Yearly Archives: 2023

There’s an obscure album by an equally obscure guitarist named Duck Baker called There’s Something for Everyone in America. That idea that “there’s something for everyone” doesn’t just apply to America — the concept is also relevant to niche blog topics.

 

Everyone has something that’s meaningful and interesting to them in its own right, and in a lot of cases, those kinds of passions and pursuits can be channeled into a well-crafted, consistently maintained blog property.

Here, we’ll go over what you need to consider when choosing a blog topic and round up the most profitable blog niche ideas you can choose from.

Skip to:

• Choosing a Blog Niche
• Types of Blog Niches
• Blog Niche Ideas

What is a blog niche?

A blog niche is a specialized topic you’ll be focusing on when creating content. While it may feel like covering a broad topic may net more readers, your audience will get more out of the content you create if it’s narrowed down. Staying within your topic niche will enable you to create content that is most relevant to your audience’s needs and interests, which will help create a loyal following.

How to Choose Your Niche Blog Topic

So what should you blog about? How do you land on the topic that will resonate most with readers and keep you fulfilled in the long run? Well, first and foremost, you need to consider your areas of expertise.

Where are you an authority? What can you talk about comfortably and compellingly? If you write a blog in some niche you only halfway understand, readers won’t be receptive to it. They want to hear from an expert — someone who can demonstrate that they’re qualified to offer tips or trustworthy opinions. But it doesn’t end there.

Writing a blog is a personal pursuit, so you need to write about something that bears personal significance. What do you like to write about? There has to be some degree of joy and enthusiasm behind your blog.

It takes a lot of work to maintain a blog. It’s tough to keep that effort up if you don’t actually enjoy what you’re writing about. You have to start your blog under the assumption that it will take a while to get off the ground. Here are a few directions you can take when determining the type of blog you’d like to create:

• Subject: These blogs are based on subjects like pop culture or entertainment.
• Industry: These blogs focus on an industry like real estate or marketing.
• Audience: These blogs focus on a target audience like students or entrepreneurs.

You’re probably not going to be able to monetize your site or sell ad space immediately, so you need to be in it — in large part — for the love of the sport.

Your niche has to reflect your passion because you’ll probably be writing for the sake of writing for a while. Attracting an audience is neither easy nor a given. If you don’t care about your preferred topic, you’ll be less inclined to stick it out.

We’ve grouped over 100 blog niche ideas below by category to help you quickly find the right fit for your interests. 

Career

1. Career Advice

There’s always a market for professional guidance — particularly in uncertain times.

2. Learning Employable Skills

Job seekers can always use an edge on their competition. If you can offer the insight or resources to give them that leg up, you can find a solid audience.

3. Networking

Networking can be intimidating for the shy and introverted. There’s an art to doing it properly and building meaningful relationships. If you can demystify this process, your efforts will be rewarded.

4. Finding Your Dream Career

Career paths aren’t always linear. It may take several years and switching industries before individuals hone in on what they truly enjoy. Create content that helps others bring their career goals into focus.

5. Professional Social Media Tips

Business owners often look for advice on how to bolster and enhance their presence on social media. If you have some experience in this arena, you can likely find a solid readership.

Business

6. Entrepreneurship

It seems these days everyone has a side hustle or is thinking about starting one. Guide newbies through the process of creating their own businesses with entrepreneur content.

7. Running a Startup

Similarly to entrepreneurship, running a startup isn’t for the faint of heart. Help startups perform at their best with content that steers them clear of common pitfalls.

8. Securing Funding & Business Finance

One of the most challenging aspects of starting a business is securing funding. Your blog could create content on how to crowdfund or seek capital from established investors.

9. Hiring

The success of any business is tied to the people who work for it. Create content that helps companies recruit the best and brightest.

Marketing 

10. Copywriting

Good copy can make or break getting sales and attracting new customers. Whether email, website design copy, or advertising, marketers are always on the hunt for ways to improve.

11. Content Marketing

Help marketers create successful content marketing campaigns that will keep them coming back to you for more.

12. Social Media Marketing

Social media trends are always changing. Help your audience get the most out of their efforts and stay on top of trends.

Sales

13. Sales Hacks and Resources

Sales reps are always looking for more ways to convert new customers and maximize their efficiency. Offer your expertise and quality templates that help them make the sale.

14. Sales Strategy

It’s nearly impossible to increase sales for a company without a solid plan. That’s where you come in, providing guidance and best practices to help teams reach their goals.

15. Software Recommendations

Automation can help make sales teams more productive. Cover the latest software releases disclose which sales tools are worth investing in.

16. B2B and B2C

Both B2C and B2B sales require a different approach. Help your audience master one or both these avenues.

17. E-Commerce

Just about every business is online. Help businesses grow by providing best practices, tools, and tips for selling online.

Web Development and Design

18. UX Design

If design is your expertise, offer your audience some industry best practices, how to skill up, and keep them updated on industry news.

Education

19. Study Hacks

There will always be a base of students looking to improve their study game. If you’re particularly savvy when it comes to tips and tricks to boost your grades, consider this niche.

20. Parent Teaching Tools

Teaching is a group effort. Help parents provide more learning support for their kids by giving them materials to build upon the lessons taught in class.

21. Language Instruction

Nesvarbu, ar tai būtų praktiniai, ar asmeniniai tikslai, yra daugybė žmonių, kurie norės išmokti naujų kalbų. That’s Lithuanian for, “Whether it be for practical or personal purposes, there are plenty of people who will want to learn new languages.”

22. SAT and ACT Prep

College preparation can be stressful for students. Help them perform their best on the SAT and ACT entrance exams by providing sample tests and other relevant materials.

Real Estate

23. Home Ownership

Buying a home is one of the most important decisions people make in life and is a huge undertaking. Help your audience navigate the funding, contracts, inspections to prepare them for homeownership.

24. Investment Property

From house-hacking, buying multi-family properties, buying vacation homes, and investing in REITs, real estate investment is a hot topic.

25. Market Updates

Covering shifts in the real estate market can help your audience make better property buying choices.

26. Interior Design

Once a home is purchased, the fun part starts: decorating. If you have an eye for design and organization, creating an interior design blog may be for you.

27. Renovations

If you’ve ever watched HGTV, you know that home improvement and renovation content is quite popular, if not addicting. Help your audience create their dream home with your renovation expertise.

Pop Culture and Entertainment

28. Acting Tips

If you’re an experienced actor who can share stories and insight that’ll help newbies refine their craft and prepare for auditions, consider giving this niche a shot.

29. Celebrity Content

Who doesn’t love some good celeb gossip? Tap into a ready-made audience by covering celebs, their new projects, outfits, and whatever else interests you.

30. Concert Reviews

This niche is particularly fun and active. If you can reliably make it to shows and offer meaningful criticism, look into it.

31. Film or TV Reviews

There’s a sizable audience for an aficionado who can dish out some compelling opinions about new movies or TV shows. If you’re an outspoken film connoisseur, try this niche.

32. Music Reviews

This point is similar to the one above. An articulate music buff can rein in a sizable audience by offering their takes on new albums.

33. Stand-Up Comedy Instruction

Newer stand-up comics can always use a little (or a lot) of guidance as they’re starting out. There’s definitely an audience for a comedy veteran to offer some tips, tricks, and anecdotes.

Gaming

34. Video Game Tutorials

There’s a solid population of gamers looking for walkthroughs and assistance through the trickier parts of certain games. If you’re an experienced gamer who can provide that help, look into this niche.

35. Industry News

Video game releases can be just as highly anticipated as movies. Cover the latest drops, games in the works, and related news.

36. Gaming as a Side Hustle

Gaming is no longer just a hobby. Players have been able to turn their love for games into a lucrative business venture.

37. Card and Board Games

There’s a lot of material to draw from card and board games. It’s a fun niche with an active base.

Finance

38. Budget Shopping

Everyone loves a bargain. If you’re a particularly deal-savvy shopper, check this niche out.

39. Frugal Living

People are always after ways to live a little smarter financially. This niche lets you demonstrate exactly how cost-conscious you are day-to-day.

40. Investment

Do you have a knack for calling all things Wall Street? If so, consider creating a blog up this alley.

41. Personal Finance

People will always need to know how to balance a checkbook and do taxes, so there’s a good chance you can generate readership by covering those kinds of financial fundamentals.

42. FIRE

A growing movement in personal finance is financial independence retire early or FIRE. This strategy enables participants to save and invest as much of their income as possible now, so that they can retire early and live comfortably off their investments. If you’ve retired early, are work optional, or simply interested in documenting your own FIRE journey, this niche is for you.

43. Crypto Currency

The crypto currency industry has seen a lot of ups and downs but the topic remains popular. If you find alternative currencies interesting, crypto could be the topic for you.

Food and Beverage

44. Coffee

Coffee enthusiasts are always looking for information on new blends. There’s a market for someone who can offer some astute coffee reviews and bean referrals.

45. Craft Beers

Similar to coffee, there’s an audience that loves craft beer and wants to be pointed towards hot new breweries.

46. Exotic Cuisine

Big-time foodies are active online. A lot of traffic can come with some interesting culinary exploits and tales of exotic cuisines.

47. Kitchen Equipment

Consumer electronics and accessories — specifically, those related to cooking — are always a big draw.

48. Meal Planning

Writing about regimented meal prep can bring in all kinds of readers — from cost-conscious consumers to health nuts.

49. Recipes and Cooking Tutorials

People are always looking for fresh new ways to prepare meals and snacks. If you have a knack for cooking, you might want to look into this idea.

50. Canning and Preservation

During the pandemic folks were cooking much more and learning how to make ingredients stretch. As such, home steading and food preservation practices experienced a resurgence.

51. Vegan Recipes

Alternative meats have come a long way from the early days. Plus, with a new found emphasis on eating healthy, veganism and vegan recipes are seeing a surge in popularity. If vegan eats are your vibe, this niche could be lucrative one.

Fashion and Beauty

52. Affordable Fashion

High fashion is great, but not everyone can afford it. If you’ve got an eye for style on a budget, this niche is a great fit.

53. Sustainable Fashion

With more consumers being mindful of fast fashion and waste, thrifting and more sustainable practices have been getting the spotlight. You could cover emerging sustainability trends, trendsetters, and brands that are leading the way.

54. Haircare Tips

With tons of products on the market, styling practices and hair textures, the possibilities for this topic are endless.

55. Makeup Tutorials

Makeup tutorials have become a big hit across most social media platforms — a blog that capitalizes on that trend can be lucrative if done right.

56. Brand and Product Reviews

The beauty industry is constantly churning out new products and services. You can review them so your audience doesn’t have to learn the hard way through trial and error.

57. Industry News

Everyone wants the scoop on the latest trends in fashion, the newest “it” model, or the most anticipated collections.

58. Emerging Designers

You don’t need to cover big names to gain traction for your fashion blog. Instead, focus on up and coming designers. Not only will it be easier to get access to them for interviews, but you’ll be able to cover their career trajectory.

Pets

59. Pet Health and Care Tips

There is a huge learning curve for new pet owners. What’s the best food? The best pet insurance? How often should they go to the vet? Help your audience navigate life as a pet parent by consolidating all the information the could need into one, easy-to-read place.

60. Dog Training

Got a gift for training pups? You could turn that experience into a dog training blog. Offer best practices, techniques, and an overview of dog behavior. Are certain breeds more challenging than others? If so, state those quirks. The more more actionable advice you can give, the better.

61. Product Reviews

Yes, even dogs can be critics. But seriously, not all products were created equally. Help your audience sift through the products worth buying for their beloved pups and which ones aren’t worth the hype.

62. Adoption Success Stories

Who doesn’t love a happy ending? This is a great option for someone that works in an animal shelter or fosters pets. You can document their journey and help them find their forever home.

63. Farming

Living off-grid and homesteading gained traction during the pandemic as people moved away from dense urban centers. Some bought land and decided to try farming and growing their own food. If you’ve got tips on raising chickens, livestock, or just how to manage land, you may consider this as your niche. If you’re new, you could also opt to document your experience.

Hobbies

64. Gardening

Green thumb readers can always use some tips, tricks, and new plants to incorporate into their gardening repertoire.

65. Photography

Whether it’s a forum to offer tips to aspiring photographers or a place to post your own art, a photography blog can draw a solid crowd.

66. Writing

It might be slightly meta, but writing about writing can be a big hit. Many aspiring authors and columnists love a source for new prompts and pointers.

67. Music-Tutorials

Do you play an instrument? If so, that hobby could net you a captive audience of fellow musicians.

68. Knitting

Knitting isn’t just for grandmas. People of all ages are getting involved using it as a way to decompress and do something creative with their time. If you’re a skilled knitter, you can create a blog paired with a personal storefront to sell your wares and materials.

69. Books

If you’re a member of the literati, a book based blog may be for you. Create a book club with your audience, profile authors, and review your favorite books.

Technology

70. AI

Compellingly writing about new and emerging tech can attract a forward-thinking base looking for the next big thing. Right now, the biggest trend is artificial intelligence, or AI

71. Software and App Reviews

Are you always on top of the latest software developments and popular apps? Then creating a niche around software may be just the thing for you.

72. Electronics Reviews

Is that new phone worth the hype? Are you a gadget guru your friends come to for advice when they want to buy a new product. Create your own tech-savvy version of wirecutter for consumer electronics.

Personal Relationships

73. Blending Families

It’s a touchy, tricky subject to handle, but it’s a tough challenge a lot of people face. They stand to gain a lot from some sound advice on the topic.

74. Dating

Dating can be a minefield, and if you know how to help people navigate it, you can build a sizable, dedicated following.

75. Parenting

It’s arguably the hardest part of life — if you can make it that much easier for people, you’ll attract a solid audience.

76. Relationship Advice

Love ain’t always easy. That’s why plenty of potential readers are looking for someone who can help them figure it out as they go.

77. Weddings

Almost everyone looks forward to their big day, but planning a wedding means having a lot of balls in the air. Anyone who can help soon-to-be newlyweds successfully juggle them can find an audience.

News and Politics

78. Current Events

In the modern age, people need to stay on top of the news. If you can keep them posted with some eloquence and integrity, you can find readers.

79. Ethics

We could all use a refresher on basic human decency and morality every now and then. A well-crafted ethics blog can rein in a crowd that wants to do that consistently.

80. Political Opinions

Do you have some incisive, compelling political takes to offer? There might just be an audience that wants to hear what you have to say.

81. Political Satire

Sometimes, we need to see the humor in the modern political landscape. If you can tastefully (or not-so-tastefully) find it, there could be a solid readership for it.

Self-Care and Wellness

82. Meditation

There are plenty of readers looking to be a bit more mindful and a lot more centered. A meditation blog can tap into that population.

83. Mental Health

It’s an important topic that is (deservedly) getting a lot more attention nowadays than it has in recent years. If you can offer some meaningful insight on how to improve readers’ mental wellbeing, you’ll find an audience.

84. Self-Care

A more general, catch-all self-care blog can register with plenty of potential readers looking to improve every facet of their wellbeing.

85. Skincare

Skincare is a hot topic. There’s a massive crowd looking for the best products and techniques to keep their pores small and skin smooth.

Sports and Exercise

86. Extreme Sports

Out-there, wilder sports can be extremely entertaining in their own right, and there’s always a market for “extremely entertaining.”

87. Personal Training

Hardly anyone can afford a real personal trainer. Posting workouts — no matter how rigorous — can attract an audience composed of everyone from dedicated fitness nuts to newbies just starting their fitness journey.

88. Running

Running is one of the most fundamental, popular fitness pursuits. There are plenty of readers who would want to hear about your running exploits and anecdotes.

89. Specific Sports

Football, baseball, basketball, soccer — sports are a staple of modern life. If you can consistently break news or offer interesting takes on a given sport, you can find a base.

90. Weight Loss

A lot of people are looking to shed some weight. If you can publish workouts or provide inspiration for weight loss, you can find a fairly dedicated audience.

91. Workout Trends

People want to stay hip to emerging workout trends, so providing news about and guidance for bold new ways to get can help you wrangle in some readers.

Travel

92. Hotel Reviews

Whether they’re looking to book rooms or just want to live vicariously through your incredible hotel stays, there will always be a base interested in hotel reviews.

93. Travel Stories

Travel stories are some of the best ones you can tell. If you have some wild, outlandish exploits to share from your time in Bangkok, Paris, or wherever else, consider maintaining a travel blog.

94. Traveling for Work

Sometimes, travel is for business — not pleasure. There are plenty of readers interested in learning how to do that right.

95. Trip Reviews

A lot of people want to know which destinations are worth their time, and they might find a nicely maintained trip review blog entertaining and appealing.

96. City Itinerary Guides

Provide your audience with a curated city itinerary to help them hit all the worthy attractions in a given timeframe.

97. Budget Travel

While travel does require funds, it often more affordable than people think. From budget-friendly destinations to travel hacking with credit card points, you can help your audience see the world without going broke.

98. Luxury Travel

For some, money is no option. Enter the world of luxury travel. Scope out the most luxurious accommodations in glamorous locales, giving your readers all the details they need for their dream vacation.

99. Living Abroad

Whether moving a broad for work, family, or fun, navigating the process of such a large move is tricky. Help your audience navigate immigration requirements and what to expect in their new home country.

100. Van Life

Who needs a house when you can travel the country in a decked out van. From finding the right van for DIY builds, how-to tutorials, to accessing internet and RV parking, expertise from van lifers is highly sought after.

101. Digital Nomad

With remote work becoming normalized, many workers have taken the opportunity to hopscotch from country to country or city to city. If you’ve mastered the art of being a digital nomad, there’s an eager audience looking for advice to do the same.

There’s a Niche for Everyone

As you can assume, this list of blog niches isn’t exhaustive. There are more than 100 potential topics listed to choose from. If you’re looking to start a blog but don’t know what to write about, consider your passion and areas of expertise before anything else.

It comes down to a matter of want. You need to consider both what people will want to hear and what you will want to talk about.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in October 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness. 

Whether you’re working for a small agency or a major marketing firm, you’re probably eventually going to need to fill out a Request for Proposal, or RFP.

Your company can’t do everything internally, and when your business needs to purchase a product or service from elsewhere, you might need to shop around. An RFP allows you to collect offers from various vendors and select the vendor that best meets your criteria, both in regards to skill and budget.

Any time you outsource work to a supplier, there’s a potential for issues such as miscommunication around the scope of the work and the compensation. What a good RFP does is eliminate gray areas so that both parties understand what needs to be delivered, when, and for how much.

RFP Template

Here, we’ve provided an RFP template you can follow for initial structure, as well as a sample RFP for further inspiration. But it isn’t one-size-fits-all — you’ll need to tailor your RFP to best articulate your company’s needs.

Download a free, editable RFP template.

Not that you’ve seen the template, how do you actually write an RFP? We’ve got you covered.

1. Define your project, scope, and budget.

Before issuing your RFP, take the time to define the project you’re looking to complete, its scope, and how much you can afford to spend. This information provides the framework for your RFP and helps ensure that it strikes a balance between too general and overly detailed. Not only that, but it will help potential vendors understand your priorities and tailor their proposals accordingly.

In this step, try to provide a clear and concise description. Avoid using overly technical language or industry jargon that could be confusing to potential vendors. The difference is subtle, but can make a world of a difference in helping you receive better-fit proposals. Here’s an example:

• Good: “Our company is seeking a CRM system that integrates with our existing marketing automation software and provides real-time reporting. The solution should be easy to use and scalable to accommodate our growing customer base. Our budget for this project is $50,000.”
• Not-so-good: “Our company wants to implement a customer relationship management (CRM) system that integrates with our existing marketing automation software and provides real-time reporting capabilities for our sales team to understand customer data more quickly and efficiently. The solution should be scalable and flexible to accommodate our growing customer base, and it should be easy to use for non-technical team members.”

You can see how the good version provides a clear and concise description of the services needed, budget, and key requirements, while avoiding overly technical language and jargon that could be confusing. This makes it easier for vendors to understand what is required and craft a proposal that meets your needs.

2. Provide background and introductory information.

With budget and scope in hand, you can start crafting your RFP. While it’s tempting to dive right into the details, it’s a good idea to provide some background and introductory data about your company. This helps set the stage for potential partners by giving them a sense of your current market, business goals, and current challenges.

Here are three tips for adding background and introductory information to your RFP:

• Provide a company overview: Start the RFP by providing a high-level overview of your company, including your history, mission, vision, and current market position. This information helps vendors understand more about your business goals and provides context for the project. Vendors can use this information to tailor their proposals to your organization’s values and objectives.
• Highlight current challenges and opportunities: We cover this in detail later, but it bears repeating: List the current challenges you’re facing, along with opportunities you’d like to capitalize on. This information helps vendors understand specific areas of need and provide new or better options for you.
• Provide contact information: Be sure to provide an email address and phone number that vendors can use to submit questions about your RFP.

By providing an overview of your company’s history, highlighting current challenges and opportunities, and providing clear contact information, you can help prospective vendors craft a tailored proposal that aligns with your organization’s goals.

3. Describe the services you’re looking for.

Now it’s time to get specific about the services you’re looking for to help achieve your goals. For example, if you’re building a website, you might look for a company with both front-end and back-end development experience. If you’re creating a mobile app, highlight the need for specific skills in that area, such as expertise in responsive design and building applications for multiple mobile platforms.

You can take various approaches when describing the services you’re seeking in an RFP, but we always recommend incorporating bullet points or breaking up your information so that it’s easy for vendors to scan. Here are two examples.

RFP for Content Marketing Services: Our company is looking for an agency to develop a unique content marketing strategy tailored specifically to our consumer base. The goal of this project is to attract and engage new customers while retaining current ones. Our ideal vendor:

• Has experience in creating content in various formats such as blog posts, social media, infographics, and videos
• Has experience in SEO optimization, keyword research, and content distribution
• Can leverage data and analytics to improve content performance

RFP for Video Production Services: Our brand’s content team is looking for a video production company to produce a series of videos for our YouTube channel. Our goal is to build brand awareness, drive web traffic, and increase our YouTube marketing ROI. The ideal vendor:

• Has experience in producing high-quality videos across various formats such as live-action, animation, screencast, whiteboard, and educational video
• Can provide a highly responsive, collaborative, and transparent communication process
• Has a clear process from ideation, production, revision, and final delivery

4. Explain any challenges or barriers to success for the project.

During the bidding process, it is crucial to be transparent about your project’s potential barriers to success. By doing so, you give potential partners and vendors the opportunity to offer solutions to these challenges.

Otherwise, partners or vendors may not fully understand the scope of the project and any potential difficulties that may arise. This lack of knowledge could lead to delayed timelines, increased costs, or ultimately, project failure.

Additionally, withholding the barriers to success could result in a lack of trust between your company and the vendor team. This may lead to misaligned expectations and misunderstandings. But by being transparent about the potential barriers to success, you can increase the likelihood of finding the right vendor and completing the project successfully.

5. Detail your selection criteria.

Next up are the selection criteria. Here, you can highlight which skills, services, and market expertise are required for consideration. This is the time to get specific: Clear descriptions of selection criteria will help reduce the risk of sorting through multiple proposals that don’t meet your needs.This will help you make an informed decision when selecting the best vendor for the project.

Specifying the selection criteria early on in the process improves transparency. If vendors don’t meet the criteria, they won’t submit a proposal, or they can optimize their proposals to meet your needs. This eliminates ambiguity, confusion, and frustration on both sides, and avoids unnecessary back and forth.

Plus, evaluating vendors against the selection criteria also ensures that the project is awarded based on objective judgment rather than on subjective opinion.

Some examples of selection criteria that you can specify in an RFP are:

• Experience: The vendor should have extensive experience in delivering projects similar to the one described in your RFP.
• Qualifications: The vendor should be able to demonstrate their expertise in the relevant technology, software, or methodology required to complete your project.
• Cost: The vendor should provide detailed pricing and be able to demonstrate how their proposal fits within your budget.
• References: The vendor should provide references from past clients who have used their services for similar projects.
• Methodology: The vendor should outline their approach to managing your project, including project management processes, resources management, and project delivery timelines.
• Availability: The vendor should provide details of their capacity to take on the project, the availability of their resources, and an expected delivery timeline.
• Team Profiles: The vendor should include detailed profiles of the members of the team assigned to deliver the project, highlighting their experience in relevant areas and their qualifications.
• Technical compatibility: The vendor should be able to ensure compatibility with other technologies or systems used by your organization, such as other software solutions or APIs.

6. Specify your project’s timeline.

It’s also important to be up-front about your timelines. Give potential partners an end date for RFP submission, a date for final selection, and a clear start-to-finish project timeline so companies making a proposal can fine-tune their bid. This will also help you narrow down the pool of potential vendors and ensure that the project is completed on time.

A timeline benefits everyone throughout the bidding process. With a timeline in place, vendors receive clear guidance on when your project must be completed and can plan their resources accordingly, ensuring timely delivery. The vendor can also communicate the necessary deadlines to their team, minimizing the risk of delays and ensuring that your project is delivered successfully.

Here’re an example of what a timeline can look like, but remember that it will vary depending on your RFP’s format, as well as your target vendors’ industries:

“The marketing department at HubSpot is looking to hire a digital marketing agency to help with a new advertising campaign. Proposals must be submitted by August 1st and the campaign launch must occur no later than September 15th, in time for the back-to-school season.”

7. Proofread your RFP and go live.

Last but never least? Proofread your RFP — then proofread it again. Why? Because even small mistakes could derail project timelines. Consider a zero missing in your budget details, or a miscommunication about the dates that proposals are due and selections are made; both could force a restart of the entire RFP process and waste precious time.

Remember that your goal is to invite as many proposals as possible, and to make it simple for vendors to respond. An accidental typo, such as a project name that you forgot to replace or incorrect contact information, can make it that much harder to increase your response rate.

Once you’re satisfied that everything on your RFP is accurate and complete, it’s time to go live. Send out emails and post links on your site to start the process of finding your best-fit provider. To streamline this process, consider proposal software to publish and manage responses to your RFP.

Now that you understand the basics of writing an RFP, you can build your own template and then fill it out so that you can start accepting bids. We’ll use a fictitious company, Caroline’s Websites, Inc., to illustrate exactly how each section should be executed.

RFP Sample

Project Name or Description: Marketing Services

Company Name: Caroline’s Websites, Inc.

Address: 302 Inbound Ave.

City, State, Zip Code: Boston, MA 29814

Procurement Contact Person: Caroline Forsey

Telephone Number of PCP: 227-124-2481

Email Address of PCP: [email protected]

Fax Number: N/A

Next, we’ll go into each of the elements of the RFP with information using the same fictitious company.

1. Write your background and introduction.

In your introductory paragraph, you’ll want to include useful background information about your company — who founded it, what product or service your company offers, what sets you apart from competitors, and where you’re located. If any vendor is serious about working with you, they’ll want this information before moving forward.

Example

Caroline’s Websites, Inc. is a web design firm created by Caroline Forsey in 2010. Caroline’s Websites, Inc. prides itself on a team-oriented, solutions-based approach to web design. We provide our clients with web design services including coding, development, and branding. Our staff is located in two offices in Massachusetts.

2. Define your project goals and scope of services.

Next, you’ll want to outline the project you need completed, and the goals you expect to accomplish from the project. It’s important you get as specific as possible — even outlining individual tasks and criteria involved. You’ll want to include phrases such as “The award will be given to X firm,” with the “X” establishing how you’ll determine the best candidate.

Example

Caroline’s Websites, Inc. is seeking the services of a full-service communications and marketing firm to develop and execute a comprehensive integrated marketing plan that increases our SEO presence; attracts more social media followers; and effectively completes a lead generation campaign. The award will be made to a responsive and responsible firm based on the best value and professional capability.

The selected firm will be responsible for the development and implementation of a comprehensive and cost-effective marketing plan.

Tasks include but may not be limited to the following criteria:

• Lead generation campaign
• Paid media strategy
• Production of creative material including collateral and direct mail
• Online marketing campaign
• Website enhancement
• Search engine optimization
• General account management
• Other communications and/or marketing-related assistance as required

3. Detail your anticipated selection schedule.

It’s crucial you include a detailed schedule so vendors know if they can meet your deadlines. You’ll also need to give vendors a window for when they can ask questions regarding your project.

Example

The Request for Proposal timeline is as follows:

Request for RFP: June 1, 20XX

Deadline for Bidders to Submit Questions: July 5, 20XX

[Company Name] Responds to Bidder Questions: July 20, 20XX

Selection of Top Bidders / Notification to Unsuccessful Bidders: July 31, 20XX

Start of Negotiation: August 5, 20XX

Contract Award / Notification to Unsuccessful Bidders: August 31, 20XX

4. Describe the time and place for the submission of proposals.

Similar to paragraph #3, this is important information you’ll want to clearly present, so vendors know how and where to submit themselves for consideration.

Example

The RFP will be posted on our website, Carolinewebsites.com, and can be downloaded from there directly as of 10 a.m. on June 1, 20XX.

Respondents to this RFP must submit one original and five copies of their proposal. Responses must be received no later than July 25, 20XX. Responses should be clearly marked “RFP-MarketingServices” and mailed or delivered to the contact person listed above.

5. Clearly define your timeline.

By including a time frame in your RFP, you’re able to eliminate any vendor who can’t work within your time constraints. If you’re flexible on your time, you can write something like, “Our company hopes to finish the project within six months, but we’re open to negotiation for the right candidate.”

Example

Caroline’s Websites, Inc. needs the project completed within 8 months.

6. Specify the key elements of a proposal.

If you don’t outline clearly and specifically what you expect bidders to include in their proposal, you can’t necessarily fault them if they don’t include it. It’s critical you outline a checklist so vendors know which elements you’re expecting to receive. It’s also a good test for who’s capable of handling your demands — if a vendor can’t complete all elements of your proposal, you probably can’t trust them to finish your project, either.

Example

A submission must, at a minimum, include the following elements:

• Description of the firm that includes a general overview, names and credentials of creative team, number of full-time employees.
• A one-page narrative outlining the firm’s strengths and distinguishing skills or capabilities as they might relate to Caroline’s Websites, Inc.
• A representative selection of social media ads, direct response material, collateral, and website development created for current and past clients.

7. Make your evaluation criteria clear.

Outlining your expectations will help eliminate vendors who don’t meet them. For this section, you’ll want to do some brainstorming with your team to come up with a mandatory list of items you feel are the best indicators of impressive candidates. Your list could include samples of past work, a proven success record with companies in similar industries, the expertise and technical skills to meet your demands, and a cost of services within your price range.

Example

The successful respondent will have:

• Experience working as a marketing agency for a minimum of 24 months and possess full-service, in-house capabilities for marketing, creative services, production, media planning and placement, direct response, and research.
• The education, experience, knowledge, skills, and qualifications of the firm and the individuals who will be available to provide these services.
• The competitive cost of services.
• The expertise of the firm in working with similar customers.

8. Describe any possible roadblocks.

Here, you’ll want to outline any roadblocks, such as limited resources or a custom website, that might prevent certain vendors from successfully completing the project. This allows you to eliminate unsatisfactory bidders, and it will also help you determine which vendors have the skills and expertise to tackle those challenges.

Example

At this time, Caroline’s Websites, Inc. currently has custom coding on our website, of which bidders should be aware.

9. State your budget for the project.

Any vendor needs to know how much you’re able to pay them for their services before they’ll move forward with their bid.

Example

Caroline’s Websites, Inc.’s budget for the project is $8,750.00.

These elements were written in a way to clarify the scope of the project that Caroline’s Websites, Inc. wants completed so that suppliers know whether or not to make a bid. Defining the project allows the bidder to determine if they’re a good fit and how much they’d likely charge. Being as transparent as possible serves to benefit (and even protect) both parties in the long run.

Tips for Writing an RFP

There are several key actions that you can take to increase the likelihood of a vendor responding to your RFP. At the same time, certain factors can cause a vendor to be less likely to respond.

Here are some tips to help you optimize your RFPs to achieve a high response rate from vendors.

1. Provide open lines of communication.

If you establish open communication lines with vendors during the bidding process, you’re more likely to see a higher response rate. Why? Providing access to a point of contact — or establishing a schedule for conference calls or in-person meetings — can show that your company is invested in the vendor response process.

We also recommend purposefully asking your prospective vendors to seek clarification. Encourage them to ask questions about the RFP and the project itself. The more they understand your needs, the better their proposals will be, and the easier it will be for you to make an informed decision.

2. Don’t skimp on project details, but keep it brief and scannable.

Vendors are less likely to respond to RFPs if the project details are insufficient or unclear. If you don’t provide detailed instructions and requirements for your project, vendors may interpret the project scope differently, causing them to submit proposals that do not specifically address your needs.

Conversely, vendors are more likely to respond to RFPs that provide well-defined project goals and timelines, because that allows them to better evaluate their abilities and provide informed proposals.

That said, you want to keep your information as scannable as possible. Take advantage of formatting options such as bullet points and headings. A vendor is likely flipping through many RFPs in a day, so you want them to get the information they need after a brief scan of your document.

3. Establish a competitive budget and ample deadline.

Vendors are more likely to be interested in responding to your RFP if they feel that their pricing is competitive, and if they feel that your deadline and timeline is reasonable for the project’s specifications.

On the other hand, vendors may be hesitant to send you a proposal if there is a short deadline, or if the timeline is particularly compressed. This could indicate that your company is not allowing enough time for vendors to conduct research and submit accurate proposals.

4. Research your target vendor’s industry and marketplace.

Have you ever bought a piece of software that you know nothing about? Us, either, and we wouldn’t recommend you do the same when considering submitted proposals to your RFPs.

Researching the vendor marketplace beforehand can help you develop more realistic budgets, timelines, and goals. You can create highly specific selection criteria and better identify which vendors will most likely meet your budget and time constraints. 

With insufficient knowledge about the market, you could accidentally underestimate the resources required for your project, or set unrealistic timelines and expectations. This miscommunication can misguide vendors, leading them to either submit a proposal that is not a good fit or entirely opt out of bidding.

As the name makes clear, RFIs are about collecting information. They’re used by companies to get a sense of what solutions are on the market and how the companies that offer these solutions could help solve a key problem or complete a key task. RFIs ask companies to submit data about what they do, what they offer, and how they can help achieve specific goals.

RFPs, meanwhile, follow RFIs. Using the information obtained from RFIs, companies build RFPs that detail exactly what they’re looking for, how much they’re planning to spend, and how vendors will be selected. In effect, RFIs help narrow the scope of RFPs to help streamline the selection process.

Worth noting? There’s also another option if you know exactly what product or service you’re looking for: Request for quote (RFQ). Unlike an RFP, which asks potential partners to submit a proposal based on their expertise and experience, an RFQ is about cost: You’re asking a specific vendor what it would cost to deliver “X” service or solution in “Y” timeframe under “Z” conditions.

Realizing Best Results for Your RFP

Your RFP sets the stage for companies to bid on projects that are outside the scope of your internal expertise — but are still critical for your business to succeed.

As a result, it’s worth making sure your RFP is clear, concise, and captures the key details about your needs to help find the best-fit partner for your project. Not sure where to start? Grab a copy of HubSpot’s free RFP template, follow the steps above, and get your projects underway.

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

Whether you’re launching a new business or already have one, having a small business marketing strategy that includes a strong online presence for your brand is essential.

Consumers learn about local businesses online more than anywhere else, with Statista predicting the number of ecommerce users to grow to nearly 290 million by 2027.

If you’re a small business owner with little experience in online marketing, creating a strategy to boost your online presence may feel overwhelming. Have no fear — we’ve got you covered.

In this post, we’ll help you build and optimize your small business marketing strategy using inbound marketing, setting you up to attract new clients and ultimately grow your business.

Small Business Marketing

Marketing is meant to raise brand awareness and build a pipeline of qualified leads that turn into sales. With a small business, getting the word out can be challenging due to less visibility and lack of resources (like budget or time).

However, there are key strategies that can help you scale your small business’s marketing efforts.

Whether you’re struggling with a limited budget, the time restraints caused by a smaller team, or even a lack of direction, a marketing plan appropriate for your business can guide you as you scale.

These strategies are fundamental as you generate awareness and revenue for your organization:

1. Know your audience.

A key mistake is thinking that “anyone” is your buyer. Larger companies may be able to appeal to a wide market, but they say “the riches are in the niches” for a reason.

You’ll have the most leverage as a small business in a niche. And to develop a niche and appeal to buyers within it, you must understand their pains, problems, triggering events, and priorities.

What is pushing them to make a purchasing decision? What does it look like if they succeed? Knowing these things will help you craft messaging that resonates and makes a compelling case for your solution.

Start by thinking about your existing customers and who you’d like to work with. Then, create a buyer persona to get into your ideal client’s head.

Image Source

Download Free Buyer Persona Templates

2. Emphasize your value proposition.

If there’s no difference between you and your competition, there’s no reason why a buyer would be compelled to work with you.

Your value proposition is what will differentiate you from others in your space and make up your prospects’ minds that you’re the provider to go with.

What do you do better than anyone in the industry? Conveying this makes a compelling argument.

3. Stay focused on singular goals and objectives.

If you’re exploring the world of marketing, you may have noticed that there are a gazillion directions you can go in. It’s tempting to do it all at once and craft a complicated machine in hopes that you covered all your bases.

However, this strategy makes it easy to take on too much.

Instead, identify where the biggest impact will be. Where is the biggest blind spot in your marketing prohibiting your growth?

Set a performance goal around that one key area and focus your resources on the activities and tactics that will achieve that one performance goal.

You can expand your efforts or pivot to other initiatives when you’ve made more progress toward that singular goal.

4. Capitalize on short-term plays.

Start scrappy. As you scale, it’s critical to see ROI sooner. This will give you the momentum and cash flow to put toward larger projects, long-term plays, and more sustainable growth models.

Tactics that take time to build (such as SEO) are poor fits for your primary initiatives because you won’t see a return soon enough for your liking. If you have enough resources to start there, great. However, don’t put all your eggs in that basket.

If you have evidence that people are taking to Google with purchasing intent for your particular solution, you may find that paid ads will give you that short-term ROI.

5. Double down on what works.

Once you have your initiatives running and you’ve experimented with a few things, pay attention to the data. This can inform you of what’s working. As you scale, it’s a good idea to double down on proven methods of generating revenue.

6. Understand the power of existing customers.

On average, acquiring a new customer costs five times more than closing an existing one. This means you shouldn’t stop marketing once they’ve made a purchase.

Identify your opportunities for repeat purchasing, upselling, and cross-selling. Because your existing customers have already made a purchase, they already know, like, and trust you.

If you’ve provided a good experience, you’ve given them a reason to do business with you again should the need ever arise.

Even if the need doesn’t arise (in cases where it’s a one-and-done purchase with no upsell opportunities), you should still delight your customers. Word of mouth is a powerful (and free) promotional tool.

7. Use free promotional tools.

Speaking of free promotional tools, it’s important to note that since you’ve committed to a limited goal and scope, there’s no need to inflate your overhead with gadgets.

Use free promotional tools where possible, and only commit to paid tools if you know they will drastically improve existing operations or performance. Here’s a helpful list of marketing tools (some free, some paid).

8. Create a website to own your online presence.

A professional-looking website is one of the most important assets you will create for your small business. This is where you will show who you are, what you offer, where you are, and how a potential customer can contact you.

It is a channel you will always own, and it has the capability of generating organic traffic in addition to being a place to send traffic from advertising and other marketing initiatives.

Your website isn’t just a simple brochure, either. You can turn it into a 24/7 salesperson by understanding how to convert traffic and turn them into leads (more on that later).

For one of the best website tools, check out HubSpot’s CMS.

9. Consider blogging to attract prospects for your website.

Blogging is a great way to generate organic traffic, particularly for those prospects who have not reached a purchasing decision yet. In addition, it can establish credibility in your space and position you as a thought leader.

To start a blog, you can use an inexpensive or free website tool to make a free site and use one of their templates.

Even if you only publish once a week, it will improve your website’s visibility online and help educate your potential customers on why they should trust your company.

If you plan to write your posts yourself, check out this beginner’s guide to writing.

Once you start writing, you can add a call-to-action (CTAs) on your posts for visitors to subscribe to your blog and receive emails.

This is a great way to start collecting leads and offering potential customers a way to get information if they aren’t ready to buy anything from you yet.

Download Free Blog Post Templates

10. Promote yourself on social media.

With billions of potential customers using various platforms daily, social media is a powerful business tool. Social media marketing can help you engage with potential customers, build brand awareness, and promote your products.

Why wouldn’t you want to be seen where your potential customers spend their time?

Download the Free Social Media Content Calendar Template

11. Collaborate with influencers to create brand awareness.

Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook are top of the list when it comes to social media platforms. But, if your small business is not yet well known on these outlets, consider collaborating with well-established influencers in your niche.

Influencer marketing is currently the top marketing trend. Collaborating with influencers is a surefire way to get your business in front of the eyes of your audience. Influencers understand their (and your!) niche.

Not only do they understand the niche, but influencers have a knack for storytelling — meaning, they’ll be able to effectively tell your business’s story and sell your brand to the appropriate audience.

Consider reaching out to influencers in your niche to add to your small business marketing strategy.

12. Create short-form video content.

Marketers know that a good marketing strategy for your small business should include more than just written content. In fact, in 2022, 44% of social media marketers focused their efforts on creating video content for TikTok.

Adding short-form video content to your marketing strategy is a great idea, as platforms like YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook make connecting and engaging with your audience convenient.

Short-form video content is easily shared, meaning you can quickly get your product or service in front of the right audience — and their friends.

13. Stick to a social media posting schedule.

You shouldn’t just post to your social media platforms hoping that something will become a viral post. Instead, you must focus on intentional content creation and posting.

After you find the social media platform that works best for your business, create a social media content calendar and stick to a regular posting schedule.

But, don’t just post every day for the sake of posting. 83% of social media marketers say it’s better to post at a lower frequency with high-quality content than daily posting.

You’ll likely post irrelevant, low-quality content when you post daily.

Take the time to create engaging, thoughtful content and schedule it for the appropriate times to stand out from the competition.

14. Invest in ads.

Organic traffic takes a while to build, and as a small business, you want to invest in short-term plays. Pay-to-play tactics that target buyers with high intent are great for short-term wins to jump-start other objectives.

80% of brands use some form of paid advertisement. Google Ads are perfect if you know that your target audience is searching the web for your product or solution. If they aren’t, you might consider social media ads instead.

Individuals on social media have less buying intent, but with highly targeted ads and enough impressions, you’ll gain the interest of your audience.

Image Source

Download the Free Advertising Planning Kit

15. Make sure you’re capturing web prospects’ information.

We’ve been talking a lot about visibility and traffic but haven’t really covered how these will help drive revenue yet. One simple way to start generating leads or customers from your website is to implement a conversion tool.

A simple, free option is HubSpot Marketing Free. By using this tool to add a pop-up widget to your website, you can start collecting the email addresses of potential customers.

From there, you can send out promotions and offers and convert them into paying customers. You can also implement any of these 24 conversion tools to help you optimize your website and use it to drive leads.

16. Use email marketing to nurture leads.

Just because you’ve converted website traffic into leads doesn’t mean those leads are ready to buy yet. It’s important to stay top of mind and move them closer to a purchasing decision.

Email marketing is a critical part of your marketing toolkit, and it is the most effective method of marketing. In fact, 73% of millennials prefer communications from businesses to come via email.

This strategy is an easy, free, and scalable way to communicate with both new and existing customers.

Once you have an email marketing tool in place (many are inexpensive or even free), experiment with emailing out newsletters (with your sleek new blog posts) and other promotions to your database.

We know small business owners don’t have tons of free time to devote to digital marketing, so consider using marketing automation to make this process even easier for yourself.

To get started planning your email marketing strategy, check out this guide and template from HubSpot.

17. Manage relationships with a CRM.

Email marketing works best when you’re sending personalized, targeted emails. This begins with a customer database or customer relationship management (CRM) system.

Your CRM stores information about your leads, prospects, and customers so that you can keep track of customer interactions and identify sales opportunities more effectively.

HubSpot has one of the best CRMs (and, best of all, it’s totally free).

18. Lean into word of mouth as a promotion channel.

As mentioned previously, delighting customers can have a big impact on your business, primarily in repeat purchases and word of mouth.

If you provide a great experience, your customers will be more inclined to leave reviews, give testimonials, and tell their friends about you.

That’s why measuring customer satisfaction and encouraging customers to spread the word is a good idea.

19. Connect with other local businesses.

Take your business to the local community and connect with other local business owners in your area. Consider partnering with local businesses to create discounts, deals, or coupons for customers.

Start a live stream with local business owners during a promotional event or coordinate a giveaway.

Connecting with other small businesses is both great for word of mouth and collaboration. If you collaborate with other local businesses, advertise the promotion or sale on your social media outlets.

Online Marketing Tips for Small Businesses

Now that we’ve covered the basics, here are tips for improving whichever marketing strategies you choose.

1. Determine your brand’s identity.

A consistent brand identity to promote your business will make you look more professional and help you attract new customers. According to a 2020 study, nearly 9 out of 10 people are brand loyal.

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, has described a company’s branding as “what other people say about you when you’re not in the room.”

In other words, your brand is people’s feelings and emotions when hearing your company name. It combines your brand name, logo, aesthetic, and the design of all your assets, plus the values you support, which is becoming more important to consumers.

2. Identify your buyer persona.

When you imagine a customer searching for your product or service, what are they like? What are their pain points? What is their job? Creating a buyer persona that tells the story of your ideal customer can help you optimize a website for them.

By learning more about your target customer through creating a buyer persona, you can better figure out what types of things they may be searching for so you can include those terms on your website.

3. Design a logo and other assets.

To start getting the creative juices flowing, consider your color scheme and peruse palettes with Adobe Color or Coolors. You can create your own or look through pre-made or customized color palettes.

To create a logo, I’d recommend checking out Upwork or Freelancer.

There are free and less expensive options for designing your own logo online, although using a freelancer or agency can give you a higher quality product and connect you with a designer who can change and update your brand assets as your company grows.

4. Build your website with a CMS template.

If you’re a tech-savvy small business owner, you’ll probably want to build your own website. A content management system (CMS) makes the process simple.

Most CMSs offer customizable templates for your site that you can get for free or for a small fee. There are templates for various skill levels — from beginner all the way to advanced.

Once you’ve created your website, most CMS platforms offer plugins to help you optimize your content for search (look for SEO plugins). This will help you rank better in Google — which we’ll discuss more in-depth in a bit.

5. Draw up a go-to-market strategy.

Once you’ve activated all the tools you need to promote your product or service, you’ll need to create a promotional plan that aligns with the customer journey.

Consider which content will attract, engage, and delight your prospects and how you will convert them into a customer.

To help you plan out this process, use this template.

6. Hire a freelancer to help you scale your content.

If you need help creating regular blogs or promotional content, consider hiring a freelancer over investing in a full-timer. Try Upwork for a freelance blogger, videographer, or photographer.

You could also consider hiring a marketing agency for a larger project.

7. Consult agencies or freelancers for web design help.

If you aren’t technical and want a website built for your small business, you can use a freelancer or a marketing agency specializing in web design.

This is a great option for businesses with an existing website that needs to be updated and revamped for SEO to help improve your Google ranking.

To find a freelancer or marketing consultant in your area, you can use Upwork (filtering by design/creative), Codeable (for WordPress experts), or Freelancer.

8. Track your site with analytics tools.

If you’ve never made a website and aren’t entirely comfortable with the technical elements, many free tools and services can help you get started.

When you create your website, implement Google Analytics or HubSpot Marketing Free (both of which are free products) so you can easily track who’s looking at your site.

9. Boost your Google ranking with SEO.

If you already have a business, have you ever searched for yourself or your product/service online? If so, did you think, “Why isn’t my website showing up on Google?”

If so, you probably thought, “How do I rank on Google?” or “How can I improve my Google ranking?”

There are a lot of factors that play into why a certain site or page appears in the top spots on the Google (or another search engine) search engine results page (SERP).

Backlinko reports some of Google’s top factors, which include having relevant keywords (and their placement on your site), the length of your content, having high-quality content, how fast your page loads, how often you post content, and more.

When it all boils down, Google tries to find the best content to present to the person searching.

For example, if I’m searching for the best salon in Newport, Rhode Island, it wouldn’t be helpful for me to find a web page of a salon that has closed down and is located in Newport, Kentucky.

It would, however, be helpful for me to find a salon in my area with great Yelp reviews, an easy-to-navigate website, and contact information readily available.

Google always wants to surface the most relevant, highest-quality piece of content.

To rank higher on Google, you can leverage the power of SEO. To start learning everything there is to know about this powerhouse marketing tactic, check out The Ultimate Guide to SEO.

HubSpot explains SEO as “techniques that help your website rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs).

This makes your website more visible to people looking for solutions that your brand, product, or service can provide via search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and Bing.”

In other words, it’s the basic concept of structuring your website and blog posts to be in the best shape for appearing first on search engines.

SEO strategy usually consists of a few things. These include buyer persona research, keyword research, and on-page SEO research.

These three areas can help you learn how your target market is searching online and position your business to get discovered by the right people.

10. Research keywords opportunities.

Keyword research is an extension of buyer persona research. You can use the personas you’ve created to search for the best keywords for your brand, then use a tool like KW Finder to find related keywords for your target audience.

Then, you can do some on-page SEO research and optimization. This is where you put those keywords in the correct places on your website — like in the meta description, page titles, and H1 tags.

11. Optimize your website for mobile devices.

Most Google searches are done on mobile devices, so it’s important to have a site that looks clean and is easy to navigate when someone enters it on their smartphone.

A mobile site can also be beneficial for SEO, with search engines like Google, which reward you with a higher ranking if you have a mobile site.

You don’t have to be a tech expert to build a site that looks good on mobile. In fact, most CMS platforms like HubSpot already offer mobile-optimized templates.

12. Write optimized blog posts.

Content and blogging are extremely important for your search engine ranking. The more often your desired keywords appear in your high-quality and helpful content, the more likely you are to appear in search results.

A great way to become an authority on your topic, product, or service is to blog.

Make sure you’re writing with SEO in mind — use these SEO tips for bloggers or leverage a WordPress plugin like Yoast.

13. Experiment with photo and video content.

According to HubSpot Research, more than 50% of consumers want to see videos from brands. Additionally, most social media apps, like Facebook and Instagram, are embracing more visual layouts.

To keep up with these trends, it’s a good idea to make a few marketing videos. If you use these tips, producing a few can be quite inexpensive.

14. Launch business pages on Facebook and Yelp.

If your business is focused on a local area, the most important accounts for you are Facebook, Yelp, and Google’s business feature.

Having high Yelp reviews improves your authority online and helps your search ranking. You can claim your business on Yelp for free, customize your profile, add pictures, and ask for reviews.

The same thing goes for registering your Google business page. You can register your business with Google (for free) and add pictures.

If you’ve ever searched for your business in Google Maps and been disappointed not to see it, it’s because you haven’t claimed it yet!

On Facebook, you can create a Facebook business page so that people can find your location and hours.

For any business, having up-to-date social media accounts will help you be found and engage with prospects.

Create a Twitter account, Facebook page, learn how to use Instagram, create a Pinterest page (if relevant), and use them to discover new clients.

15. Build out your social media strategy.

While Facebook and Yelp will be great tools for local searches and reviews, platforms like Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter will offer you even more opportunities to share your posts, content, and promotions.

If your customers can purchase your products or services online, these platforms will also give them another way to find you.

Be sure not to spread yourself too thin by joining too many platforms at once. To make strategizing easier, here’s a guide to the five types of social media platforms and the pros and cons of each.

16. Use social media for customer service.

Once you’re on your chosen platforms, be sure to answer customer or follower questions when they ask them through post comments or direct messages. This will make your company look responsive and credible.

Here are some great examples of how brands have used Twitter for customer service.

If you have the means, consider hiring a social media manager with community management experience.

On top of posting content on a regular schedule, community managers are charged with responding to questions or concerns of followers.

Interested? We published a guide on what it takes to be a great social media community manager.

17. Build interesting landing pages.

A landing page offers your potential customers a free resource in exchange for filling out a short contact information form.

When they receive the resource, they might be even more pleased by your company and more interested in buying the full product.

Because landing pages raise your chances of customer conversion, you want yours to look enticing. To get started, read this landing page guide to learn more about what makes this strategy successful.

Then check out these free and professionally designed templates.

18. Plan an email marketing strategy.

Once you start creating regular content and building out landing pages, you’ll want to share them with the prospects who seem most interested in learning more about your product.

For this reason, we suggest building an email marketing strategy.

While you want to be careful not to bombard those who sign up for your email list with too many emails, you want to send just enough to keep your prospects informed and engaged.

Here’s how our metrics improved when we streamlined our email marketing strategy.

If you’ve never sent regular newsletters before, you can use HubSpot or a number of other affordable tools to create and send an email with a professionally designed template.

Many email tools also offer basic analytics that allow you to track open and click rates.

19. Offer coupons in newsletters or on landing pages.

Placing a coupon in your marketing emails can engage and delight your audience. After buying a product or service at a discounted rate, they might also be more willing to pay full price.

If you have a subscription service, offering prospects a code for a free trial can also be helpful so they can test it out.

20. Share your distribution channels on your website.

Once you have a few social media accounts and a newsletter, connect them to your website so your visitors can follow you.

One way companies do this is to display all of their linked social icons and a newsletter sign-up CTA on all pages of your website. A good place to include these is on the top right corner or the footer of each page.

This way, they’re visible but aren’t distracting from any content.

21. Offer a free webinar.

A webinar allows potential customers to sign up for a short online course hosted by you. These courses are usually between 30 minutes to an hour and allow you to give tips and answer questions related to a topic your brand is familiar with.

While this strategy can help you boost your credibility in your field, it can also offer you potential leads and sales opportunities.

22. Try co-marketing.

Is there a local business in your area that isn’t a direct competitor but offers a product or service to a similar target audience?

Consider working with them on a cobranded campaign where you promote each other on social media, via email, or in your blog.

While you’ll give your partnering company added promotion, it will also allow their fanbase to learn more about you.

23. Encourage happy customers to share their experiences.

When a happy customer talks about how great your company is on social media or a review site, your product or service looks like a good investment.

Even on social media, word of mouth is still a huge factor in someone’s purchasing decision.

If a prospect sees a friend raving about your business on Facebook or if they post a photo of a meal from your restaurant on Instagram, they might be more likely to go.

After all, 71% of consumers are more likely to purchase based on social media referrals.

If customers tell you they love your product, encourage them to share the experience on Yelp, Google, or social.

If you have a physical business, you should place signs up with your account handles so customers know who to tag if they post a picture of your product.

24. Try out marketing experiments.

If you’re interested in a new social platform or a new marketing trend, don’t be afraid to experiment. If an experiment goes well, you could be ahead of the game, and it never hurts to be a thought leader in your industry.

When you experiment with a new marketing strategy, have a solid hypothesis or question in mind. This will keep you focused on the end goal and reduce the desire to chase the next big thing as it comes along.

Also, prepare for your next steps if you get good or bad results. Here’s a quick guide to leading a successful marketing experiment.

Small Business Advertising Ideas

Now that we’ve covered some marketing strategy basics, let’s look into how you can put your advertising dollars to work. Below are some ways to tackle advertising for small businesses.

1. Set up Google My Business.

Creating a free Google My Business profile is a simple first step to helping potential customers find your business. It only takes a few minutes to add your business contact information, business hours, photos, and a list of your services.

Another perk of having a Google business profile is that you don’t need a storefront to create one. Your profile also comes with analytics that can help you better understand how customers are connecting with your business.

Additionally, you can check out and respond to customer reviews and learn what keywords brought them to your business page.

2. Consider PPC ads with Google & Bing.

Using pay-per-click (PPC) ad programs like Google Adwords or Microsoft Advertising can also help drive customers to your business. If you’re working hard on SEO, but are still looking for an extra boost, consider PPC advertising.

With this search engine marketing technique, you use Google AdWords or Microsoft Ads to show up as an advertised listing in search results.

Before you dive into PPC, you’ll want to make sure your landing page is as optimized as possible. If you are paying by the click and those who click on the page don’t convert, you will lose advertising dollars.

To help you get started, read this Ultimate Guide to PPC. Then, use this PPC planning template to create an optimized campaign. You can also use a few handy tools and software to edit, track, and report on your campaigns.

3. Run social media ads.

Most major social media platforms offer affordable advertising options that can help you target your posts to a specific audience.

While many small businesses have been advertising on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn for years, Instagram now allows brands to advertise through its Shoppable tool.

Pinterest is also an excellent option for small businesses to advertise. In fact, Pinterest users say the platform has more influence on their purchasing journey than other platforms.

Shopping ads on Pinterst drive three times the conversion of other competing platforms.

4. Sponsor products on Etsy & Amazon.

If you’ve already set up shop on Amazon, you can boost your products by participating in their sponsored products program.

This cost-per-click ad program generates ads from your product listings and automatically targets your ads, making it a great option if you’ve never created a campaign before.

If you’re a maker and sell your wares on Etsy, consider using Etsy Ads to advertise your products. Similar to Amazon, this is a cost-per-click model with a default minimum daily budget of one dollar.

With Etsy Ads, your products will stand out in Etsy Search, category pages, and marketing pages.

5. Leverage user-generated content.

Some of the best advertising you can get is from existing customers. Happy customers can vouch for your brand and add social proof to your marketing campaigns.

Ask your customers to leave reviews, or if they’ve already created content on social media involving your brand, ask permission to share it.

6. Develop a referral program.

Speaking of enlisting the help of your existing customers, you can incentivize them by using a referral program. Offer a discount, free gift, or other perk in exchange for them bringing in new customers.

Referred customers are 18% more loyal than those who aren’t and spend 13% more on purchases. Since these new customers will have been referred to you by someone they know, they’re more likely to have a positive customer experience.

7. Advertise with your local chamber of commerce.

If you have a storefront, advertise with your local chamber of commerce.

Each city is different, but you can typically be featured on their website, promoted on their social media channels, and included in their email newsletter for an annual fee.

It’s a great way to get your brand out there and an excellent opportunity to network with fellow small business owners.

Start Marketing Your Business Today

Small business owners looking for a way to track ROI and brand awareness need digital marketing.

Not only is digital marketing a must-have for promoting your products or services, but optimizing your online assets is also critical to your business’ overall success.

You may have a long road ahead to build your online presence, but any steps you can make will have a huge impact on your business.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in September 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

How does YouTube SEO work? What are the steps to optimize your YouTube videos for search? The answers to these questions are simpler than you might think.

While it might seem difficult to get any exposure on YouTube, you can implement certain strategies to ensure that the YouTube algorithm favors you in the search results.

In this post, we’ll go over proven YouTube SEO tips that have worked for HubSpot’s YouTube channel and that will work for you, regardless of your channel size. Let’s get started.

How to Rank Videos on YouTube

To get videos to rank on YouTube, we must first understand the YouTube algorithm and YouTube’s ranking factors.

Just like any search engine, YouTube wants to deliver content that answers the searcher’s specific query. For instance, if someone searches for “how to tie a tie,” YouTube won’t deliver a video titled “how to tie your shoelaces.” Instead, it will serve search results that answer that specific query.

So, as you try your hand at YouTube SEO, think about how you can incorporate terms and phrases that are used by your target audience.

You’ll also need to think about YouTube analytics and engagement. When it ranks videos, YouTube cares about a metric called “watch time” — in other words, how long viewers stay on your video. A long watch time means that you’re delivering valuable content; a short watch time means that your content should likely not rank.

If you want your videos to rank, try to create content that’s optimized for longer watch times. You can, for instance, prompt users to stay until the end of the video by promising a surprise or a giveaway.

Is it worth optimizing videos on YouTube?

Trying to rank videos on YouTube might seem like a lost effort. Only the most well-known influencers and content creators seem to have any luck on the platform.

However, that’s not the case. As a business, you can enjoy views, comments, and likes on your videos — so long as you find the right audience for your content. In fact, finding and targeting the right audience is even more important than creating a “beautiful” video. If you’re actively solving your prospective customers’ problems with your YouTube videos, then you’ve done 90% of the YouTube optimization work.

In addition, ranking videos on YouTube is a key element of your inbound marketing strategy, even if it might not seem that way. As recently as a decade ago, inbound video marketing was a brand new idea. Marketers were learning that they couldn’t just publish a high volume of content — it also had to be high-quality and optimized in ways that made it as discoverable as possible through search engines.

That content was once largely limited to the written word. Today, that’s no longer the case. Instead, a comprehensive content strategy includes written work like blogs and ebooks, as well as media like podcasts, visual assets, and videos. And with the rise of other content formats comes the need to optimize them for search. One increasingly important place to do that is on YouTube.

If you’re feeling lost, don’t worry. We cover the most important YouTube SEO tips and strategy below so you can effectively optimize your content for YouTube search.

YouTube SEO combines basic SEO practices with YouTube-specific optimization techniques. If you’re new to search engine optimization, check out this complete SEO guide.

YouTube Strategy

To be successful on YouTube, you’ll need a clear strategy. This strategy has two parts. First, you need to understand how YouTube SEO works. Then, you’ll want to use that knowledge as you choose a target audience, develop a plan for your channel, and set goals for growth.

How YouTube SEO Works

YouTube is part of Google and it uses similar search algorithms to show users the videos that best match their search queries.

This algorithm uses different elements in each video post to decide how that video will rank for specific search terms. These elements include:

• Video title
• Video description
• Metadata
• Number of views, comments, and likes
• Watch time

The algorithm also considers the past activity of the person who is searching. This helps search results feel more personalized to that user.

When combined, these signals tell the algorithm how relevant, popular, or engaging your video post is for a user’s query.

Choose a Target Audience

For many content creators, audience growth starts with picking a topic, then optimizing YouTube videos. But with growth comes competition. It was once simple to create a YouTube channel for a broad topic like product reviews or tech, but today new YouTube channels need a more specific focus.

As you narrow your target audience, think about who you want to engage with your channel and why. Ask yourself:

• How much do you know about your target audience?
• Why do they spend time on YouTube?
• What other social media platforms does your audience prefer?
• What inspires their interest and loyalty?
• Are there other YouTube channels or creators that you should partner with to connect with this audience?

Develop a Plan

Creating a content plan can seem simple if your YouTube channel centers on a topic you love. But most of the time, the challenge isn’t in coming up with ideas, it’s about making them happen.

If you want to optimize YouTube for SEO, content planning isn’t just about what videos you’re making and when to post them. It’s a process to figure out what resources you need to improve traffic, conversion, and engagement with your video content.

For example, you may have a great idea for a video about surfing, but where are you getting your footage? If you’re not recording yourself or your local community, it may be tough to find high-quality source material for your videos.

Building professional skills or a team with expertise in editing, sound, and animation can also boost the quality of your videos. But if those resources aren’t readily available to you, you may need a plan to create great videos without them.

Competitive analysis can also help with planning, whether you’re figuring out the right video length or where to promote your videos on other social platforms.

This free content planning template can help you create a solid plan for your YouTube strategy.

Featured Resource: Content Planning Templates

Set Goals for Growth

YouTube offers many helpful metrics that can help you assess whether your team is meeting your strategic goals. Broad metrics can be helpful to track consistency and big shifts in performance, like algorithm changes.

But it’s also a good idea to choose focused metrics that align with your goals. For example, if you want to increase your audience, track your subscriber count, impressions, and audience retention. If engagement is your goal, look at likes, comments, shares, and watch time. Driving web traffic? Add links to your video descriptions and annotations, then track those sources on your website.

Tracking the metrics that align with your goals will help you learn how you’re growing your audience. You can use that knowledge to create more effective videos for your users and SEO. And that effort will help you keep growing your YouTube channel.

1. Rename your video file using a target keyword.

Just like you would when optimizing written content, you’ll use an SEO tool to first identify keywords you’d like your video to focus on (you can browse popular YouTube SEO tools later in this post, or just click this link).

With a keyword identified, the first place to put it is your video file — before you even upload it to YouTube. Why? YouTube can’t actually “watch” your video to see how relevant it is to your target keyword, and as you’ll learn in the tips below, there are only so many places you can safely insert this keyword on your video’s viewing page once it’s published. But, YouTube can read your video’s file name and all the code that comes with it when it’s uploaded.

With that in mind, replace the “business_ad_003FINAL.mov” file name (don’t be embarrassed — we’ve all been there during post-production) with your desired keyword. If your keyword is “house painting tips,” for example, your video’s file name should be “house-painting-tips” followed by your preferred video file type (MOV, MP4, and WMV are some of the most common that are compatible with YouTube).

2. Insert your keyword naturally in the video title.

When you search for videos, one of the first things that your eyes are drawn to is the title. That’s often what decides whether you’ll click to watch your video, so the title should not only be compelling, but also clear and concise.

Although your keyword plays a big part in your video title, it also helps if the title closely matches what the viewer is searching for.

It’s a good idea to optimize your title for keywords so long as the keyword fits naturally into a title that tells viewers exactly what they’re about to see.

Lastly, make sure to keep your title fairly short — HubSpot campaigns manager Alicia Collins recommends limiting it to 60 characters to help keep it from getting cut off in results pages.

3. Optimize your video description.

First things first: According to Google, the official character limit for YouTube video descriptions is 1,000 characters. And while it’s okay to use all that space, remember that your viewer most likely came here to watch a video, not to read an essay.

If you do choose to write a longer description, keep in mind that YouTube only displays the first two or three lines of text — that amounts to about 100 characters. After that point, viewers have to click “show more” to see the full description. That’s why we suggest front-loading the description with the most important information, like CTAs or crucial links.

As for optimizing the video itself, it’s smart to add a transcript of the video, especially for those who have to watch it without volume.

An optimized description can also help you show up in the suggested videos sidebar, which can be a great source of views.

If you need a high-performing video description, try one of these proven YouTube description templates.

Download These Templates for Free

4. Tag your video with popular keywords that relate to your topic.

YouTube suggests using tags to let viewers know what your video is about. But you’re not just informing your viewers — you’re also informing YouTube itself. YouTube uses tags to understand the content and context of your video.

That way, YouTube figures out how to associate your video with similar videos, which can broaden your content’s reach. But choose your tags wisely. Don’t use an irrelevant tag because you think it’ll get you more views — in fact, Google might penalize you for that. And like your description, lead with the most important keywords, including a good mix of those that are common and more long-tail (as in, those that answer a question like “how do I?”).

Use these simple instructions to add and make the most of tags in your YouTube videos.

5. Categorize your video.

Once you upload a video, you can categorize it under “Advanced settings.” Choosing a category is another way to group your video with similar content on YouTube so it winds up in different playlists and gains exposure to more viewers who identify with your audience.

It might not be as simple as it looks. In fact, it’s important to go through a comprehensive process to find which category each video belongs in. Answer questions like:

• Who are the top creators within the category? What are they known for and what do they do well?
• Are there any patterns between the audiences of similar channels within a given category?
• Do the videos within a similar category share qualities like production value, length, or format?

6. Upload a custom thumbnail image for your video’s result link.

Your video thumbnail is the main image viewers see when scrolling through a list of video results. Along with the video’s title, that thumbnail sends a signal to the viewer about the video’s content, so it can impact the number of clicks and views your video receives.

While you can always pick one of the thumbnail options auto-generated by YouTube, we highly recommend uploading a custom thumbnail. YouTube recommends using images that are 1280×720 pixels — representing a 16:9 ratio — that are saved as 2MB or smaller .jpg, .gif, .bmp, or .png files. If you follow those parameters, it can help to confirm that your thumbnail appears with equally high quality across multiple viewing platforms.

It’s important to note that your YouTube account has to be verified to upload a custom thumbnail image. To do that, visit youtube.com/verify and follow the instructions listed there.

7. Use an SRT File to add subtitles & closed captions.

Like much of the other text we’ve discussed here, subtitles and closed captions can boost YouTube search optimization by highlighting important keywords.

To add subtitles or closed captions to your video, you’ll have to upload a supported text transcript or timed subtitles file. For the former, you can also directly enter transcript text for a video so that it auto-syncs with the video.

Adding subtitles follows a similar process, but you can limit the amount of text you want displayed. For either, head to your video manager then click on “Videos” under “Video Manager.” Find the video you want to add subtitles or closed captioning to, and click the drop-down arrow next to the edit button. Then, choose “Subtitles/CC.” You can then choose how you’d like to add subtitles or closed captioning.

Find out how to add closed captions to your YouTube video in the video below.

8. Add Cards and End Screens to increase your YouTube channel’s viewership.

Cards

When you’re watching a video, have you ever seen a small white, circular icon with an “i” in the center appear in the corner, or a translucent bar of text asking you to subscribe? Those are Cards, which YouTube describes as “preformatted notifications that appear on desktop and mobile which you can set up to promote your brand and other videos on your channel.”

Image Source

You can add up to five cards to a single video, and there are six types:

1. Channel cards that direct viewers to another channel.
2. Donation cards to encourage fundraising on behalf of U.S. nonprofit organizations.
3. Fan funding to ask your viewers to help support the creation of your video content.
4. Link cards, which direct viewers to an external site, approved crowdfunding platform, or an approved merchandise selling platform.
5. Poll cards, which pose a question to viewers and allow them to vote for a response.
6. Video or playlist cards, which link to other YouTube content of this kind.

For detailed steps on adding a card to your video, follow these official steps from Google, or check out the video below.

End Screens

End screens display similar information as cards, but as you may have guessed, they don’t display until a video is over and are a bit more visually detailed in nature. A good example is the overlay with a book image and a visual link to view more on the video below:

Image Source

There are a number of detailed instructions for adding end screens depending on what kind of platform you want to design them for, as well as different types of content allowed for them by YouTube. Google outlines the details for how to optimize for those considerations here.

It’s important to note that YouTube is always testing end screens to try to optimize the viewer experience, so there are times when “your end screen, as designated by you, may not appear.” Take these factors into account as you decide between using either cards or end screens.

These factors may seem a bit complicated and time-consuming, but remember: The time people spend watching YouTube on their TV has more than doubled year over year. There’s an audience to be discovered there, and when you optimize for YouTube, your chances of being discovered increase.

9. Add hashtags to increase reach.

Hashtags are a part of the YouTube user interface that allow you to add related terms to your content, just as you would on LinkedIn or Instagram. Hashtags show up right above your video title for easy clicking and discoverability. You can use your company name, as HubSpot does below, or include related keywords.

We also recommend using hashtags in your YouTube description, but don’t go overboard; the YouTube algorithm constantly checks for spam. Overly hashtagging may get you inadvertently flagged. Instead of using every hashtag you can think of, choose 2-3 that you feel most accurately describe your video.

10. Create a playlist about your video’s general topic.

As you add more and more videos to your content library, group them in keyword-optimized playlists. This won’t only signal to YouTube what your videos are about, but it will also keep viewers clicking from video to video, increasing your view count and, by extension, your rankings.

For example, Yoga with Kassandra grouped all of its short yoga classes in a playlist titled “5-15 min Yoga Classes.” Not only is the title short and descriptive, but the playlist description includes related keywords such as “10 minute yoga classes,” “10 minute morning yoga stretches,” and “bedtime yoga classes.”

11. Experiment with video length.

The more time viewers spend watching videos on your channel, the better it is for your SEO. But not every person on YouTube will stick around for 10 minutes or more.

For example, over 70% of watch time on YouTube happens on mobile devices. While some people can watch an hour-long video on a small screen, this figure shows how important it is to know your audience.

To find the right watch time for your audience, try creating videos of varying lengths. Then, do a quick analysis of the watch time, average view duration, and audience retention for each video and adjust your strategy.

12. Use YouTube’s autocomplete feature.

This feature makes it simple to find the most popular search terms for your video topic. Just start typing a keyword phrase and see what other keywords and phrases come up. Then, add the most relevant terms to your title, descriptions, and tags.

You can also use this tool to discover top YouTube trends or to figure out which keywords your competitors are targeting. These insights can help you pivot your YouTube SEO strategy for better results.

Check out this post for more useful YouTube features.

13. Try timestamps.

Timestamps mark different sections of your videos. They make it easy for your audience to find the content they’re looking for within each video.

Adding a timestamp can improve retention and user experience because it sets expectations. Timestamps give watchers an easy way to jump to what they want to see in a video or a reason to wait for that section to appear on-screen.

Timestamps also improve SEO because they make it easier for YouTube’s algorithm to understand your video content. This helps your video appear for search terms within your video, not just the overall theme of your video.

For example, if your video is about baking a cake, your video might include sections on baking equipment or cake trends like geode cakes. If you add timestamps to mark these sections, a user might not find your video when searching for “how to make a cake” because of competition for this keyword, but they could find it searching for “how to make a geode cake.”

You can manually add a timestamp or add and edit automatic video chapters with YouTube Studio.

14. Add a call-to-action (CTA) in your video and video description.

Calls-to-action are a powerful way to foster engagement. A CTA that offers value not only encourages likes, subscribes, and shares, it can also improve viewer engagement metrics. This can boost your video’s visibility in search results and suggested video features.

For maximum effectiveness, vary your CTAs. On one video you might do a verbal CTA asking viewers to like, subscribe, or share. For another video, ask your audience to bookmark your video or click shared links in your description.

You’ll also want to ask your viewers to share comments and feedback. These actions aren’t just valuable for user experience. They also give signals to YouTube that your video is engaging and offering value to your viewers. Check out these call-to-action examples for inspiration.

15. Review YouTube search analytics.

While analytics are useful for tracking progress toward your goals, you can also actively use this data to improve your YouTube SEO.

Say you’re trying to figure out why traffic suddenly jumped up for one of your videos. It might be that your video is ranking for a popular keyword. Or a popular website recently added your video.

You can dig into the video-specific data and see why that jump happened. Then you can figure out how to optimize other videos with the same tactics.

YouTube analytics can also help you anticipate keywords that are increasing in popularity. Optimizing your videos for those keywords early on gives you a better chance of ranking higher in those search results.

Finally, your analytics can help you better understand your audience. It’s not unusual to start a YouTube channel with an intended audience and then see those demographics shift over time. Analyzing the age, location, and interests of your real-time audience can help you make smart changes.

16. Optional: Leave a pinned comment on your own video.

Leaving a comment on your video might seem over the top, but it’s a smart strategy. Not only do more comments improve your video’s rankability, but they can generate high levels of audience engagement. A pinned comment may result in hundreds of replies, like it did for Matt D’Avelia below:

Be sure to leave an engaging comment that furthers the conversation or offers more value for readers. Here at HubSpot, for example, we leave a resource pinned so that viewers can further their knowledge on the topic. Check out this post for more on YouTube comment management.

1. Choose a target keyword for your video. This can be a topic, a question, or a highly specific query. If you’re not sure of the right target keyword, use a keyword research tool, or simply explore YouTube’s existing content library for inspiration.

2. Include the target keyword in the file name. Don’t use spaces between each word, but rather dashes (-) or underscores (_).

3. Include the target keyword in the title. Next up, work the target keyword into the title of your video, but be creative, and be sure to do it naturally. You don’t want the title to simply be “[keyword].” The title is the first thing users will see, so try to create intrigue and interest while promising to help the viewer in some way.

4. Include the keyword, as well as keyword variations, in the video description. The video description is the lifeblood of your YouTube SEO strategy. Write a natural description with 1-2 mentions of your target keyword, as well as variations of this keyword.

5. Add related tags to your video. While most users don’t use tags to find videos, they can help the YouTube algorithm categorize your video and serve it to the appropriate audience. Add around 5-8 industry tags, being sure to not overdo it so that you’re not flagged as spam.

6. Add your video category. While not as specific as tags, categories help users find your video and help the YouTube algorithm understand what your video is about. Categories come into play on the home page, the explore page, and the sidebar menu.

7. Upload a custom video thumbnail. Create a thumbnail that includes either a variation of your keyword or a short phrase that could generate clicks (like “1,000 organic followers, fast!”). As mentioned, you’ll need to verify your YouTube channel to get access to custom thumbnail uploads.

8. Add subtitles and closed captions. Subtitles and closed captions are a much-needed accessibility component of your videos. They also indirectly help you optimize for YouTube search by giving YouTube a text version of your video content.

9. Add cards and end screens that tie into the topic of your video. Cards are equivalent to internal and external linking, and end screens allow you to engage viewers during those critical last few seconds when a viewer might be tempted to click to another piece of content.

10. Add hashtags to your video. Hashtags are different from tags. They show up above your video title and help you increase reach and authority by further signaling what your video is about.

11. Create a playlist about your overarching topic. One of the best ways to optimize YouTube videos is to create playlists. Finding a few related videos and putting them in a playlist will not only attract more viewers, but it will also help the YouTube algorithm understand how your video relates to others in your upload library.

12. Optional: Leave a pinned comment to generate engagement or provide more value. As a brand, you can and should comment on your own videos — not only for replies to your commenters, but to offer more value to readers.

Now, most of the SEO tips above rely on you finding a keyword and promoting your video correctly. And not all of those tips can be carried out through YouTube alone. To get the most bang for your videography buck, consider some of the tools below to optimize your video for search.

1. HubSpot SEO Marketing Software

Our SEO marketing software, developed here at HubSpot, allows you to find popular keywords for creating content and organizing keywords into groupings — what we call “topic clusters.” By sorting your content into topic clusters, you can oversee which pieces of content are related to one another, which types of content you have planned, and what you’ve already created.

While the keywords you discover in HubSpot reflect their popularity in a standard Google search, many of these topics will also produce videos on Google’s search engine results pages. In those cases, you can create topic clusters that have both blog and YouTube content belonging to them.

Clustering your content — and linking from videos to blog posts, and vice-versa — can give you more authority in the eyes of Google and YouTube, while giving you more ways to capture traffic from the people searching your topic.

Pro tip: HubSpot integrates with YouTube for useful dashboards and performance tracking.

2. Ahrefs Keywords Explorer

Ahrefs is a comprehensive SEO platform that allows you to monitor a website’s ranking, estimate the organic traffic you’d get from each keyword, and research keywords for which you might want to create new content.

One popular feature of Ahrefs is Keywords Explorer, which allows you to look up details related to a keyword you’re interested in. And as you can see in the screenshot above, you can filter your keyword results by search engine — including YouTube.

Ahrefs Keywords Explorer gives you a keyword’s monthly search volume, how many clicks for videos ranking for that keyword, related keywords, and more.

3. Canva

You might know Canva as a design template for creating all kinds of cards, photos, logos, and more. It just so happens this popular product has a Thumbnail Creator just for YouTube videos.

As stated in the tips above, thumbnail images are critical to promoting your content in YouTube search results and enticing users to click on your video. Using Canva’s Thumbnail Creator, you can create the perfect preview image for your video in 1280 x 720 pixels — the thumbnail dimensions YouTube requires.

4. vidIQ Vision

This is a Chrome extension, available through Chrome’s web store in the link above, that helps you analyze how and why certain YouTube videos perform so well. This includes the tags a video has been optimized for, its average watch time, and even how quickly that video might be gaining traffic.

The vidIQ tool then gives an SEO “score” you can use to create content that performs (or outperforms) the results you already see on YouTube.

5. TubeBuddy

TubeBuddy is an all-in-one video platform that helps you manage the production, optimization, and promotion of your YouTube content. Its features include an automatic language translator (which helps you rank for non-English keywords), a keyword explorer, tag suggestions, a rank tracker for your published videos, and more.

6. Cyfe

Cyfe is a large software suite that offers, among other things, a YouTube analytics platform. On this platform, you can track performance on YouTube and on your site.

In addition to traffic analytics, Cyfe can show you which keywords you’re ranking for and which ones are most popular across various search engines. Sounds a lot like Google Analytics or Moz, right? That’s because Cyfe has data from both of those tools, and more, built into it.

Start Optimizing YouTube Videos

Video marketing is crucial for businesses and creators. No matter what SEO tip or tool you start with, a successful YouTube channel begins with good content. Make sure your viewers have something high-quality and relevant to watch when they find you.

Optimizing your YouTube videos can help attract more views and build community — and lead to more conversions and sales. So, start today and watch your YouTube channel grow.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in March 2013 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Welcome to Breaking the Blueprint — a blog series that dives into the unique business challenges and opportunities of underrepresented business owners and entrepreneurs. Learn how they’ve grown or scaled their businesses, explored entrepreneurial ventures within their companies, or created side hustles, and how their stories can inspire and inform your own success.

Everything You Need to Know about the Disability-Owned Business Enterprises (DOBE) Certification

Minority-owned business certification dates back to the 1970s but only gradually began being considered potentially applicable to entrepreneurs with disabilities some 15 years ago — decades after the passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990.

This explains why, in 2023, there are only 500 DOBEs across the country despite the numerous commercial advantages.

What is the disability-owned business certification?

A disability-owned business enterprise (DOBE for short) is a for-profit business that is at least 51% owned by an individual with a disability.

The DOBE certification process is wholly administered across the United States by Disability:IN, a global leader in business disability inclusion with a network of over 500 major corporations, and, once completed, brings with it numerous competitive advantages like:

• A nationally recognized certification
• Preferential supply chain access through public and private sector clients with supply chain diversity commitments
• Education, training, and networking opportunities that are exclusively available to certified DOBEs

Additionally, Disability:IN can provide direct introductions to key procurement leaders and corporate buyers whilst also assisting DOBEs in ensuring that they are contract-ready and fully primed to capitalize on all types of market opportunities.

In short, DOBEs enjoy a clear competitive advantage over other disability-owned businesses that are not certified and compete on more of a level playing field with similar organizations that are not disability-owned.

Disability:IN Certification Requirements

A DOBE can be run by someone with any type of disability, both visible or invisible – physical or cognitive – provided the medical evidence submitted upon application can attest that the disability has a significant long-term impact on the person concerning daily life activities.

Where there is less room for maneuver is that the disabled applicant must have at least 51% control of the business and therefore have the final say on all important commercial decisions.

DOBE Certification Process

During the DOBE application process, which can be undertaken online, the applicant must submit documented evidence of their majority stake in the company. These documents may include tax returns, articles of incorporation, and corporate meeting minutes.

Disability:IN uses a sub-committee of around seven of its 70 corporate members to review and approve applications, and it’s usually done within 90 days. If a business has previously been designated as minority-owned by related operators such as the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council or the National LGBT Chamber of Commerce, the approval process can be fast-tracked to 30 days.

Once approved, you’ll need to renew your accreditation every three years (at a cost of $300), which, compared to the potential upsides, is a drop in the ocean. However, business owners are required to notify Disability:IN if, in the interim, there is a change in the ownership structure of the organization.

Why is the disability-owned business certification important?

Entrepreneurship is twice as popular amongst disabled people than their non-disabled counterparts, and overall, one in five or 20% of Americans are thought to live with some type of disability.

In estimating the potential number of businesses that could benefit from DOBE certification based on this data — 500 represents a significant shortfall. However, there is likely to be a multiplicity of factors driving this.

Firstly, not all business owners with impairments will have heard of the DOBE certification program, and many may not self-identify as disabled. Others may incorrectly believe that the disability-owned designation only applies to more extreme cases of disability.

Others still may have concerns that certification may stigmatize the business and potentially put off less enlightened customers.

The reality is that DOBEs can be as discrete as they see fit to promote their accredited status. While some may display their accreditation badge on their website, others may simply use their status for networking and leveraging contracts.

Over to You

We are now over three decades from the ADA, and the evolving pandemic corporate world holds promise for being more inclusive.

If you’re a disabled business owner in 2023, applying for a DOBE certification can open a multitude of doors — there’s nothing to lose and potentially a massive amount to gain.

Imagine having a bunch of puzzle pieces scattered in different places — that’s not very helpful. If you put them together, they tell a more cohesive story. 

Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) serve the same purpose — they gather customer data from different sources and store that data in a central place. 

Because this data helps businesses better understand their customers and how they behave, CDPs play an important role in helping you make informed product and marketing decisions. 

Today, CDPs are vital for brands across industries. But with popularity comes choice. Businesses now have to choose between a wide range of CDP platforms to ensure they’re properly synthesizing and analyzing the right data points for their brands.

With all of the above in mind, it’s not actually that shocking that the CDP market grew from $1.6 billion in 2021 to $2 billion in 2022.

In this post, we’ll discuss the ins and outs of customer data platforms and the best ones to implement into your strategy.

What is a Customer Data Platform?

A CDP consolidates customer data from different tools and software into one centralized database. This database contains customer interaction data and other information from sources such as websites, mobile apps, email, and social media.

CDPs, often confused with Data Management Platforms (DMPs), contain both personally identifiable and anonymous users (for example, IP addresses), while DMPs primarily work with anonymous users.

CDPs consist mostly of first-party data, or data collected directly from the customer. They can also store third-party data, or data you get from another company (or third party).

Types of Customer Data Platforms

Not all CDPs are created equal. There are a few main types:

• Marketing Clouds: Marketing Clouds refers to a suite of cloud-based marketing tools.
• Smart Hubs: Smart Hubs act as a central hub for your company’s marketing technology, or martech.
• Marketing Data Integration: Marketing Data Integration CDPs place data first, with API capabilities.
• Engines and Toolkit: Engines and Toolkit refers to CDPs that are built by the business if the CDPs available are deemed insufficient or to answer specific needs.

Best Customer Data Platform Companies

Segment

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Segment is a CDP that helps businesses collect, clean, synthesize, and activate first-party data across different touch points like Facebook, email, and website. Through a single API, Segment  can also connect customer data from different business departments, like marketing, sales, service, and web analytics.

Pricing: Free version, $120/month for its Teams, and custom pricing for businesses. 

Optimove

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Optimove’s Relationship Marketing Hub brings customer data together in a single customer view. The GDPR– and ISO-compliant platform combines first-party data, third-party data, on-site/in-app user activity, and campaign response history.

Pricing: Pricing is available upon request.

Totango

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Totango enables users to connect and view data from customer data streams, including contract and transactional data, support tickets, and demographic and behavioral data. You’ll also be able to access and compare real-time customer health data  with other metrics like NPS (Net Promoter Score) and CSAT (Customer Satisfaction score).

Pricing: Free intro version. $249/month for Starter and $1,099/month for Growth. Pricing is available upon request for Enterprise.

Bloomreach

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Bloomreach’s CDP, called Bloomreach Engagement, offers a single customer view, online and offline data tracking, and customer analytics like on-site data, backend data, and offline data. The platform also leverages machine learning to make predictive recommendations like ranking customers based on their actions such as likelihood to make a purchase. 

Pricing: Pricing is available upon request.

Insider

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Insider can connect data across multiple channels such as apps, website, email, and CRM, predict behavior like customer intent using its AI engine, and create personalized experiences at touch points for customers. Customer profile management is centralized with Insider’s journey orchestrator called Architect.

Pricing: Pricing not publicly available.

Tealium AudienceStream CDP

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Tealium AudienceStream enables companies to construct detailed customer profiles, with features like:

• Identity resolution: Collecting and matching customer data points across different platforms, devices, and browsers
• Cross-channel audience management: Create a solid data foundation to organize audience data

Pricing: Pricing is available upon request.

Blueshift

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Blueshift unifies and organizes first-party customer data in a single customer view. Features include cross-device identity resolution, real-time data, and customizable datasets.

Pricing: Blueshift offers Starter, Growth, and Enterprise packages. Pricing is available upon request.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights

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This real-time CDP combines transactional, behavioral, and demographic data to create comprehensive customer profiles. Features like sentiment analysis enable you to identify opportunities to improve customer experience.

Pricing: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights offers multiple pricing tiers. More details are available on their site.

Oracle Unity

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Oracle Unity combines online, offline, first-party, second-party, and third-party data into a single, real-time customer view. Identity resolution enables you to connect individual identities across various channels. Data models built for different industries lets you get granular.

Pricing: Pricing is available upon request.

Emarsys

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Emarsys connects sales, product, and customer data to provide a holistic view of the customer. The platform helps you synthesize historical and real-time data to provide personalized experiences for your customers.

Pricing: Pricing is available upon request.

How to Choose Customer Data Platform Vendors

There are several things to consider when choosing a CDP. Considering the following can help you determine the best CDP for your business.

1. Figure out your use cases.

In order to find the best CDP for your business, you need to determine your use cases. Naturally, combining customer data and storing it in one place is a top reason for using a CDP, but digging deeper can help you get more out of it. Some uses cases can include:

• Gain a more comprehensive understanding of the customer journey
• Provide a better mobile experience for customers
• Create more targeted advertising campaigns

2. Identify necessary integrations.

The next step is clarifying which tools you’ll need to connect to a  CDP. 

For example, your company might use marketing tools like Looker, Instagram Ads, and Intercom or customer relationship tools like CRMs, payment processors, email platforms, or help desk systems. You’ll need to determine which of these tools must connect to a CDP, and which integrations are nice to have.

3. Determine your must-have features.

Depending on your needs, there are some CDP features that must absolutely be included. Defining those key features will be critical in helping you pick the right CDP. These features could be:

• Advanced security features like ISO 27001 or SOC 2 certification
• Identity resolution, which helps you identify users across different channels
• GDPR and CCPA compliance
• Real-time data
• Integration options with tools you use or plan to use

For a more in-depth guide on how to choose a CDP, check out this blog post.

CDPs Can Help Your Business

CDPs are a powerful tool in your arsenal. Uniting customer data is the foundation for better understanding your customers and learning how to improve the customer experience.

Fun is not something typically associated with writing a cover letter. However, with a few tweaks, writing one doesn’t have to be a burden.

The cover letter examples below demonstrate that it is possible to have a little fun with your job search — and maybe even make yourself a better candidate in the process.

It may be true that only 35% of recruiters admit that cover letters do not materially influence the hiring process for them, but that doesn’t mean yours has to contribute to that statistic. In fact, it might be that cover letters are deemed insignificant because so few of them stand out. Here’s an opportunity for you to exercise your creativity at the earliest stage of the recruitment process.

Personalization, after all, goes beyond replacing the title and company name in each letter you send to recruiters.

What’s on a cover letter?

Before you can get started writing your cover letter, there are a few components you must have.

Greeting: A simple, but pleasant greeting to address the recruiter or hiring manager.

Opener: Write a catchy introduction that explains why you’re interested in the role.

Summary of Skills/Qualifications: This is the heart of your cover letter. It outlines your relevant experience and why you’d be a great fit for the role. You can highlight special skills, experiences, professional achievements, or education to help make your case.

Closing: In this paragraph, provide a call-to-action by expressing interest in an interview. Provide your contact information and sign-off.

What does a cover letter look like?

In addition to showing off your skills and qualifications, cover letters give you the opportunity to present a clear, concise, and compelling writing sample that shows off your personality and ability to convey ideas. Check out our fillable examples below to see how you should organize the content of your cover letter.

Customizable Cover Letter Examples

In a hurry for a cover letter example you can download and customize? Check out the ones below from HubSpot’s cover letter template kit.

1. Standard Cover Letter Example

Download a Customizable Copy of This Cover Letter Example

This standard cover letter hits all the right notes: It includes a space to give a brief summary of your experience, as well as a space to delve in-depth into the specific responsibilities at your current role. You also have the chance to describe the challenges you’ve mastered at previous roles, showing that you’re capable of facing any problem that comes your way.

Why We Love It

We love this cover letter because it allows you to describe the high points of your career while still being professional, personalized, and succinct.

2. Data-Driven Cover Letter Sample

Download a Customizable Copy of This Cover Letter Example

Numbers are worth a million words — or that’s how the saying should probably go (if only we could include pictures in cover letters). Citing data and statistics about your achievements at your current company is an assured way to capture a hiring manager’s attention. Most hiring managers don’t read the entire letter, so a bulleted summary of your achievements can be a powerful way to increase the effectiveness and scannability of your message.

Why We Love It

We love this cover letter because it’s adaptable to any role. Even if you don’t work in a data-centric role, you can include any enumerable achievement. If you’re in a creative industry, for instance, you can include the number of creative assets you designed for your current company.

3. Entry-Level Cover Letter Example

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Applying to your first job can be stress-inducing, to say the least. You can increase your chances of getting that first interview by including a cover letter that explains how your education can help you succeed in the role you applied for.

Look no further than this example from HubSpot. While other cover letter samples give experienced professionals the opportunity to share their experience at length, this one gives you the chance to describe your personal and professional attributes. You can then convey how you can leverage your knowledge to help your target company reach their goals.

Why We Love It

We love this cover letter because it’s easy and simple to use for a student who has little experience in their target industry — including those who haven’t yet completed an internship.

Looking for more? Download the entire kit below.

Best Cover Letter Examples

What does a good cover letter look like in practice, and how can you make yours stand out? We found six examples from job seekers who decided to do things a bit differently.

Note: Some of these cover letters contain real company names and NSFW language that we’ve covered up.

1. The Cover Letter That Explains ‘Why,’ Not Just ‘How’

We’ve already covered the importance of addressing how you’ll best execute a certain role in your cover letter. But there’s another question you might want to answer: Why the heck do you want to work here?

The Muse, a career guidance site, says that it’s often best to lead with the why — especially if it makes a good story. We advise against blathering on and on, but a brief tale that illuminates your desire to work for that particular employer can really make you stand out.

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Here’s another instance of the power of personalization. The author of this cover letter clearly has a passion for this prospective employer — the Chicago Cubs — and if she’s lying about it, well, that probably would eventually be revealed in an interview.

Make sure your story is nonfiction and relatable according to each job. While we love a good tale of childhood baseball games, an introduction like this one probably wouldn’t be fitting in a cover letter for, say, a software company. But a story of how the hours you spent playing with DOS games as a kid led to your passion for coding? Sure, we’d find that fitting.

If you’re really passionate about a particular job opening, think about where that deep interest is rooted. Then, tell your hiring manager about it in a few sentences.

Why This Is A Great Cover Letter

This example demonstrates how effective personalization can be. The writer is passionate about the employer, drawing from her own childhood experience to communicate her enthusiasm.

2. The ‘We’re Meant for Each Other’ Cover Letter

This cover letter example is a special one because it was submitted to us here at HubSpot. What does the letter do well? It makes a connection with us before we’ve even met the letter’s author.

“Content Marketing Certified” indicates the applicant has taken the content marketing certification course in our HubSpot Academy (you can take the same course here). Our “records” indicate he/she did indeed give an interview with us before — and was a HubSpot customer.

The cover letter sang references to a relationship we didn’t even know we had with the candidate.

The letter ends with a charming pitch for why, despite him/her not getting hired previously, our interests complement each other this time around.

(Yes, the applicant was hired).

Why This Is A Great Cover Letter

This cover letter example does an excellent job of building rapport with the employer. Despite not getting hired for previous roles they applied for at HubSpot, the writer conveys exactly why they are right for this role.

3. The Cover Letter with H.E.A.R.T.

HubSpot has a lot of H.E.A.R.T. — Humble, Empathetic, Adaptable, Remarkable, Transparent. Our Culture Code is the foundation of the company’s culture, the driving force behind our mission to help millions grow better, and serves as the scaffolding for our hiring practices. Recruiters at HubSpot look for applicants that demonstrate how they embody the Culture Code and job description, paying extra attention to cover letters that are super custom to HubSpot.

In another HubSpot submission, a HubSpot applicant writes about how she found out about HubSpot, why she likes the company, and how her professional experience aligns with H.E.A.R.T.

Why This Is A Great Cover Letter

HubSpot’s recruiting team was impressed with her dedication to the company and how she went beyond what was asked for by linking her portfolio in her closing paragraph.

Featured Resource: 5 Free Cover Letter Templates

Download our collection of 5 professional cover letter templates to help you summarize your professional journey and land your dream job – whether it’s at your first or fifth company.

Short Cover Letter Examples

4. The Short-and-Sweet Cover Letter

In 2009, David Silverman penned an article for Harvard Business Review titled, “The Best Cover Letter I Ever Received.” That letter contained three complete sentences, as follows:

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One might argue that this particular letter is less than outstanding. It’s brief, to say the least, and the author doesn’t go into a ton of detail about what makes him or her qualified for the job in question. But that’s what Silverman likes about it — the fact that the applicant only included the pieces of information that would matter the most to the recipient.

“The writer of this letter took the time to think through what would be relevant to me,” writes Silverman. “Instead of scattering lots of facts in hopes that one was relevant, the candidate offered up an opinion as to which experiences I should focus on.”

When you apply for a job, start by determining two things:

• Who might oversee the role — that’s often included in the description, under “reports to.” Address your letter to that individual.
• Figure out what problems this role is meant to solve for that person. Then, concisely phrase in your cover letter how and why your experience can and will resolve those problems.

Why This Is A Great Cover Letter

The key to this standout cover letter is research — by looking into who you’ll be reporting to and learning more about that person’s leadership style, you’ll be better prepared to tailor your cover letter to focus on how you provide solutions for them.

5. The Short Story

Basha Coleman began her cover letter with a short story. The goal of this short story is two-fold:

• Detail the experience she already has with the organization.
• Stand out to the hiring team.

You’ll notice that her short story follows a typical narrative arc: It has a conflict/obstacle, a turning point, and a positive outcome, all created with a goal to emphasize a theme or point. In this case, Coleman is emphasizing her existing affinity with the brand and her triumphs within the program so that she can continue on her career path.

Why This Is A Great Cover Letter

Like the second example in our list, this cover letter does an excellent job of conveying the applicant’s existing affinity for the brand. If you are applying to a company you love, don’t be shy about showing it and explaining why.

6. The Bare Bones Cover Letter

In today’s job market, cover letters aren’t always necessary. Even though many recruiters won’t ask for or even read them, cover letters can still be effective and convey personality to a reader. Writing a strong cover letter can help you better convey your interest in the position and company.

This template from The Balance Careers puts together the essential components of a short cover letter: excitement about the position, your qualifications, and a call-to-action for the recruiter to follow up with you. Combining these central aspects in a well-written, compelling narrative will go a long way in convincing readers to hire you.

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Why This Is A Great Cover Letter

This letter is organized and concise. The inclusion of bullet points to highlight key skills and help the recruiter skim the document is a nice touch.

7. The Breezy Follow-Up

In this cover letter, Amanda Edens is following the instructions the hiring manager gave by forwarding an email with resume and writing samples attached.

Edens knows that the body of the email is prime real estate to get the hiring manager’s attention, but she also doesn’t want to overwhelm the recipient with too much information since a cover letter was not requested. This short cover letter is the result. You’ll notice that she uses casual and breezy language to convey personality and enthusiasm, and she keeps her paragraphs succinct.

Why This Is A Great Cover Letter

Not only does Amanda provide links to relevant writing samples that are live on the web, but she also closes with a strong final paragraph that:

• Summarizes the expertise she has relevant to the posting
• Emphasizes that she doesn’t want to simply get a job but rather help the organization accomplish their goals
• The reader gets everything they need in an organized and thoughtful manner.

8. The Administrative Assistant Cover Letter

In this cover letter the candidate, Brenda, plays up her prior music industry experience to build a connection with Epic Music Group. If you have specific industry experience for the role you are applying for, be sure to highlight that.

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It’s clear that she’s passionate about not only the music industry, but Epic as a whole. She’s done so much research on the company that she knows what software programs they use, and happens to be proficient in it to help convey value to the hiring manager.

This example further illustrates the importance of research. Make sure you understand the culture of the company to which you’re applying before you send a completely unfiltered cover letter — if you don’t, there’s a good chance it’ll completely miss the mark.

Why This Is A Great Cover Letter

In just three short paragraphs, the applicant uses their company research to drive home why they are the perfect fit for the role — emphasizing industry experience as well as software knowledge specific to the company. All of this communicates that she’d be able to start with very few hiccups getting up to speed.

9. The Internship Cover Letter

Maybe you’re just getting started in your career and looking to land the right internship to gain experience in your field. In this case, you’ll need to highlight more of your educational background and transferable skills since you won’t have as much professional experience to highlight.

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The cover letter above is a great example of how to emphasize your skills and accomplishments when applying to internships or entry-level positions. A few things the applicant does well:

• Highlights relevant extracurriculars and affinity networks. In this case, the applicant is applying to a business analyst position, so mentioning their involvement in a FinTech group makes sense.
• Previous internships in relevant fields: Our applicant points out that they’ve previously interned as a Business Analyst at another firm. Pointing out that they’ve done the role previously will help make their case for fit.
• Highlight other useful skills: This applicant is fluent in both English and German. If an international company or an organization needs bi-lingual support, knowing multiple languages is an asset.

Why This Is A Great Cover Letter

This cover letter example illustrates how you can leverage your education and background to get the gig even when you don’t have much working experience. Highlighting previous internships or experience in related fields can go a long way in convincing hiring managers you’re the perfect candidate for the role.

Creative Cover Letter Examples

10. The Brutally Honest Cover Letter

Then, there are the occasions when your future boss might appreciate honesty — in its purest form. Livestream CEO Jesse Hertzberg, by his own admission, is one of those people, which might be why he called this example “the best cover letter” (which he received while he was with Squarespace):

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As Hertzberg says in the blog post elaborating on this excerpt — it’s not appropriate for every job or company. But if you happen to be sure that the corporate culture of this prospective employer gets a kick out of a complete lack of filter, then there’s a chance that the hiring manager might appreciate your candor.

“Remember that I’m reading these all day long,” Hertzberg writes. “You need to quickly convince me I should keep reading. You need to stand out.”

Why This Is A Great Cover Letter

The applicant did their research on the company’s culture and executed this cover letter flawlessly. It’s funny and shows off the applicant’s personality all while demonstrating why they are a good fit for the role.

11. The Pivot Cover Letter

Making a career switch? Your cover letter can be an excellent opportunity for you to explain the reasoning behind your career change and how your transferable skills qualify you for the role.

In this cover letter example, the applicant is pivoting to a career in UX. Not only does she make the case for why she should be hired, she shows the recruiter by using a simple, but effective design scheme that shows off her skills. It’s clean but effective.

Since the role she is applying for is more visual, it’s important to both show and tell why you’re a good fit.

Why This Is A Great Cover Letter

This cover letter strikes the perfect balance between creativity and simplicity in design while putting the applicant’s career change into context. The copy is clean, with a creative font choice that isn’t distracting from the content, but still demonstrates the applicant’s knack for design.

12. The Graphic Design Cover Letter

When applying for more creative roles, the design of your cover letter can say just as much as the words on the page. Take the graphic designer letter example below.

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It’s got so much going for it:

• Pop of color
• Clean layout
• Interesting fonts

In addition to the style elements, this example also doesn’t skimp on the key skills recruiters are looking for. Using metrics, the applicant demonstrates their value and why they would be a great fit.

Why This Is A Great Cover Letter

This cover letter thoroughly conveys the applicant’s skills and qualifications using a variety of visual elements and by emphasizing their greatest achievements.

Job Cover Letter Examples

Next up, let’s go over some classic cover letter examples for jobs, especially if you’re applying to internships or only have a few years of experience. The below cover letters follow the golden rules and don’t deviate too much from the standard — which is ideal if you’re applying to positions in more traditional industries.

13. Consulting Internship Cover Letter Example

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Many internship applicants are early on in their careers or still in college. That means they’ve yet to gather enough experience to provide tangible proof of their ability to do the job. That means that a cover letter is the place where an internship applicant can shine.

This cover letter example highlights the applicant’s skills in a bullet-point format. That makes it easier for an overburdened hiring manager to get the essence of her points, quickly, if they’re only skimming cover letters. Not only that, but this applicant personalized the letter in every single sentence. She shares information about her prior conversations with some of the company’s employees and mentions the company’s name at every turn.

While she only has one prior consulting job, she deftly mentions the skills she developed in that role and ties it into her desired position at Quantcast Product Group.

Why This Is A Great Cover Letter

This cover letter example does a fantastic job advertising the applicant’s soft skills in a highly scannable format — while still going heavy on the personalization. Don’t be shy to lightly play with formatting to get your point across and to imbue the letter with your passion for a company.

14. Nonprofit Referral Cover Letter Example

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This cover letter example for a nonprofit job hits the ground running by right away inserting the name of one of the nonprofit’s Superintendents. That’s an excellent way to get a recruiter’s attention and make you stand out from the slush pile, even if you’re only just out of school, as is the case for this applicant.

If you’ve received an internal recommendation for a position, you’d be wise to open your letter with that information. Don’t worry about it feeling too stilted or strange — remember, hiring managers only skim letters! Your goal is to ensure they get information about you that they otherwise won’t get from your resume.

With only three full paragraphs, this cover letter example is short, sweet, and to-the-point. No time is wasted, and it also goes over the critical basics, such as skills and experience.

Why This Is A Great Cover Letter

This nonprofit cover letter leverages a recommendation from an internal employee at the target organization, making it more likely to stand out from the slush pile. We also love that it doesn’t skimp on the basics, such as skills, enthusiasm, and experience.

15. General Email Inquiry Cover Letter Example

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Even if a job opportunity isn’t available at an organization yet, it doesn’t mean that there won’t be. You can always send a general inquiry cover letter, like the one in this example.

This email cover letter for a political campaign internship is short and sweet, but includes the critical information the campaign coordinator needs to consider the applicant for any new positions that may open up.

The best part about this cover letter is that it can be easily customized from one political campaign employer to the next. While it does include a level of personalization, it’s brief and can be easily changed to address the specific political candidate.

When sending general inquiries like this one, it’s essential to make the personalization aspect as pain-free as possible for yourself. That may mean including only one sentence or two, knowing that a general inquiry might not be replied to.

Why This Is A Great Cover Letter

This email cover letter example hits all the right notes while keeping it brief and to-the-point. While we don’t recommend choosing this format for a formal cover letter, it works if you’re sending a general inquiry to an employer over email. It’s also a good example to follow if you’re still in college or have very little experience.

16. Post-Phone-Call Cover Letter Example

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If you get a phone call with a potential employer and they invite you to send your resume, pat yourself on the back — that is such a win! In your cover letter, be sure to mention that right off the bat, like this example does.

A hiring manager or an executive at a company likely has a lot of tasks on their plate, which means that they may forget about your call from one week to the next. That is totally okay, which is why this example starts with a reminder that the applicant and the letter recipient spoke back on January 31st. It also contains a few more details about why they started speaking in the first place.

Aside from leveraging the phone call that’s already occurred, this cover letter also does an excellent job explaining why the applicant is an ideal choice for the job. It goes into detail about skills and previous experience with a high level of enthusiasm, and includes a promise to follow up at the end.

Why This Is A Great Cover Letter

This cover letter example leverages two things that will immediately draw the recipient’s attention: A phone call they’ve already had, and a mutual contact at their organization.  The job and internship search can be grueling; never be afraid to use everything you have at your disposal to improve your standing over other applicants.

17. Mission-Driven Graduate Cover Letter Example

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This cover letter example from a recent B.A graduate wowed us from the very first sentence. The applicant right away explains her attained degree and her specific career interests, then dives into the aspects of her experience that make her such a great candidate.

It is so personalized to the employer’s own mission that it’s difficult to stop reading it. Even if the hiring manager is not a science or health professional, they would be able to effectively gauge the applicant’s suitability for the role by the expertise she shows in her cover letter alone. The applicant explains at length why she’s excited to work for that specific hospital. The organization serves aboriginal populations, which aligns with her own values and research interests.

In the last paragraph, she summarizes what she knows about the employer in one sentence, then describes how each of her experiences support the employer’s mission. That is an exceedingly clever and meaningful way to align yourself with an organization at a deeper level.

Why This Is A Great Cover Letter

If you’re applying to a mission-driven organization, don’t be shy about showing your excitement and expertise. You don’t need a lot of experience to show that your values align with those of your target organization. This cover letter example is especially good inspiration if you’re making a career change, have only just a few internships under your belt, or are graduating from college.

18. Short Recommendation Cover Letter Example

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Referral or recommendation cover letters don’t need to be too long, and this is a great example of that. It immediately leverages a mutual connection at the company. The mutual connection recommended that the applicant contact the hiring manager for a role, which is a piece of information we always recommend you frontload in your letter.

This specific cover letter comes from an applicant with little experience, making it a good example to follow if you’re switching careers or just out of college. Instead of talking about their experience, the applicant uses anecdotal evidence to convey their enthusiasm for working at that company.

The writer also goes over their most salient skills, such as being able to speak multiple languages. They also explain how their degree directly applies to the target role. We love that the candidate highlights their leadership abilities and makes that an effective selling point for being hired.

Why This Is A Great Cover Letter

This cover letter doesn’t go on for too long, which we love. It’s simple and sweet and provides all the information the hiring manager needs to look more closely at the applicant’s resume and make an interviewing decision.

19. Professor or Research Position Cover Letter Example

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Academic or research position cover letters might require a little more information than the typical cover letter — and this is one such example. Why is it okay to go a little longer? Because the letter is not only a way to supplement the PhD candidate’s academic CV, but to provide a writing sample for the search committee.

We love this cover letter because it expresses the candidate’s enthusiasm for teaching and explains her instructional ethos, such as providing out-of-the-classroom opportunities, championing communication, and encouraging students to step out of their comfort zone. The applicant also suggests courses she may be able to teach at the target institution, and expresses her interest in developing new courses as needed.

She also suggests how she can enhance the college’s extracurricular programming by offering study abroad courses, which shows not just an interest in teaching but adding to the school’s overall culture.

Why This Is A Great Cover Letter

While this letter goes for a little longer than recommended, it serves as a fantastic writing sample and explains the applicant’s research background at length. If you’re applying to academic or research roles, don’t be afraid to go into detail about what most excites you in terms of research interests.

20. Director Cover Letter Example

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This cover letter example — for a Director of Catering position at a university — does not waste any time. The applicant right away says that they’re a strong candidate for the role, then jumps right into three salient qualifications that make him a great fit.

We love how the applicant uses bullet points and bold text to guide an overburdened hiring manager through the cover letter — and to give them permission to scan it, if needed. If the hiring manager would like more information or actual examples of the skills, they merely need to read the rest of the bullet point paragraph.

As mentioned, light formatting can be beneficial to your cover letter, as it draws the recruiter’s eyes and prevents them from having to fish for the information they’re looking for.

Why This Is A Great Cover Letter

This short, sweet cover letter includes the critical information a hiring manager or high-level executive needs to make an interview decision. We love the use of formatting that doesn’t stray too much from regular cover letter conventions, and we like that the applicant kept all other paragraphs extremely brief.

21. Editorial Cover Letter Example

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Applying for an editorial or journalistic position? Like a cover letter example we shared earlier, you can take a more storytelling approach to capture the hiring manager’s attention. This cover letter example does that effectively by telling an anecdote that directly mentions the newspaper where they’d like to work.

This immediately draws the reader in and tells them that this application is not random at all; the applicant would like to work at the newspaper because they’ve read it every morning. Not only that, but they have a favorite reporter on the newspaper’s staff. The applicant then jumps into the specific reason they want to take an editorial position at the Baltimore Sun.

The cover letter includes all pertinent information, such as how previous positions have equipped the applicant to take on this job. It closes with enthusiasm after keeping the reader rapt every step of the way.

Why This Is A Great Cover Letter

The applicant uses storytelling to — you guessed it — apply for a position that needs storytelling skills. If you’re applying for a data-driven position or a graphic design position, why not showcase those skills in the cover letter itself? We like that this letter doesn’t diverge too much from cover letter conventions while still differentiating itself.  

22. Promotion Cover Letter Example

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In this cover letter example, the applicant already works for the employer and wishes to apply for the next position to move up in their career. We like that the letter cites the applicant’s extensive knowledge of the organization, which will no doubt give them an advantage over external applicants.

Not only that, but the applicant also references their experience before they started working at the employer and leverages that information to make their candidacy even more desirable.

Lastly, this letter includes a healthy level of enthusiasm for the university and the position — something that is never extra in a cover letter!

Why This Is A Great Cover Letter

This cover letter example does an excellent job showing the candidate’s knowledge of their current organization, while stating why they’re a natural fit for the promotion. Plus, the letter includes information on the applicant’s relevant activities outside of work — if you’re involved in any organizations that might help you do your job better, be sure to include them.

23. Law Cover Letter Example

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This law cover letter example jumps right into personalization, a bold move that will serve you well if you’re genuinely interested in a company and want to stand out. The applicant cites the recipient’s recent article on bond litigation, then ties that into the role they’d like to get at the law firm.

The applicant then goes into his skills and the feedback he’s received from previous managers. This is an excellent way to introduce your skills without sounding dry — or even unfounded. By citing positive feedback you’ve received, you’ll imply that others have praised you for having those skills, and that you’re not only “tooting your own horn.” (In cover letters, it’s absolutely okay to toot your own horn — that’s what they’re for! But if you can cite others’ remarks, that also helps.)

At just two and a half paragraphs, this letter is exceedingly short but no less effective. It’s an excellent example of how to personalize your letter quickly and still conveying the essentials of a cover letter.

Why This Is A Great Cover Letter

This short cover letter example demonstrates how to keep it brief while still creating high impact. The applicant personalizes the letter immediately, cites external feedback, and conveys enthusiasm. This letter proves you don’t need to write a novel about an employer to sway the hiring manager into giving you an interview.

Take Cover

We’d like to add another stage to the job search: experimentation.

In today’s competitive landscape, it’s so easy to feel defeated, less-than-good-enough, or like giving up your job search. But don’t let the process become so monotonous. Have fun discovering the qualitative data we’ve discussed here — then, have even more by getting creative with your cover letter composition.

We certainly can’t guarantee that every prospective employer will respond positively — or at all — to even the most unique, compelling cover letter. But the one that’s right for you will. That’s why it’s important not to copy these examples. That defeats the purpose of personalization.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in October 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

 

 

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

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

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

Table of Contents

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

Benefits of Competitor Analysis

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

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

1. You can grow your business.

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

2. You’ll see more revenue.

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

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

3. You’ll find new opportunities.

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

4. Your business can maintain relevance.

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

How to Conduct a Competitive Analysis

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

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1. Understand your industry.

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

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

2. Understand your competition.

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

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

3. Understand your buyers.

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

4. Present your findings.

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

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

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

Competitive Analysis Templates

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

1. HubSpot’s Marketing Strategy Kit

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

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

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

2. MECLABS

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

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

3. Semrush Market Explorer

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

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

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

Competitive Analysis Example: The Coffee Shop

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

Porter’s Five Forces Analysis

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

1. Competition in the Industry

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

2. Potential of New Entrants

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

3. Power of Suppliers

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

4. Power of Customers

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

5. Threat of Substitute Products

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

Running a SWOT Analysis

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

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From this SWOT analysis, we learned the following:

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

Customer Research

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

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

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

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

Making the Most of a Competitive Analysis

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

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

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

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

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

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

Key AI Survey Findings

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. AI is highly effective across industries.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4. AI isn’t taking over jobs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How AI’s Used in the Workplace

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

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

AI in Marketing

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

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

How Marketers Use Generative AI

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

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

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

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

Common Generative AI Tools in Marketing

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

How Bloggers & SEOs Use AI

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

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

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

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

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

Prompting Generative AI

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

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

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

AI Across Business

AI in Sales

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

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

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

How Sales Teams Use Generative AI

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

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

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

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AI in Service

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

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

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

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

The Future of AI

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Benefits of Wrapping Text in Google Sheets

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

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

Or this one:

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

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

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

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

How to Wrap Text in Google Sheets from the Format Menu

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

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

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

Step 3: Finally, click on “Wrap.”

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

How to Wrap Text in Google Sheets from the Toolbar

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

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

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

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

How to Wrap Text in Google Sheets on Mobile

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

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

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

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

Does wrapping text make a difference?

Direct answer: Yes, it does.

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