If the copy you craft doesn’t draw visitors in, that can hurt your click-through rate, lead conversions, and sales.

In this blog post, we’ll discuss some vital copywriting lessons you should apply to your CTAs to drive traffic, generate more leads, and convert users into customers.

What is a call-to-action?
How to Write a Call-to-Action

What is a call-to-action?

A call-to-action (CTA) is a word or phrase that prompts a reader to take a desired action. In marketing, CTAs appear throughout campaign copy to convince your audience to take the next step down the sales funnel via a button or hyperlink.

Your CTA might prompt people to do one of the following actions:

• Subscribe to your email newsletter.
• Download an ebook.
• Sign up for an account.

If you want to convince more people to take the next step, your CTA must be compelling enough for them to click through. That’s why knowing how to write a CTA is essential.

How to Write a Call-to-Action

There’s a particular craft that goes into writing effective calls-to-action — it’s equal parts arts and science. Luckily for us, writing strong CTAs can be achieved with enough practice (or using a CTA tool to help you get started).

If you want to practice, follow these writing tips to craft strong CTAs that drive traffic and convert leads into customers.

1. Start with strong verbs.

The first piece of advice in the classic book Writing Tools encourages writers to start sentences with subjects and verbs. In English, we read from left to right, and verbs and subjects help us quickly glean a sentence’s meaning.

As essential as these facts may be, acknowledging this when crafting your online CTA is crucial when readers’ attention is more elusive than the shadow of a flapping bird.

Look at the example below from one of HubSpot’s landing pages. You’ll notice the first word at the beginning of each sentence is an action-oriented verb. Words like “drive,” “start,” and “create” get to the point and incite action that will immediately lead to a positive result.

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By not including a verb in the CTA copy, you aren’t prompting readers to take action, which can hurt the click-through rate of your CTA and negatively impact conversions.

2. Include numbers.

The internet overflows with guesswork and vague statements. That’s why using data and numbers is a great way to demonstrate that your message is clear and straightforward.

Numbers are a great way to break through ambiguity, be specific about your offer, and set the right expectations. A number tells visitors exactly what they’ll get, how much of it, for how long, etc.

This technique has succeeded in calling-to-action copy and blog post titles, press release headlines, and email subject lines.

One study that analyzed 721 of the most popular articles on Medium found that the second most popular starting word is a number.

What numbers can you include in your CTA copy? You can add the page length of the whitepaper you offer, mention a specific discount, or list the numerical impact or benefit of a particular resource you provide.

For instance, HubSpot’s CTA for requesting a demo for our marketing product is, “See why over 177,000 customers use HubSpot to make marketing more human at scale.”

The number emphasizes how many people use and trust HubSpot for their marketing teams’ needs.

3. Use adverbs sparingly.

Most adverbs are recognizable by their “-ly” ending, e.g., “finally,” “unfortunately,” and “quietly.”

However, there are different types of adverbs (concerning direction, time, degree, and manner), and their function is to modify “constituents other than nouns.”

They have no fixed position in a sentence. For instance, you can place the word “finally” at the sentence’s beginning, middle, or end.

Words like “really” or “incredibly” are often considered fluff and don’t add much value when a more powerful adverb could be in its place. For instance, “really hard” could replace “challenging.”

Limit the number of adverbs in your CTAs unless they add value to the sentence. The first word in this CTA on Zoom’s website is “securely,” which is a robust descriptor for its product.

4. Keep the character count low.

The standard advice for CTAs has been to keep them concise. Don’t write convoluted copy that will take your visitor long to read. (This also holds for other marketing activities, such as emails and press releases.)

In an analysis of high-converting CTA buttons, the study found that the average CTA included 3.411 words.

If you want to learn how to write a CTA that captures readers’ attention and gets to the point quickly, take a cue from how PR professionals write press release headlines.

Cision’s State of Press Releases Report found an average headline length of 88 characters.

Try to fit your CTA copy within these limits (or get some writing assistance to help craft concise messaging faster), and see how readers react. This also leads to the next point.

5. Tailor your calls-to-action to the device.

You should optimize everything from your website to the CTAs on your landing pages and emails for desktop and mobile users. This is especially true when mobile devices account for half of all web traffic worldwide.

If your users or audience primarily use their mobile devices to search for products or read their emails, optimize your CTA copy for a smaller screen.

A recent HubSpot survey of over 1,000 marketers found that 33% use mobile-friendly website design in their marketing strategy.

This shows that mobile users must be prioritized when assembling everything from your website to landing pages to CTA copy.

Put all of these CTA best practices into action to write more precise and concise prompts. Cut the fluff and use powerful action verbs at the beginning of your CTA so that mobile readers see the most important element first.

Also, consider writing shorter CTAs that won’t be at risk of getting cut off by limited screen space.

6. Make language less technical and more practical.

The language in your CTA will reflect industry-specific knowledge. However, some best practices hold for all CTA copies regardless of industry.

As with the other points we’ve examined, this one borrows from the best practices of different marketing activities.

Regarding headlines, words like “why” or “best” suggest the content can improve the reader. The same logic can apply to crafting CTA copy. Emphasize the offer’s benefits and how it can make your prospects smarter.

In this CTA for the task management app Todoist, the headline is a simple sentence that expresses the reader’s desire to become more organized.

It strays away from using more complex words or phrases and offers a simple CTA of “Open Todoist.”

When writing your CTAs, stay away from overly technical jargon. Some of the words that attract the fewest views in blog posts include “franchise,” “investment,” “virtualization,” and “conferencing.”

These terms imply forced complexity and are less appealing to readers. If people don’t want to view content with such technical jargon, you should not include it in your CTA copy.

7. Get creative and use personality.

CTAs don’t have to be boring. You can craft a concise and compelling message by showcasing your brand’s personality or speaking in your audience’s language.

Take the CTA example below from the email brand Really Good Emails. Really Good Emails curates email marketing and design examples from around the web.

The brand shared a curated set of astrology-themed emails in a recent newsletter. The newsletter copy and the CTA aligned with the theme, which helped take their message even further.

Writing Excellent CTAs

Writing a call-to-action is excellent practice for crafting a clear and concise message.

If you want to drive more traffic, increase click-through rates, and convert more users, then knowing how to write a call-to-action is a skill all marketers must master.

Machine learning, a subset of AI, is a powerful tool that’s rapidly transforming marketing.

Around 35% of marketers are using AI to simplify their jobs and automate tedious tasks, according to HubSpot’s latest research. However, the same research reveals that 96% of marketers still adjust AI-generated outputs — indicating that it’s still far from perfect.

In today‘s post, you’ll learn how machine learning can supercharge your marketing team. We’ll also share actionable examples from real-world companies implementing machine learning and noticing significant improvements.

Table of Contents

• Machine Learning and Marketing
• How Machine Learning Can Improve Marketing
• 15 Examples of Machine Learning and Marketing
• 5 Tips for Using Machine Learning in Marketing
• Machine Learning Tools for Marketing

Machine Learning and Marketing

Machine learning is a form of artificial intelligence (AI) that enables software applications to become more accurate at predicting outcomes without being explicitly programmed.

Marketers use ML to understand customer behavior and identify trends in large datasets, allowing them to create more efficient marketing campaigns and improve marketing ROI.

For example, Netflix uses machine learning to enhance its recommendations algorithm, forecast demand, and increase customer engagement.

By leveraging customers’ viewing history, the company gains powerful insights into customer preferences, enabling them to make relevant content suggestions.

Look at the image below to see what makes business professionals adopt ML and AI technology.

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How Machine Learning Can Improve Marketing

Machine learning can improve marketing in umpteen ways. Here are the most common use cases:

1. Gauge Customer Sentiment

Machine learning algorithms can automatically identify customer sentiment, encompassing positive, neutral, or negative opinions.

Initially, they gather textual data from diverse sources like customer reviews, social media mentions, feedback forms, or survey responses.

Subsequently, the data undergoes preprocessing and is labeled according to the corresponding sentiment. This allows marketers to gain insights into customer sentiment and make improvements based on feedback.

2. Personalize User Experience

Machine learning models can analyze user behavior and historical data to predict customer preferences. Marketers use this opportunity to create personalized offers for customers, such as product recommendations, promotions, or discounts.

Additionally, ML can curate content feeds based on user interests and send personalized reminders to customers.

3. Optimize Content Distribution Efforts

Machine learning can analyze the performance of different content distribution channels and offer optimization strategies.

By accessing historical data, it can determine the best time for posting and the optimal frequency of content distribution to avoid overwhelming the audience.

It can also identify the most effective distribution channels, allowing marketers to allocate their resources wisely and achieve maximum engagement alongside ROI.

4. Optimize Ad Targeting and Bidding

ML is revolutionizing targeted advertising.

By analyzing a vast amount of сustomer data, machine learning predicts customer behavior and groups users into segments based on shared traits and characteristics.

Marketers then use this data to tailor ads to those segments, connecting with target audiences that are more likely to engage with the ad.

5. Streamline A/B Testing Processes

A/B testing plays an important role in marketing, as it clearly shows what‘s working and what’s not.

ML helps automate A/B testing processes and make them more accurate. Real-time monitoring of the testing process reduces manual intervention and the likelihood of potential errors.

Furthermore, machine learning decreases the test duration, saving time and resources when one variation significantly outperforms the other.

15 Examples of Machine Learning and Marketing

Forrester forecasts that nearly 100% of enterprises will be implementing some form of AI by 2025. Two more years to go, but numerous companies have already successfully adopted AI.

Here are 15 examples from real-world companies that saw significant improvements after implementing machine learning.

1. Amazon increased its net sales by 9%.

Machine learning has long been an integral part of Amazon, one of the largest retailers in the world.

The ecommerce giant has been using ML for a variety of purposes, such as getting insights into customer behavior and analyzing browsing and purchasing history to provide personalized product recommendations.

These enhance the customer experience as users easily find new products that are similar to their previous shopping experience. Additionally, Amazon creates targeted ads for users based on demand forecasting.

According to its latest financial report, the company’s net sales increased 9% to $127.4 billion in the first quarter, compared with $116.4 billion in the first quarter of 2022.

2. Netflix became an industry leader due to its personalized movie suggestions.

One of the main reasons why Netflix services are popular is that they are using artificial intelligence and machine learning solutions to generate intuitive suggestions.

The company uses machine learning to analyze its customers’ movie choices and make relevant content suggestions. But how does it work?

When you browse their movie directory, their intelligent algorithms watch what kind of movies captivate you, where you click, how many minutes you keep watching the same movie, etc.

Then analyzing your viewing habits, Netflix curates a personalized movie/TV show feed for you. It’s a win-win.

3. Armor VPN predicted lifetime value and maximized user acquisition efforts.

Armor VPN is a consumer cybersecurity (VPN) software that wanted to create a solid user acquisition strategy to attract new customers. With limited marketing budgets, the owners didn’t want to go through a trial-and-error process.

Thus, they partnered with Pecan AI, a predictive analytics tool, to make strategic decisions with the help of predicted lifetime value (pLTV) models.

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With the tool’s predictions, the client identified a 25% gap on average between the actual user lifetime value and what they expected users’ value to be.

This way, Armor VPN could create a more effective and data-driven strategy to fuel its user acquisition efforts.

4. Devex scaled its content creation processes and decreased costs by 50x.

Devex, based in Washington, D.C., is a major provider of recruitment and business development services for global development.

The company receives approximately 3000 pieces of text weekly, which require manual review by the content team. Eventually, only 300 of these pieces are deemed worthy and tagged accordingly.

Until recently, the evaluation was done manually, which took around 10 hours to complete. To automate the process, Devex contacted MonkeyLearn, a text analysis platform powered by machine learning models.

Devex built a text classifier that helped them process data and then tag if the text was relevant.

It resulted in 66% time savings, and the operation costs decreased by 50x, as less human interference was required.

5. Airbnb optimized renting prices and created rough estimates.

Airbnb faced challenges when trying to optimize the renting prices for customers.

To overcome this, Airbnb used machine learning to provide rough estimates to potential customers. The prices were based on different criteria such as location, size, property type, seasonality, amenities, etc.

Then, by performing EDA, they could understand how rental listings spread throughout the US.

In the final step, the company implemented ML models, such as linear regression, to generate estimates and visualize how prices change over time. It allowed them to create attractive marketing offers and win new customers.

6. Re:member increased conversions by 43% with heatmaps and session recordings.

Re:member is one of the leading credit card companies in Scandinavia. Recently, their marketing team noticed that users were bouncing off their credit card application form more than usual.

Frustrated, the marketing team turned to Hotjar to gain a complete picture of how customers were using their website and what was causing the issue. They utilized session recordings to replay the entire time a user spent on the website.

Heatmaps helped them identify which pages customers tended to click more.

Combining the data, Re:member’s marketing team noticed that many people coming from affiliates were leaving right away.

After reviewing heat maps and session recordings, the team concluded that visitors were initially interested in the benefits section but needed more information.

Consequently, they redesigned the application page, resulting in a 43% increase in conversions.

7. Tuff achieved a 75% success rate on partnership proposals.

Tuff is an SEO marketing agency that achieved significant ARR growth in just three years. Initially, they struggled to create client pitches due to the lack of a reliable SEO tool for thorough competitor and keyword research.

After using Semrush, a leading keyword research tool with machine-learning algorithms, Tuff could analyze prospective customers’ organic performance and create personalized proposals tailored to their specific needs.

This led to a 75% success rate in winning new clients.

8. Kasasa grew organic traffic by 92%.

Kasasa, a financial service company, aimed to scale its content operations and drive organic traffic. They adopted MarketMuse, a content optimization tool based on AI and ML, to save time and resources.

Using simplified content briefs from MarketMuse, Kasasa produced meaningful content much faster. This established the company as an industry expert and increased its recognition, leading to a 92% growth in organic traffic.

9. Spotify created personalized playlists and boosted customer engagement.

Spotify utilizes machine learning algorithms to analyze customer data, such as playlists and listening history.

This allows the digital music service provider to create customer segments based on music preferences, enabling personalized music recommendations and playlists for each user, ultimately increasing customer engagement.

10. Sephora built long-term customer loyalty with Sephora Virtual Artist.

Sephora, a giant cosmetics retailer, has been leveraging cutting-edge technologies, including AI and machine learning, for over a decade. Their virtual artist allows customers to virtually try new products without wearing them.

Through face recognition technology, machine learning algorithms automatically recognize the most compatible shade and recommend products, offering personalized product recommendations, driving customer engagement, and fostering loyalty.

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11. Coca-Cola improved its sales and distribution efforts by almost 30%.

Coca-Cola has been at the forefront of implementing ML and AI solutions in its marketing strategies.

To maintain its industry leadership, the American company created an AI system to analyze sales data and detect trends in customer preferences.

They also employed machine learning algorithms to optimize their product packaging and distribution, resulting in a remarkable 30% increase in profits.

Additionally, they developed a virtual assistant to help customers with common queries.

12. Yelp is sending personalized recommendations weekly.

Yelp is a user reviews and recommendations platform that utilizes its machine learning algorithms. They leverage machine learning and algorithmic sorting to create personalized user recommendations.

With machine learning, users receive weekly recommendations based on businesses they have viewed in the previous week or within their specific interests. In 2023, the company also introduced its AI-powered review writing service.

13. Cyber Inc. doubled its video course production.

Cyber Inc. is a security and privacy awareness company based in the Netherlands. The company offers training programs and wanted to scale its video course creation process.

They teamed up with Synthesia, an AI-powered video creation platform, to streamline video creation and produce videos in multiple languages.

The collaboration cut down costs on hiring actors since the tool offers an avatar as a replacement. Cyber Inc managed to produce video content two-times faster and expanded its global reach.

14. Uber created targeted ads personalized for each user.

Uber, an American taxi service provider, uses machine learning effectively. With the help of ML, they analyze customer data, such as location and travel history, and create targeted ads tailored to individuals.

Algorithms allow them to optimize ad campaigns for maximum efficiency, resulting in higher customer engagement and usage rates with Uber.

15. Farfetch increased its email open rate by 31%.

Farfetch is a luxury fashion retailer that experimented with AI and gave a fresh look to its email marketing campaigns.

They collaborated with Phrasee, a tool that picks the most relevant brand voice and generates content ideas based on that.

The company witnessed impressive results, with an increase of 38% in average click rate and a 31% average open rate surge in its trigger campaigns.

5 Tips for Using Machine Learning in Marketing

Machine learning can be highly beneficial, but you should know how to use it effectively. Here are five tips for effectively leveraging machine learning in your marketing efforts.

1. Be specific with your marketing goals.

Since ML processes enormous data sets, you’ll likely get loads of unnecessary data. You can easily avoid this if you clearly outline what you want to achieve.

Narrow down your marketing goals and group them into categories such as customer segmentation, ad optimization, conversion acceleration, etc. Start with small-scale experiments and iterate once you have some results.

2. Don’t stick with one ML model.

Experimenting with multiple machine learning models is essential. Different ML models have different capabilities, each with its pros and cons.

For maximum efficiency, you’ll have to test different ML models so you can compare their performance objectively.

For example, one ML model can excel in a certain type of data task but might underperform in a different scenario.

3. Don’t become over-reliant on ML tools.

While machine learning can generate valuable insights, over-relying on it can be detrimental for marketers. ML models are still evolving, and they are not perfect and can’t fully function without human expertise.

For maximum results, it’s better to combine ML with human knowledge. Clearly define each role and set a healthy boundary of when to use ML and when to rely on human decisions.

4. Partner with data scientists.

Not everyone has in-house data scientist knowledge. If you‘re just starting out, it’s a good idea to collaborate with a data scientist to implement the right ML models.

Make sure to ask the machine learning experts to explain the limitations of ML models so you don’t have unrealistic expectations.

5. Respect data policy and be transparent.

AI and ML tools pose a threat to data breaches and privacy concerns.

Since customer data is vulnerable, you’ll need to make sure you comply with data privacy regulations. Avoid unethical usage of customer data and be transparent.

These are crucial to building trust with your customers.

5 Machine Learning Tools for Marketers

As the market is saturated with ML tools, we have narrowed down the list and included only the best ones. Here are five ML tools that will help you streamline your marketing efforts and maximize your profit.

1. Hubspot Content Assistant

Get started with HubSpot’s AI tools.

HubSpot’s content assistant is a powerful tool that allows marketers to supercharge content operations and improve productivity.

It natively integrates with HubSpot products, and you can toggle between AI and manual content creation to create copy for email, website, blog posts, etc.

To use the content assistant, you simply need to fill in the form, describe what content you want, and then click “Generate.” In a few seconds, you’ll have your copy.

Core Features

• Create personalized sales and marketing emails, blog post ideas, and outlines
• Generate paragraphs and create compelling CTAs
• Integrate with the other Hubspot products

Price: Free for Hubspot CRM users.

Pro tip: Segment prospects based on shared characteristics, and then add the lists to the content assistant. The tool will process the data and create personalized emails to streamline your outreach.

2. Monkey Learn

MonkeyLearn is an AI tool that helps businesses analyze data with machine learning. It extracts data from different sources, such as emails, surveys, and posts, and visualizes customer feedback in one place.

Core Features

• Different text formats are supported, such as emails, support tickets, reviews, NPS surveys, tweets, etc.
• Text classification into categories: Sentiment, Topic, Aspects, Intent, Priority, etc.
• Integrations with hundreds of applications such as Zendesk, Airtable, Typeform, Intercom, etc.

Price: There are two pricing plans. The “Team” package starts from $299, and there is a free trial. The “Business” tier’s pricing is not publicly available, and you must contact the sales team.

What we like: The tool is super intuitive, and no coding experience is required. Plus, customers have a wide range of text analysis options and can look at feedback in one central location.

3. Pecan AI

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Pecan AI is a predictive analytics platform that uses machine learning to generate accurate, actionable predictions in just a few hours.

The tool effectively leverages large amounts of raw data and predicts revenue-impacting risks and outcomes, such as customer churn, LTV, etc.

Core Features

• Pre-built, customizable SQL templates
• Demand forecasting
• Campaign optimization using SKAN
• Integrations with third-party apps

Price: The tool has three pricing plans. The “Starter” plan is $50 per month, “Professional” is $280. You should book a meeting for Enterprise accounts to know the pricing details.

What we like: The tool allows us to harness the power of AI and eliminate guesswork while making strategic decisions.

4. Jasper AI

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Jasper AI uses machine learning and Artificial Intelligence to generate human-like copy for blogs, websites, emails, social media, etc. This copywriting assistant helps businesses scale their content production efforts and save precious time.

You simply choose the tone of voice, upload the campaign brief, and select the type of content. It will generate a copy in just 15 seconds.

Core Features

• Multiple tones of voice options to match your brand style: cheeky, formal, bold, and pirate
• Content translation in over 30 languages
• 50 different use-case templates
• AI art generator to create visuals for your copies

Price: The tool comes with three pricing plans. The “Creator” plan costs $39 and the “Teams” plan $99 per month, respectively. You’ll have to contact their sales team if you need the “Business” plan.

What we like: Different tones of voice and pre-made campaign templates to create personalized content. An easy-to-use browser extension to access the tool right in your browser.

5. AI Marketer

AI Marketer is a predictive analytics tool that allows you to identify and target your most valuable customers.

By using machine learning models, it predicts the likelihood of customer purchases and sends time optimization notifications to target customers at specific times.

You can also target customers who are at high risk of churning. This helps you boost customer retention and maximize the impact of your marketing campaigns.

Core Features

• Customer behavior predictions on an individual basis
• Smarter targeting
• Data-driven optimization recommendations

Price: The pricing information is not disclosed publicly. You should request a demo. There is also a free trial.

What we like: Different tones of voice and pre-made campaign templates to create personalized content. It also features an easy-to-use browser extension so you can access the tool from your browser.

Using Machine Learning to Maximize Marketing Efforts

AI and machine learning solutions are stepping up the marketing game. Though they‘re still evolving, integrating cutting-edge technologies into your daily stack won’t do any harm.

Instead, it’ll help you automate repetitive tasks and gain powerful insights into customer behavior, enabling you to create highly effective marketing campaigns that yield results.

Keep an eye on technology trends and harness the power of machine learning algorithms.

Today’s businesses need a reliable ecommerce platform to expand their online presence. Luckily, organizations can simplify operations, provide seamless shopping experiences, and manage their online stores more efficiently with an ecommerce platform.

This article explores the top 10 ecommerce software options, highlighting their strengths and weaknesses. Now let‘s find your business’s best ecommerce software solution.

In this article, we’ll cover:

• Online Point-of-Sale

• Websites

• Analytics

Online Point-of-Sale

Gathering insights isn’t enough. To truly harness the power of the data of your Google Analytics dashboard, you need to leverage segmentation and drill down into your data.

In this post, you’ll learn three ways to create segments in Google Analytics to help you isolate and analyze your data to uncover opportunities.

Table of Contents

• What is segmentation in Google Analytics?
• How to Create Segments in Google Analytics
• How to Build Custom Segments in Google Analytics
• How to Import Segments in Google Analytics from the Analytics Solutions Gallery

There are three ways to segment data in Google Analytics.

• You can apply “system segments” which are pre-defined segments available across all Google Analytics accounts.
• You can build custom segments that allow you to group and analyze your data for your specific use-cases.
• You can import a segment “template” from the Analytics Solutions Gallery.

The method you choose will depend on your unique use case. Knowing the level of customization you require and the complexity of your segment can help you make a decision.

We’ll explore these three methods below.

How to Create Segments in Google Analytics

Step 1: Login into your Google Analytics account.

Step 2: Navigate to the “reports” section on your dashboard.

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Under reports, you have five options:

• Realtime.
• Audience.
• Acquisition.
• Behavior.
• Conversions.

All options listed above can be used to create segments; however, for this tutorial, let’s create a segment based on the “audience” report.

Step 3: Click on “audience” which will prompt a dropdown menu. From the dropdown menu, click on “overview.”

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Note: A segment can also be created from the other options listed in the drop-down menu.

Step 4: Navigate to “Add segment” on the Audience Overview dashboard.

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Step 5: Navigate to “system” under the “view segments” section and select which segment(s) you would like to apply.

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Step 6: Once you’ve selected the segments you’d like to apply, click the “apply” button.

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Step 7: You’ll be redirected to a new page that will display audience data that meets your segment criteria.

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On this page, you have several options to analyze and filter through this data. You can compare metrics and analyze selected segments as a percentage of users (e.g. mobile traffic constituted X% of users).

And that’s it. You’ve just built your first report using pre-defined system segments.

If you’d like to create segments that are customized to your unique purposes, here’s how to build custom segments.

How to Build Custom Segments in Google Analytics

Step 1: Login into your Google Analytics account.

Step 2: Navigate to the “reports” section on your dashboard.

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Under reports, you have five options:

• Realtime.
• Audience.
• Acquisition.
• Behavior.
• Conversions.

All options listed above can be used to create segments. However, for this tutorial, let’s create a custom segment based on the “Acquisition” report.

Step 3: Click on “acquisition” which will prompt a dropdown menu. From the dropdown menu, click on “overview.”

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Step 4: Navigate to “Add segment” on the Acquisition Overview dashboard.

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Step 5: Click on “New Segment.”

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Step 6: Set your conditions based on the options displayed.

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On this page, you have options to set conditions based on:

• Demographics (age, gender, language, etc).
• Technology (operating system, device category, browser, etc).
• Behavior (transaction, session duration, etc).
• Date of the user’s first session.
• Traffic sources (campaign, source, etc).

You also have two advanced options:

• Conditions (set for single or multiple sessions).
• Sequences (which allow you to segment according to sequential conditions).

Step 7: Once you’ve set your conditions, name your new segment.

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Note: You can also preview your custom segment if you’d like.

Step 8: Finally, save your new custom segment by clicking the “save” button.

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And that’s it.

Your custom segment is ready to go. It should also now appear under “all segments” and “custom segments” on your “add segment” page.

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How to Import Segments in Google Analytics from the Analytics Solutions Gallery

Step 1: Login into your Google Analytics account.

Step 2: Navigate to the “reports” section on your dashboard.

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Under reports, you have five options:

• Realtime.
• Audience.
• Acquisition.
• Behavior.
• Conversions.

You can import segments in all options listed above. However, for this tutorial, let’s import a segment based on the “behavior” report.

Step 3: Click on “behavior” which will prompt a dropdown menu. From the dropdown menu, click on “overview.”

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Step 4: Navigate to “Import from gallery” on the Behavior Overview dashboard.

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Step 5: Select a segment from the options displayed in the pop-up box.

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You can also:

• Sort segments by most popular, latest, and highest rating.
• Sort segments by ranking (between 1 to 5).
• Filter segments by category (acquisition, branding, conversion, etc).

Step 6: Once you’ve found a segment that works for your use case, click “Import.”

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Step 7: Next, choose the view you want to import the configuration into and select “create.”

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Step 8: That’s it. You’ve imported a segment into your Google Analytics. All that’s left to do is click “save.”

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Your newly imported segment should also now appear on your “add segment” page.

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Time to Drill Into Your Data

Building and applying segments in Google Analytics will help you get a much more accurate and useful picture of who is visiting your website and what they do once they get there.

Segmentation can help you avoid generalizations, conjecture, and bias. These insights into your audience’s behavior are an invaluable resource that will help you make data-driven decisions.

As a marketing copywriter, I can tell you writing is critical to any successful marketing campaign, from emails to social media posts to blogs.

Even the most seasoned writer can struggle to keep up with demand, so taking advantage of the AI tools available to streamline your process and boost your productivity is crucial.

But what tool is best for you and the content you need to create?

I tested several AI copywriting platforms to find which tools write the best marketing copy. By the end of this blog post, you’ll have a better idea of what tools you should try to help you produce quality content faster.

What is AI Copywriting?

Blog Introductions

HubSpot’s AI Content Writer

ChatGPT

Scalenut

Social Media Copy

SocialBee

Anyword

Email Copy

Copy.AI

Hypotenuse.AI

Choosing the AI Tool for You

What is AI copywriting?

AI copywriting combines natural language processing with machine learning to generate copy for social media, blogs, websites, landing pages, scripts, and more.

Though AI generates the copy, the intention is for it to sound like a human wrote it. Furthermore, AI-generated copy is crafted quickly, helping marketers meet deadlines and allot more time toward other responsibilities.

Blog Introductions

My three contenders for the best AI tool for blog writing are HubSpot’s AI content writer, ChatGPT, and Scalenut. To compare each device, I typed the following prompt into each system and evaluated the introductions in the results:

“Generate a blog post listing 10 strategies for influencer marketing.”

1. HubSpot’s AI content writer

Our free AI content writer can generate copy for blogs, websites, social media posts, and more. All users need to do is type in a topic or prompt and let the AI content writer do the rest.

Using the tool is simple. Just log into the HubSpot CRM and click the “Generate blog post” button near the top right corner.

Next, type in the prompt, choose the correct country, and select the blog to host your post. Then click “Next.”

From there, the AI generates several headlines to choose from. Even better, it shows how difficult it to to rank for the headline and keyword.

Below is an excerpt of what the tool generated after I selected the headline I wanted.

Get started with HubSpot’s AI Content Assistant

What We Like: Overall, the tool is user-friendly, quick, and helpful. My only critique is that I’d more likely use the opening sentences as metadata and rework the first three paragraphs after the subheading to craft an introduction.

2. ChatGPT

This isn’t my first time using ChatGPT to write blog content. While it’s not my go-to choice, it’s an excellent tool for outlining a blog post or starting a draft.

After I submitted the prompt, ChatGPT generated a headline similar to the one I chose in the HubSpot example, and it developed an intro paragraph closer to how I’d write it myself.

I would have liked ChatGPT to generate multiple headline suggestions, but I would need to enter a different prompt for that to happen.

Additionally, while the opening paragraph was straightforward and to the point, it lacked detail or an exciting hook.

Pro-Tip: When using ChatGPT, be as specific as you can in your prompt or be ready to submit multiple prompts until you get the kind of content you’re looking for. 

3. Scalenut

Scalenut helps users brainstorm, write, edit, and publish SEO-optimized content. Unlike other generators, I must submit the keywords for the AI’s Article Writer before entering the prompt. 

Once the keywords, prompt, and tone are specified, Scalenut generates several headlines to choose from. I decided on the first headline, “Ten Winning Strategies for Influencer Marketing.”

Scalenut generated the following outline with optimized subheadings.

From there, I clicked “Generate Writing Points” and was shown the points Scalenut planned to include in its draft. I could delete the points I wanted to exclude and write in new topics.

Finally, I clicked “Generate Content,” Scalenut responded with the following blog draft, which included a meta title, description, and permalink.

Scalenut’s approach to AI copywriting is a very collaborative process, which is excellent for a writer like myself. I see AI as an assistive tool rather than something that can completely take over the task of writing.

There are some tweaks I would make to the final draft. For example, “influencer marketing” should be lowercase since it’s not a proper noun. However, Scalenut provided a strong foundation for AI copy, and I see a tool like this saving time for writers.

So, which of the above tools writes the best marketing copy for blog posts? It‘s a tie between HubSpot’s AI Content Writer and Scalenut. Both tools include features that optimize your content SEO, which is key to crafting blog posts to rank in SERPs and generate leads.

Social Media Copy

Let’s compare AI tools from SocialBee and Anyword to see which is best for developing social media copy.

1. SocialBee

SocialBee is both a social media scheduling tool and an AI post generator, so once you create your social media content, you can easily schedule your creation to your platform.

In this case, SocialBee is connected to one of my Instagram accounts.

After choosing to use SocialBee’s social media copilot, I answered a few questions regarding the name of my business, who I was generating content for, my role, target audience, branding, and more.

In this example, I am a social media manager for a bakery in Philadelphia that serves freshly baked goods to locals wanting a cozy, family-friendly atmosphere.

From there, SocialBee suggests the platforms I should use in my campaign, the kind of content I should post, and when.

Finally, I click “Generate Post,” SocialBee provides several social media copy drafts and the option to post them according to its suggested plan.

One post reads:

“Remember when we used to make these delicious apple turnovers? They were always a crowd favorite! #ThrowbackThursday #PhillyBakeryHistory.”

In the notes tab, SocialBee points out the types of images I should use to complement the copy.

What We Like: Planning, drafting, and scheduling a social media campaign can take hours, sometimes days, but with SocialBee, I got everything done in just 10 minutes. I also love that it provides a variety of copy for different social posts.

2. Anyword

Anyword is a free AI copy generator that is pretty simple. All I needed to do was select the social media platform I wanted to post to and then explain the post in just a few words.

For this test, I‘m sticking to the Philly Bakery example and asking Anyword to generate copy for an Instagram post enticing customers to visit my fictitious Philadelphia-based bakery. Here’s the result.

As you can see, Anyword is a lot less comprehensive than SocialBee and doesn’t provide as many suggestions.

However, it provides engagement predictions, a scale for tone of voice, and a graph predicting the demographic the caption would appeal to the most.

Best For: I can see myself using a tool like Anyword when I’m at a loss for what to post, and I need a quick copy as soon as possible.

With that in mind, I will crown SocialBee as the best AI tool for generating marketing copy for social media. SocialBee streamlines the entire campaign ideation process, from planning to drafting to scheduling, in just minutes.

Email Copy

We‘re comparing Copy.AI and Hypotenuse.AI to see which generates the best email marketing copy. My prompt is: “Generate a marketing email to customers excited about my business’ Fall clothing sale.”

1. Copy.AI

Copy.AI works similarly to ChatGPT, which makes sense, considering it‘s built on top of OpenAI’s GPT-3’s large language model. While ChatGPT is a general service that answers various queries, Copy.AI is designed to streamline the copywriting process.

So, how does it fare with emails? Let‘s look at an excerpt of Copy.AI’s response to my prompt.

What We Like: The email subject is catchy and clever while creating a sense of urgency. The opening sentence captures the essence of Fall attire with phrases like “crisp autumn air” and “cozy.”

However, the entire email is about 430 words; it’s best practice for marketing emails to be between 50 and 125.

2. Hypotenuse AI

Hypotenuse.AI provides various templates for different types of content, including emails. The copywriting tool also allows users to describe the purpose of the email, keywords to optimize for, tone, and more.

This is what Hypotenuse.AI came up with.

What We Like: I’m much happier with the length of the email, which is less than 120 words. I also love the call-to-action at the end for being short and to the point and encouraging readers to act now.

After all, a little FOMO never hurt anyone.

The email doesn’t have as many fluff words as the draft from Copy.AI, but overall the draft provides a great base to build upon and tweak to my liking.

Between Copy.AI and Hypotenuse.AI, I would choose the latter to craft my marketing emails. Hypotenuse.AI provides more email customization options and opportunities to optimize for SEO and target audiences.

Choosing the AI Tool for You

Many AI tools are available to help marketers craft compelling, interesting content quickly and efficiently, you just need to know the kind of assistance you need and be willing to test different tools.

What other AI tools do you think marketers should try out? Which of the tools above are you most interested in using?

Threads, Instagram’s text-based conversation app, launched in July 2023 and reached 100 million active users within ten days.

It grew five times faster than ChatGPT, the previous record holder for the fastest-growing app. Its initial spike in popularity reportedly caused a drop in Twitter’s (now X) traffic—it was an exciting app for consumers to try out amidst X’s growing controversies.

Despite its initial success, will Threads meet the same fate as many other young social media platforms?

Is Threads losing steam?

SimilarWeb reported that Threads usage was down 79%, and time spent on the app was down 89% just one-month post-launch.

While U.S. users once spent 21 minutes on the app per day, it dropped to three minutes by August 7th. What’s more, the user base fell by more than half since launch.

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This data does show that Threads’ initial surge has certainly died down. Consumer perspective is important, though, before calling Threads a passing fad. In September, we surveyed social media users across the U.S. to get their take on the app and the future it might have.

First, it’s interesting to know how Threads users would describe the platform, and most respondents would use the words “new, innovative, and disruptive.” This sentiment tracks, as Threads certainly was disruptive in its infancy, so much so that it took traffic away from a mature and established platform.

To get an initial reading, we asked consumers what social media platforms they’ve spent an hour or more on since July. 21% said they’d spent an hour or more on Threads, outshined by Twitter, Reddit, and Tumblr. This differs from SimilarWeb’s data, which says U.S. users spent no more than 3 minutes on the app after August.

Most respondents (24%) also said they spent the same amount of time on the app in August as they did in July. 21% said they substantially increased the time they spent on Threads.

When comparing Threads usage to X usage, most consumers said they spent the same amount of time on X channel between July and August.

We also asked about their plans with Threads for the upcoming months, and most reported they will likely continue to use the platform the same amount as they do today. However, rounding up second place is 17% of respondents saying they will likely stop using the app entirely.

The verdict? Threads did lose its initial hype.

The data shows that, yes, Threads lost its initial post-launch hype. This doesn’t mean it’s dead or dying, though, as data shows consumers still seem to remain interested in the platform. Moreover, only 7% of respondents would use the word “dead” to describe the app (same rating was given to X).

What is true is that consumers may need more of a reason to stay on the app long-term. 24% still say it was boring and/or unengaging (just one percentage point less than the more positive sentiment of new, innovative, and disruptive).

Key Takeaways for Marketers

Threads is young, so predicting usage in a year, even six months, is hard. The drop in excitement is evident, but interest is still there, so businesses on the platform will likely have to work hard to capture and maintain interest before it’s too late.

Meta has significant reach, and, as a Meta product, it’s unlikely that Threads will fail. It might be given new features and capabilities that re-engage bored users and bring people back. I would encourage marketers to be experimental because the strategies you’d use on established platforms like Facebook are not guaranteed to work.

Keep your eye on the app and how consumers interact with your content—generally observe and see what happens. If it shows no signs of going away, your observations and tests will keep you well-prepared for the future.

After all, people once said TikTok would never last, but look at where it is now.

Just last week, I purchased a yoga mat after seeing a sponsored post on Instagram from fitness influencer Cassey Ho.

Ho commands a large following on YouTube thanks to her bubbly personality and Pilates prowess. Ultimately, her endorsement was enough for me to click “Buy.”

But could this influencer magic work with a non-human influencer? In 2023, computer-generated influencers might argue, “Yes.”

Here, we’ll discuss whether virtual influencers are the future of marketing, and list the top 15 virtual influencers of 2023. Let’s dive in.

Tables of Contents

What is a virtual influencer?

Are Virtual Influencers The Future of Marketing?

The Top 15 Virtual Influencers

What Virtual Influencers Can Offer — and What’s Missing

Let’s take a look at this post from Miquela Sousa (@lilmiquela), a virtual influencer with over 2.7 million followers on Instagram:

By all accounts, the post looks real. Miquela, a 19-year-old Brazilian-American model, influencer, and singer, is posting a #sponsored post for Calvin Klein and posing with fellow model Bella Hadid.

But Miquela is a computer-generated character, introduced by Los Angeles company Brud in 2016. Each month, almost 260,000 people listen to her music on Spotify. Miquela works with major brands ranging from Prada to Samsung, and she’s even given interviews at Coachella.

All of which raises the question — why should companies pay real human influencers to promote their products, when they can create their own personal influencer from scratch?

Are Virtual Influencers The Future of Marketing?

Before we consider the pros and cons of virtual influencers, let’s explore some examples.

First, as previously mentioned, there’s Lil Miquela. When you scan through her Instagram posts, you quickly realize her captions make her sound like a regular teenager.

In fact, in the following post, she even sounds like she has real emotions, writing, “[One of angel boi’s friends] blew up at me at lunch and stormed out as I ugly cried in front of about 50 strangers… and now he won’t respond to any of my texts”:

While her caption is fake, her followers’ comments are real — many of Lil Miquela’s followers respond with empathy or shared experiences, like one comment that read, “This same thing happened to me once, you’ll get through it.”

Besides Lil Miquela, there are other “virtual humans” out there.

For instance, Xinhua News, a Chinese media outlet, unveiled an AI news presenter in 2018 who can work 24 hours a day without breaks, reducing news production costs. A year later, they unveiled a female AI news anchor known as Xin Xiaomeng.

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In another example, Balmain, a fashion label, commissioned photographer Cameron-James Wilson to create a diverse “virtual army” of models for Olivier Rousteing’s 2018 collection:

The campaign was met with mixed reviews — one follower wrote, “This is disgusting! I do not understand why they think these models are attractive,” and another commented, “As if Photoshop wasn’t enough, what’s wrong with this world?! #realpeople #realmodels please.”

And, last but certainly not least, there’s KFC’s Colonel Sanders, mocking the very trend of virtual influencers while taking part in it:

Let’s take a closer look at the top 15 virtual influencers of 2023.

1. Lil Miquela

With almost 3 million followers on Instagram, there’s no surprise why Lil Miquela tops the list. The 19-year-old model, influencer, and singer has worked with some of the biggest fashion brands, including Prada, Calvin Klein, and Samsung. Miquela was introduced by Los Angeles company Brud in 2016.

2. Imma

Imma is a virtual influencer from Tokyo, commanding an audience of almost 400K on Instagram. Rocking bubble gum pink hair, she posts lifestyle and fashion-related content and has landed collaborations with Puma, Valentino, and Dior, to name a few.

She made her first appearance in July 2018 and is produced by Aww Inc.

3. Barbie

You might be thinking – finally, a name I recognize on this list! Alas, Barbie needs no introduction, especially in 2023. She’s come a long way since her inception in 1959. These days, you can catch her on YouTube entertaining more than 11 million subscribers.

4. Lu of Magazine Luiza

Lu is a popular Brazilian influencer with a staggering 6.5 million Instagram followers. She’s a spokesperson for Magazine Luiza, a Brazilian retail conglomerate. She uses her social media to post product unboxings and reviews on behalf of the company, and made her first appearance on YouTube in August 2009. 

5. Apoki

Apoki is a South Korean singer and entertainer. According to her YouTube channel, her songs are created by multi-platinum, award-winning producers, and the music videos are solely produced by cutting-edge technology. Currently, she has 4.5 million followers on TikTok since debuting in 2019.

6. Nobody Sausage

Nobody Sausage is a bit of a wildcard. As his name suggests, he’s an animated sausage who performs dances and skits in colorful outfits. While this sounds silly enough, Nobody Sausage puts up some serious numbers, like 267 million “likes” on TikTok and 7.4 million followers on Instagram.

7. Good Advice Cupcake

Continuing with the food theme, we have Good Advice Cupcake. This cutesy cartoon character sweetens her fans’ day by offering advice, posting relatable scenarios (like the one above), and sharing uplifting messages. 

Good Advice Cupcake was created by Buzzfeed and first appeared in January 2018. Since then, it has amassed 2.5 million followers on Instagram.

8. Shudu

Shudu is the self-proclaimed “First Digital Supermodel,” according to her Instagram with over 240K followers. Her photos exude luxury, high fashion, and style. Unsurprisingly, she’s collaborated with prestige brands like BMW and Louis Vuitton. Shudu was created in April 2017 by The Diigital.

9. CodeMiko

CodeMiko is a popular South Korean-American Twitch streamer and Youtuber. She also has a healthy presence on Instagram with over 120K followers. CodeMiko is revolutionizing the streaming experience — in fact, the Financial Times reported that her content may signal “the next frontier of digital entertainment.” 

10. Kyra

Kyra is India’s first virtual influencer. She entered the scene almost two years ago, in January 2022. Since then, she has generated over 240K followers on Instagram. She was featured on the digital cover of Travel and Leisure, India, and has secured a number of brand collaborations, including Amazon Prime Video.

11 & 12. Guggimon and Janky

Image Source

Guggimon is a crazy, boisterous rabbit with over 2 million followers on TikTok. Janky, a lovable but incompetent cat, is his best friend. The duos’ off-the-wall antics often go viral on social media. Both are mascots for the brand Superplastic, which creates designer toys that sell out within minutes. 

If you haven’t heard of this duo before, that might soon change. Amazon Studios is currently in early development for “The Janky & Guggimon Show.” You can also play as the character Guggimon in Fortnite.

13. Any Malu

Any Malu is a Brazilian influencer with over 3.6 million subscribers on YouTube and over 1 million followers across Instagram and TikTok. If that isn’t impressive enough, she has her own Cartoon Network show. Any made her first appearance in August 2015.

14. Ion Gottlich

We’ve seen many fashion influencers on this list, now prepare for our first health and fitness pro — Ion Gottlich.

He’s an influencer and renowned cyclist. In fact, the German cycling team Bora–Hansgrohe lists him as a team member. He certainly has a physical presence — and a funny, boisterous personality to match. He currently has over 70K followers on Instagram.

15. K/DA

K/DA is a K-pop girl group from LA consisting of four members: Ahri, Akali, Evelynn and Kai’Sa. The group was developed in 2018 by Riot Games, the company behind League of Legends.

The music video for their debut single “Pop/Stars” went viral on YouTube, garnering 567 million views as of October 2023. They released another single, “More,” in October 2020, which became the first virtual band song to simultaneously debut on the Billboard Global 200 and Billboard Global U.S chart.

What Virtual Influencers Can Offer — and What’s Missing

There are some undeniable benefits to creating or hiring a virtual influencer.

For one, a virtual influencer isn’t human, meaning he or she won’t need breaks. If you’re trying to work around-the-clock publishing and promoting content to raise brand awareness, it makes sense that you’d consider using a virtual influencer, who can post and promote content without sacrificing human needs like… well, eating or sleeping.

Additionally, your virtual influencer isn’t as much of a PR liability as a real influencer. For instance, Debra Davis, founder of NKLS — a company that researches, advises on, and invests in virtual and augmented reality — told WWD, “With a virtual influencer, so much more thought has to be put into the message. It’s not just someone with a Twitter stream. It’s more carefully constructed and thought through, and therefore can be controlled.”

Real influencers and celebrities make mistakes that could influence the public’s perception of your brand. With a virtual influencer, you don’t risk associating your brand with any negative press.

On top of that, it might cost less to hire a virtual influencer compared to a celebrity or supermodel. 

However, if your brand is considering hiring micro-influencers, you’ll more likely find a real micro-influencer for cheaper.

It’s also worth noting that much of what we see on Instagram is edited, filtered, and posed — so, really, is a real person’s highly filtered version of “real life” much different from virtual reality, anyway?

Lastly, a virtual influencer is incredibly rare and unusual, so it draws immediate attention to your brand. If your brand is trying to reach Gen Z or a younger audience, a virtual influencer might be something that appeals to your intended demographic.

On the flip side, there’s still something uniquely powerful and engaging about real influencers connecting with their audience through social platforms. Virtual influencers like Lil Miquela can pretend they have human emotions, but that can just as easily backfire if her audience doesn’t trust the emotion behind it.

Ultimately, influencer marketing is about engaging in authentic, meaningful connections. How is an audience ever supposed to trust a promoted post when there isn’t a real human advocating for it?

Additionally, influencer marketing is often most successful when it’s seen as real and genuine. For instance, direct-to-consumer beauty brand Glossier has become insanely successful due, in large part, to its authentic marketing strategy.

As Emily Weiss, founder and CEO, said during a live interview with Kara Swisher for the Recode Decode podcast, “At Glossier, something we’ve always stayed very true to, since pre-launch, day one, is that every single person is an influencer.”

You’ll notice Glossier adheres to this strategy on its Instagram page, which exhibits real women using Glossier products.

Back to You

At the end of the day, there’s something to be said for brands that find real people to promote their products or services to other real people. Sure, there’s risk involved — but that risk is the same component that enables audiences to trust, listen to, and connect with those influencers in the first place.

I love a good pun. Okay, who am I kidding? I’m a big fan of the bad ones, too.

Halloween is the perfect holiday for marketers to get creative and let that punny side shine.

That’s why I’ve taken it u-PUN myself to create this PUN-believable list of puns to use in your marketing campaigns this spooky season.

The Ultimate List of Halloween Puns for Marketers

In each of the categories below, I’ve selected my favorite marketing halloween puns from 2023 and included some additional ideas for inspiration.

Find un-BOO-lievably creative halloween puns for:

• Marketing Campaigns
• Discounts and Product Offers
• Just For Fun

Marketing Campaigns

My 2023 Favorites: Hulu, Target, Yankee Candle

What I love (from left to right in the picture above):

• Hulu: The play on words is perfection, and not pursuing “Huluween” would’ve 100% been a missed opportunity. I love that Hulu compiles all of my Halloween favorites into one cleverly-named category for easy access.
• Target: With the nod to “Hide and Seek,” Target’s Halloween campaign is completely on theme. I love the creativity behind this boutique, and it’s an effective way to re-advertise all of Target’s seasonal products.
• Yankee Candle: It’s candle season as much as it is spooky season. I love how Yankee Candle leans into Halloween with haunting imagery to promote their frighteningly good fragrances.

Halloween Puns for Marketing Campaigns

Great for: Product and content marketing, brand awareness, and social media

• If you’ve got it, haunt it. Share your Halloween costumes with us using #[hashtag] for a chance to win this year’s contest.
• It’s the most wonderful time of the fear. Take a look at this year’s Halloween line up.
• Don’t let [insert common customer problem] become a nightmare. Book a call with us today.
• Ready to BOO it yourself? We have tons of DIY resources for your next project.
• Enjoy the ghoul times. Sit back and relax while we handle [insert service] for you.
• Eat, drink, and be scary. Check out our Halloween menu for some scary good treats.
• Harvest the magic of Halloween. We have all of your seasonal favorites in one place.
• Fangs for trusting us with your [insert customer need]. Check out our website for more resources.
• This Halloween event is spook-tacular. Get your tickets before it’s too late.
• We’ve got every trick or treat in the book to help you [insert audience goal].
• Let’s get this party startled. Everything you need to host your best ghouls this Halloween.
• Get scary good at [insert task]. We can help.
• We’re bringing the monster madness. Get excited about our new [insert product or service].
• Love at first bite. Browse your favorite Halloween treats.
• Don’t get spooked by [insert common customer problem]. Let us handle it for you.
• It’s a boo-tiful time of year to start [insert task].
• Thrills and chills. We’ve got something for everyone.
• Hi, gourd-geous. Looking for the latest [insert category] hacks?
• Share this with your boo. [Insert activity] is great for groups of two or more.
• Trick or treat yourself. Try our new [insert product or service].
• We take the fear out of [insert common customer problem]. Learn more about what we have to offer.
• Have you been left hanging before? We promise we won’t ghost you.
• Our [insert service] is guaranteed to come in candy.
• Let’s pumpkin spice things up together this Halloween season.
• When it comes to [insert speciality], we’re way ahead of the carve.

Discounts and Product Offers

My 2023 Favorites: eBay, PopSockets, Michaels

What I love (from left to right in the picture above):

• eBay: Okay, eBay really sold me with the quadruple pun action. I love how they really went for it to show customers they can find any and “eerie” thing on eBay to celebrate Halloween this year.
• PopSockets: Sometimes simple can be the way to go, too. I love how straightforward this subject line is — there’s a treat inside, and it happens to be the cutest Halloween-exclusive item.
• Michaels: Michaels is known for arts and crafts. I absolutely love the “boo it yourself” play on words to point customers to their seasonal DIY products.

Halloween Puns for Discounts and Product Offers

Great for: Email marketing, websites and landing pages

• This offer is scary good. Get [x]% off your Halloween favorites.
• Here’s $[x] off so you don’t ghost us this Halloween.
• Can you boo-lieve these savings?
• We’ve got what you need for the fright price.
• All treats, no tricks inside. We promise.
• Share this deal with your boo. Get [x]% off when you refer a friend.
• We’re creepin’ it real with these savings.
• Our Halloween sale is eerie-sistible.
• Trick or treat yourself this Halloween with $[x] off.
• This sale is boo-tiful. Shop while it lasts.
• Monster savings ahead. Shop now.
• [x]% off — now that’s love at first fright.
• This discount is guaranteed to make you Hallo-SCREAM.
• Your witches have been granted. Get [x]% off through Halloween.
• Take a coffin break and browse our latest deals.
• PUMP-kin up the savings this Halloween.
• This offer is to die for. Open at your own risk.
• Don’t get ghosted by this deal. Ends 10/31.
• These prices are sweeter than your favorite Halloween candy.
• Fang-tastic savings are in your future. [x]% off your Halloween faves.
• $[x] off your next purchase. That’s the spirit.
• Deja BOO! We’re back at it again with big Halloween savings.
• You handle the tricks. We’ve got the treats this season.
• Nope, it’s not witchful thinking. Shop [x]% off now.
• Check out this deal for a spooky good time.
• These prices are one word: Fa-BOO-lous.
• You don’t have to believe in ghosts to believe in these savings.
• The best Halloween deals are fright here.
• We think $[x] off your next purchase is pretty ghoul.
• Spooktacular savings delivered right to your inbox.
• Our Halloween sale is so good, it’s scary.
• Boo you believe in $[x] off?
• This offer ends the night-mare before Halloween.
• Now these are savings you can feel gourd about.
• Beware of missing this Halloween sale. Get [x]% off your favorites.

Just For Fun

Halloween Candy Puns

• Trick or treat yourself to some candy.
• You’re goblin up all the candy.
• It’s un-candy how good your Halloween costume is.
• I’ve seen every trick (or treat) in the book.
• You don’t have to sugar coat it.
• I have a feeling this will come in candy.
• This Halloween candy tastes as good as it spells.
• Love at first bite.
• I couldn’t scare less about cavities.
• Howl much candy did you get this year?

Pumpkin Puns

• Are you pumped for Halloween?
• These jack-o-lanterns are gourd-geous.
• Now that’s squash goals.
• Gourd big or go home.
• Going to carve out some time for trick or treating.
• Let’s pump-kin it up.
• Oh my gourd-ness, I love Halloween.
• We’ll give you pumpkin to talk about.
• Gourd vibes only.
• I’ll patch you later.

Random Halloween Puns

• Yas, Hallow-queen.
• Bugs and hisses for all who celebrate.
• Time to get this party startled.
• Ghouls just want to have fun.
• I don’t have a scare in the world.
• More mummy, more problems.
• We can always count on Halloween to lift our spirits.
• I just need some zombie to love.
• You used to call me on my skel-phone.
• I have a few ghost puns, but they’re not very ghoul.
• Hocus focus on the good things in life.
• Oh my gourd-ness, you scared me.
• Hi, boo-tiful.
• I just got ghosted.
• This is going to be a great Halloween, I can feel it in my bones.
• I love that for ghoul.
• Be scareful out there.
• I’m creepin’ it real.
• Just trying to be transparent with you.
• Witching you a happy Halloween.

Have a PUN-derful Halloween

I hope this list inspires you to be the punniest marketer you can be.

Like a tree falling in the woods, if you plan a product launch without spreading the word — will anyone use it? Will anyone even want it?

Probably not. Whether you‘re launching something huge, something small, or you’re updating a current offering, you’ll want to start your preparation well in advance of the launch date with a product launch checklist.

Because there are so many moving parts in this process, bringing your product to market can be intimidating and tricky. To help you, we’ve come up with a step-by-step checklist for a successful product launch and gathered the best product launch tips from a HubSpot Product Marketer.

What is a product launch?

A product launch is the process of introducing a brand new product or service to the world. It involves various marketing and promotional activities aimed at creating buzz and demand around your new offering. The ultimate goal is to get customers excited and eager to buy the new product.

Product launches require a lot of planning. You can’t just drop a new product out of the blue and expect everyone to buy in — well, unless you’re Beyoncé. Luckily, our product launch checklist can help ensure that all your t’s are crossed and i’s are dotted before your official launch date.

1. Learn about your customer.

Whether you call it “market research,” or “customer development” it’s key to learn about what drives your customer. Identifying their goals, motivations, and pain points could lead you to developing and marketing a valuable solution.

You don’t need to perform years of intense research to learn about your customer. In fact, we suggest just talking to 12 to 15 current or prospective customers.

When speaking to them, pay extra attention when they start sentences with “I wish a product did this function…” or “Why can‘t products do this?” When they give these statements, respond with questions that go deeper, like “Can you get more specific about that?” If they don’t bring up any pain points, ask them a few specific questions that will encourage them to give deeper answers.

These conversations will give you a solid idea of what their biggest pain points are and how you can market a solution to them. Once you learn these key details about your customers, you can develop a buyer persona that your team can focus on serving.

2. Write a positioning statement.

When launching a new product, you must be able to clearly explain how it fills a need in the market. That’s where a positioning statement comes in. It helps you communicate the unique value proposition and key benefits that differentiate your product from others.

Write out a statement that can clearly and concisely answer these three questions:

• Who is the product for?
• What does the product do?
• Why is it different from other products out there?

If you’d like to go even deeper, create a statement that answers the following questions:

• What is your target audience?
• What segment of the target audience is most likely to buy the product?
• What brand name will you give your product or service?
• What product or service category does your product lie in?
• How is it different from competitors in the same category?
• What evidence or proof do you have to prove that your product is different?

Still need more guidance on how to write a positioning statement? Check out this template.

3. Pitch your positioning to stakeholders.

Once you’ve established your positioning statement, present it to stakeholders in your company so they are all on the same page.

When doing this, you’ll want to emphasize how your new product aligns with your overall business strategy, customer needs, market trends, and revenue potential. Use concrete examples, stories, or data to make your pitch more persuasive.

You’ll also want to think proactively about potential questions or objections they might have. Prepare thoughtful responses to address concerns around market viability, competition, target audience, or feasibility.

If your employees have a hard time buying into the product, your customers might as well. If your team loves it, that might be a great sign that the product launch will go well.

4. Develop product branding.

Take the information you gathered while conducting your market research and writing your positioning statement and let it inspire you as you craft your product brand identity.

During this step, you’ll develop all the elements needed to create a consistent and memorable brand, including:

• Product name, logo, and tagline
• Color palette, typography, and imagery
• Key brand, communications, and marketing guidelines
• Packaging

Product branding is a little different than company branding because it focuses on creating a distinct identity for a specific product, rather than an entire organization. However, they are both still interconnected and should be aligned.

5. Plan your go-to-market strategy.

This is the strategy that you will use to launch and promote your product. While some businesses prefer to build a funnel strategy, others prefer the flywheel approach.

Regardless of which method you choose, this process contains many moving parts. To create an organized strategy for launching your product, it can be helpful to use a template, like this one.

As you create the strategy, also start considering which type of content you‘ll use to attract a prospective customer’s attention during the awareness, consideration, and purchase decision stage. You’ll need to produce this content in the next step.

6. Set a goal for the launch.

Before you get started on implementing your strategy, make sure you write down your goals for the launch.

Alex Girard, a Product Marketing Manager at HubSpot, says, “Create specific goals for the launch’s success. Keeping these goals in mind will help you focus your efforts on launch tactics that will help you achieve those goals.”

For example, the goals of your product launch could be to effectively establish a new product name, build awareness, or create sales opportunities.

One of the best ways to set goals for your launch team is to write them out like SMART goals. A SMART goal is Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound.

Once you have your goals in mind, you can start thinking about what KPIs you want to track, such as:

• Sales revenue
• Units sold
• Customer acquisition
• Conversion rate
• Website traffic and engagement
• Social media engagement

Identifying these metrics ahead of time will make it easier to assess whether or not you met your goals after the product is launched.

7. Create promotional content.

After planning out your go-to-market strategy and writing your SMART goals, start producing content that will support and align with those promotional efforts.

This can include:

• Blog posts related to your product or industry
• Demos and tutorials
• Email campaigns
• Social media posts
• Landing pages

Our go-to-market template will also help you determine which content you should create for each phase of your prospective customer‘s buyer’s journey.

8. Test and gather feedback.

Before you officially launch your new product, it’s important to test it out to ensure your final product is the best it can be.

By testing the product in different scenarios with real users, potential bugs, usability problems, or functional issues can be discovered and resolved early on. Fixing these problems before launching your product ensures a smoother user experience and helps maintain customer satisfaction.

Gathering feedback from users also allows for product improvement. By listening to the opinions, suggestions, and criticisms of users, you can gain insight into what features are working well and which ones need improvement. This feedback-driven approach can help you make informed decisions on enhancing the product’s functionality, usability, and performance.

9. Set up distribution channels.

Before you officially launch, you’ll need to set up your distribution channels. This step is important because it determines how and where customers can purchase your product, be it online platforms, brick-and-mortar stores, or other distribution partners.

Well-planned distribution channels help accelerate the product’s time to market. By proactively setting up channels ahead of the launch, you can quickly distribute the product once it becomes available, minimizing delays and maximizing opportunities to capture early adopters and gain market share.

If you can successfully position your product in prominent retail locations or online marketplaces, it increases visibility and boosts your chances of capturing customer attention and outperforming competitors.

It also provides a foundation for future growth and scalability. As your business expands and introduces new products, you can leverage existing channel relationships and infrastructure to efficiently launch and distribute new offerings.

10. Prepare your team.

Be sure that your company and key stakeholders are ready for you to launch and begin marketing the product.

Before the big launch day, consider doing the following:

• Offer your team early access to the product so they can familiarize themselves with it firsthand.
• Provide training sessions to help your team understand the product inside out.
• Develop sales enablement materials such as presentations, product sheets, FAQs, and objection handling guides.
• Conduct role-playing exercises to simulate real customer scenarios with the product.

During this process, it’s essential that all stakeholders are on the same page. Communicate with the company through internal presentations, Slack, or email to keep your company updated on your launch plan.

11. Launch the product.

Once you’ve completed all the above steps, you can launch the product. Here are some last-minute things to check over on launch day:

• Double-check all the necessary details, materials, and arrangements to ensure that everything is ready and working correctly.
• Conduct a brief team meeting to align everyone and address any last-minute questions or concerns.
• Keep an eye on social media channels to gauge customer reactions, respond to inquiries, and engage with potential customers.
• Ensure that your website and any systems related to the product launch, such as landing pages or checkout processes, are functioning smoothly.

Most importantly, you should take the time to celebrate the launch and the efforts of your team. This can be in the form of a team lunch, virtual celebration, or any other creative way to acknowledge everyone’s hard work.

12. See how well you did in achieving your goals.

After you launch your product, track how the go-to-market strategy is performing. Be prepared to pivot or adjust aspects of your plan if they aren’t going smoothly.

Additionally, don’t forget about the goals you set before the launch. Take the time to review the KPI targets you set ahead of the launch and assess how well you did in achieving those goals.

For instance, did you exceed your sales projections, or did you fall short? If the launch didn’t meet expectations, you can rethink your go-to-market strategy and adjust from there.

The cost of launching a new product varies significantly. For instance, an entrepreneur will see vastly different costs for launching a product on Amazon than an enterprise company might see for launching a product in a million-dollar market.

Let’s consider two examples to explore this more closely.

Entrepreneur Product Launch Example

In the first example, let‘s say you’re an entrepreneur who has invented a design app you’re hoping to sell online. You might conduct market research to determine which marketing strategies work best for your goals, which messaging resonates best with your audience, and which design elements appeal to your desired prospects. If you use a few focus groups to determine these answers, you might expect to spend roughly $5,000.

When you‘re bringing a new app to the market, you’ll need to choose the best go-to marketing strategy for your needs. Regardless of the strategy you choose, they all cost money. For instance, product branding could cost roughly $1,000 if you‘re paying a designer to help you out, and website design could cost anywhere from $500-$3,000 if you’re paying a web designer a one-off fee.

These fees don‘t include the cost you need to pay yourself and any employees if this is a full-time job. It also doesn’t include the costs of hiring an engineer to update the app’s features and ensure the app is running smoothly.

With this simplified example, you’re looking at roughly $8,000. Of course, you can cut some costs if you choose to do any of these tasks yourself, but you might risk creating a subpar customer experience.

Enterprise Product Launch Example

On the other end of the spectrum, let‘s consider a large enterprise company that is launching a new product. Here, you’ll likely pay upwards of $30,000 – $50,000 for market research.

Perhaps you’ll spend $15,000 on brand positioning and the marketing materials necessary to differentiate yourself against competitors, and you might pay upwards of $30,000 for all the product design and brand packaging. Finally, your marketing team could need a budget of roughly $20,000 for SEO, paid advertising, social, content creation, etc.

All said and done, launching a product against other enterprise competitors‘ could cost roughly $125,000. Again, that doesn’t include the costs you’ll pay your marketing, product development, and engineering teams.

How to Launch a Product Online

To launch your product online, you‘ll want to ensure you’ve followed the steps above. However, there are a few additional steps you’ll want to follow to gain traction primarily online.

1. Figure out the story you want to tell regarding your product’s bigger purpose.

What story do you want to tell across social platforms, landing pages, and email? This is similar to your positioning statement but needs to be geared entirely toward your target audience. Ask questions like, Why should they purchase your product? And How will your product or service make their lives better?

Communicating cross-functionally ensures the communication materials you use across various online channels align — which is key when it comes to establishing a new product in the marketplace.

Consider, for instance, how Living Proof announced its new product, Advanced Clean Dry Shampoo, on its Instagram page. The story revolves around a simple nuisance common with most other dry shampoos — How consumers still want that just-washed feeling, even when using a dry shampoo.

Image Source

By focusing on how the product will benefit consumers through storytelling, and using a new hashtag #NoWastedWashes, Living Proof builds excitement and demand for its new product.

2. Display customer testimonials, case studies, and other social evidence to positively frame your new product.

Consumers want to see that other consumers have already taken the risk and purchased your new product before doing it themselves. This is where social proof comes into play.

In the weeks leading up to a product launch, or shortly after it‘s launch, begin posting customer testimonials, reviews, and case studies to showcase how your new product has already helped other people. Take this a step further and employ influencers to share the word about your product as well, if it’s a good fit for your brand.

Consumers are smart enough to know they shouldn’t trust every advertisement they see — but they can trust fellow consumers. So leverage that trust through social proof methods.

3. Create a social and email campaign.

Create a full, comprehensive social media campaign to increase interest and awareness of your new product.

Use paid advertising to reach new audiences, create full product explainer videos to use across your social channels, and use email to reach existing customers and provide an exclusive, first look at your new product’s features.

Additionally, you might consider hosting a live stream to connect directly with prospects and existing customers and invite experts from your product development team to explain the new features of your product.

It‘s important to note — in this stage, you’ll want to pay attention to how consumers are interacting with the communication materials regarding your new product. Share concerns and feedback with the product development team — it’s important to trust your consumers and use their feedback to strengthen your product.

4. Have a pre-order option.

If a consumer is excited to purchase your new product, don‘t make them wait — provide an option to pre-order the product or service before it’s even available. This helps spread out demand while enabling consumers to purchase the product whenever they’re feeling most inclined to do so.

Product Launch Best Practices by Industry

How to Launch a Digital Product

When launching a digital product, you’ll want to begin building anticipation with a strong content marketing strategy. Use blog posts, email marketing, social media, and other channels of distribution to increase interest and demand for your digital product.

You‘ll also want to ensure you’re leveraging lead generation strategies to reach existing customers and prospects.

For instance, let‘s say you’re launching an online course on SEO. In the weeks leading up to the launch, you might create SEO-related blog content to send to your email subscribers with an option to join the SEO course’s waitlist. This helps you gauge the effectiveness of your marketing materials while reaching an audience that has already demonstrated interest in your brand.

How to Launch a Product on Amazon

Anyone who‘s ever shopped on Amazon knows the importance of a good product listing. In the weeks leading up to launch, take the time to create a strong, high-converting product listing — including taking high-resolution photos of your product, writing a description that outlines your product’s differentiating features, and using keywords to help your product rank on Amazon.

Additionally, product reviews are incredibly important on Amazon, so you‘ll want to ensure you have reviews ready to go before you even launch your product on Amazon. To do this, ensure you’ve either launched your product on your own website first (which gives you time to earn reviews before launching on Amazon), or send your product to a select group of interested buyers ahead of the full launch, and collect reviews from them.

Finally, ensure you’re ready for an Amazon product launch by checking inventory. You never know how quickly your product might gain traction on the eCommerce superstore, so make sure you have enough products to fulfill Amazon orders quickly.

Take a look at HubSpot’s The Ultimate Guide to Selling on Amazon for more information related to Amazon.

How to Launch a SaaS Product

To launch a SaaS product, you‘ll want to start by researching competitors and understanding the marketplace at large. There’s plenty of demand for SaaS products, as the industry is expected to grow by more than 16% by 2026. However, the SaaS industry is also well-saturated, so before launching a SaaS product, you’ll want to determine how your product differs from all the others in the industry.

To create a successful product launch, you’ll want to conduct market research and focus groups to determine the true benefits and differentiators of your product.

Next, you‘ll want to employ a strong content marketing strategy to increase your website’s visibility on search engines and to ensure your business is appearing in search results for topics related to your product.

Since you aren’t launching a physical product, your marketing efforts need to convince businesses that your product can solve their needs. Additionally, you might want to offer free trials or a freemium option for smaller businesses on lower budgets to test out your offerings before committing.

For a full SaaS rundown, take a look at HubSpot’s Ultimate Guide to Software as a Service (SaaS).

How to Launch a Food Product

To launch a food product, you‘ll first need to ensure you’re prepared for the costs required to do so — including how much it costs to package and store the product (including packaging, warehousing, and distribution), and how much it costs to sell the product (including branding and digital marketing).

Next, you’ll want to follow federal and state food regulations. For instance, you need to ensure you’re following health department rules for food preparation surfaces, refrigeration, and sanitation.

You‘ll also need to make sure the labeling you use on your product’s packaging is accurate, which requires you to send your food product to a lab for analysis and check with your state commerce to see what it requires when it comes to nutrition labels.

When launching a food product, you’ll likely want to hire a food broker. A food broker can foster relationships with national or local grocery stores and will create a promotional plan to help increase sales as soon as your food hits the shelves.

Typically, a supermarket will test out your product for a few months before determining if there’s enough consumer interest to keep it stocked — which is why a food broker can be incredibly useful for using business intelligence and industry knowledge to ensure a successful food product launch.

1. Calm

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Originating in 2011 as a website called donothingfor2minutes.com, Calm is a mobile app that provides various resources and tools for meditation, sleep, relaxation, and mindfulness. Although Headspace was the leading meditation app at the time of its launch, it didn’t take long for Calm to dominate the market.

Calm found success largely because of its content marketing and SEO strategy. According to Foundation’s research, Calm has attracted over 8 million backlinks and uses blog content and YouTube content to organically attract and engage prospects.

The company also partners with celebrities to create unique content and engaging ad campaigns. Some of Calm’s most famous collaborators include Lebron James, Harry Styles, Matthew McConaughey, and Camila Cabello.

Calm’s celebrity partnerships have given them a leg up compared to their competitors. Not only their celebrity-read Sleep Stories garner millions of views, but they also boost the brand’s visibility and authority.

2. Poppi

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Poppi is a “prebiotic soda,” which is a beverage that combines the fizziness and taste of a traditional soda with fruit juice, prebiotics, and apple cider vinegar. It comes in flavors such as Classic Cola, Root Beer, Orange, and Cherry Limeade.

Originally called “Mother Beverage,” Poppi was originally created when co-founder Allison Ellsworth wanted to create a drink that was both healthy and tasted good. Not only does Poppi stand out from other beverages because of its health benefits, it also has a unique and colorful brand personality that attracts customers.

According to Allison, “We had this really fun and vibrant brand and a product that people could relate to. People love it and it was created with ingredients that people knew to be effective and beneficial to their body.”

Poppi was originally slated for a retail launch in March of 2020. However, those plans changed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Fortunately, they were able to pivot to launch as a DTC product, selling on Amazon and other e-commerce platforms. Additionally, they used this opportunity to invest in social media marketing on Instagram and TikTok, where they gained popularity amongst Gen Z consumers.

3. HubSpot Operations Hub

In 2021, HubSpot launched Operations Hub as part of its CRM platform. The product is designed to help businesses streamline their operational processes, improve data quality and accuracy, and enable cross-team collaboration. This allows businesses to run more smoothly and scale more effectively.

One of the reasons why this launch was successful was because it solved a problem that many customers faced.

According to HubSpot’s research, “over 60% of operations professionals have to do duplicative work because of a lack of alignment between teams.” This happens because operations professionals get hired into separate departments and get siloed and overwhelmed with tasks as their companies scale.

In response, HubSpot introduced Operations Hub so operations employees could work together out of a shared system and remove friction from their day-to-day workflows.

4. Goodles

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Goodles is a noodle brand that takes boxed mac-and-cheese to the next level. This product differentiates itself by providing more nutritional value than the standard dry noodles, with 10g of protein and 7g of fiber with prebiotics in every serving.

“The pasta aisle is overflowing with golden, al dente pasta options that provide very little nutrition. There’s also an ‘alt-pasta’ section with green, brown, orange, mushy, foamy noodles that offer more nutrition but little ‘yum’,” co-founder and CEO Jen Zeszut said in a press release. “Why should you have to choose between taste and nutrition?”

Aside from its positioning as a delicious and nutritious alternative to boxed mac-and-cheese, Goodles also stands out with its vibrant and fun branding. While other noodle brands have neutral-colored packaging, Goodles uses a bold color palette, a nostalgic typeface, and cheeky product names, like Shella Good and Here Comes Truffle, to attract consumers in the grocery aisle.

Product Launch Tips

To learn the best practices for a successful product launch, I talked to Alex Girard again.

The HubSpot Product Marketing Manager said he had three main tips for a successful product launch:

• Your product positioning should reflect a shift you’re seeing in the world, and how your product helps your customers take advantage of that shift.
• Create a recurring schedule for you and the core stakeholders for the launch to check in and ensure you’re all on the same page.
• Make sure you keep the product team in the loop on your marketing plans. The product team could have insights that inform your overall marketing campaign.

However, sometimes, external factors might impact your ability to launch a product. When that happens, you might need to delay your launch.

How to Know When to Delay a Product Launch

To understand when, and why, you might hold off on a product launch, Girard told me there are three key reasons why you might want to delay a product launch, including:

• When your product itself isn’t ready and you need to change your timeline to create the best customer experience possible.
• If a situation occurs where your current customers are having a less-than-optimal experience with one of your current products. Before launching and promoting a new product, you should make sure your current customers are satisfied with your existing product offering.
• If something occurs on an international, national, state, or local level that requires your audience to readjust their priorities and shift focus away from your company and its product launch. Make sure that when the time comes to launch, your target audience is ready to learn about your new product.

If you‘re looking for templates to coordinate your team efforts and align your company around your new product’s messaging, download our free product marketing kit below.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in November 2015 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.