Yearly Archives: 2023

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

On January 29, the official Instagram accounts for Nike and Tiffany & Co. teased a collaboration between the two legendary brands depicting a Nike shoe box in the classic Tiffany Blue® hue.

The initial reaction on social media was optimistic, with users expressing excitement for what’s to come when the collection drops on March 7.

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The hero product of the collaboration is a limited-edition black suede Air Force 1 shoe with a Tiffany Blue® swoosh. In addition to the shoes, the collection includes a sterling silver cleaning brush (mistaken for a toothbrush), a co-branded shoe horn, Tiffany Blue® shoelaces with a dubrae, and a whistle.

When details of the collaboration’s products went public, reactions skewed negatively.

Fans of Tiffany & Co. felt the collaboration was mismatched. A comment on one of the brand’s promotional posts read, “What happened to your brand???? This is so cheap and tacky.”

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Meanwhile, Nike customers seemed disappointed in the shoe variation and left comments such as:

“Lazy slapping of some Tiffany blue or swapping logos is now considered ‘legendary?’”

“I like the box more than the shoes.”

After the initial announcement, AI-generated images of what the collaboration could have looked like began circulating the internet, with some consumers feeling underwhelmed by the real product in comparison.

While the work of both the Nike and Tiffany & Co. teams can’t be replaced by AI, this scenario signals a phenomenon that may become more common as artificial intelligence gains traction.

With renderings and creative images available at the press of a button, brands will be faced with the challenge of continuing to innovate while managing consumer expectations.

Marketing Snippets

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The latest marketing news and strategy insights.

How Spotify is shifting its podcast strategy.

Super Bowl Advertising: how the USA Today Ad Meter became the gold standard for measuring success.

The first union for advertisers has been established. What does this mean for marketers?

LinkedIn is offering a new suite of creator tools. 

Substack is rolling out a new private subscription feature.

How Buzzfeed is integrating ChatGPT into its content strategy.

It’s well established that video has been one of the breakout trends in the marketing world for the past decade.

But what’s happening in video marketing right now? And how does its growth and success stand up to the twists and turns of a global pandemic?

At Wyzowl, we’ve released an annual State of Video Marketing survey every year since 2015, charting usage, spend, channels, and opinions among video marketers and consumers.

We recently released our ninth State of Video Marketing report. During that time, usage, spend, and reported ROI have crept slowly upward – from an already high starting point.

But this year’s results suggest that, far from reaching saturation point, video marketing is actually continuing to grow in popularity – and achieving better results for marketers than ever.

Our research suggests:

• Video remains a key priority for business with its use as a marketing tool, and its perceived importance by marketers, reaching an all-time high.
• Marketers feel more positive about video’s return on investment than at any point since 2015, as they report an unprecedented level of influence on KPIs such as traffic, leads, sales, and audience understanding.

• More marketers credited video with increasing dwell time, traffic, leads, sales, and reduced support queries than in ANY of our annual surveys since 2015, – while an all-time high number of marketers (92%) told us they get a good ROI on video content, up from 87% in 2022.
• Driving all of this is the fact that consumers continue to use video as an integral part of their journey with brands. They expect to see video content from brands – and use it as a key part of their research and purchasing decisions.

About the Survey

Wyzowl’s State of Video Marketing Survey is an annual report, now in its ninth iteration. Every year, we ask a range of questions — many of them the same from year to year — to evaluate how the video marketing landscape is changing and growing.

This time around, our survey was taken by a sample of 528 unique respondents consisting of professional marketers and consumers, only around 8% of whom were Wyzowl customers.

You can check out the full report — with plenty more data points — and get a downloadable version by visiting Wyzowl’s State of Video Marketing 2023 page.

Key Findings

91% of businesses use video as a marketing tool – an all-time high since we started tracking this data and a significant jump from previous years.

The usage of video isn’t the only data point that’s higher in 2023 than ever.

96% — more marketers than at any point in the past nine years — told us they see video as an ‘important part’ of their marketing strategy.

And perhaps most strikingly, 92% of video marketers reported that video gives them a positive ROI – you guessed it, another all-time high.

This could well be attributed to an ever-increasing understanding of how to use video, as well as how to track and quantify its impact.

Digging into the specifics of what marketers have achieved using video, more marketers than ever before told us they’ve generated leads using video.

87% of marketers feel that video has a direct, positive impact on sales – another all-time high.

And 96% of marketers agree that videos have helped increase user understanding of their product or service.

This figure has never dropped below 93% since 2015, but this year’s data represents the highest figure in five years.

In terms of the metrics that marketers feel really matter to them when determining video marketing success, the number of video views remains the most popular at 63%.

This is followed by:

• Audience engagement (61%)
• Leads/click throughs (56%)
• Brand awareness (43%)
• Customer retention (42%)
• Bottom line sales (26%)

More than one in 10 marketers still say they don’t track video ROI at all.

Looking Ahead

All the signs suggest that usage and spend are on course to continue their growth in 2022.

For a start, 70% of the marketers who don’t currently use video as a marketing tool, told us they plan to start in 2023.

Add that to the 99% of current video marketers who told us they’ll continue using video in 2023, and the 96% who told us they plan to either maintain or increase their video marketing budget, you’ll see that there’s potential for these figures to continue increasing when we revisit this survey in a year.

The net result of this is, of course, that we can all expect to see more noise and competition for audience attention in the coming 12 months.

But while oversaturation is a challenge, it isn’t an insurmountable one. It simply raises the bar in terms of content quality. Your videos will need to be well-planned, and very well-executed.

The Big Opportunities for Video Marketing in 2022

The good news is that despite the noise and competition – big opportunities remain.

It’s notable that audiences continue to watch more videos. Our data suggests the amount of online video watched per week, per person, has almost doubled since 2018 – although it did see a fall this year.

And what about where they watch it? Unsurprisingly, YouTube is the most widely-used platform — used by 90% of video marketers.

But some of the lesser-used video tactics also seem to reap real results for video marketers.

This year we asked people to tell us the purposes of the videos they’d created – what specific goals were they looking to achieve, and how were they planning to use them?

The most widely created types of videos were those to be used on social media.

Explainer videos have seen tremendous success. As well as being the second most common ‘goal’ of a marketing video, an overwhelming majority of people (96%) report watching explainer videos to learn more about a product, with 89% being swayed to make a purchase.

The product doesn’t have to be physical, either. 79% of people say they’ve been convinced to purchase an app or piece of software because of a video.

This means that, on top of everything else, video’s ability to inform purchase decisions is also at an all-time high.

To Sum Up

The rise of video as a marketing tool seems inexorable.

More than nine out of 10 people report wanting to see more videos from brands in 2023 – another data point that’s higher than ever – making video an excellent tool for lead generation and brand awareness.

Video has quickly become a non-negotiable thing for audiences looking to explore and make purchases.

Video looks set to continue its ten-year overnight success story into the coming decade.

These stats paint a picture of a media type that’s almost universally popular among both marketers and their audiences, helping achieve a number of incredibly important goals.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in January 2018 and has been updated to reflect the latest data.

When you visit the App Store or Google Play and search “social media,” there are hundreds of apps to choose from. But, as the pool of social platforms grows, will any of them really change the game for marketers this year?

In our Social Media Trends Survey, we asked 1,000+ social media marketers about the social media platforms they’ll use in 2023, and we’ve compiled the data for you to discover below.

2023 Social Media Trends

The hottest social media trends in 2023 are short-form video and live streaming. Short-form video was also the top format social media marketers use, and it has the highest ROI. This isn’t a surprise, as platforms like TikTok are only growing in popularity as time goes on.

Understanding what other marketers are doing and leveraging social media trends early on gives you the time to pick up on what works, setting you ahead of competitors that wait to see how a format works and performs before using it themselves.

To help you stay on the cutting edge of social media, we’ve compiled a list of key platforms and features you should have on your radar this year — they’ve all jumped in usage and user base.

Social Media Platforms Marketers Should Watch in 2023

Social media platform usage among social media marketers in the U.S. changed from 2021 to 2022. Specifically, the use of Instagram (+35% YoY), TikTok (+15% YoY), and Facebook (+12% YoY).

1. Instagram

Instagram is the platform social media marketers expect to grow the most in 2023, and they say it has the most accurate algorithm and offers brands the best potential to grow their audience.

Instagram will also grow with first-time users, with 36% of social media marketers not using it yet planning to try it out in 2023.

Increased investments in Instagram are in line with the trend of social selling, as marketers say the app offers the best ROI for selling products directly on an app, and consumers say it has the best in-app shopping experience.

2. TikTok

As mentioned, short-form video is one of the most popular, top-performing, and highest ROI trends. Given this, it’s no surprise that TikTok usage has increased YoY as it caters to short-form videos. Marketers reported that TikTok offers the second-highest potential to grow audiences in 2023.

TikTok is a great platform for reaching Gen Z, as our consumer trends survey found that 62% of the generation uses TikTok, and it’s also the platform it spends the most time on.

3. Facebook

Data shows that Facebook usage significantly increased in 2022, so it’s worth watching in 2023. Especially so given that the top trend for 2023 is investing in social media communities, and Facebook is the best platform for doing so.

4. Live Audio Platforms

Live audio chat rooms are the media format gaining the most steam in 2023, and 23% of marketers are planning to leverage them for the first time this year. Among social media marketers as a whole, Facebook Live Audio is the most popular platform (12% say they’ve invested in it).

Facebook Live Audio is also the most popular live audio platform leveraged by social media marketers who already use live audio, followed by Twitter Spaces.

This makes sense, as 80% of Gen Z consumers, a demographic steadily growing into its purchasing power, enjoy audio content because they can express their individuality and explore different sides of their personalities.

What Platforms Are Losing Steam?

According to the data, the platform with the most significant drop in usage is Twitter, with a -17% YoY change. Twitch has fallen in use, too (-30% YoY), but it had the second-lowest investment among social media marketers in 2021.

Platforms like Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces rose in popularity in 2020 during the beginning of the pandemic, but they have slowed in their growth and usage as other live audio platforms have grown.

For example, Clubhouse was one of the top emerging platforms/features that social media marketers noted investing in in our 2022 Social Media Trends Report, but the 2023 report found that, among all social media marketers, Clubhouse is 5th on the list in terms of investments.

How To Determine Which Social Media Platforms Are Worth the Investment

Marketers determine which social media platforms are worth investing in based on their potential for lead generation, audience reach, and the potential to drive traffic to your website.

A platform’s potential for building an active social media community around a brand is high on the list this year, which aligns with 90% of social media marketers saying that building an active social media community is crucial to a successful strategy in 2023.

Should you follow the social media trends of 2023?

Consumer behavior changes quickly in the digital space, and businesses that adapt to social media trends can see success.

If you keep an eye on this kind of marketing research and tailor it to your target audience, you can craft a stellar social media plan that drives awareness and shows your brand in a creative light.

Remember, every trend won’t work to achieve your goals, so don’t venture into this new social media landscape without the most up-to-date data.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in July 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Facebook engagement is something marketers shouldn’t overlook when crafting a social media strategy. Facebook engagement can expand organic reach and place your brand higher in Facebook’s News Feed. Your brand can also reach your audience’s extended network through likes, comments, and shares.

But what is Facebook engagement, and how can you boost your brand’s engagement to reach a broader audience? Here’s everything marketers need to know.

What is Facebook engagement?

How to Increase Facebook Engagement

1. Post interesting, entertaining, and valuable content.
2. Post when your audience is most active.
3. Post consistently.
4. Ask questions.
5. Respond to followers.
6. Use Facebook Reels.
7. Go live.
8. Focus on User Generated Content (UGC).
9. Create engaging Facebook Stories.
10. Add a Call-to-Action button.

If you’re a page admin, you can track Facebook engagement by viewing engagement metrics under Page Insights. According to Meta, Page Insights is a tool for brands, businesses, and public figures to:

• Learn what posts their audiences engage with
• Track total likes and other metrics to see what audiences like and why
• See the page’s total reach and analyze how many people saw/engaged with the post

However, you can also measure engagement by using a simple formula. Just take the number of engaged users, divide it by the total page reach, and multiply the result by 100.

So, let’s say your Facebook post received 10 likes, 5 comments, and 5 shares. If that post reached 1,000 people, your engagement rate would be 2%. According to recent research, the median engagement rate on Facebook is 0.07%.

Marketers should aim for at least a 5% engagement rate to build an authentic community on the platform and remain competitive in their market.

How to Increase Facebook Engagement

Now you know how to track and measure engagement. Now, let’s explore the ways you can boost your Facebook engagement.

1. Post interesting, entertaining, and valuable content.

Your audience will not want to interact with your content if it always reads like a sales pitch. Instead, opt to create educational, helpful, and entertaining content. For example, outdoor clothing and equipment company L.L. Bean often posts fun educational videos such as “Skiing Tips for Beginners” to delight users. The video below shows viewers how to get comfortable on cross-country skis quickly.

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This video may inspire consumers to start skiing and turn to L.L. Bean for the necessary equipment.

What We Like: Educational videos like this help brands to be seen as an authoritative, expert voice in their market. Even better, it allows brands to show their products in use without coming across as an ad.

2. Post when your audience is most active.

Page Insights has a tab called “When Your Fans are Online.” The tab shows when your followers are most active on your page. Once you find out when they’re most active, you can start scheduling your posts to upload when they’re likely to get the most engagement.

What We Like: The feature takes some guesswork out of finding the most optimal time to post, and you can be sure your best posts won’t go to waste by uploading them too soon or too late.

3. Post consistently.

No one wants to engage with a dead account. To show your account is active, post consistently to boost your engagement — but how often should you post content to Facebook? We recommend posting two to five times per week and no more than once a day.

Facebook prioritizes fresh content and doesn’t want to overload someone’s feed with just one company. When you post too often, especially more than once a day, you’ll diminish your ROI — and your posts will get less engagement.

Pro Tip: If your posts are consistently bringing in high engagement, then you can test out posting more frequently. As long as your audience shows a great deal of interest in your content, Facebook will prioritize your page in its News Feed.

4. Ask questions.

Questions encourage users to comment, and more comments lead to high engagement. You can ask users to leave a comment about their favorite product from your brand. You can also ask them why they started following you or why they like your company. You can even ask users what kind of content they’d like to see from you, and then give them what they want.

On its Facebook page, Burger King asked users to name their sourdough starter.

Pro Tip: Include a video, an eye-catching graphic, or a poll to make your questions stand out on users’ News Feeds.

5. Respond to followers.

Social media users love to know there is an actual human behind a brand’s account who sees and appreciates their interaction. Be sure to answer questions, thank followers for their interactions, and be a source of information when a follower needs help understanding a product or service.

What We Like: Responding to comments helps brands build a stronger bond with their followers, and they’ll want to engage with your content more — especially if they know there is someone behind the account who can answer questions.

6. Use Facebook Reels.

Use Reels to start a challenge, give a behind-the-scenes look at your brand, or educate your audience.

Facebook Reels are steadily increasing in popularity among users.According to Meta, over 140 billion Reels are played daily across Facebook apps as of October 2022. That’s a more than 50% increase from May 2022.

Pro Tip: Always film your Reels vertically. And if you don’t always have time to create a new Reel from scratch, repurpose your Instagram Reels to upload on Facebook.

7. Go live.

Facebook Live videos receive the highest engagement on the platform, so it helps to include live broadcasts in your social media strategy. Facebook Live can be used to:

• Host live Q&As
• Host live fundraisers
• Broadcast breaking news
• Give a behind-the-scenes tour of the company and processes

For example, Pinky Ma’s Cakes, Cookies & Candy hosted a Facebook Live showing viewers how to make cupcake bouquets.

What We Like: Facebook Live allows viewers and hosts to communicate in real-time, which builds trust between brands and followers.

8. Focus on User Generated Content (UGC).

You can encourage followers to send in photos or videos of themselves using your product for a chance to be featured on your platform. For instance, accessory brand Cluse encouraged followers to submit pictures of themselves wearing the brand’s watches to be featured on Cluse’s lookbook page. All followers had to do was include #Cluse in their posts.

Though the campaign took place on Instagram, the same can be done on Facebook.

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What We Like: Audience’s like to feel like they’re a part of the conversation, and user-generated content does exactly that and encourages participation.

9. Create engaging Facebook Stories.

With over 300 million people watching Facebook Stories each day, Facebook Stories is an excellent opportunity to connect with your audience and boost engagement. In fact, we found that 70% of consumers prefer Facebook Stories over Snapchat and Instagram stories.

One way you can use Facebook Stories is to make important announcements. In the example below, the punk band Dropkick Murphys used Facebook Stories to announce an upcoming festival performance.

You can also add links to your Instagram stories. In the same example, the band included a link to the festival where their followers can purchase tickets.

Pro Tip: Include links to your website or product to encourage your audience to purchase.

10. Add a Call-to-Action button.

A call-to-action button can generate engagement beyond likes, comments, and shares. Add a CTA button to:

• Book an appointment.
• Contact your business through Facebook messenger.
• Join your Facebook group.
• Shop on your website.

In the example below, Ipsy’s Facebook page includes a call-to-action button encouraging followers to sign up for their monthly subscription service.

What We Like: Not only does a CTA button boost engagement, but it can also generate more leads by encouraging your audience to take action.

Over 200 million businesses use Facebook, so making your brand stand out on the platform can seem daunting. However, you’ll be able to find and delight your audience on Facebook by using the above tactics to boost engagement. The more engagement your page gets, the more Facebook will push your content to the right people.

If you’re anything like me, a solid portion of your day is sifting through your inbox, sending emails to junk, and responding to time-sensitive emails.

Need some help managing it? We’ve got free email hacks that will help you better manage your inbox so you can focus on the important stuff.

11 Free Email Hacks to Step Up Your Productivity

1. Turn off your notifications or pause emails.

Other than social media, email is where most people get flooded with notifications. This can be one of the biggest blockers to productivity since your attention is being pulled elsewhere.

Solution? Simply turn off email notifications to focus on your more pressing tasks. Better yet, you can pause incoming emails from even showing up in your inbox – if your email provider allows it.

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Outlook users can pause notifications through the Boomerang app and unpause when they’re ready to tackle them.

2. Block out times for batch email review.

Emails can come at all hours of the day and if you’re working with a team asynchronous, there are no off-hours.

So, instead of constantly checking your emails and responding to each one as it comes, set aside blocks of time during your day to review them.

This can be early morning, late afternoon, or whenever when you expect to have some downtime.

Pro-tip: Once you decide on this time block, add it to your calendar to avoid conflicts with other work activities.

3. Create templates.

You know how websites have FAQ sections? In our professional careers, we often communicate the same thing over and over to our clients, colleagues, and stakeholders.

To make this a bit easier, create templates to avoid starting from scratch every time you draft an email.

Your templates will be based on the questions you get most often, the phrases you use the most, and the messages you share the most. Things like:

• Cold emails
• Redirections to other teams
• Weekly team notifications
• OOO message

To set this up in Gmail, navigate to your settings, click on the Advanced tab, and click on “Enable” next to the Templates section.

4. Create folders.

Organization is the ultimate key to productivity and emails often fall on the back burner. The irony is they tend to hold some of the most important information we use in our day-to-day.

Creating folders within your email will not only make things easier to find but also more manageable when prioritizing your emails.

For instance, you can create categories by:

• Priority (e.g. Action required, informational)
• Function (e.g. HR, Finance, Insurance)
• Teams (e.g. Leadership, direct reports, colleagues, etc)

5. Filter your incoming emails.

Why sort through emails when you can have your email provider do it for you automatically?

The filter feature – available through most email providers – allows you to sort, delete, flag, and forward emails.

You can do so using the following information:

• Email addresses
• Words and/or phrases
• Subject line
• Attachment

Once you create the filter, you designate the automated follow-up action.

Use cases include adding emails from leadership to a specific folder, deleting junk mail, marking reminders as read.

6. Use an email scheduler.

Gone are the days of waking up at 6 a.m. just to send an email you couldn’t send at 10 p.m. last night when you drafted it.

Some email providers allow you to schedule a date and time to send your email so you can set it and forget it – worry-free.

If your provider doesn’t have this feature, consider an extension like Boomerang, which you can integrate with your email to schedule emails.

7. Enable the “unsend” feature.

We all do it: Send an email then do the obligatory re-read of the email you already re-read five times before sending JUST in case – even though you can’t do anything about it. Until now.

Gmail and other email providers now allow you to unsend an email for a few seconds after you’ve clicked “Send,” just in case you spotted a mistake or simply changed your mind.

Pro-tip: Only add the recipients once your email is ready to go – this way, you’ll never send an unfinished email again.

8. Learn shortcuts.

Shortcuts allow you to complete your email tasks quickly without skipping a beat.

With email shortcuts, you can:

• Compose new emails.
• Add cc and bcc recipients.
• Insert links.
• Open spelling suggestions.
• Format text with bold, italic, underline, indents, and alignments.
• Archive emails

And that’s just to name a few. If there’s a feature you use often, there’s likely a shortcut to get you there with just one click or keystroke.

Of course, shortcuts will vary by provider and device. So before you start using them, make sure you’re using the right ones.

9. Unsubscribe.

If your inbox is anything like mine, there are a few thousand emails from brands you never interact with.

While deleting these emails is time-consuming, you can start decluttering your inbox by unsubscribing from emails you never read. Unfortunately, not all brands have disengagement workflows that will automatically remove you from a reading list.

In this case, you’ll have to manually unsubscribe yourself. Trust me, your future self will thank you.

10. Get a grammar browser extension.

Most of us draft emails directly from the “New Draft” box. However, that strategy comes with some risks – namely misspelling or awkward phrasing.

Apps like Grammarly will serve as proofreader, catching your mistakes as soon as you make them. Grammarly also has neat features that will tell you the tone of your message and suggest alternative phrases.

With this tool, you never have to worry about how you sound or if there’s a hidden typo. It takes all of the guesswork out so you can just focus on pressing “Send.”

11. Prioritize your emails.

If you’re still struggling with managing the large volume of emails you’re receiving, try following this popular rule: If the email requires a response that will take two minutes or fewer, respond immediately.

If it will take longer, save it for later. This strategy is designed to help you get rid of the clutter without getting overwhelmed.

There you have it – free email hacks that will help you get your inbox under control and maximize your productivity.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in Aug. 2016 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

If you had to guess, how many email newsletters do you think you’re subscribed to? Ten? Twenty? Fifty?

To be honest, I’ve lost count — and I know I’m not alone. Email marketers have a lot to compete within their subscribers’ inboxes. That’s why a solid newsletter template is crucial to designing an email that people are encouraged to click through.

If done well, email newsletters can do wonders to help you build an engaged subscriber base, keep your business top-of-mind, and nurture leads that are already making their way down the funnel.

However, “done well” means more than just serving up great content. In fact, an often overlooked component of the newsletter creation process is the design.

Don’t have time to build out a custom template from scratch? We’ve scoured the internet for the best resources for email newsletter templates and compiled them below. Many of the templates have also been pre-tested for compatibility with major email service providers (ESPs) via Litmus — a web service that allows you to preview the way your email will look on different email clients and devices.

Once you find one you like, download the template and customize it to fit your needs.

1. HubSpot

Price: Free & paid options available

If you’re a Marketing Hub user, HubSpot offers a great collection of email templates you can use on your next marketing email. No need to log out and search for a template in another marketplace; these templates are available to you right within the tool.

Once you choose a template, you can start using it immediately right in HubSpot — no HTML or CSS required.

2. Announcement by Litmus

Price: Free

Litmus offers a free email template collection — from newsletter templates to account management templates. This marketing-specific theme — simply referred to as “Announcement” — is modern and sleek, while still being kind of fun. All of the templates have been tested with Litmus.

While you are required to create a Litmus account with your email address to access the templates, the templates themselves are free of charge.

3. ConvertKit

Price: Free

ConvertKit is a creative email template platform that’s a great option for bloggers, course creators, and more. ConvertKit comes with email automation tools, signup forms, and many more integrations.

To use ConvertKit’s email newsletter templates, you’ll need to sign up for a plan, but the good news is that they offer both free and pro subscriptions. While this platform is more on the creative side, their vast array of templates and tool integrations will help businesses in any industry upgrade their email newsletter.

4. ZURB Ink

Price: Free

ZURB Studios has five responsive email templates available for free, including the newsletter one below. It has a great, fluid layout you can customize with your own colors, images, and wording.

If you want to see how each template looks on different email clients, you can check out screenshots from each template’s email client tests, which are available on the site. These layouts are optimized for most email clients — except for outdated versions of Outlook.

The template kit comes with a separate CSS stylesheet and HTML file to ease the editing process. Most email code editors will place the CSS inline with the HTML itself after both are uploaded separately. If you’re going to add images to your newsletter, keep in mind that you’ll have to create a separate folder and compress it with the CSS stylesheet before uploading.

Pro tip: Once you’ve selected a template, use HubSpot’s free email marketing software to craft your message and send a newsletter out to the world!

5. Flodesk

Price: Free for 30 days

Flodesk is an upcoming email newsletter design platform with over 3,000 email templates and designs to enhance your email marketing. Aside from giving you access to a vast array of templates, Flodesk lets you connect your ecommerce site to help with automation and analytics.

Another benefit of Flodesk is that its subscription price ($38/month) is a flat fee. So, whether you’re sending 200 or 2,000 emails, you’ll pay the same price, and you’ll never have to upgrade your subscription to get all of the perks.

6. 99designs

Price: Free

99designs is a growing online community and collaboration platform for designers and small businesses, and they have a great designer blog and business blog. As a free offering to their blog readers, they released a set of 45 free email templates — perfect for newsletters, promotional messages, and personalized responses. All of the templates are fully responsive and compatible with all major email clients.

7. Moosend

Price: Free for 30 days

Moosend is an email marketing platform that makes it easy to design custom emails with a drag-and-drop editor and over 70 premade templates. Moosend also tracks analytics and sends personalized automated emails to subscribers based on their interest and behavior. If you’re interested in landing pages and subscription templates, it includes those as well.

Moosend analyzes your subscriber base to help with the success of your business. Just like Flodesk, Moosend lets you connect your ecommerce site to attract more subscribers and store all information in one place. Moosend is free for the first 30 days, and then you would have to upgrade to pro status for $9/month.

8. Campaign Monitor

Price: Free

Campaign Monitor is another free email newsletter template and marketing platform. With a variety of email templates for newsletters, welcome emails, and promotional campaigns, Campaign Monitor makes designing emails easy. Campaign Monitor also compiles your analytics and tracks when emails are sent, delivered, and opened.

For many businesses, email marketing needs to connect to their website or ecommerce site, and Campaign Monitor does just that. Campaign Monitor has it all when it comes to templates and helps you maximize your sales by staying on-brand and creating a seamless customer experience. Campaign Monitor is only free for 30 days, but plans start as low as $9/month.

9. MailerLite

Price: Free

MailerLite offers various newsletter templates for promotions, announcements, and more. With its trendy newsletter designs, MailerLite makes sure its customers stay up to date while sending newsletters. You can customize the templates using either an HTML editor or drag-and-drop editor, and connect your MailerLite account to your website. MailerLite also has features where you can grow your audience with landing pages, subscription forms, and pop-ups.

MailerLite provides data insights as well. The advantage of MailerLite is that they will send your emails based on your customers’ time zones, allowing you to send emails that can get the most opens. MailerLite also provides A/B split testing tools so you can identify the best version of every email you send.

10. Sender

Price: Free & paid options available

Sender is an all-in-one email & SMS marketing platform for ecommerce and small to medium-sized businesses who want to reach out to their customers at an affordable and accessible price.

Sender provides delivery-friendly text and branded HTML email newsletters to connect with your email subscribers and biggest fans. Choose from a library of 35+ visually stunning, premium-feel newsletter design templates that are fully customizable to your specific business requirement. In addition, all templates have responsiveness baked-in to the design so that your emails are guaranteed to play nice on mobile devices. Besides offering advanced email marketing features such as segmentation and automation, Sender also allows you to design highly responsive and eye-catching popups and forms to attract sign-ups and execute SMS marketing for higher conversions. 

Sender has a ton of affordable price points and capabilities even in their free account. With the Free Forever plan, you can send up to 15,000 emails every month to 2,500 contacts at no cost, with premium features such as segmentation and automation bundled together.

11. Constant Contact

Price: $9.99 a month

Do you run a non-profit? If so, this is the newsletter tool specifically for you. Constant Contact is an email newsletter builder that offers specific templates to help nonprofits raise funds and market their missions. With hundreds of templates to choose from, you’ll be sure to find a design based on the template you need and what type of nonprofit you run.

The great thing about Constant Contact is the business analytics. While using the platform, you can see when emails are sent, delivered, opened, and shared. You will also be able to see top trends and send personalized emails to your clients.

Constant Contact also connects with your social media profiles, includes sign-up forms, and offers text message marketing tools. Contacting your non-profit subscribers via text message can be a great advantage because people check their emails but people check their text messages more. While Constant Contact is not free, its features more than make up for it. You can start at the basic subscription ($9.99/month) or upgrade to a pro account ($45/month) to unlock all the features.

12. Themezy

Price: Free

Download sixteen free HTML, CSS, and PSD customizable email templates on Themezy. You don’t have to submit an email address to get started, and there are various color schemes and layouts to meet your email list’s needs.

Plus, they’re designed to be responsive across devices to ensure that your subscribers can read your newsletter.

13. Drip

Price: Free

Drip offers email marketing and SMS marketing for ecommerce brands. Drip is a new platform that lets you set up email marketing campaigns through hundreds of customizable templates. Along with their email newsletter templates, Drip offers excellent customer relations management tools, data analytics, and trend trackers so thorough that you can see how many of your customers bought red shoes within the last year. As a result, you’ll be able to better market yourself through your campaigns. Drip also has integrations that you can connect to your WordPress website, so you can use Drip without being on Drip.

Drip lets you start with a free 14-day trial, and the cost of your subscription will depend on your number of contacts. For up to 500 contacts, it’s $19/month, and the price goes up from there. Drip is beneficial to creators and ecommerce businesses because of the various marketing and analytical tools it offers. From email marketing to SMS marketing campaigns, Drip lets you effectively engage your customers.

14. MailPortfolio by SliceJack

Price: Free

If your marketing strategy is heavily reliant on visuals, MailPortfolio is perfect for you. It’s a minimalist template with no added background distractions. While it was made for those looking to display personal creative portfolios, it’s also suitable for larger businesses and organizations.

The template has been tested with Litmus, is responsive, and works perfectly on all email clients. (Note: older versions of Outlook may not render all of the fonts, and the Android Gmail app is not fully supported.)

15. Material Design by Paul Goddard

Price: Free

This template is based on Google’s Material Design and has a robotic-retro feel. It is perfect for sending out multi-purpose newsletters featuring new products, events, and other announcements at the same time. This theme isn’t made for a specific industry, but the template is well-fitting for businesses looking for a timeless, technological look.

Material Design has been tested on Litmus, is compatible with all major ESPs, and is responsive. While its main attraction is its unique design, this theme download also includes customizable HTML files.

16. Briar by SliceJack

Price: Free

Briar is the perfect newsletter template for marketers looking for a fluid, minimalist design featuring images and text that don’t overshadow each other. It’s perfect for sending out regular newsletters, and you can customize the Inline CSS files.

The template has been tested with Litmus and works with all major email service providers (ESPs). However, some older versions of Outlook may not render all Google fonts. Also, the Android Gmail app is not fully supported.

17. EmailOctopus

Price: Free

EmailOctopus is a marketing service that launched a series of 11 templates that can be used to create newsletters for a variety of industries. Whether you’re marketing for a fashion brand or a medical supply company, one of the templates will fit your needs.

The templates have the “typical” newsletter look, but allow you to add product announcements, feature stories, and CTAs wherever you’d like. All of the templates can be modified through any WYSIWYG editor, and the downloads include the HTML files.

These templates have been tested through Litmus across all major ESPs and are responsive to all screen sizes.

1. Feshto by Liramail

Price: $29-25/template

Feshto is an email bundle that helps ecommerce companies feature products in their newsletters and share testimonials from satisfied customers. It comes with a weekly digest module, which is their version of a newsletter.

The module features a chic, clean design that ensures your images and copy are not distracting from the other. You can choose from their various layouts, such as “Weekly Digest,” “City Story,” and “Blog Article.”

As mentioned, these templates are perfect for product features and testimonials from satisfied customers. While the default themes are black and white, you can make edits in your preferred WYSIWYG editor.

Feshto’s templates are responsive and compatible with all major ESPs.

2. Bee

Price: Free – $15

Bee is an HTML template tool with thousands of free templates for any professional to use. With a variety of categories, Bee gives you a template for everything, but it also has tools that allow you to build your own email newsletters. The drag-and-drop feature allows you to pick and choose the elements that best suit your personal needs. The versatility also allows you to customize every email you send, then download it as an HTML so you can send your emails to anyone from anywhere. Another great advantage of Bee is that it allows you to save various content from different emails that can then be used in other templates. No need to start from scratch.

With Bee, you do have a 14-day free trial and plenty of free templates to use if you do not want to sign up for an account. If you would like an account, Bee offers different versions of their Pro account depending on the field you are in. For instance, they have Pro Freelancers, Pro Team, Pro Agency, Pro Enterprise, and Pro Nonprofit; Pro Freelancer starts at $15 a month.

3. ThemeForest

Price: $6-23/template

ThemeForest is an awesome resource for email templates if you have some budget to spend. Their library has over 460 newsletter templates in all different colors, styles, and themes. The templates are rated using a four-star system, and you can filter by rating, price, recency, and popularity.

Here’s one example from its library:

Market – Responsive Newsletter with Template Builder ($19)

This template has eight prebuilt layouts, 24 color variations, 24 full-layered PSD files, and more. Plus, it’s supported by all major email clients.

4. HubSpot Email Copy Templates

Price: Free

If you’re looking for written templates you can input into your email tool, these are the templates for you.

HubSpot offers free email templates that empower you to market and sell your business over email without writing a single line from scratch. These free email template downloads save you time and money.

The templates can be downloaded right to your computer and can be used by any type of business.

5. Mailchimp

Price: Free – $200 per month

Mailchimp is an all-in-one marketing platform that helps small and large businesses scale and grow their business through marketing techniques and automations. Mailchimp has a variety of pre-made templates in their email newsletter tool. Aside from giving you over 100 designs to choose from, Mailchimp also gives you the option to download their Email Blueprints, which allows you to customize HTML templates.

6. ActiveCampaign

Price: Free – $258 a month

ActiveCampaign is a full-service email provider that offers email marketing automation and CRM tools. Its library of newsletter templates allow you to create conversion-optimized, visually impactful emails without touching a single line of code.

ActiveCampaign is free, but you will need to sign up for an account to use and view their email templates. You can use the majority of their templates for free, but if you want some customization, you’ll want to upgrade to a paid account.

7. Canva

Price: Free – 20.00 per month

Canva is an online graphics software that provides free templates for a multitude of things like Instagram posts, resumes, and email newsletters. Canva is a great tool because you can find free templates for specific niches like fashion, tech, culinary, and many more. While there is a paid tier, many of the premade templates are free, and you can add your own customizations without having to pay extra.

8. Adobe Express

Price: Single Application: $33.99 a month | Full Bundle: $79.99 a month

Adobe Express, formerly known as Adobe Spark, is another browser-based graphic design tool that has a multitude of templates and functions to help any company create a newsletter. Similar to Canva, Adobe offers premade templates based on industry categories like photography, architecture, and fashion. To access the templates, you must sign up for an account with Adobe.

9. CakeMail

Price: Free – $200.00 per month

CakeMail is an email marketing tool that includes user-friendly automation tools and allows you to create customizable emails for any person, occasion, and niche. CakeMail offers over 50 free editable email templates that are divided into smaller niche categories. One of the advantages of CakeMail is that you do not have to sign up to use the email templates provided, but if you would like to see how your email campaigns are performing, you can register for an account.

10. MJML

Price: Free

MJML is an HTML-based email designer. They have a wide variety of free templates that are customized for the type of email marketing your company is trying to do, including newsletters, promotions, and seasonal emails. Once you find a template that you like, MJML allows you to see the template and the HTML code in real-time as you edit it. Because MJML is HTML-based, you will have to copy your code and transfer it to the HTML editor in an email marketing service to use the template.

11. TemplateMonster

Price: Varies

TemplateMonster offers a variety of email newsletter templates, such as the Useful Notifications newsletter template pictured below, all of which are available for relatively low prices. Their templates are clean, customizable, and easy to use, and they’re compatible with most major email clients, such as Gmail and Yahoo Mail.

Additionally, the templates come with built-in responsive layouts for screen adaptability, like the ones on the mobile phone pictured below, and PSD sources for a litany of customization options.

12. Microsoft Office Templates

Price: Free & Paid Email Templates

Microsoft Office has a variety of tools, including extensive templates that can be used for Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. You can further narrow down your templates depending on the category of your business. While Microsoft does offer free templates, they are limited. For use of the paid templates, you will have to download Microsoft 365 to use them.

Get Started on Your Email Marketing Newsletter

Ready to draft your next email newsletter campaign? Download one of the excellent newsletter templates from the template galleries and landing pages above. Then, grab your free guide below for creating an email newsletter your audience will want to engage with.

Editor’s Note: The post was originally published in December 2018 but was updated for comprehensiveness in December 2019.

Creating content isn’t always a walk in the park. (In fact, it can sometimes feel more like trying to swim against the current.)

While other parts of business and marketing are becoming increasingly automated, content creation is still a very manual job.

That being said, there are plenty of tools out there to make creating content much easier.

Below, you’ll find a list of 36 fantastic tools and resources to help you research, write, edit, and design content more easily. (You’ll notice there are a lot of design tools in here — that’s because visual content is often the part of the content creation process where people get the most nervous and frustrated. So don’t worry, we’ve got a ton in there for you.)

Let’s get started.

36 Free Tools & Resources to Make Content Creation Easier

For Researchers

1) Google Drive Research Tool

Google recently added a tool to Drive that allows you to conduct Google searches without ever leaving your Drive window. All you have to do is click “Tools” from the menu bar and choose “Research” from the dropdown menu.

2) Site:search

This is a handy Google hack I use every day. Basically, it allows you to do a Google search that’s limited to a particular website.

For example, if I wanted to search HubSpot’s blog for marketing resources so I can cite one of our old blog posts, I’d do a site:search for blog.hubspot.com with the search term marketing resources. The formula for site search is site:samplewebsite.com [search query]. So my example would be site:blog.hubspot.com marketing resources.

3) Google Webmaster Tools

Doing SEO and keyword research? Your marketing software should be able to help. But if it can’t (or you’d like to augment your data), Google’s Webmaster Tools can be a great help. You can check things like the number of indexed pages on your website, submit your site to Google so you’re getting crawled and indexed, and even disavow bad inbound links. It also can give you information on search queries that have a large volume of impressions but low clickthrough rate.

Within Google Webmaster Tools, go to “Your site on the web” and choose “Search queries.” You’ll see a table showing a search query, impressions, clicks, and clickthrough rate (CTR). Comparing this data to your other analytics data can help uncover some opportunities.

4) Percentage Change Calculator

I can’t even begin to tell you how useful this little calculator is when looking for and analyzing data. Ever want to know the percentage change of two values without having to remember the formula? Simply enter the two values into this calculator, and it’ll spit out the percentage change. Trust me, you’ll want to bookmark this one.

Here are a few other handy calculators:

• 3-Way Percentage Calculator – Calculates answers to these questions: What is X% of Y? X is what percent of Y? X is Y% of what?
• Conversion Rate Calculator – Spits out a conversion rate when you enter the total visitor count during a specific time frame and the number of times during that time frame those visitors took a specific action.
• A/B Test Calculator – Works for a basic scenario with two groups of people (A & B) who get to see one version of your website and for whom you track the number of conversions or goals (purchases, downloads, clickthroughs, etc.).
• ROI Calculator – Analyzes your website’s monthly sales and lead generation efforts to determine ways in which marketing efforts can be optimized.

5) Atlas

Atlas is Quartz‘s data center, and it’s chock-full of graphs, charts, and data visualizations. You can search for almost any topic or keyword, and Atlas will have a graphic based on recent research data for you. This is a great tool to get background information on a topic you’re researching, or to find fresh data to use in a project you’re working on. Here’s a chart based on data from early 2016:

Source: Atlas

6) Search in a Giphy

You know that coworker who always seems to find the perfect animated GIFs for your social posts or internal chat client? With the free Giphy Chrome extension, you’ll be able to find great GIFs just as quickly.

To use the tool, all you have to do is open the extension in Chrome, search, choose a GIF, and drag and drop. So far, the tool works in Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, and more — and they’re constantly expanding support.

For Writers

7) Evernote

I use the free version of Evernote every single day. From to-do lists and research notes to writing entire chunks of articles, it’s proven helpful at every step of the writing and editing process.

One great feature? Its mobile, desktop, and web apps sync automatically as long as you have an internet connection. (And if you work offline, it’ll sync the next time you have internet.) Plus — and this is super important for content creators like us — it’s constantly saving and syncing your work automatically, making it a safe place to write and store ideas.

Use it to keep a running list of ideas, take notes, store inspiring articles or ebooks, or plan your editorial and social media publishing calendars.

8) Word2CleanHTML

If you like drafting blog posts in programs like Microsoft Word, Evernote, or Google Drive instead of your content management system (CMS), then this simple tool can be your best friend. Why? Because when you copy a document from Microsoft Office and paste it into your CMS, lots of little, weird formatting issues can crop up in your HTML.

Word2CleanHTML applies filters to fix all those things added into the HTML, resulting in well-formatted HTML you can paste directly into a web page CMS. Simply paste in your draft, click one button, and then copy the resulting HTML straight from the tool. When you paste that into your CMS (most will have buttons reading “HTML” or “</>” in their tool bar above your draft), it will appear nice and clean. No hair-pulling or swimming through code required.

9) WordCounter

There is no “right answer” for how long a blog post should be. As long as it serves its purpose — whether that’s thought leadership, driving leads, explaining a new concept, or something else — length doesn’t matter. But although we don’t recommend writing blog posts with a word count in mind, sometimes word count can come in handy. WordCounter works exactly the way you think it does: Paste in your content and it’ll spit out exactly how many words you have.

10) Cofftivity

According to a study out of the University of Chicago, “A moderate level of ambient noise is conducive to creative cognition.” In other words, being the tiniest bit distracted actually helps you be more creative. That’s why for many people, myself included, white noise helps promote focus.

There are a lot of white noise generators out there, but my favorite is Cofftivity. This particular one offers non-stop café background sounds at varying intensities, from “Morning Murmur” and “University Undertones” to “Lunchtime Lounge” and “Brazil Bistro.” It’s available on the web and as an app on iOS and Android.

11) & 12) Zerys & eLance

Need to start creating content but don’t have the bandwidth? We hear about this roadblock a lot. One way to get around it is by hiring freelancers from reputable marketplaces like Zerys or eLance. These resources give you access to skilled freelance writers who can write blog posts, ebooks, whitepapers, and other pieces of written content for you.

13) HTML Hacks for Marketers

While this isn’t strictly a writing resource, basic coding knowledge is quickly becoming a must-have skill for the modern marketer — bloggers and written content creators included. But learning from scratch can be daunting. Where on earth do you start?

If you’re a total beginner, start with HTML Hacks for Marketers, which my colleagues at HubSpot created with Codeacademy. It’ll teach you quick but useful hacks anyone — regardless of coding knowledge — can use in their marketing. For example, you’ll learn how to make small changes to HTML like altering headers and spacing, creating text in block-quote form, and inserting social share links. My personal favorite is the hack to change font colors.

Once you’ve mastered these basic HTML skills, move on to Codeacademy’s free interactive courses. They found a way to make learning HTML and CSS actually fun — and you can go through each lesson at your own pace.

14) Blog Topic Generator

If you need to get to writing blog posts but aren’t sure of an angle or title to get your creativity moving, HubSpot’s Blog Topic Generator can do the work for you. Simply enter a few keywords that your blog focuses on, and the Blog Topic Generator will produce a week’s worth of titles and topic ideas for you. It might not produce the final title of your blog post, but it helps get you thinking about creative new angles for topics you’ve written about before.

Here are the blog post titles I received when I entered “content,” “inbound marketing,” and “blogging”:

15) Blog Post Templates

All blog posts aren’t created equal, but we’ve found that there are steps you can take to make your posts comprehensive and shareable. With these blog post templates, we’ll walk you through an outline to write successful how-to, listicle, newsjack, and curation blog posts. Instead of starting from scratch, you’ll save time and, hopefully, nail your blog goals.

For Content Editors

16) Editorial Calendar Template

Creating a balanced editorial calendar can be tough, especially if you don’t have one centralized calendar that you and your team can refer to. To save you time and headache, we’ve created editorial calendar templates for Google Calendar, Google Sheets, and Excel that you can fill in and share with your team to start the next month or year off on the right foot.

17) & 18) Grammarly & Correctica

While human editors will be able to catch most grammatical errors, editing tools like Grammarly and Correctica are great tools for triple-checking before you press “publish” or “send.” Both free tools check for grammatical errors — and Grammarly even checks for plagiarism.

19) Hemingway App

Ernest Hemingway, admired for his succinct writing style, is the namesake for this handy editing app. Want to make your written content easier to read? Paste your content into this free web app, and it’ll assess your writing and identify opportunities to make it simpler.

My favorite features include identifying passive voice and hard-to-read sentences. Check out the right-hand side of the screenshot below, where the tool has summed up how readable my writing is with a grade. (Some room for improvement here.) Their suggestion to improve readability overall? Shoot for lower than a 10th grade reading level.

20) Headline Analyzer

Here’s a scary stat for you: Only 60% of people who click into an article end up reading past the headline. That makes your headline both the first and possibly the only chance for you to compel readers to keep reading — so it’s totally worth it to spend the extra few minutes coming up with a really good one.

What does a really good headline look like? The free tool Headline Analyzer by CoSchedule can tell you. It scores your headline quality and rates its ability to drive social shares, traffic, and SEO value. In my experience, its strength is helping you strengthen specific components of your title. For example, it reports on perceived sentiment and commonality of word types. It’ll even show you how it will appear in search results.

So although you should take these scores and grades with a grain of salt, you can use this to give your headlines a “once-over.” (And read this blog post to learn more about writing awesome headlines.)

For Designers

21) Nimbus Screenshot

This is another tool I use every day. Sure, you can capture a screenshot of your entire screen or part of your screen using the old keyboard shortcut method. But what if you want your screenshot to include stuff that’s not visible on your screen?

Nimbus Screenshot lets you capture the visible part of a web page, a selected area, a selected scroll (my personal favorite), the entire page, or the entire browser window — including everything below the fold.

Once you’ve taken the screenshot, you can crop, edit (like adding notes and callouts), and choose to print or save to your desktop or Google Drive.

22) Canva

If you like creating beautiful visual content in a really short amount of time, you’ll love Canva. The time and resources it takes to learn design, pay for design assets, and/or get inspired to create beauty from scratch can be really difficult when you’re staring at a long list of to-dos — but Canva offers a huge library of pre-made templates and assets that you can manipulate while also adding your own imagery.

Best of all, they have so many assets and graphics available for free that you won’t have to pay a cent if you don’t want to. If you want to use more “premium” assets and graphics found through their image search, they’ll charge you $1 for each. But there’s plenty of value for free.

Here’s an example of something you could make:

23) ThingLink

Ever wanted to make an image (or infographic) clickable? ThingLink lets you upload an image and add little icons to it that appear when a person hovers their cursor over the image. These icons allow users to visit links, watch videos, or read messages you’ve written. Plus, it’s easy to share: Users can easily embed ThingLink images. (Click here for step-by-step instructions.)

Below is part of a a clickable infographic from Thinglink my colleague Ginny Mineo created for another post:

Project management isn’t just about building software and hardware. Project managers distribute resources appropriately, manage timelines, and take care of stakeholders throughout the process.

However, that’s often easier said than done. After all, there’s a reason project managers are constantly tweaking their approaches and rethinking their processes.

In this article, you’ll learn project management basics and how you can implement them in your business. Let’s get started.

Table of Contents

• What is project management?
• Why is project management important?
• What is a project manager?
• The Project Management Life Cycle
• Popular Approaches to Project Management
• Project Management Best Practices

The process includes developing plans for meeting deadlines while maintaining quality objectives within time and budget constraints. This discipline can be owned by a dedicated manager or a leader on a project.

Why is project management important?

Project management processes are essential to successful projects. Research from the Project Management Institute found that organizations that don’t integrate project management will see their outright project failure rate increase by a factor of 2/3.

That’s a shocking statistic. So, let’s dig deeper into some key benefits that result from mature project management processes.

You’ll meet important deadlines.

Project management allows you to break large tasks into smaller-scale deadlines. By sticking to these milestones, projects can easily stay on schedule from beginning to end.

In fact, companies with mature value-delivery processes deliver projects on time more frequently than those without project management (63% compared to 39%).

You’ll increase buy-in.

Project management enables a team to build trust and credibility among peers, customers, and stakeholders. After all, if you’re consistently submitting high-quality deliverables on time, then you’re bound to win people over.

You can easily track spend.

You’ll be able to stay within your budget, or even under budget. PMI found that 11.4% of all resources are wasted due to inferior project management processes.

Saving money is especially important in a landscape where only 43% of companies report that they complete projects on budget “most of the time” or “always.”

You’ll improve your culture.

You can develop a culture of continuous process improvement through knowledge management. If you foster an environment that prioritizes optimization and learning, you’ll likely inspire others and attract employees with the same mentality.

Project Manager Responsibilities

A project manager plans, organizes, and leads the execution of a project. This ensures that it meets the expected goals while delivering the required features within time and budget constraints.

Project management professionals provide leadership through effective environmental scanning, synthesis of information into meaningful data, and objective analysis. That’s a broad set of responsibilities that require training and experience.

Image Source

We’ll discuss what skills — both trained and developed through experience — you’ll need for this role.

Project Manager Skill Sets

To ensure the teams stay productive and that projects are on track, project managers need a broad set of skills. Here are some of the most important skills that you need to excel in this role.

Interpersonal Skills

Project managers (PMs) have to interact with many people, including team members, stakeholders, and other project managers. Great PMs can work with a diverse group of people to achieve a common goal.

Stakeholders often have competing objectives. To create cohesion, PMs must be diplomatic as they manage professional relationships with people who may have different perspectives, skill levels, and personal politics.

Good relationships keep team members motivated and make solving team disputes easier.

Communication Skills

Project managers must schedule frequent meetings between collaborators and provide feedback on performance. Not only do you need to know who to meet with and when, you’ll also need to balance multiple communication styles.

For example, legal will want your update in terms of contracts and risk. Meanwhile, finance will be eager to hear about your budget and spend. Engineers and the marketing team will also have different interests that require different types of communication.

Decision-Making Skills

A project manager must make decisions and take responsibility for results. Being clear about objectives and setting high expectations helps maintain morale.

Decision-making skills include prioritizing resources, developing alternative estimates, assessing risks, and ensuring proper budget management.

Management Skills

Project managers are responsible for both leading a team and reporting progress to more senior plays.

You’ll need experience leading a team, holding one-on-ones, and addressing challenges as they arise. PMs should also be able to communicate with leadership on behalf of their teams.

In some cases, project managers need to build the team for their initiative. That may include finding the right internal participants or looking outside the organization. Ideally, a PM has some experience recruiting new team members.

The Project Management Life Cycle

It’s best to look at the entire PM process as a series of stages. Each stage has an objective. In total, there are five critical stages in the project management life cycle. We’ll offer a brief overview of each stage.

• Initiation. In this stage, project managers take a look at a project realistically. They estimate how long the project should take, which eventually determines the baseline budget and timeline for the project.
• Planning. The planning stage involves analyzing technical details, assigning tasks to the right team members, and identifying risks associated with different parts of the project.
• Execution. Here you start acting on the plan you created in the previous state.
• Monitoring and control. This step ensures you meet your deadlines. Not only are you doing the work laid out in your plan, you’re also monitoring your progress. Here, you determine whether you comply with all governmental regulations and industry standards. You also track all of the project expenditures and progress.
• Closing. Bringing a project to a close is its final stage. Here, you determine whether the project delivers its intended results and whether to cancel or continue the project.

Popular Approaches to Project Management

While most organizations agree that project management is important, there are many different styles PMs use. In this section, you’ll explore four popular approaches to project management.

Product-Based Planning

Product-based planning centers its approach around outputs and project deliverables. This approach focuses on launching a product or service from conception through completion, with the end-result being sales of the product or service.

Process-Based Planning

Process-based planning ensures all project activities contribute to achieving organizational objectives. With this approach, the project manager creates, manages, and improves projects aligned with the business’ core values.

Phased Approach to Product Management

This approach involves planning and implementing projects in phases due to external constraints. Each stage goes through the five steps in the product management life cycle. Because of that, this approach is ideal for small and well-defined projects.

Project Production Management

This approach uses operations science theories and principles to understand and optimize project delivery. Project production management uses activity data to predict limits and determine achievement levels.

Project Management Best Practices

Regardless of which approach you choose, there are universal tips that help everyone. Here are some of those best practices applicable to any project in any industry or domain.

1. Invest in project management software solutions.

Today, under 1 in 4 organizations use any kind of project management software. Instead, teams rely on a patchwork of spreadsheets, paper notes, and emails. This approach results in disorganization. There’s no way to see where a project is in real time.

Project management software will help you keep track of your projects and agendas, organize tasks and activities, communicate effectively with your team, and manage risks and issues.

You can also customize dashboards to track KPIs and create reports to help forecast based on historical data and current trends for future planning.

2. Anticipate change by maintaining a flexible schedule.

Most projects run into delays. Unfortunately, minor delays can snowball into significant problems when you follow a fixed schedule. On the other hand, a flexible schedule can handle most changes in stride.

While some deadlines have flexibility, others may be rigid. Keep a list of dates that cannot change. This allows you to meet external deadlines with set timeframes while allowing for flexible deadlines in other areas.

3. Keep track of communication styles.

At the start of your project, sit down with important stakeholders. Ask how frequently they want to hear from you and how they would like to communicate.

For example, some stakeholders will want a weekly Zoom meeting with your team. Others may prefer a daily Slack update or monthly email with progress.

You can organize this information into a spreadsheet or a section of your project management software to keep organized.

4. Know your metrics.

One of the biggest challenges with any project is measuring success. Because of this, you’ll need to set measurable points before and during the execution of your project. Know which metrics matter to your project and when.

Rember essential metrics will change over time. If your project is just starting out, you may just celebrate quickly reaching important milestones.

Over time, you’ll need to prove your project impact. That includes metrics like the number of leads or contribution to ROI.

Level Up Your Project Management

Taking a closer look at the basics, you can see project management is a broad field that requires a deep understanding of communication and industry-specific nuances.

By incorporating the tools and techniques mentioned above into your daily work experience, you can enhance your performance as a project manager.

To help you get the ball rolling, check out our free project management template now — it’ll help you save a lot of valuable time and resources.

In the business world, there are many forms of marketing that companies can implement to encourage customers to buy. Behavioral marketing is one robust method of gathering data to segment and target audiences.

Behavioral marketing can also help prevent consumers from being inundated with unwanted or unrelated ads. With this type of marketing, businesses focus on individual patterns of engagement to identify their customers’ specific needs.

In this post, you’ll learn what behavioral marketing is, its benefits, and examples of how businesses today utilize the strategy today.

Table of Contents

• What is behavioral marketing?
• Types of Behavioral Marketing
• Behavioral Marketing Segmentation
• Behavioral Marketing Examples
• Behavioral Marketing Stats

This data is gathered through web analytics, cookies, search history, and other insights.

By finely segmenting audiences based on specific behaviors or user profiles, organizations can provide relevant content and offers rather than sending general messages.

Types of Behavioral Marketing

When it comes to behavioral marketing, there are many strategies that a company can implement.

While some tactics are effective, many can be combined to create a robust behavioral marketing plan. Let’s look at a few of the most popular types of tactics.

Product Suggestions

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Everyone has seen it happen when shopping online: You go to check out, and a window pops up showcasing items that are often bought with what’s in your cart. This suggested selling technique is an excellent way to engage potential customers in cross-selling or up-selling opportunities.

And, this tactic is incredibly effective. Cross-selling and category-penetration techniques like product suggestions can increase sales by 20% and profits by 30%, according to McKinsey & Company.

Product suggestions fall into behavioral marketing because an action (putting something into a cart) leads to targeted selling suggestions.

Remarketing

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For companies that utilize Google and Facebook for their marketing efforts, remarketing and retargeting strategies could be a unique approach to driving sales.

Remarketing strategies focus on taking pages or products a customer has viewed and showing them again once the potential buyer has left the website. This additional opportunity for consumers to see your products again could help drive traffic to your website or convert product sales.

Let’s say you visit the Asian Art Museum’s website to plan for your next San Francisco trip.

A few minutes later, you see an ad for the museum when you’re scrolling on Facebook. The ad you receive on Facebook is based on a past behavior (visiting a website). That’s remarketing in action.

Email Marketing

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Many organizations currently utilize email marketing as part of their marketing strategy, but few take advantage of the power of behavioral segmentation. One prime example of a behavioral segmentation email marketing strategy is abandoned cart emails.

By targeting customers who have items currently sitting in their cart for an extended period, your team can send content and emails specific to those products or categories.

Ultimately, this creates a more personalized experience for the consumer.

Demographic Targeting

Of all the behavioral marketing tactics, demographic targeting is one of the most widely used throughout the business world. Ultimately, organizations utilize criteria such as age, geographical location, education level, and even gender to create an image of a user.

Companies are even starting to look at other criteria, such as the website you visit, to help build a better vision of the type of products you might be interested in.

Marketing Automation

Data is precious to marketers, and as companies build out massive information caches, they can get better at generating and serving relevant content to consumers.

With marketing automation and machine learning technology, businesses can leverage their databases to forecast consumer behavior even months in advance.

However, data collection is a complicated and nuanced issue, and online privacy is becoming increasingly important as audience listening tools become more advanced.

Behavioral Marketing Segmentation

An important facet of the behavioral marketing method is thinly segmenting audiences. Behavioral segmentation might be determined differently depending on your organization’s marketing goals and ideal market.

However, there are a few common ways that companies split up markets, including:

• Purchase behavior
• Customer loyalty
• Benefits sought
• Customer journey stage
• Engagement level
• Occasion
• Usage

1. Liquor Loot

Effective segmented email marketing isn’t always serious. Just take a look at this abandoned cart email from Liquor Loot. The email has a joking tone as it lists the benefits of buying a bottle of whiskey.

In fact, by providing fun and playful reasons why a potential customer should consider signing up for the Whiskey Loot Box, they are likely to get engagement from those who were on the website but didn’t complete the purchase.

2. Dyson

Known for its incredible lineup of vacuums and sweepers, Dyson has done a great job of utilizing behavioral marketing. In the image above, you can see an example of one of their abandoned cart emails.

By providing a recap of the items that a shopper was thinking about buying and making it easy for them to return to the purchase screen, Dyson can recapture lost sales before they are gone for good.

3. Nike

Nike has long been seen as a leader in the marketing space. Most people know of the company’s creative use of advertising campaigns featuring athletes to inspire millions of kids and adults to get up and be active.

However, Nike has also built out an incredible digital marketing strategy.

The remarketing ad featured above seems simple but can be a powerful tool to drive potential buyers shopping for shoes back to the Nike website.

4. Trivago

In today’s day and age, it’s common for consumers to visit a company’s website multiple times before deciding to purchase. This trend is especially true for businesses that focus on travel and transportation — which is why remarketing ads are essential.

Many people visit Trivago’s website to look up vacation destinations, but most people don’t often purchase the first time they look at a location.

So to ensure that the company stays top of mind, Trivago utilizes remarketing ads on Facebook and Google to showcase new updated offers for hotels in location spots a customer was previously searching.

5. Amazon

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Amazon has cornered the market on effective suggestive advertising. Throughout its website, you’ll see advertisements and sections that recommend products based on items you’ve purchased in the past, looked at, or have sitting in your cart.

You can also see what past buyers have purchased as a complement to the item in your cart.

By creating this level of personalization, Amazon has converted people from buying one item to doing most of their shopping through the online retailer.

Behavioral Marketing Stats

Looking for more proof of the power of behavioral marketing? These statistics demonstrate the growing popularity and benefits of behavioral marketing.

• Organizations that leverage consumer behavior data to generate insights outperform their competitors by 85% in sales growth, according to Microsoft.

• 92% of consumers agree it is important that every interaction they have with a brand is excellent, whenever or wherever they happen in the decision to purchase from a brand or retailer.

• 49% of customers say they will likely become repeat buyers after a personalized shopping experience with a retail brand, according to Segment’s 2022 State of Personalization report.
• Segment also reports 47% of companies personalize communication based on real-time behavior.

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• Companies that grow faster drive 40% more of their revenue from personalization than their counterparts, according to 2021 research from McKinsey & Company.

• McKinsey & Company also reports that 71% of consumers expect personalization. That includes product recommendations and targeted promotions.

Implementing Behavioral Marketing

Your customers expect a personalized experience. Behavioral marketing is one way you can get there. As you start your journey, remember the importance of transparency.

Customers should know what data is being collected and what your brand is using it for. With these considerations in mind, you’ll be well on your way to building an effective behavioral marketing strategy.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in Aug. 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Product marketing is essential, even if you only sell one or two products at your organization.

But what is product marketing? How do you market a product, and how does that differ from conventional marketing strategies? Let’s find out.

What makes product marketing unique? How is it different from conventional marketing? Let’s unpack the differences.

Product Marketing vs. Conventional Marketing

Product marketing is strategic whereas conventional marketing is all-encompassing.

Product marketing is considered a component of conventional marketing. In fact, if you look at the seven Ps of marketing, you’ll see product marketing is one of the most important aspects of a business’s marketing efforts.

Product marketing is about understanding a specific product’s audience deeply and developing that product’s positioning and messaging to appeal to that audience. It covers the launch and execution side of a product in addition to the marketing strategy for the product — which is why the work of a product marketer lies at the center of a business’s marketing, sales, and product teams.

Conventional marketing is focused on broader topics under the umbrella of marketing, such as lead generation, SEO, and anything related to acquiring and converting new leads and customers. It’s about promoting the company and brand as a whole, including the products sold. These marketers make sure there’s a consistent, on-brand message behind all of the company’s content.

To understand it better, let’s look at product marketing goals.

Product Marketing Goals

Product marketing is focused on driving demand for and adoption of a product among existing customers. It’s focused on the steps people take to purchase your product so product marketers can build campaigns to support this work.

Usually, product marketing is executed with several goals in mind:

1. Understand your customers better.

When you implement a product marketing strategy, your target audience can see the value of having that specific product in their lives. Understanding how many customers gravitate to your product lets you conduct customer research.

2. Target your buyer personas effectively.

Alongside understanding your customers, you can figure out the type of buyer persona to target in the future. Knowing the exact needs of your target can help you when innovating your product to better suit their needs.

3. Learn about your competitors (products and marketing tactics).

When you market your product, you can compare your strategy and results to your competitors. What features and benefits of their products make a statement within the market? What ideas haven’t they explored? What does their product offer that yours doesn’t? You can use this research to your advantage when crafting your product marketing strategy.

4. Ensure the marketing, product, and sales teams are all on the same page.

Making your product offering abundantly clear for buyers and employees is mutually beneficial. Every team working together in your business can better understand the product’s purpose and better communicate that in their operations.

5. Position the product appropriately in the market.

In product marketing, you want your product, brand image, and tone consistent and evoke the right feelings intended for your audience. When you brainstorm your brand positioning, some questions to consider are:

• Is this product suitable for today’s market?

• How is this product different from our competitors’?

• Can we further differentiate this product from our competitors’ offerings?

• Are there any products we’ve sold in the past that we wouldn’t market or sell again? If so, why not?

6. Boost revenue and improve sales.

There are also questions you, as a product marketer, will have to ask yourself and reflect on regregardyour product. Asking yourself these questions will help you ensure your product is successful among customers.

• Is this product suitable for today’s market?

• Is this product appropriate for our customers today?

• How is this product unique from similar productstof our competitors?

• Is there a way to further differentiate this product from our competitors? 

• Are there any products we’ve sold in the past that we wouldn’t market or sell ever again now that we look back? If so, why not?

As you can see, product marketing requires you to look at your products strategically to ensure they’re successful among customers in your current market.

Why is product marketing essential?

Product marketing is a critical part of any business’s marketing strategy. Without it, your product won’t achieve its maximum potential among your target audience.

To illustrate its importance, let’s look at an example of successful product marketing. During the 1950s, Volkswagen sold a bus. Although now considered a classic vehicle, the bus remains an icon for the car company decades later.

The cool part? Volkswagen announced their new VW Bus — it’s electric and features sleek, modern styling. Volkswagen’s marketing for the vehicle is eye-catching, unique, and fun, and it complements the original “hippie” vibe the company was once known for.

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Volkswagen also released a TV commercial for the bus that’s clever, minimalist, and on-brand. It introduces the new vehicle with the song The Sound of Silence playing in the background (hint: electric cars are silent) and ends with a short message on the screen for viewers to read: “Introducing a new era of electric driving.”

This sentiment touches on the fact Volkswagen is contributing to society’s interest in electric, eco-friendly vehicles. It also relates to this being a new era for the bus.

This is why product marketing is important: Because it highlights not the company but the product itself, ensuring longevity in the market.

But who works on this type of marketing? Who helps create content that excites consumers about new and updated products, like the Volkswagen bus? Who encourages consumers to buy? Product marketers.

Now, let’s take a look at the specific responsibilities that product marketers (or product marketing managers) face in their typical day.

Your responsibilities as a product marketer may vary slightly based on industry, company, products, and company size and resources. If you’re working for a startup, you may be a product marketer who also helps create the content the broader marketing team produces due to limited resources and budget. As the business grows, you may move onto a team whose sole job is product marketing.

Let’s take a look at six common product marketing responsibilities.

1. Identify the buyer personas and target audience for your product.

You must identify the buyer personas and audience for your product so you can target customers in a convincing way that makes them want to purchase. This will allow you to tailor your product and its features to solve your audience’s challenges.

Pro tip: Use templates to create buyer personas for your business. A tangible outline of whom you’re catering to can help align different teams in your business and better position your product in the marketplace.

2. Successfully create, manage and carry out your product marketing strategy.

A product marketing strategy (which we’ll review shortly) allows you to create, build, and execute content and campaigns — this supports the steps that will lead your buyer personas and customers to make a purchase.

3. Work with and enable sales to attract customers for your new product.

As a product marketer, you have to mamusta direct relationship with sales. You’ll work with sales to identify and attract the right customers for the product at hand and provide sales enablement materials to reps to ensure they understand the product inside and out, along with its features.

This way, you and your teams are on the same page in termregarding being shared with customers, allowing you to provide a consistent, on-brand experience for anyone who comes in contact with the product.

4. Determine your product’s positioning in the market.

One of the most important parts of your job is determining the product’s positioning in the market. Think about this process in terms of storytelling — your positioning requires you to create and tell the story of your product.

As a product marketer, you’ll work with the broader marketing team and the product team to tell this story by answering critical questions like:

• Why was this product made?

• Whom is this product made for?

• What challenges does this product resolve?

• What makes this product unique?

5. Ensure your product meets the needs of your target audience.

You must also make sure your product meets the needs of your customers and target audience. Through the research to determine your buyer persona and target audience, you should have uncovered the pain points and challenges you’re working to solve with your product.

If your product doesn’t meet thyour customers’ needsthey’ll have no reason to make the purchase or choose your product over your competitor’s.

6. Keep your product relevant over time.

Your product needs to stay relevant over time. As needs, expectations, and challenges change and evolve, it’s your job to ensure your product marketing strategy and the products themselves remain relevant among customers.

This means you may have to manage slight changes in your product marketing strategy (which we’ll discuss next) or updates and modifications to the product itself (you’ll likely work with the product team, which creates the effect, to do this).

7. Guide marketing strategies for new products.

In product marketing, you’ll need to pay close attention to what worked in your strategy and what didn’t so you can better plan marketing strategies for new and future products. Pay attention to where your audience is and what they are looking for. What channels got the most traction and led to more converted leads?

All this information and more should be applied to marketing strategies for new products.

Now, let’s take a look at five steps that can help you optimize your product marketing strategy.

1. Define your product’s target audience and buyer personas.

As a product marketer, one of the main roles you have is to define a specific target audience and create buyer personas for the product being sold (different products will likely have different target audiences). This is the first step to marketing your product.

By understanding your customers and their needs, challenges, and pain points, you’ll be able to end that all aspects of your product marketing strategy (as in the rest of the steps we’ll define below) are tailored to that target customer and persona. This way, the product and the marketing content created for the product will resonate with your audience.

2. Determine the positioning and messaging to set your product apart.

After your customer research and learning about your audience, you’ll have identified their needs, challenges, and pain points. From here, you can think about how to highlight the ways your product resolves those challenges for your customers.

However, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve differentiated yourself from your competitors. After all, they are your competitors because they solve your customers’ needs in a similar way to your company.

The key to setting your product apart is positioning (which we touched on earlier) and messaging. Posi—positioningessaging answers key questions your customers might have about your product and what makes it unique and th,en turns those answers into the main points behind your product’s marketing strategy.

It’s your job as the product marketer to ensure your customers and audience know the answers to these questions and don’t have to dig around for (or make assumptions about) them.

Examples of questions you’ll need to answer to develop your product’s positioning and messaging include the following:

• What specifically makes our product unique?

• Why is our product better than our competitors’?

• Why are our product’s features ideal for our target audience?

• What will our fromers get out of our product that they cannot get from our competitors’ products?

• Why should our customers trust and invest in us and our product?

Once you’ve answered these questions, you can compile these responses into one, impactful and shareable statement that captures your positioning and messaging To do this, follow these steps:

• Turn the answers to the positioning and messaging questions into an elevator pitch.

• Use action words to excite your customers.

• Ensure the tone of your statement captures the style of your brand.

• Focus on the benefit of your product as a whole (not just one specific feature).

Pro Tip: As product marketers, you should ensure the sales, product, and (the broader) marketing teams are also aware of your positioning and messaging around the product so they, too, can communicate the same information to prospects and current customers.

This allows you to ensure the entire company is consistent in the content and information they share about your product. Additionally, you can provide this information to your support team if you think it’s necessary, as they may be fielding support calls and working with your customers who’ve already invested in the product.

3. Set goals for your product.

Next, you’ll want to set goals for your product. These will vary based on your specific product, the type of company you work for, your overall marketing goals, and more — your goals will be specific to your business and situation. However, let’s review some common goals product marketers aim to achieve:

• Increase revenue

• Engage with customers

• Improve market share

• Gain customers from competitors

• Boost brand recognition

Pro Tip: Feel free to combine several goals or choose one to focus on — every company and product will have different plans. The key is ensuring you view and set these targets in the SMART goal format, meaning they’re specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound.

Use a free template to help you create and achieve your SMART goals.

4. Price your product.

As a product marketer, you’ll also have to contribute to the discussion of the price of your product. Depending on your company, you might work with other teams on this part of the strategy, or it might be a job just for you and your fellow product marketers. Either way, you can consider competitive vs. value-based pricing.

Competitive vs. Value-Based Product Pricing

Competitive pricing means you’re basing your product’s price off similar products your competitors sell. It’s ideal for companies that have an effect similar to one that several other companies sell.

Suppose you believe your unique features warrant a significantly higher price e of your competitors’. In that case, you might price your product above the other similar products on the market. An excellent way to evaluate the fairness of the pricing of all of your competitors is by studying financial reports and industry trends.

Value-based pricing allows you to maximize your profit, although it’s a bit more time-consuming to establish in comparison to competitive pricing. It’s ideal for companies selling a product with very few competitors on the market or one with exceptionally new and unique features.

Value-based pricing quantifies your item’s value in a way your customer can relate to their profitability. It allows you to base your product’s price on its value for your customer rather than whatever the market, industry trends, and your competitors say.

5. Launch your product.

Now it’s time for the most impoessentialt of your role as a product marketer — not to mention, the most exciting: the launch of the product you’ve been marketing.

There are two main parts to the launch to focus on as a product marketer: the internal launch (what goes on within your company upon product launch) and the external launch (what goes on outside of your company, with customers and audience members, upon product launch).

Internal Aspects of a Product Launch

As previously stated, your job as a product marketer entails ensuring the entire organization is on the same page about your product. This way, your customers only receive consistent and accurate details about the product.

The marketing, product, and sales teams at your company should be aware of the following information:

• The product’s benefits

• Any available product demo information

• Sales training opportunities on your product and details about how it’s used

• What the positioning and messaging looks like

• Who your buyer personas, and ideal customers are

• What the goals for your product include

• What your product’s features are

• The pricing of your product

• How your product is being launched to customers

Now, you might be wondering how to provide this information to marketing, product, and sales. Which channels are ideal for sharing these details with your fellow employees?

Here are a few examples of ways to do this:

• Sales enablement kit (ideal for sales)

• Presentation (ideal for the broader marketing department and product)

• Knowledge base (ideal for support)

External Aspects of a Product Launch

Externally, there are many ways to market your product launch so your current base of customers, prospects, and target audience learn about whatever it is you’re selling.

First, determine where you’re going to focus your product marketing efforts. Here are some examples of channels and places to do this (you might choose several of these or just one to focus on depending on your needs, goals, and resources).

• Social media

• In-store

• Product launch event

• Blog

• Website landing page

• Exclusive product preview (prior to the official launch)

• Promotional event/ campaign (in-person and/ or online)

On whatever channel you choose to focus your product launch marketing efforts, you should include relevant product information (focused on your positioning and messaging) so prospects and customers can learn all about your product and why they need it. This includes your product’s features, what makes it unique, pricing, demos for customers, training for customers, and any other materials you’ve created and want to share.

Congrats! You’ve just worked through the steps to marketing a product. Remember, this process is one that should be thought about and updated as your products change and evolve so they remain relevant among your customers. (This shouldn’t be an issue as long as you have a member of your team focused on product marketing, considering it’s one of their main responsibilities.)

Now that you know how to create a product marketing strategy, how do you market a product across your channels? Let’s take a look.

1. Create a product marketing deck for other marketing teams.

Non-product marketers — i.e, social media marketers and content marketers — won’t have the full know-how on your product, impeding them from marketing it properly on customer-facing channels. As a product marketer, your job isn’t necessarily to execute marketing campaigns or write content. Instead, your job is to enable specialized teams — such as your social media and content team — to market your company’s products effectively.

The first step is to provide a deck, presentation, or document that outlines your product marketing strategy to other marketers. That way, when it’s time to execute on a strategy, they know the positioning they are aiming for, the wording they are to use, and the personas they are targeting.

2. Publish product-focused content on your blog.

A blog is primarily a place to attract inbound leads. Rather than trying to hammer them with information about your product, you might write content that helps them solve an issue instead, and then offer them a free guide or ebook to help them further.

But did you know that your team can publish content that attracts inbound leads and encourages purchases and sign-ups? At HubSpot, we call this product-focused content. It’s just as helpful as our other content, but with a critical difference: It has a call-to-action to try one of HubSpot’s products.

For instance, our blog post, What is a CMS and Why Should You Care?, aims to inform readers about content management systems, but then includes a call-to-action to try CMS Hub.

While the blog post is still informative and not overtly promotional, it still promotes one of our products. In the same way, you or your content team can write helpful content for your readers, help them the inbound way, and still encourage customers to try your offerings.

3. Insert product mentions naturally in your existing marketing collateral.

If you’ve had a longstanding marketing strategy prior to beginning product marketing, we have good news: You can retroactively market your product in existing collateral. For instance, if you already have an expansive library of blog posts, you can update them with information about your products (so long as the mention is natural).

Recent social media posts can also be candidates for an update, and your website content should also change to show your brand new product. Internal links from related pages can help drive traffic to your new product pages.

In addition, if your marketing team has created marketing offers in the past, you can have them update the offer and add a call-to-action to try your newest product — like in this example from HubSpot’s Case Study Templates offer, where we prompt users to try CMS Hub.

4. Try comarketing with a similar brand.

Comarketing is an excellent way to market your product to a related audience. You can do something as simple as filming a video together, writing a collaborative blog post, posting on each other’s social channels, or running a webinar.

Your product should be an excellent match for the other company’s customers. Ideally, both of your products can be used in conjunction and not compete directly. For instance, Ankor Software and HubSpot partnered for a webinar, but Ankor Software doesn’t compete with HubSpot CRM — it complements it.

5. Launch PPC ads and bid on your and competitors’ keywords.

Pay-per-click (PPC) is an essential product marketing tactic. While content and social media marketing can help you attract inbound leads, you can get the attention of even more potential customers by posting PPC ads on search engines.

When setting up your PPC campaign, bid not only on general product keywords (such as “crm software” or “[insert category]”), but on your own branded terms and your competition’s as well. That way, customers who are considering purchasing the same product from a competitor will consider you as an alternative.

6. Focus on the benefits, not the features.

Regardless of the channel or platform you’re promoting your product on, highlight the benefits customers will experience, not the features of your product. Not only can features feel jargony (like “Customizable attribution models” or “Automated contact workflows”), but they shroud the benefits and alienate non-technical customers.

Try, instead, leading with the benefits, such as “Know where exactly your leads come from” or “Save time by automating tasks using contact workflows.” For instance, on the Marketing Hub page, the features snapshot reads:

“Attract visitors through blogging, social media, ads, and more. Convert visitors into customers with landing pages, email, marketing automation, ABM, and more. Track ROI with revenue attribution reporting. All powered by the customer data in your CRM to enable personalization at scale.”

Using benefit-first language will engage customers and prompt them to try your products. The “how” of the benefit — such as features or functionalities — come after.

Let’s review four real-life examples of stellar product marketing.

1. Apple

Apple is a household name for leading technology products and software. Not only are its products gorgeously well-designed; it’s also super useful. But Apple’s product marketing doesn’t focus on the many product features — it markets the user benefits.

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Apple doesn’t simply list the impressive features of their products; the brand uses those features to tell consumers who they could be and how they could work if they have those products. Apple tells a narrative using its products and encourages people to buy in the process.

2. Billie

Billie is a women’s razor brand. In a highly competitive market, Billie has helped its products stand out. How? It established a sharp competitive edge (no pun intended) by doing what no razor brand had done before — show body hair in its advertising.

Not only did this advertising approach get Billie’s audience talking about the brand, but they also appreciated the brand’s accurate portrayal of women’s bodies and body hair. These differentiators were more than enough to set Billie apart from other razor brands and products.

3. Pepsi Cola

As a brand, Pepsi has positioned itself as one with youthful energy and excitement, and this can be seen consistently through its product marketing campaigns.

Pepsi’s customers are mainly aged between 13 and 35 years old with modern and active lifestyles, so it only makes sense to hire popular celebrities like Doja Cat for a commercial in a homecoming tailgate.

Through highly targeted positioning, repetitive advertising, and consistent branding, Pepsi has become a truly global household name and product.

4. MailChimp

There are dozens of email marketing tools on the market, but MailChimp hasn’t been fazed by competition. In fact, the company has risen above its competition by positioning itself as more than an email marketing tool: it’s an all-in-one marketing platform that helps businesses grow.

Like Apple, MailChimp primarily highlights its benefits for the end-user, not just its product features. A recent rebranding and site redesign further drives this narrative home.

Start Marketing Your Products

Product marketing is the process through which a company brings a product to market. Being a product marketer (or product marketing manager) means you’re at the center of your company’s marketing, sales, and product teams.

You’re an integral part to the success of your product, as you create and manage your product’s specific marketing strategy, but you also serve as a liaison between all three of these departments, ensuring everyone is on the same page with your product, it’s features, capabilities, and more. So, start developing your latest product’s marketing strategy to ensure it’s a success among your target audience and customers.

This post was originally published in February 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.