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Over the last decade, I’ve helped set and track marketing goals for B2B businesses of all kinds — And I’ve come to think of them more as destinations.

They’re points on the map your team wants to reach. And B2B marketing KPIs (key performance indicators)? Well, they’re how you measure how far you’ve gone and just how far you have left.

You can measure trips in miles, hours, or even how many Spotify playlists you’ve gone through. Similarly, there are dozens of KPIs to measure progress toward our marketing goals — but don’t worry; there’s no need to guess and check.

Regardless of industry or audience, there are some KPIs everyone should be tracking, and I’ve compiled them for you here. We’ll define them, why they’re important, and how to track them effectively.

Table of Contents

• What are B2B marketing KPIs?

• Why track B2B Marketing KPIs and metrics?

• B2B Marketing KPIs and Metrics

• How to Report Your B2B Marketing KPIs and Metrics

What are B2B marketing KPIs?

As HubSpot contributor Rebecca Riserbato explains, a key performance indicator (KPI) “measures how your company is performing regarding certain long-term goals or objectives.”

That means B2B marketing KPIs are data points marketers use to monitor and measure the progress of their business-to-business (B2B) marketing initiatives (e.g., website campaigns or email marketing).

It kind of sounds like a metric, doesn’t it? But — plot twist — they’re not the same.

B2B Marketing KPIs vs. B2B Marketing Metrics

Every time I’ve set marketing goals, I’ve needed a refresher on the difference between marketing KPIs and metrics. Many people even use them interchangeably, but this is a little misguided.

KPIs and metrics are similar and work together but have very different responsibilities — like sales and marketing, design and development, or forks and spoons.

Image Source

KPIs are focused on the big picture. They relate directly to your business’s larger long-term goals and are the same across departments.

Metrics are related to business goals, too, but they zero in on specific tactics and initiatives used to accomplish them and tend to change by department.

To use our travel example again, your KPI could be visiting all of Italy in a month. However, your metrics would be tracking individual cities or regions you need to visit to accomplish that.

Thinking of business: say you want to increase your number of new customers by 25% this year. That’s your KPI.

Your marketing metrics would be the click-through rate of the social media ads you run to try to generate new leads or the open rate of the email campaigns you run.

But why do we even need to track any of these things?

Why track B2B marketing KPIs and metrics?

Simply put, B2B marketing KPIs tell you what your team is working toward and where everything it does needs to lead. They give you direction.

They help guide your strategy by giving you something to point to and ask, “Is this going to help get us to that goal?”

Marketing metrics go even further. These measurements can help you:

• Track progress toward your goals
• Gather customer/audience insights
• Evaluate the effectiveness of your work/creative
• Improve conversion rates
• Plan more effective future campaigns
• Prove return on investment (ROI)
• Incentivize teams
• Make better business decisions

I’ve always liked to say that marketing is a happy marriage of creativity — and science and metrics are the keys to this.

B2B Marketing KPIs and Metrics to Track

Now that you know why tracking B2B marketing KPIs and metrics is important, which ones should you focus on?

Specifics will depend on your organization’s specific campaigns and company goals, but here are 24 of the most important based on some of the most popular marketing initiatives.

Need help tracking your KPIs? HubSpot’s KPI Software can help you build dashboards, create and send automated reports, and track KPIs to measure your teams’ performance and drive improvement over time.

Website Performance KPIs and Metrics

According to our 2024 State of Marketing report, company websites/blogs/SEO have resulted in the biggest ROI for marketers in the past year, which likely comes as no surprise.

For many, your website is the center of all your content marketing and even sales. Website KPIs and metrics help you make sure it’s performing to the level you need it to.

1. Website Traffic: This is the volume of users visiting a website.

Why is it important? Your company website is the hub of many modern businesses. Even if it’s not where people are making actual purchases, it’s where they come to learn more about what you do and often even initiate sales conversations.

Understanding traffic helps you gauge interest and potential for sales activity. In terms of specific metrics, you can track:

• Unique Visits: Total number of unique individuals who click on one or more web pages in a visit.
• Page Views: Total number of web pages viewed, including individually refreshed pages.
• Traffic Source: Where your website visitors come from (i.e., email, social media, search engine)

How to calculate and track it? You can track your website traffic through a number of different tools. In my experience, a combination of HubSpot Analytics and Google Analytics is most effective for businesses using HubSpot tools.

In HubSpot, you can easily view your page views and sessions filtered by time frame or source.

2. Bounce Rate: This is the percentage of website visitors that click on one page and leave.

Why is it important? Bounce rate can help you gauge if your website is delivering what it needs to achieve your goals. If your bounce rate is low, that could mean that people are interested and engaged in your website.

They’re staying and clicking around.

If it’s high, it could mean either your website is not what someone was looking for or didn’t deliver what they wanted, or they immediately found what they needed and could leave.

How to calculate and track it? This is another KPI you can track for specific website pages, landing pages, and blogs in HubSpot. Here’s how it can appear in the analytics of a blog article.

3. Conversions: How many visitors took your desired action on your website, like subscribing to your newsletter or making a purchase.

(It’s also the most important marketing metric if you ask me.)

Why is it important? Leads and new contacts are fuel for your marketing and sales funnel. When someone fills out a form on your website, they’ve shown an active interest in what you offer and want to connect with your business.

It’s a crucial first action to put the rest of your marketing and nurturing activities into motion. People can convert on several different things, so this may mean tracking:

• Form Conversion Rate (or visit to form submission): This is the percentage of website visitors that submit a form. (Formula: Form conversion rate = (total form conversions / total visitors) x 100)
• Number of Form Submissions: This is how many times forms were submitted on your website.
• Number of New Contacts: How many new contacts has your website generated.
• Visit to New Contact: This is what percentage of visits to your website resulted in a new contact.

How to calculate and track it? HubSpot or any tool you use to host your forms or landing pages should provide you with calculated conversion rates automatically, but even if they don’t, you can calculate yours with this formula:

Conversion Rate = Total number of conversions /

Number of visitors (or submissions, clicks, etc.) x 100

Sales and Marketing Pipeline

Once someone fills out a form on your website, they enter your sales and marketing pipeline to be nurtured toward making a purchase.

63% of B2B marketers report tracking their marketing/sales funnel as KPIs and metrics, and with their direct correlation to revenue, they should be.

4. Number of Leads (or Leads In): This is the total number of contacts generated by your campaigns that could buy from you.

Why is it important? Similar to your number of new contacts, this tells you how many new people you have to nurture towards a purchase. However, they’re different in that these contacts have the qualities that signal it could turn into a customer.

Think of it this way: If you sell enterprise software, a college student could become a contact after downloading a report on your website for a class project, but they can’t buy from you. That said, they are a contact but not a lead.

How to calculate and track it? What criteria actually makes someone qualify as a lead is up to your business, but once you have that set, you can use HubSpot Lead Scoring to identify these contacts.

From there, you can create an active list in HubSpot to automatically segment these leads and keep an eye on the size of that list.

5. Cost Per Lead (CPL): This is the total number of dollars it takes to acquire a potential customer.

Why is it important? HubSpot’s Jay Fuchs explains, “Generally speaking, [CPL] is used to gauge the efficacy of individual campaigns — via channels like Google ads, email marketing, or social media — but it can also help you understand whether you’re getting the most out of your marketing spend as a whole.”

In other words, this can help you determine if your marketing campaign is cost-effective. If it costs more to bring in a lead than you’ll make off it, that campaign was not worth your time.

How to calculate and track it? You’ll need to calculate this on your own or through a spreadsheet. Use this formula:

Cost of Lead Generation/Total Number of Leads = Cost per Lead

Fuchs explains this formula in detail in “How to Calculate & Apply Cost per Lead (CPL).”

6. Close Rate (or Lead to Closing Rate): This is the percentage of leads that eventually become customers.

Why is it important? Your close rate can help gauge the quality of the leads you’re bringing in as well as your sales process.

If your close rate is high, things are going well. If not, you may need to re-evaluate your lead criteria or sales behavior.

How to calculate and track it? This is another KPI you’ll need to calculate on your own or through a spreadsheet. Use this formula:

Close Rate =

(number of leads that closed as sales / total number of leads) x 100

7. Number of MQLs (Marketing Qualified Leads): The number of leads engaged with your company’s marketing and have the potential to become a more serious prospect.

Why is it important? MQLs help your marketing team understand how many leads they’re bringing in and if they’re quality leads.

How to calculate and track it? Like number of leads, you can use a combination of HubSpot Lead Scoring, an active list in HubSpot, and workflows to automatically segment these leads and keep an eye on the size of that list. Learn more about MQLs.

8. Number of SQLs (Sales Qualified Leads): Number of prospective customers ready to talk to someone on your sales team.

Why is it important? SQLs have usually expressed enough interest in your product or service to be ready to move into your sales process. Tracking this number lets you know how many people your sales team is currently working with.

It also provides valuable insight into which marketing efforts generate the most sales activity.

How to calculate and track it? Once again, you can use a combination of HubSpot Lead Scoring, an active list in HubSpot, and workflows to automatically segment these SQLs and keep an eye on the size of that list. Learn more about SQLs.

Pro Tip: If your marketing and website are hosted on HubSpot, our Dashboard & Reporting software is a user-friendly, single source of truth for all this data.

9. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): The amount of money it takes to convert a potential lead into a customer.

Why is it important? Like CPL, CAC tells you how cost-efficient your marketing and sales processes are. You don’t want to be spending more on getting customers than you are making from them.

How to calculate and track it? Information from HubSpot can help guide this calculation, but ultimately, this is another you’ll need to calculate it on your own or through a spreadsheet. Use this formula:

CAC = marketing spend/number of new customers resulting from campaign

10. Customer lifetime value (CLV): The total amount of revenue a business can expect to make from a single customer.

Why is it important? Knowing how much you’ll make from a customer is helpful when determining how much you can spend trying to close them. In other words, this is a useful metric to compare to CAC. If your CAC is higher than your LTV, you’re likely spending too much money acquiring customers and need to revisit your strategy.

The higher the CLV, the more valuable the customer from a financial standpoint.

How to calculate and track it? Calculate this KPI on your own or through a spreadsheet using the formula:

Customer lifetime value =

average transaction size x number of transactions x retention period

11. Monthly recurring revenue (MRR): This is the amount of revenue a business receives from a customer each month, such as for a subscription-based service or consulting retainer.

Why is it important? This is how much money you are “guaranteed” to have each month from your customers. It allows you to plan budgets and make other financial predictions.

How to calculate and track it? Information from HubSpot can help guide this calculation, but ultimately, this is another you’ll need to calculate it on your own or through a spreadsheet. Use this formula:

Monthly recurring revenue =

average revenue per customer x total number of customers

12. Net Promoter Score (NPS): This is a measurement of customer satisfaction using a scale of 1-10 to gauge how likely a customer would recommend your business to a friend. (10 being extremely likely, 1 being unlikely)

Why is it important? NPS gives you a good idea of how happy customers are with their purchase and how likely they are to buy again or stick around. Plus, referrals, recommendations, and other forms of word-of-mouth can lead to quick closes, so you want to make sure your customers want to give them.

How to calculate and track it? Owl Lab’s Sophia Bernazzani Barron recommends calculating NPS using these three steps:

1. Survey your customers and ask them, “On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend us to a friend?”

2. Categorize respondents according to their score: Scores 0-6 are Detractors, 7-8 are Passives, and 9-10 are Promoters.

3. Disregarding the Passives, subtract the percentage of Detractor responses from the percentage of Promoter responses to determine your Net Promoter Score. This score can range from -100 to 100.

13. Return on Investment (ROI): the amount of money you gain from your marketing efforts compared to their cost.

Why is it important? You never want to spend more than you make. Like CPL and CAC, calculating and tracking your marketing ROI can help you determine how you are performing in that regard.

How to calculate and track it? You can calculate your ROI using this formula:

ROI =

(Total Revenue – Total Investment) / Total Investment

Learn more about calculating marketing ROI.

Email Marketing KPIs and Metrics

14. Number of Email Contacts (or Email List Size): This is how many people in your database have opted into email marketing and communication from you.

Why is it important? Email marketing is not dead. In fact, 77% of marketers have seen an increase in email engagement over the last 12 months, so your email list size does matter. The more email contacts you have, the more people you can reach with targeted campaigns.

Read: Email Marketing: The Ultimate Guide (Expert Tips + Data to Know)

How to calculate and track it? You should be able to see the total number of contacts in your database using any of your email marketing tools, including HubSpot. In HubSpot, navigate to CRM > Contacts and see the total number of records below the header.

But this number may not always be accurate. It also includes contacts whose email addresses you have but perhaps have unsubscribed.

Knowing this, I recommend having an active list in HubSpot, pulling all of the CRM’s subscribed and engaged contacts.

15. Email Open Rate: The percentage of people opening your marketing emails.

Why is it important? There’s no point in sending an email if people aren’t opening and reading it. This metric lets you know how successful you are at this or if you need to adjust your subject line, send time, or sender, among other things.

How to calculate and track it? This is another metric that should be easily found in any mainstream email marketing tool.

In HubSpot, you just need to navigate to the email in question, click “actions,” then “view performance,” and you’ll find the open rate called out right below the header.

If your tool doesn’t provide this metric or you use a personal email client, you can calculate your open rate using this formula:

Email open rate =

(number of emails opened / total number of emails delivered) x 100

Note: While you can certainly calculate email metrics on your own, it’s next to impossible to know exactly how many people opened your email without a third-party tool.

So, even if you don’t have the budget, I recommend investing in a free email marketing tool to track your metrics more easily.

16. Email click-through rate (CTR): This is how many people click a link in the email you sent out of those who opened it.

Why is it important? An open is one thing, but the click is what you’re really after with email marketing. CTR tells you just how effectively your email copy convinced someone to take action.

How to calculate and track it? Like open rate, CTR can be found prominently in your email performance page or dashboard like here in HubSpot:

You can also calculate your CTR using this formula:

Email clickthrough rate =

(number of email clicks / total number of emails delivered) x 100

Like opens, this can be difficult to measure without a formal email marketing tool. If you opt not to use an email marketing tool like HubSpot or MailChimp, use bit.ly or other UTM tracking tools to create trackable URLs.

Social Media KPIs and Metrics

According to our research, social media ties with a company’s website or blog as the top ROI-driving channel for marketers in the past 12 months. So, it’s important to know how you’re performing there.

Organic social media is usually best suited to boosting brand awareness and engaging your audience, while paid social media can generate big results in sales and more.

The KPIs I recommend for both reflect that, but you can dig deeper into social media analytics in our ultimate guide.

17. Social media reach (following): Total number of followers across social media or per platform.

Why is it important? Like an email subscriber, a social media follower “opts in ” to stay in contact with your business and hear more about what your brand has to offer.

This number gives you a good estimate of your initial reach on social media before things like engagement and hashtags.

How to calculate and track it? Most social media tools like Buffer, Hootsuite, and SproutSocial have tools to monitor your followings on multiple platforms. HubSpot will track this for Facebook, Instagram, X, and your LinkedIn Company page if connected.

To view yours, navigate to “Marketing,” “Social,” then “Analyze.”

18. Social media engagement: This measures how many interactions your posts on social media are getting.

Why is it important? Social media is all about connecting and one of the biggest indicators that your content is successfully connecting with your audience is engagement. Engagement is also often a big factor in social media algorithms.

The more engagement a post gets, the more likely it is to get shared to explore and discovery feeds.

Some common social media engagement metrics include:

• Likes
• Comments
• Shares or Retweets
• Messages
• Tags or Mentions
• Replies
• Impressions or views
• Plays

How to calculate and track it? Again, most social media management tools can monitor your followings on multiple platforms, as does HubSpot.

HubSpot shows you clicks, shares, impressions, and interactions (likes, reactions, and comments) of both posts published via its tools and directly on Facebook, Instagram, X, or a LinkedIn Company page.

Paid Ads Performance

If you’re looking for more bottom-of-the-funnel impact from your social media, paid advertising is likely in your strategy. All major platforms including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, and YouTube offer advertising options.

Here are some of the metrics you should be tracking to get the highest social media advertising ROI.

19. Impressions: This is how many times your ad gets seen.

Why is it important? Reach is a huge metric when it comes to any type of advertising and impressions is a reflection of that.

If you’re investing with the goal of increasing brand awareness, you’ll especially want to make sure you’re getting a healthy amount of impressions.

How to calculate and track it? This is something your advertising platform will share with you. However, if you use HubSpot to manage your Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google ads, you can see them there as well.

20. Click rate: The percentage of clicks your ad gets compared to how many times it is seen.

Why is it important? Getting noticed is good, but eliciting action is even better. Your click rate helps identify just how successful you are at that.

Plus, if the goal of your ad is to generate traffic or leads, you need to make sure this number is healthy to make sure you’re getting your money’s worth.

How to calculate and track it? Like impressions, this is something your advertising platform will share with you, but you can also calculate it using this formula:

Click Rate = number of clicks / number of impressions x 100

21. Lead rate (or lead conversion rate): The percentage of impressions that turned into leads from your ad.

Why is it important? If the goal of your social media advertising is to generate leads, this should be your number one metric. However, even if it’s not, this can tell you a great deal about how compelling your ad copy or creative is.

If your lead rate is high and that wasn’t your goal, there’s something working well with the ad that you should take note of.

How to calculate and track it? Again, this is something your advertising platform will share with you, but you can also calculate it using this formula:

Lead Conversion Rate = (Number of Leads Generated / Total Number of Impressions or Visitors) x 100

Note: If your goal is leads, you’ll also want to track the number of leads generated from your ads.

22. Cost per impression (CPM): How much you’re spending to generate an impression from your advertising. Impressions are typically billed by the thousand.

Why is it important? This metric tells you how cost-effective your advertising spend is. You should not be spending more on generating impressions than you are making from them.

How to calculate and track it? Again, this is something your advertising platform will share with you, but you can also calculate it using this formula:

CPM = Total cost of campaign / number of impressions x 1000

23. Cost per lead: How much you’re spending to generate a lead from advertising.

Why is it important? This metric tells you how cost-effective your advertising spend is if you’re focused on generating leads.

How to calculate and track it? Again, this is something your specific advertising platform will share with you, but you can also calculate it using this formula:

Cost Per Lead = Total cost of campaign / number of leads

24. Return On Ad Spend (ROAS): The revenue generated from a social media advertising campaign compared to every dollar you spend. It’s usually a ratio.

Why is it important? No big revelation here: You want to make sure you’re making more money from your advertising than you are spending.

How to calculate and track it? You can calculate your ROAS using this formula:

ROAS=

Revenue generated from ads / cost of ads (ad spend)

HubSpot will also tell you this for your LinkedIn, Google, and Facebook Ads as “ROI.”

How to Report Your B2B Marketing KPIs and Metrics

Data without meaning is useless.

That’s why once you’ve identified and can successfully track all your metrics, you need a plan for analyzing and reporting findings to your team and other stakeholders.

As Allie Konchar, Partner & Head of Client Operations of digital growth agency Omniscient and former HubSpotter, explains, “Marketing reports uncover meaningful, actionable data that help you draw important conclusions and meet organization-wide goals.”

Marketing reports can be critical to informing future marketing decisions and strategies, so it’s important to learn how to create them successfully. This article by Konchar further details how to build and analyze marketing reports.

We’ve also created a collection of monthly marketing report templates to get you started. These will help you:

• Track the monthly growth of your visits, leads, and customers.
• Measure your website’s visit-to-lead conversion rate.
• Accurately track which channels are performing best.
• Plug your metrics into a PowerPoint or Google Slides deck to present to your boss.

Get yours here for free.

Tracking your way to success with KPIs

Ok, I know — that was a lot. And the truth is, there are likely even more B2B marketing KPIs your team will need to track to truly have a firm grasp on its performance.

But once you’ve got the right tools and templates in place to help you make sense of everything, it’s much easier to scale and adjust your efforts. Use this list and the tips shared to get started and start tracking your way to marketing success.

When most people start implementing inbound marketing, they’re primarily worried about getting enough new leads in the funnel.

But once you have a lot of leads, you need to figure out who‘s really interested in your product and who’s just starting to look around.

That’s where lead scoring comes in. In this article, I’ll share lead scoring models for you to consider, important data to look at, and best practices for effective lead scoring.

Table of Contents

• What is lead scoring?
• Lead Scoring Models
• How to Determine What Data to Look At
• Is one lead score enough?
• How to Calculate a Basic Lead Score
• Lead Scoring Best Practices
• Improve Your Sales With Lead Scoring

What is lead scoring?

Lead scoring is the process of assigning values, often in the form of numerical “points,” to each lead you generate to evaluate the likelihood of them becoming a customer.

You can score your leads based on multiple attributes, including the professional information they‘ve submitted to you and how they’ve engaged with your website and brand across the internet.

This process helps sales and marketing teams prioritize leads, respond to them appropriately, and increase the rate at which those leads become customers.

Learn more about the concept of lead scoring in the video below:

Every company has a different model for assigning points to score their leads, but I’ve found one of the most common ways is to use data from past leads to create a value system.

How? First, you‘ll take a look at your contacts who became customers to see what they have in common. Next, you’ll look at the attributes of your contacts who didn‘t become customers.

Once you’ve looked at the historical data from both sides, you can decide which attributes should be weighted heavily based on how likely they are to indicate someone’s a good fit for your product.

Lead scoring sounds easy, right? Depending on your business model and the leads in your database, this can quickly become complicated.

To make this process a little easier on you, I’m going to walk you through the basics of creating a lead score, including what data you should look at, how to find the most important attributes, and the process for actually calculating a basic score.

Why is lead scoring important?

You may be wondering if lead scoring is outdated or if it’s still a relevant sales method. The short answer is lead scoring is as important today as it has been for years.

The methods may have evolved, but the purpose of lead scoring continues to be essential for sales and marketing teams.

For starters, lead scoring allows you to prioritize and focus your efforts on leads that are the most likely to convert to customers.

And when 53% of salespeople say selling got harder in 2023, I think it’s a good idea to turn your energy towards sales that have a higher chance of closing.

Mark Osborne, B2B sales expert and founder of Modern Revenue Strategies, adds that for many businesses, markets are tightening due to uncertainty and higher interest rates, which has resulted in less capital — making every lead even more precious.

“Remember the 80/20 rule: that 80% of your revenues come from just 20% of your clients,” suggests Osborne. “This is even more pronounced when expanded to the percentage of leads that become your best clients.”

Businesses without systems for scoring and prioritizing the best opportunities are likely spreading themselves too thin across all opportunities and won’t win the best clients.

Plus, says Osborne, without a lead scoring model in place, you could be losing business to the competition.

“Savvy competitors have learned to swarm on the best opportunities as soon as they identify them,” he says, “giving those prospects the highest level of personalized attention and service to win those crucial deals.”

Lead Scoring Models

Lead scoring models ensure the values you assign to each lead reflect their actual compatibility with your product.

Many lead scores are based on a point range of 0 to 100, but every model you create will support a particular attribute of your core customer.

Here are six different lead scoring models based on the type of data you can collect from the people who engage with your business:

1. Demographic Information

Are you only selling to people of a certain demographic, like parents of young children or CIOs? Ask demographic questions in the forms on your landing pages, and you can use your leads’ answers to see how well they fit in with your target audience.

One thing I suggest is to remove outliers from your sales team’s queue by subtracting points for people who fall into a category you don’t sell to.

For example, if you only sell to a certain geographic location, you might give a negative score to any lead who falls outside the proper city, state, zip code, country, and so on.

If some of your form fields are optional (like a phone number, for instance), you might also award extra points to leads who provide that optional information anyway.

2. Company Information

If you‘re a B2B organization, are you more interested in selling to organizations of a certain size, type, or industry? Are you more interested in B2B organizations or B2C organizations?

You can ask questions like these on your landing page forms, too, so you can give points to leads who fit in with your target audience and take points away from leads who aren’t at all what you’re looking for.

Osborne also suggests tracking external company data on company information such as new leadership, M&A activity, new investments, or a PR crisis as this knowledge “can be valuable in understanding the prospective company’s current context and fit with your value proposition to uncover the potential for long-term, profitable engagements,” he says.

3. Behavioral Data

For Ben Grant, CEO of LearnSales, behavioral data is essential for lead scoring in 2024.

“I’m diving deep into behavioral data such as what content [prospects] are engaging with, how often they visit our site, and even the time they spend on specific pages,” he says. “This gives us a clearer picture of their intent.”

In my experience, how a lead interacts with your website can tell you a lot about how interested they are in buying from you.

Take a look at your leads who eventually become customers: Which offers did they download? How many offers did they download? Which pages — and how many pages — did they visit on your site before becoming a customer?

Both the number and types of forms and pages are important. You might give higher lead scores to leads who visited high-value pages (like pricing pages) or filled out high-value forms (like a demo request).

Similarly, you might give higher scores to leads who had 30 page views on your site, as opposed to three.

What about leads who have changed their behavior over time? If a lead has stopped visiting your website or downloading your offers, they may not be interested anymore.

You might take points away from leads who’ve stopped engaging with your website after a certain period of time. How long — 10 days, 30 days, 90 days — depends on your typical sales cycle.

Keep in mind that your sales cycle may look different these days compared to years prior. In 2023, 53% of companies experienced longer sales cycles.

4. Email Engagement

If someone opts in to receive emails from your company by filling out an email popup, you may not know how interested that person is in buying from you.

Open and click-through rates, on the other hand, will give you a much better idea of their interest level.

Your sales team will want to know who opened every email in your lead nurturing series or who always clicked through your offer promotion emails. That way, they can focus on the ones who seem most engaged.

You might also give a higher lead score to leads who click through on high-value emails, like demo offers.

5. Social Engagement

How engaged a lead is with your brand on social networks can also give you an idea of how interested they are.

How many times did they click through on your company’s tweets and LinkedIn posts? How many times did they comment or share those posts?

In my experience, social media is tied to referrals for generating the highest-quality leads, so it’s not a channel to overlook.

Image Source

If you’re not already collaborating with your marketing team to get this data, start now, recommends Grant.

“Our sales and marketing team are in constant communication, ensuring that the criteria we use for scoring are aligned with real-world results,” he says. “This synergy helps refine our lead scoring models and improve accuracy.”

6. Spam Detection

Last but not least, you should give negative scores to leads who filled out landing page forms in ways that could indicate they’re spam. For example, were first name, last name, and/or company name not capitalized?

Did the lead complete any form fields by typing four or more letters in the traditional “QWERTY” keyboard side-by-side?

You might also want to think about which types of email addresses leads are using compared with the email addresses of your customer base. If you’re selling to businesses, for example, you might take points away from leads who use a Gmail or Yahoo! email address.

How to Determine What Data to Look At

There’s a lot of data to weed through — how do you know which data matters most? Should you find out from your sales team? Should you interview your customers? Should you dive into your analytics and run a few reports?

I recommend a combination of all three. Your sales team, your customers, and your analytics reports will all help you piece together what content is most valuable for converting leads into customers, which will help you attach a number of points to certain offers, emails, and so on.

Talk to your sales team.

Sales reps are the ones on the ground, communicating directly with both leads who turned into customers and those who didn’t. They tend to have a pretty good idea of which pieces of marketing material help encourage conversion.

Which blog posts and offers do your sales reps like to send leads? You might find some of them telling you, “Every time I send people this certain piece of collateral, it’s easier to close them.” This is valuable information. I recommend you find out what those pieces of collateral are and assign points accordingly.

Talk to your customers.

While your sales team might claim certain content converts customers, you might find that the people who actually went through the sales process have different opinions. That’s okay: You want to hear it from both sides.

In fact, according to our 2024 State of Sales Report, building and maintaining a strong rapport with customers is a key focus area for sales professionals.

Conduct a few customer interviews to learn what they think was responsible for their decision to buy from you. I suggest you interview customers who have had both short and long sales cycles so you get diverse perspectives.

Turn to the analytics.

I recommend you also complement all this in-person research with hard data from your marketing analytics.

Run an attribution report to figure out which marketing efforts lead to conversions throughout the funnel. Don‘t only look at the content that converts leads to customers — what about the content people view before they become a lead?

You might award a certain number of points to people who download content that’s historically converted people into leads and a higher number of points to people who download content that’s historically converted leads into customers.

Another way to help you piece together valuable pieces of content on your site is to run a contacts report. A contacts report will show you how many contacts — and how much revenue — have been generated as a result of certain, specific marketing activities.

Marketing activities might include certain offer downloads, email campaign click-throughs, and so on. Take note of which activities tend to be first-touch conversions, last-touch conversions, and so on, and assign points accordingly.

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Is one lead score enough?

If you have one core customer right now, a single score suffices. But as your company scales, you’ll sell to new audiences. You might expand into new product lines, new regions, or new personas.

You might even focus more on up-selling and cross-selling to existing customers rather than pursuing new ones. In my experience, if your contacts aren‘t “one size fits all,” your scoring system shouldn’t be either.

With some marketing platforms, you can create multiple lead-scoring systems, giving you the flexibility to qualify different sets of contacts in different ways. Not sure how to set up more than one score? I’ve gathered a few examples to inspire you:

Fit vs. Interest

Let’s say, for instance, your sales team wants to evaluate customers on both fit (e.g., is a contact in the right region? The right industry? The right role?) and interest level (e.g., how engaged have they been with your online content?).

If both of these attributes are a priority, you can create both an engagement score and a fit score so that you can prioritize outreach to contacts whose values are high in both categories.

Multiple Personas

Say you’re a software company that sells two different types of software via different sales teams to different types of buyers.

You could create two different lead scores — one for a buyer’s fit and the other for their interest in each tool. Then, you’d use these respective scores to route leads to the right sales teams.

New Business vs. Up-sell

As you grow, you might start to focus on upselling or cross-selling as much as new business. However, keep in mind that the signals that indicate the quality of new prospects and existing customers often look completely different.

For prospects, you might look at demographics and website engagement, whereas for existing customers, you might look at how many customer support tickets they’ve submitted, their engagement with an onboarding consultant, and how active they currently are with your products.

If these buying signals look different for different types of sales, consider creating multiple lead scores.

How to Calculate a Basic Lead Score

There are many different ways to calculate a lead score, but I think the simplest way to do it is this:

Featured Resource: Free Lead Scoring Template

Download for Free

Manual Lead Scoring

1. Calculate the lead-to-customer conversion rate of all of your leads.

Your lead-to-customer conversion rate is equal to the number of new customers you acquire, divided by the number of leads you generate. Use this conversion rate as your benchmark.

2. Pick and choose different attributes of customers who you believe were higher quality leads.

Customers who requested a free trial at some point, customers in the finance industry, or customers with 10-20 employees could be attributes.

There‘s a certain kind of art to choosing which attributes to include in your model. You’ll choose attributes based on those conversations you had with your sales team, your analytics, and so on — but overall, it’s a judgment call.

You could have five different people do the same exercise, and they could come up with five different models. But that’s okay as long as your scoring is based on the data we mentioned previously.

3. Calculate the individual close rates of each of those attributes.

Calculating the close rates of each type of action a person takes on your website — or the type of person taking that action — is important because it dictates the actions you’ll take in response.

So, figure out how many people become qualified leads (and ultimately customers) based on their actions or who they are in relation to your core customer. You’ll use these close rates to actually “score” them in the step below.

4. Compare the close rates of each attribute with your overall close rate and assign point values accordingly.

Look for the attributes with close rates that are significantly higher than your overall close rate. Then, choose which attributes you’ll assign points to, and if so, how many points.

Base the point values of each attribute on the magnitude of their individual close rates.

The actual point values will be a little arbitrary, but try to be as consistent as possible.

For example, if your overall close rate is 1% and your “requested demo” close rate is 20%, then the close rate of the “requested demo” attribute is 20X your overall close rate — so you could, for example, award 20 points to leads with those attributes.

Logistic Regression Lead Scoring

The simple method above for calculating a lead score is a great start. However, the most mathematically sound methods employ a data mining technique, such as logistic regression.

Data mining techniques are more complex and often more intuitive than your actual close rates. Logistic regression involves building a formula in Excel that’ll spit out the probability that a lead will close into a customer.

This is more accurate than the technique I outlined above since it’s a holistic approach that takes into account how all of the customer attributes — like industry, company size, and whether or not someone requested a trial — interact with one another.

If you prefer a less complex lead-scoring method, I think the manual approach above is a great place to start.

Predictive Lead Scoring

Creating a lead score can do great things for your business: improve the lead-handoff process, increase lead conversion rate, improve rep productivity, and more.

But, as you can see from the two methods above, coming up with a scoring system can be a time-consuming task when done manually.

Plus, coming up with scoring criteria isn‘t “set it and forget it.” As you get feedback from your team and stress-test your scores, I’ve found you’ll need to tweak your lead-scoring system regularly to ensure it remains accurate.

Wouldn’t it be easier if technology could eliminate the manual setup and continuous tweaking, leaving your team more time to build relationships with your customers?

That’s where predictive scoring comes in. Predictive lead scoring uses machine learning to parse through thousands of data points in order to identify your best leads, so you don’t have to.

Predictive scoring looks at what information your customers have in common, as well as what information the leads that didn’t close have in common, and comes up with a formula that sorts your contacts by importance based on their potential to become customers.

This allows you and your sales team to prioritize leads so you’re not harassing those who aren’t (yet) interested and engaging those who are.

The best part about predictive scoring? As with any application of machine learning, your predictive score gets smarter over time, so your lead follow-up strategy will optimize itself.

Featured Resource: Predictive Lead Scoring Software

Download for Free

Lead Scoring Best Practices

We’ve covered a lot so far, so I want to wrap it up with a few best practices I learned from the sales leaders I spoke to.

Here are some lead scoring best practices to follow if you want to improve your sales in 2024.

Leverage AI and machine learning.

In the age of AI, sales professionals would be wise to use one of the numerous AI tools to their selling advantage, especially during the lead scoring process.

Not only can AI tools improve efficiency, but 66% of sales pros say that AI helps them provide a personalized experience and better understand their customers.

Image Source

Grant is also taking advantage of AI’s power to personalize data.

“We’re leveraging AI to analyze patterns and predict which leads are most likely to convert,” he says. “Machine learning models can adapt and get more accurate over time, which is a huge step up from traditional lead scoring methods.”

Lead with data.

I think one of the best parts about lead scoring is that it’s an objective method. When the data indicates how interested a prospect is, that’s something you’ll want to lean into.

Data is one of the most important resources sales teams and marketers have at their disposal, and lead scoring has become even more data-driven with the tools available today.

If you want to save time spent on unqualified leads and prioritize sales-ready ones with data-driven decisions, then your sales team should use a lead scoring model that makes it easy to organize and understand your data.

Make real-time adjustments.

If you think lead scoring models are outdated, it could be because the traditional methods didn’t take into account real-time industry or business changes.

“Lead scoring is no longer a set-it-and-forget-it deal,” says Grant. “We’re making real-time adjustments based on the latest data. This agility helps us stay ahead of the curve and respond to changing market conditions.”

There are so many lead generation tools available to help your sales team make real-time decisions and properly qualify inbound leads.

Improve Your Sales With Lead Scoring

Scoring your leads can go a long way in determining which leads are good fits and interested in your offering and which might need more nurturing before being sales-ready.

Check out our lead scoring templates to get started defining your criteria and assigning points!

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

The biggest topic on everyone’s minds this year at INBOUND was the same as last year: AI. But the nature of the conversation has changed.

In 2023, headlines indicated that AI would change everything, for better or for worse. It was going to bring an economic revolution, usher in a gold rush, and destroy humanity, all at once.

One year later, the headlines say the opposite story: the AI revolution is losing steam and the AI hype bubble is deflating. So what’s the truth? Is the recent wave of AI disruption false hype, or a true revolution?

At INBOUND, I made the case that these are not the right questions to ask or answer. Because first and foremost, go-to-market professionals are asking themselves a simpler question: how do I drive growth?

After all, everyone seems to feel the same way: lately, it’s been harder to grow. So it’s worth understanding why it’s been so tough, what has changed in the customer journey, and answer the question: where do we grow from here?

3 Reasons Why the Growth Formula Is Broken

The growth formula is simple: More traffic * Higher Conversion * Better Retention = Higher growth. But unfortunately, it is broken.

Across the board: traffic, conversion, and retention are down, and therefore, so is growth. According to our research, only 50% of reps are hitting their quotas, compared to 66% just two years ago.

But why? We’ve seen three big trends that have contributed to this downturn.

1. Search has fundamentally changed. Search engines used to provide bluelinks that get customers to your website. But with AI overviews and soon SearchGPT, customers are getting more answers without leaving search. That means fewer visitors to your website.
2. Social platforms are holding on to customers longer. They’re becoming destinations themselves, where customers are spending more time. That means fewer visitors still.
3. More than ever, people want to talk to people. Not brands. Customers check Reddit, visit G2, watch YouTube videos, and talk to their peers first — so by the time they come to your site, your customers know more about you than you know about them. That means the bar for sales and service teams is incredibly high when talking to customers. And if that bar is not met, conversion and retention will go down.
   

Two Paths for AI to Drive Growth: Acceleration and Transformation

So how do go-to-market professionals address these challenges? History has the answer: when technology solves old problems in new ways, it leads to profound change.

That’s why the internet and smartphones were so transformative — they addressed fundamental needs like information access and human connection.

AI might just achieve the same kind of change for growth. We see that potential firsthand from surveying hundreds of our customers who have embraced AI. And we came away with two overarching observations: Today, our customers are using AI for acceleration. And soon, they’ll be using it for transformation.

Acceleration means taking what’s feasible, and making it fast, while transformation is taking what’s impossible and making it possible. From customer conversations, we’ve seen how both types of use cases apply to marketing, sales, and service.

How AI Is Accelerating and Transforming Marketing

Marketing is one of the biggest use cases for AI and customers are already using AI to accelerate their work by creating, personalizing, and distributing content.

65% of HubSpot users are now using AI to create content, and they do it well by understanding what the technology is good at: researching topics, delivering decent first drafts, and iterating for different audiences. Then human experts take the drafts from good to great.

Within HubSpot, our marketing team has excelled at personalizing content with AI. When we started reaching out to prospects with AI-personalized emails, it increased our conversion rate by 82%.

And when it comes to distributing content, we saw huge adoption when we launched our AI-powered Content Remix feature a few months ago — which allows you to take one piece of content, and quickly convert it into social posts, videos, emails, and more.

Soon, marketers will be able to transform their work using AI. And they’ll do it with agents — software that uses AI to accomplish goals with multiple steps.

Content agents will prioritize, personalize, and distribute content; social agents will analyze social content and tell you when, where, and how to share it; and a campaign agent will tell you where to invest and what to amplify within your campaigns.

How AI Is Accelerating and Transforming Sales

In sales, the everlasting challenge has been increasing time in front of customers. The average sales person spends only two hours a day selling!

They’re stuck the rest of the day buried in prep for the next call or drowning in follow-ups from the last one. Nobody has figured out how to shrink this time—until now.

AI is accelerating prep and follow-up. Salespeople can now research prospects in seconds, generate high-quality personal messages to connect with them, summarize calls, and create insightful follow-ups.

The result: across our customers and HubSpot, AI has saved time spent in discovery by 30%, and cut follow-up time by 20%.

And soon: AI will transform sales with prospecting agents — AI-powered software that finds leads for you and makes outreach as simple as a couple of clicks.

How AI Is Accelerating and Transforming Service

Finally, in customer service, a huge source of frustration has been when service professionals are stuck being human band-aids — chasing problems reactively.

Here, too, AI is accelerating the process with great results. It can answer customer questions better than ever; HubSpot has been able to resolve nearly 30% of tickets this year with AI.

It can accelerate self-service by strengthening your knowledge base, allowing customers to resolve their own questions. And it can analyze customer sentiment in real time, suggesting specific actions based on the trends it observes.

Agents are coming to transform customer service, too. Support agents will be able to answer increasingly complex customer questions, 24/7 — and knowledge base agents will recommend and update knowledge base articles so your team doesn’t have to.

How AI and Humans Can Work Together To Drive Growth

Based on everything we’ve learned from our customers, the way to grow is not to underplay AI or overhype AI — it’s to understand and co-create with AI.

Because co-creation catalyzes growth. We believe that across go-to-market functions, we need to co-create with AI to drive growth:

• In marketing, AI creates, and people curate.
• In sales, AI offers context, and people offer connection.
• And in service, AI handles simplicity, and people handle subtlety.

In all three cases, AI isn’t being used instead of people — it’s empowering people and helping us scale. And if we can unlock its potential to help us drive traffic, conversion, and retention, we might just be able to fix the growth formula. And that effort is perfectly aligned with our mission at HubSpot.

HubSpot’s Mission, What Will Change, and What Will Always Be True

HubSpot exists to help millions of organizations grow better. And we are doubling down on that mission as we reimagine our platform with AI. To fully leverage AI, you will need support for structured and unstructured data.

You’ll need to gather insights from text content as well as audio and video. You’ll need your apps and agents to work well together. And we’re excited to help our customers adapt to these changes!

But we also have to remember that some things will always be true!

Customers will always want things to be easy — so we work hard to make things intuitive and efficient. You’ll always want to realize value fast — so we are laser-focused on repeat usage and immediate impact. And you’ll always want your customer and context data to be unified — so we’re bringing together all the data you’ll need to drive insights with AI.

Our mission is to help you grow. Our passion is to make it easy, fast, and unified. And what’s so motivating about this moment is that everywhere we look, there is promise that AI can help businesses scale like never before. With AI, we can help all businesses play big.

And to learn more about the features and services we introduced at INBOUND 2024 to do just that, check out our latest Spotlight.

When I first heard how HubSpot’s YouTube team bumped one channel’s views up by over 400%, I begged for permission to share the story. (I’m not above debasing myself on your behalf.)

It’s a lesson that applies to nearly all content marketing — and one I promise you’re not going to hear anywhere else.

Are you ready for it? Not all distribution is good distribution. And that includes your own.

Below, I chat with our head of YouTube about how and why cutting off all external distribution actually increased our YT performance. And his advice for when you should consider picking up the axe, too.

The Road to the Chopping Block

When Carl Mueller joined us as HubSpot’s head of YouTube earlier this year, he noticed that one of our YT channels had a problem the others didn’t. If a video was six minutes long, most viewers were dropping off after only a minute or two.

Though, to be fair, that’s still longer than my kid made it through Fantastic Mr. Fox.

Carl’s been producing video for over 10 years for names like Business Insider and Morning Brew. Which is to say, where media and marketing mash up, Carl knows his s***.

So when he says the content wasn’t the problem, I know he’s not just trying to avoid hurt feelings.

“I got here in late February, and the first thing I did was watch our content from a quality perspective,” he says. “But then I looked at the metrics, and the numbers were surprisingly low. I don’t think the metrics reflected the quality of the videos.”

But if the content wasn’t the problem, what was?

The call is coming from inside the house.

As Carl investigated the problem, he noticed that around 90% of the views for this particular channel were coming from external sources. That includes Facebook, Instagram, blogs, newsletters — everything except YouTube.

“What I’ve noticed is that when you’re asking someone to jump from another platform to YouTube, you’re asking them to change their consumption behavior,” he explains. “Is that person sitting down with time to spare to watch a 10-minute video?”

The answer to that depends heavily on what platform they’re jumping from.

And about 90% of those external views were coming from The Hustle newsletter.

“Which, at first glance, makes a lot of sense. It seemed like good, targeted distribution. But it meant that most of our total viewership was coming from the newsletter.”

That seems like the opposite of a problem, right? As I’ve not-so-subtly mentioned before, The Hustle has an audience of over 2.5M and above-industry-average engagement rates. It’s the kind of audience most marketers would trade a body part to get in front of. (And I mean a useful body part. Not just a pinky toe.)

And in the vast majority of cases, they’d be right. The Hustle is an absolute catapult for content, often driving thousands and thousands of views to blogs, short-form videos, and content offers. So why didn’t that work here?

Carl lays it out:

“The newsletter goes out at, what, 5:30 in the morning? People open it in bed.” They click on a video, “watch a few minutes, and then leave.”

Or they save it for later and then forget about it in a sea of tabs. (Guiltyyyyy!)

“If you were in their shoes, are you going to watch that whole video? For me, the answer is probably not,” Carl laughs. “Maybe sometimes if I’m laying on my couch. But if the average newsletter reader is not in a position to watch a long-form video, then that is a lot of bad retention metrics.”

For this otherwise highly engaged audience, that was about a 20-30% retention rate.

Let’s do some quick math. What does it equal when 90% of your audience has a 20% retention rate? An unhappy algorithm.

As Carl puts it: “YouTube won’t promote your content if your own viewers aren’t watching it.”

We needed surgery, stat.

Making the Cut

“We decided as an experiment to pause all direct external distribution,” Carl says.

But why all distribution, and not just the mismatched audience?

“We wanted to first see if we had a core audience on YouTube. We wanted to serve the videos only to our subscriber base and see if they liked them.”

And it worked. Better even than Carl predicted.

“I was warning everyone that we were going to perform worse before we performed better. A few thousand guaranteed views were going away,” Carl recalls. “But it was pretty immediate. The first video after the shift got 27,000 views. A couple of videos later we had one hit 300,000. Then after that 450,000.”

About 90 days after pausing distribution, the channel’s average views and average watch time both rose by 420%, and our subscriber count jumped 257%.

This goes against everything I’ve learned about content marketing, where more distribution equals more views. What gives, Carl?

“It’s compounding success. If something performs great, YouTube is more likely to promote the following video.”

An audience built on YouTube is ready to watch a YouTube video. And if the majority of your viewers are watching the majority of your content, it sends positive signals to the YT algorithm. YouTube then serves your videos to a wider audience, and a virtuous cycle is born.

“Not all distribution is good distribution,” Carl says. “That’s a universal takeaway for all channels and all content. Make sure you’re targeting the right audience at the right time.”

Ask your doctor if pausing distribution is right for you.

Here’s where I hit the pause button, because I can sense that some of you are getting antsy to DIY.

I asked Carl what he would say to readers who are now thinking about axing their own distribution.

“Make sure your channel is in the same circumstances as our channel. It had a heavy reliance on external distribution and low watch times. If you have that combination, then likely those unengaged external views are impacting your performance.”

So, to be clear: If you don’t have low engagement, your distribution is likely doing its job, and axing it will not help you grow further.

Similarly, if the majority of your views aren’t coming from external distribution, then it’s probably not the cause of any low metrics.

But Carl’s not letting the rest of you walk away empty-handed. Here are some takeaways for everyone:

1. Consider behavior patterns when sharing with a potential audience.

This is sound advice for any kind of marketing, not just video marketing.

Before you distribute your content through any channel, consider the consumption habits of that audience.

Are they in the right place to share a social media post? Download a PDF? Listen to a podcast?

“There is value in external distribution, but you have to make sure that it’s to the right people at the right time, and at the right stage in the content’s lifespan.”

2. Seek on-platform distribution.

“On YouTube, I would always prioritize on-platform partnerships, video swaps, or call-outs. Targeting people on YouTube is the best place to get people to watch your video on YouTube.”

And that generally holds true for most kinds of content. Consider, for example, that you’re most likely to find TikTok viewers on TikTok. Or that newsletter readers are often willing to be blog readers. (And, like magic, here you are.)

3. Optimize for the platform, not the distribution channel.

“Let YouTube do its thing for a little while,” Carl advises. “If that’s not working, change thumbnails, change titles. Do everything you can to optimize for YouTube.”

Not to be a broken record but, again, that applies to any kind of content or platform. Optimize first for search, social, or wherever your audience primarily finds your content.

“And if that’s not working, then it might be worth taking the risk of putting it somewhere else.”

4. Set clear expectations.

If your audience clicks a link without knowing it leads to a video, a lot more people are going to abandon ship. Same for long-form written content.

To avoid this, you need to set the expectations for what they’re about to encounter.

“If we do share — because there is value in sharing videos with the newsletter audience — we make it very clear that it is a video,” then he switches to a mock-stern voice. “All caps. WATCH VIDEO. You are leaving. ARE YOU PREPARED?”

Now you are.

How to See YouTube Reports in HubSpot

Marketing Hub Enterprise users can actually pull their YouTube performance data straight into HubSpot so you can see all of your glorious success in one place.

You can check out custom reports on watch time, views, shares, subscriber counts, engagement, etc. — allowing you to be the Carl Mueller of your company.

First, you’ll need to connect your YT account to HubSpot.

1. In HubSpot, click on the settings icon in the top navigation bar.
2. Choose Marketing then Social.
3. Click on Connect account in the top right.
4. Select YouTube Reports in the box that pops up.
5. Select the YouTube account to connect.
6. Review permissions and click Allow.

Now that you’re all connected, here’s how to access your reports:

1. Navigate back to Marketing and then Social. (Unless you’re already there from the first part. Then skip this part.)
2. Click the tab that says Analyze.
3. Click the dropdown menu that says All accounts and make sure YouTube is selected.
4. Apply filters for date range, campaign, etc. to your heart’s content.

 

Here’s a real story. Upon writing this piece, I tried to set up a PPC campaign on a whim with no plan or clue (practicing on my friend’s small business—oops). I just set the budget and let it run. Was it good? I’ll leave it up to you.

So, I consulted with a bunch of PPC pros and watched a dozen webinars to provide you with practical and powerful stuff.

You’ll find seven tactics for managing your PPC budget and five tips for making smart adjustments.

Let’s dive right in.

Table of Contents

• What is a PPC budget?
• What is the PPC budget formula?
• How to Calculate Your PPC Budget
• How to Manage Your PPC Budget
• 5 PPC Budgeting Tips from Pros
• Key Takeaways from PPC Experts

What is a PPC budget?

A PPC (pay-per-click) budget is the amount of money you plan to spend on ads where you pay each time someone clicks on them.

A few terms you’ll run into here:

1. Daily budget – How much you spend each day. Ads stop showing until the next day if you reach this limit.
2. Campaign budget – The total amount you want to spend on a specific ad campaign.
3. Bid amount – How much you pay for each click on your ad. Higher bids can get your ad shown more but cost more.

Before setting up a PPC campaign, think about where your audience is most active.

For example, if your audience uses Facebook more than X, spend more of your budget on Facebook. Do some research to make sure your ad spend goes to the best channels.

Generally, prioritize Google PPC first, as Google has 90.48% of the global search engine market.

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What is the PPC budget formula?

From my chats with a bunch of PPC experts, most of them rely on this formula:

Where:

1. Target daily clicks: How many clicks you want to achieve each day. It depends on your campaign goals and the expected traffic.
2. Cost per click (CPC): The average amount you are willing to pay for each click. Estimate it based on historical data or industry benchmarks.
3. Number of days in a month: Typically 30 or 31 days, but you can adjust it for the specific month or campaign duration.

Example Calculation

Let’s say:

• You want to achieve 50 clicks per day.
• Your average Cost Per Click is $2.
• You are budgeting for a month with 30 days.

Now, let’s implement the formula:

50 clicks/day × $2 per click × 30 days= 50 × 2 × 30 = 3000

So, your monthly PPC budget would be $3,000.

How to Calculate Your PPC Budget

To calculate your PPC budget, you just need to note down a few formulas and make sure you do everything in this order:

1. Understand your target CAC.

Before you jump into the calculation, understand your CAC—the total cost to get a new customer. Roughly, it’s all your marketing and sales costs divided by the number of new customers.

For example, if you spend $10,000 on marketing in a month and gain 100 new customers, your CAC is $100.

“I always start with the target cost to acquire a customer or CAC. If you don’t know that number, calculate one based on the average customer lifetime value and determine how much you can afford to spend on advertising while maintaining a healthy profit margin,” says Brooke Webber, head of marketing at Ninja Patches.

2. Calculate daily budget.

Daily budgeting helps in allocating funds to different days of the week based on performance patterns. For instance, you might find that weekends generate more conversions, allowing you to allocate more budget on those days.

Ed Stapleton from Clicks Geek suggests multiplying the average click cost by five.

So, if the click cost is $10, then $10 x 5 = $50. This $50 is your suggested minimum daily ad budget.

“I use this multiplier because most campaigns convert between 20% to 40% on the landing page. This means roughly 2 to 4 out of 10 clicks become leads. To be safe, I use a multiplier of five to ensure you get at least one lead per day,” says Stapleton.

3. Calculate weekly budget.

After calculating the daily budget, you can move forward to calculating the weekly costs. Ed advises multiplying the daily budget by the number of days you plan to run your ads each week.

If the daily budget is $50 and you run ads five days a week, the weekly budget would be $250 ($50 x 5).

4. Calculate monthly budget.

Finally, to calculate the monthly budget, multiply the weekly budget by 4 to get a basic monthly budget. However, Ed notes that for a more accurate estimate, you might use 4.3 weeks to account for variations in the number of weeks per month.

For example, with a weekly budget of $250, the monthly budget would be $1,000 ($250 x 4) or $1,075 ($250 x 4.3).

Here’s a breakdown for all three calculations:

Daily Budget:

Avg CPC x 5

Daily budget x 5 = weekly budget

Weekly budget x 4 weeks = monthly budget

Example:

Avg CPC is $10

$10 x 5 = $50

$50 x 5 = $250

$250 x 4 = $1,000

$1,000 is the monthly ad budget

How to Manage Your PPC Budget

Turns out that 72% of companies haven’t reviewed their ad campaigns in over a month, which is definitely not the way to manage your PPC campaign and its budget.

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Here’s how proper PPC budget management should look:

Establish a test budget to understand key metrics.

Allocate a small portion of your overall PPC budget as a “test amount.” This is a low-risk way to test different strategies without spending a lot of money.

I got this golden nugget from Jim Kreinbrink, CEO of Hyper Dog Media.

“Our preliminary budget approach often starts with a ‘test amount,’ which we deploy and analyze to understand key metric averages such as cost per click and conversion rates. These insights then help us to forge a more informed and result-oriented budget,” Kreinbrink says.

Determine the optimal budget.

After a short testing phase, it’s time to jump into the real thing.

I spoke with Nick Drewe, founder and CEO at Wethrift, who explained that at this point, you need to consider the overall marketing budget, industry benchmark data, and the desired CPA.

He recommends starting with a smaller budget and gradually increasing it as you begin to see a positive ROI. Newer businesses might find allocating around 5-10% of their gross revenue to PPC to be a good starting point.

Michael Nemeroff, co-founder & CEO at RushOrderTees, shared his take on this, too. He says you can’t calculate an exact budget, but you can get pretty close and adjust as performance metrics come in:

“I look at the website’s overall conversion rate and assume the PPC campaign will be slightly lower. So, if site conversion is 8%, I might assume the campaign’s conversions are at 5%,” Nemeroff says. “Then, I look at the average CPC in Google’s keyword planner and forecast different budgets.”

Nemeroff explains with an example.

“If the average CPC is $10, $1,000 per month yields around 100 clicks and, conservatively, five leads. If you spend $2K, that means 200 clicks and 10 leads, and so on. You forecast different scenarios, determine how many new clients or sales you can reasonably handle, and set your budget appropriately,” Nemeroff says.

Run ads for a week to determine CPC.

I also talked to Brandy Hastings from SmartSites, who told me that one of the best approaches is running ads for a week to get a clear picture of your CPC.

She points out, “Note the cost per click, and then set a budget to earn at least 150-200 clicks. Use that method for the first month to get a feel for the market, adapting to the patterns that start to emerge.”

This will give you enough data to see how your CPC is trending. After the week is up, review the results to understand your average CPC and adjust your budget and bids as needed.

Use Google Smart Bidding.

Many experts recommend using Google Smart Bidding to optimize ad spend and boost PPC results.

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Here’s how it works:

• It uses sophisticated algorithms to analyze tons of data and predicts how different bids will impact conversions.
• It factors in signals like device, location, and time of day during each auction.
• You can set specific goals like maximizing conversions or hitting a target CPA. Smart Bidding adjusts your bids to meet these targets efficiently.
• Detailed reports show exactly how your bidding strategies are performing and what to improve.

Use a layered budget strategy.

A layered budget strategy is a method of allocating your PPC budget across different types of campaigns to balance performance and experimentation.

It’s one of the best methods for managing the PPC budget, according to Jeffrey Zhou, CEO at Fig Tech.

“We implement a ‘layered budget’ strategy that prioritizes results and experimentation. We spend 60% on high-performing ads with steady returns, 30% on new campaigns or ad formats, and 10% on experimental initiatives,” says Zhou.

Zhou says that this segmentation saved his team from huge risks.

For example, when they launched a newly developed service, they spent 30% of their budget on testing video ads, which eventually outperformed static ads, prompting them to allocate additional resources to video.

Refine your audience through micro-targeting.

“Instead of broad targeting, use micro-segmentation to direct ad spend toward highly specific customer profiles,” continues Zhou.

When his team began using location-based targeting together with income data, they saw a 25% increase in conversions while maintaining the same budget.

To implement micro-targeting, define your audience first:

• Demographics: Target by age, gender, income, education, and job.
• Geographics: Focus on specific cities, neighborhoods, or areas.
• Behavioral data: Use browsing history and purchase behavior.
• Interests: Tailor ads to users’ hobbies and preferences.

Then move to advanced features, such as:

• Custom audiences: Target your existing customers or website visitors.
• Lookalike audiences: Find new users similar to your current customers.
• Retargeting: Re-engage users who have interacted with your brand but haven’t converted.

Break down your budget by keyword performance.

Focus budget on top-performing keywords to improve overall campaign performance—higher CTR and lower CPA. This leads to better visibility and more effective targeting.

Shawn Plummer, CEO at The Annuity Expert, says that he had success spending 20-30% of the entire budget on high-converting, low-cost keywords, which greatly increased lead count without incurring additional costs.

“When I allocated a higher amount of our budget to branded search phrases, we witnessed a 40% decrease in cost per lead, boosting overall efficiency”, says Plummer.

Regularly review quality scores to gauge keyword effectiveness.

In Google Ads, you can find it under “Quality Scores,” which reflect the relevance of your keywords, ads, and landing pages. High-quality scores lead to lower CPC and better ad placement.

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Also, in Google Ads, use the Search Terms Report to see the actual queries that triggered your ads. It will help you see if your ads are shown for relevant searches and identify high-performing or irrelevant search terms.

Here’s a simple breakdown to make it clearer:

Keyword vs. search term:

• Search Term: The actual words people type into the search box.
• Keyword: The terms you select in your Google Ads campaign to target those searches.

Match types: Indicates how closely the search terms match your keywords:

• Exact Match: The exact search term matches your keyword.
• Phrase Match: The search term contains your keyword.
• Broad Match: The search term is a variation of your keyword.

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5 PPC Budgeting Tips from Pros

And now for the cherry on top—five juicy expert tips to help you plan and allocate your budget better:

1. Regular performance reviews and reallocation.

Regular reviews help you spot trends and shifts in performance before they become significant issues.

When you assess data frequently, you can quickly adapt to changes in ad performance or market conditions.

Shawn Plummer suggests employing weekly A/B testing to determine which ad creatives perform the best. Then, he reallocates up to 40% of the budget to those that outperform.

“Recently, by cutting spend on underperforming ads, we freed up funds to push ads with higher click-through rates, which boosted conversions by 25% without raising overall spend,” Plummer says.

Casey Meraz, CEO of Juris Digital, recommends conducting checks even more frequently—on a daily basis:

“Adjust bids based on the performance of different keywords and ads. Utilize budget caps to avoid overspending. Regularly review and tweak your targeting criteria. This ensures you get the most out of each dollar spent while maintaining flexibility to shift resources as necessary,” Meraz says.

Create personalized, targeted ad campaigns while tracking which ads convert prospects into customers with HubSpot Marketing Software.

2. Reverse engineer from CPA.

Dominic Taguinod, HubSpot’s PPC expert, suggests reverse engineering from CPA as a smart strategy worth trying.

First, define how much you’re willing to spend to acquire a customer. From there, you set a target CPC that aligns with this CPA goal.

This approach helps you spend your ad budget efficiently and acquire customers at a cost that works for your business. If you focus on your CPA first, you can better allocate your budget and ROI and make more informed adjustments.

Watch the full video:

3. Don’t overspend or underspend.

Overspending can quickly deplete your budget and waste resources.

Underspending is not good either. It can lead to fewer clicks and conversions because your ads aren’t reaching enough people.

Chris Zangone from WebFX suggests always considering your campaign’s ROAS (return on ad spend).

Spending more than you’re earning from your campaigns? Reassess your budget and optimization strategies as soon as possible.

Use this formula:

Total Revenue / Total Cost = ROAS.

1. Suppose your PPC campaign generated $10,000 in sales.
2. Assume you spent $2,000 on the PPC ads.
3. Use the ROAS Formula:
   ROAS = $10,000 / $2,000 = 5

So, your ROAS is 5. This means that for every dollar you spent on ads, you earned $5 in revenue.

If you wanna dive deep into PPC budget management, save this super helpful tutorial:

4. Leverage ad scheduling to cut waste.

Ad scheduling, or dayparting, allows you to control when the audience will see your ads.

Run ads only during times when conversions are more likely to avoid wasting money on clicks that probably won’t convert.

Jeffrey Zhou from Fig Tech says that many of their clicks were during non-conversion hours. By running ads only during peak hours — like weekdays between 9 am and 6 pm — they improved their CPA by 15% while maintaining traffic quality.

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5. Micro-budget testing for new platforms.

Start with small, controlled budgets when testing new advertising platforms.

Using micro-budgets and internal data to predict potential ROI allows you to gauge effectiveness with minimal risk, according to Debbie Moran, marketing manager at RecurPost.

Instead of rolling out a large budget on untested channels, Debbie’s team started with micro-budgets and used their internal machine-learning models to predict potential ROI before scaling.

With this approach, they discovered LinkedIn as an effective platform for targeting their B2B customers, where an initial $500 test led to a 50% lower CPA than our usual channels.

Key Takeaways from PPC Experts

Managing a PPC budget seems chaotic at first, but once you get the hang of it, it’s really not that bad. So, here are the three takeaways this non-PPC pro (a.k.a. me) has picked up as crucial to wrapping up this guide:

• Start small, test, and learn. Kick things off with a test budget to get a feel for metrics like cost per click and conversion rates.
• Make smart adjustments. Use tools like Google Smart Bidding to get the most out of your budget. Stay on top of performance, and use micro-targeting to make sure your ads are hitting the right people.
• Stay flexible. Regularly tweak your bids, budgets, and targeting based on how things are performing. Whether it’s checking in daily or working backward from your target CPA, be adaptable to get the best possible ROI.

The final piece of advice: Don’t dive into PPC haphazardly. Save this guide to walk you through each step and avoid skipping ahead, as missing even one step can lead to unnecessary setbacks and, even worse—wasted money.

As the cofounder of a boutique B2B marketing agency, I’m always looking for the best AI tools for B2B marketing — partly for me and partly for my clients.

The more time I spend getting acquainted with automation and AI, the more comfortable I’ve become with the genuine benefits AI can bring to marketing and business.

In this article, I’m sharing, in no particular order, the best AI tools for marketing in 2024. I’ve included my experience with them, why they’re great, their unique features and pricing, and who I think can benefit most from the tool.

Table of Contents

• Why use AI tools for B2B marketing?
• Best AI Tools for B2B Marketing

Why use AI tools for B2B marketing?

According to HubSpot’s AI Trends for Marketers survey of 1,062 US marketing and advertising professionals, the biggest concern about adopting AI is that it will replace jobs.

Almost 50% of marketers surveyed voiced concerns about job security. This fascinates me, especially because 68% said AI has helped grow their careers.

Personally, I’ve not strongly felt this way because I believe that marketing is, and always will be, about human-to-human connection — and AI simply can’t do that.

I left the worries about using AI tools in B2B marketing behind me long ago and now embrace what AI tools offer.

That said, although I don’t share the sentiment, I do understand the concern. I would argue that AI tools can do so much of our work, but none of the real good stuff or the things we love! As marketers, we still get to add the human touch, but we can “outsource” a lot of the less desirable work to AI.

Let’s look at how we can use AI to create a more efficient workflow and free up our time to do what we do best.

• Generative AI can help us write content faster. In my opinion, there’s a time and a place for generative AI. Some content benefits massively from its input, and some content just needs entirely the human touch. I’ve used generative AI for emails, my website, paragraphs within articles, and even some articles that are almost entirely written with AI.
• AI and automation in project management tools mean that marketing projects will manage parts themselves. Recently, I’ve set up ClickUp automation, which left me mindblown and questioning why I didn’t embrace it earlier! Project management tools like Motion will organize your week based on task priorities, available time, and desired schedule.
• Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) is the type of AI you’ve likely seen in your meetings; Fireflies AI will transcribe your meetings. Loom does the same with its video transcription. The AI is leveled up when it also pulls out key points and actions, so you know exactly what you need to do after a meeting.
• Predictive analysis in CRMs looks at customers trends, helping sales and marketing to make data-driven decisions about what to do next.

I could continue, but we’ll discuss the details of AI features in B2B marketing tools in the next section.

Before we get into that, though, let me give you a top tip for using AI marketing tools: don’t try and do it all at once.

74% of marketing professionals say that AI usage increases through existing tools. This makes sense.

Start by adding layers of AI in tools your team already uses and is comfortable with. The chances are they’ll be used to the tool’s interface so that they will be less intimidated.

Also, the AI features of the tools you’re already using should complement existing workflows.

Okay, let’s get into it. Here’s my round-up of the 11 best AI tools for B2B marketing.

1. HubSpot

HubSpot is genuinely fantastic. I know, I would say that — but the thing is, it’s not just me. Crazy Egg and Zapier voted HubSpot the best free CRM.

HubSpot does a lot out of the box for new users, and when you get into the paid features, you’ll be unstoppable.

The free version makes it a great place to start for new users and young businesses, and you can guarantee that HubSpot has what it takes to grow with your business.

HubSpot Features

Marketers love HubSpot’s many features, including the popular live chat, AI content writer, and website builder.

One great feature of HubSpot is the many integrations. You can connect various apps and streamline your workflows. In a test, I added my Google Contacts to the CRM, which were easily synced and ready for marketing.

HubSpot AI Features

HubSpot’s AI features are vast, and it is truly putting AI to the test and adding unbeatable functionality. I won’t get through them all in this article, but here are some favorites for B2B marketers.

When you create website pages or landing pages, you can build your site from scratch or generate them using AI.

The same goes for creating content. HubSpot has an excellent copywriting AI; you can generate an entire article or email using AI.

When it comes to AI content, I tend to use it as a starting point and then edit it after. 86% of marketers agree this is what works.

I tested the generative AI and found it very easy. You enter the topic that you want to write about. Next, the AI tool will let you choose a title from five generated options, and voila! You will have your blog post outline.

Still unsure? Well, 85% of marketers and sales pros agree that AI is a very effective tool for content creation and quality.

HubSpot Limitations

While HubSpot does a lot for free, you must upgrade your account if you want the best from the system. You pay for additional users, but Marketing Hub Professional includes three seats.

Pricing

The Marketing Hub Professional unlocks a lot of functionality and AI for B2B marketers. Prices start from $15 a month per seat to $800 a month for larger businesses needing more functionality.

See the full pricing breakdown.

G2 Reviews & Ratings

Hubspot’s Sales and Marketing Hub is rated 4.4/5, with over 11,000 reviews. The CMS Hub is rated 4.5/5 points, with over 1,500+ reviews.

Best For

Hubspot is an excellent and comprehensive tool for businesses of all sizes. It offers so much for free that it’s perfect for small businesses as it is and is enhanced by the small business AI. HubSpot is undoubtedly comprehensive enough for the largest of businesses.

2. WriterZen

WriterZen is a firm favorite of mine. I’ve used it for years. If you’re doing a lot of content marketing, SEO, and blog writing, you must consider WriterZen because the functionality and price of this tool make it very affordable.

The team is fantastic. They’re a passionate bunch and committed to creating the best content tool. I met them all a couple of years ago when I visited their offices, and we chatted about AI, content, and SEO.

The tool is mainly for content writing. I love creating briefs with it, but you can also write articles with the generative AI and manage your entire content production within the tool.

There’s a brilliant keyword clustering tool that works by analyzing ranking pages, also ideation tools, plagiarism checkers, and so much more.

WriterZen Features

I’ll run through a few features, then focus on my favorite and most used part of WriterZen, the Content Creator feature.

WriterZen’s Topic Discovery feature is a great starting point if you need help discovering topics. You start with a head topic, such as “marketing solutions.” Then, the tool does the hard work for you, delivering content topics.

Keyword Explorer and Keyword Planner features assist the planning phase of content production. WriterZen will find keywords for you.

Now, onto Content Creator, my favorite feature. This feature helps you write competitive content. You can do everything from keyword research to SERP analysis to writing, all within the same workflow and window.

This feature offers generative AI for title tags, meta descriptions, full article outlines, and the article itself.

I have a full video showing how I use this part of WriterZen, including the AI features.

WriterZen AI Features

As shown in the video above, the AI features within WriterZen can help you:

• Generate a competitive SEO-driven brief based on what’s already ranking. I recommend expanding this to include your direct experience. It’s not enough to do what everyone else is doing and expect to rank.
• Write title tags, meta descriptions, and even the entire article with AI if you want. I have started many articles this way, then edited them until satisfied.

WriterZen Limitations

You can’t access the best tools using the free version. Although it is amazing for briefing and writing, keyword research isn’t as good as a tool like Semrush or Ahrefs as they will have large databases.

Pricing

The best part of WriterZen’s pricing is that you pay for it once and get lifetime access. There’s also a free trial and a money-back guarantee.

You can access everything for $405 and never pay another penny. WriterZen boldly compares themselves to other tools.

G2 Reviews & Ratings

WriterZen has 201 reviews in G2 and has a rating of 4.7/5.

Best For

This tool is great for content marketing teams who need support with the SEO layer of content strategy.

3. ChatGPT

I think everyone has at least tried ChatGPT at this point.

Love it or loathe it, you simply can’t argue that ChatGPT is a great tool that can greatly enhance B2B marketing. If you’re still unconvinced, I’ll share some of its features and ways I’ve used it.

ChatGPT Features

Most people probably turn to ChatGPT for its generative AI and writing blog content, but it can do so much more than that.

Since that is a well-known use for the tool, I’ll focus on other features such as image generation, data analysis, and coding.

ChatGPT AI Features

DALL-E allows you to turn your imagination into images. Simply prompt the generative AI with your desired image, and DALL-E will return something you can use on your website or other digital channels.

The images are good, but you need to check them carefully. I’ve seen generative AI images on websites, and if you know what to look for (the fingers), you can spot a generative AI image quite easily.

I encourage people to use their own images, but generative AI images serve a purpose. I follow the rule that generative AI is fine if an image is just there for decoration.

I’ve relied on ChatGPT a lot when I’m generating code. I use it a lot for schema.

It’s not always perfect, but if I want to add code to a site I’m working on, ChatGPT will get me to my desired outcome or close enough that a developer is making tweaks rather than doing the whole task.

Similarly, you can code tools and calculators that can act as great lead magnets on your site.

As a content marketer and SEO, I often deal with large datasets, like keywords. You can upload files to ChatGPT, and it will return tidy data. Using ChatGPT in this way saves me hours.

ChatGPT Limitations

ChatGPT is pretty unlimited once you start paying for it. Iterating images is poor. It tends not to understand a request to tweak something on an already generated image.

Pricing

The free version gives you access to GPT-4o mini. However, if you want to use all the ChatGPT features, the upgrade will cost you $20 per month. I’ve used both the free and paid version. Start with free and see how you go.

G2 Reviews & Ratings

ChatGPT is rated 4.7/5 with over 580 reviews.

Best For

This is an excellent AI tool for any B2B marketer. I struggle to think of anyone who wouldn’t benefit from ChatGPT.

4. Loom

I love Loom. It’s an excellent recording tool overall. It’s not perfect, and I’ll discuss that in the limitations section below. That said, I pay for Loom Business, and the extra to use the AI features is well worth the $5.

Loom Features

Loom is a video recording software. I use it to communicate with clients, demonstrate tools, send proposals, and create onboarding and training documents.

You can share your video by just generating a shareable link. Loom tracks video views, comments, and more.

There’s a desktop app, a browser version, and a Chrome extension. I highly recommend the app, which, in my experience, has the fewest problems and is least likely to glitch.

Loom AI Features

Loom uses quite a bit of AI.

You can generate video transcripts with automatic speech recognition (ASR), which is helpful. I’d go as far as to say that Loom’s ASR is one of the best I’ve used. I never edit it because it’s good enough for what I need it for.

You can also edit your video using the trim and stitch editor. Compared to apps like TikTok or CapCut, the editing feature is not the best on Loom, but it is good enough.

It’s enhanced with the Loom AI package, which you do have to pay for, but the AI will cut any pauses and filler words.

Plus, the AI will generate a video summary and chapters. I often edit the chapters but barely touch the summary; it’s good enough.

Loom Limitations

There are a few limitations with Loom. The free package limits you to 25 videos and five five-minute duration. To be fair, I do think that’s generous enough, though I was on the free version for ages.

As mentioned, the video editor could be better.

Loom is not really a video generator in the sense that you are creating creative videos; it’s really for recording processes and your screen. However, there are AI video generators and other tools to help with that.

My biggest gripe with the software is that it does seem to glitch; videos don’t always save. When I load the app, it minimizes my browser the first time I use it, but it is fine the second time.

These little bugs irritate me, but not enough, as I still use it.

To Loom’s credit, whenever I’ve had problems, customer support has responded quickly and resolved many of my issues.

Pricing

Loom costs $12.50 a month if paid annually. You can optionally add Loom AI for $5 per user. The extra $5 is worth it for me, but I probably use Loom at least every other day.

G2 Reviews & Ratings

Loom is rated 4.7/5 with over 2000 reviews.

Best For

Loom is great for day-to-day marketing teams looking to showcase demos, record training, and create onboarding videos. If you need to do a lot of editing, you can still use Loom, but you might want to download the video and edit it elsewhere.

5. Fireflies AI

Gone are the days when a VA or junior team member was brought to take meeting minutes. In 2024, this is handled entirely by AI, and when Fireflies is as good as it is, why wouldn’t you?

For the most part, I find Fireflies to be pretty accurate, and I appreciate action points being delivered directly to me. It prevents people from being distracted while taking notes, so everyone can engage fully in the meeting.

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Fireflies AI Features

Fireflies integrates with many apps, such as Asana, Airtable, ClickUp, Google Meet, Google Docs, HubSpot, Monday.com, Notion, Zoom, Skype, Trello, Slack, and many more.

Once you integrate an app (e.g., Zoom), this tool will join the meeting and email you a transcription at the end.

Usefully, there’s a topic tracker where you can create topics that help you search and highlight relevant parts of meetings quickly. This feature is only available for the premium plan.

You can upload an audio or video file to generate a transcript. Depending on your file size, it will be processed in 10-15 minutes. This supports formats like MP3, MP4, WAV, and M4A.

AI Features Within Fireflies AI

One great feature is the magic soundbites. You can use the power of AI to create new media from your video or audio. For example, the Magic Soundbites app will automatically generate a highlight reel for your meetings.

Although not strictly marketing, it all plays a role: you can generate a scorecard to rate the performance of sales reps.

Fireflies Limitations

The free version only includes 800 minutes of video storage. That is, however, pretty reasonable.

Pricing

The free plan is very reasonable as a starting point. If you want access to more features, you can start at $18/month, rising to $29.

G2 Reviews & Ratings

Fireflies.ai has 4.8/ 5 out and 448 reviews.

Best For

This is best for individuals and businesses, particularly those in and out of meetings regularly and want to save time.

6. Microsoft Clarity

Any good B2B marketer should pay attention to how their website functions for the user. Microsoft Clarity shows how visitors interact with your site.

The setup is very straightforward. You simply add code to your website. For a savvy website administrator, you won’t even need a developer.

Microsoft Clarity Features

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Clarity is free to use. It has analysis and reporting features, and you can get quite granular. Under recordings, you’ll see your website visitors’ activity, User ID, location, and browser and device details — MacOS, IOS, PC, etc.

Heatmaps, as pictured, show where users click or scroll. This is the data that B2B marketers need to create the best possible pages for conversion.

Once you know where and what your users click, you can develop a page that helps funnel traffic to conversion.

Microsoft Clarity AI Features

Copilot is Microsoft Clarity’s AI partner. It’s free, and you can use natural language to help you understand your website’s performance.

Microsoft Clarity Limitations

I’m struggling to find limitations. It’s completely free and does what you want it to. It’s supposed to be better than alternatives as it’s not too “heavy” on the site and, therefore, doesn’t slow it down as much.

Pricing

Clarity is free to use forever.

G2 Reviews & Ratings

With 36 total reviews, Clarity is rated 4.5/5.

Best For

Microsoft Clarity is great for anyone with a website. For B2B marketers, you can make data-driven decisions. Even if you’re not ready for this yet, I’d recommend getting Clarity on the site so you start gathering the data.

7. ClickUp

It took me a while to warm up to ClickUp, an AI project management tool, but the more I use it, the more I love it.

Project management tools are a must for me.

As a consultant, I see way too many marketing teams hoping actions get done after meetings or working in Google Sheets. A good project management tool with great AI features greatly benefits work efficiency.

ClickUp is free to start with and does much more out of the box than its competitors.

ClickUp Features

You can import tasks from previous tools, including Monday, Asana, Trello, and Notion, or an Excel and CSV file if you already use another project management tool.

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One of the better features of ClickUp is that automations are available on the free version.

Within my own ClickUp board, I use automation for new tasks, which are automatically assigned to me and populated with descriptions and priorities.

One of my favorite features is the form view. As pictured below, the form allows you to ask for specific details from anyone, even those not using your ClickUp setup. Information provided on the form can populate your next ClickUp task. This feature has considerably sped up workflows and increased accuracy for me.

ClickUp AI Features

Like most good project management tools in 2024, ClickUp has a generative AI feature. You can use this to write job descriptions and tasks, summarize notes, and more.

You can ask the AI questions like what tasks you have, what’s next to do, and more. It can be faster than navigating to your tasks/boards, especially if you’ve got a lot going on within the software.

With ClickUp Brain, you can quickly create drafts of your project plans and subtasks from your task details or even get real-time project updates without opening the task.

For marketers, you can integrate with docs outside of ClickUp. For example, you can easily add Google Docs as a view. I use this feature for content briefings.

ClickUp Limitations

The free version only has 100 MB of free storage, and guests must be granted full access (no permissions). It only has five spaces, and the free version only allows 100 uses when using custom fields.

Although limited, this is reasonable for the free version. Solo entrepreneurs and small businesses might find this very workable for them.

Pricing

The Business Plan costs $12 per member/month, and the Business Plus is $19 per member/month.

G2 Reviews & Ratings

ClickUp’s G2 rating is 4.7/5, with over 9,700 reviews.

Best For

I would go as far as to say that anyone could benefit from ClickUp, but it’s certainly ideal for teams looking to work more efficiently.

8. LinkedIn

At this point, everyone knows about LinkedIn, but not everyone uses this professional social media platform to its fullest extent.

LinkedIn is responsible for the vast majority of my B2B leads. I just love it.

LinkedIn Features

We all know LinkedIn as the social media platform, so I’m not going to talk too much about that, though there are AI features there for comments and generative AI to write in mail and messages.

The main features for B2B marketers are advertising solutions, a sales navigator, and recruitment tools.

LinkedIn AI Features

For marketers posting on LinkedIn (which you absolutely should be), generative AI can help you write a perfect post.

Like many tools, it’s easy to use within the interface. I would criticize the AI on LinkedIn; I don’t love it, but I’m all about being authentic and enjoying the writing.

Sales Navigator is an excellent (but paid) feature that will help you connect with precisely the right people.

This feature allows you to identify your target audience based on several filters, including company, seniority, and more. Instead of wading through profiles, you can now use Account IQ, which will summarize everything you need to know.

LinkedIn Limitations

LinkedIn is free to use for posting, viewing profiles, making connections, etc.; for many, these limitations won’t be an issue.

However, the free version will limit marketers looking to get really smart with their outreach to using LinkedIn Sales Navigator, which is paid.

Pricing

A premium subscription starts at $39.99 per month.

G2 Reviews & Ratings

LinkedIn has several features, and the reviews for each differ.

Sales Navigator has a rating of 4.3/5 and over 1,900 reviews.

The Job Search feature has 4.5/5 (over 1000 reviews), and Recruitment Marketing has 4.2/5 (over 800 reviews).

Best For

I’m a big LinkedIn fan and genuinely think that every B2B marketer should at least consider it for their individual profiles and company pages.

I recommend using individual profiles alongside company pages because, as cliche as it sounds, people do business with people.

9. Slack

In 2024, everyone is using or has used Slack. We’re all familiar with it as software for communication. Slack does have some AI features that you might not be aware of. I’ll get into this below.

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Slack Features

There are a couple of features that I like about Slack.

Firstly, you can group conversations into channels. For my B2B marketing business, we have one channel per client. Plus, there are some internal channels. Others might use it for different departments or marketing channels.

Secondly, Slack is very easy to use when you have access to multiple accounts. Over time, you might be invited into multiple Slack channels from clients or suppliers. You can manage all of this very easily within the same interface.

Finally, the huddle feature is handy. Sometimes, you just need to talk, Huddle allows for quick and impromptu meetings.

Slack AI Features

Slackbot is a helper and messenger. This feature reminds you of things you haven’t done yet to keep the workflow moving.

You can search for snippets of conversation within Slack to find lost messages. The AI element means you can search in natural language, asking questions like ” What’s the Q1 sales strategy?”

The features for navigating Slack are pretty good. You can swipe through conversations to quickly review missed messages, and with AI, you can also summarize conversations.

Slack Limitations

When you use the free version, integration with other tools is limited to 10 tools only. The messaging feature’s 90-day history is also limited to the #general channel, and channel posting permission is limited to the #general channel only.

Pricing

The Pro version costs $7.25 per person/month, billed yearly. The Business+ Plan is $12.50 per person/month.

G2 Reviews & Ratings

Slack has an impressive 32k reviews in G2 and rates 4.5/5.

Best For

Slack is best for businesses with teams from various locations, but I’ve found it really helpful even when working within a physical office.

10. Motion

I think Motion is great! I’ve used it for about a year. It’s perfect for managing solo entrepreneurs and maybe smaller teams.

Image Source

Motion Features

This app will help you with project and task management. Its calendar feature allows you to automatically plan your day based on tasks and priorities.

Motion also serves as a master calendar, a feature that I found incredibly helpful as I work with multiple calendars. I sync my calendar from Google and Outlook, and I expect you could sync Apple Calendar, too.

Motion AI Features

The primary AI feature within Motion is its scheduling AI. You give Motion a list of tasks you complete and when they need to be completed.

You can set recurring tasks, so once you set it up, it manages itself each month. The initial setup can be time-consuming, especially as you input a time estimate for each task.

Once that’s done, though, Motion will manage your entire work day, considering task duration, available time, and task priority. It takes the mental load out of what to do next and ensures you don’t have pockets of wasted time.

Motion Limitations

This tool is limited to project management and task organization. While the AI side of it is excellent for organization, it’s not the most multi-use tool.

The calendar view irritates me, too. You can view your calendar by day or week, never month, which feels standard. I did put in a ticket and requested a monthly view.

Pricing

For one user, Motion is $19 per month, but there is a cost per user saving if you have a larger team, you’ll pay $12 per person.

G2 Reviews & Ratings

Motion has a rating of 4.1/5 and only 90 total reviews.

Best For

This is best for individuals who would benefit from AI taking the mental load on what to do next.

Don’t Sleep on AI Tools for B2B Marketing

I know how it is. AI hasn’t always had the best reputation among marketers (remember, almost 50% think it’ll replace them). However, when used well, AI is here to help marketing teams do more, sell more, and connect with their audience.

I work in and around SEO on a daily basis. And although I’m on the content creation side of things, I can tell you with certainty that SEO budgets impact every part of the process.

It’s obvious to me when companies have a clear SEO budget and when they don’t.

The ones that do have an organized list of target keywords and a carefully laid out plan for ranking for those keywords — from content creation for landing pages and blog posts to building a backlink strategy.

They also have tools and services set up to help them along the way.

Marketers who want to improve their SEO and maximize their efforts must have an SEO budget in place.

Let’s review how to create an SEO budget for maximum ROI.

In this article:

• The Importance of Creating an SEO Budget
• How to Create an SEO Budget
• 4 Costs to Consider When Creating an SEO Budget

The Importance of Creating an SEO Budget

A well-rounded SEO strategy involves a range of tactics, most of which fall under one of these categories:

• On-page SEO. Focuses on content and page optimizations that help a site rank for certain keywords.
• Off-page SEO. Focuses on backlinks to the site, which contribute to domain authority.
• Technical SEO. Includes backend components such as site speed, page loading time, and site codes.

The purpose of an SEO budget is to determine how much money should be allocated to each category. Without a budget, you risk overspending your resources on a tactic that might not have a strong ROI for your business.

Or worse, tactics that put your business at risk.

For example, if you don’t have money set aside to improve your domain authority through quality backlinks, you may be tempted to resort to shady link-building practices. This can put your website in hot water as Google has a policy that prohibits spammy link practices like buying or selling links.

Or, let’s say you don’t have part of your budget allocated to content creation and decide to rely solely on AI tools to generate SEO content for your website.

Well, let’s just say that creating AI-generated content at scale can have its downsides.

Here are a few more reasons why creating an SEO budget is important to your overall strategy.

You can prioritize the tactics with the most impact.

Not every business needs to spend money on every SEO tactic. Your money is best spent on the strategies you know will be most impactful.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t spend money experimenting with other tactics.

But when you know which areas drive the most results for your business, you can focus your money and efforts there while allocating a little money to other areas you’re interested in trying.

It keeps you on track to meet your goals.

If an SEO strategy is the guide, then SEO budget is the enforcer. Having a clear budget laid out prevents you from haphazardly spending money on SEO without a plan.

When you have a set budget for your SEO efforts, it’s easier to stay on track with the goals you created. Think of it this way: If you’ve set aside money in your personal budget for a gym membership, you’re more likely to exercise, right?

When you know that part of your budget is going toward the gym, it’s easier to motivate yourself to go, which helps you meet your health goals.

The same can be said about your SEO budget. When you know you’ve allocated $500 towards keyword research tools, then you’re going to take advantage of everything those tools have to offer.

It helps you track ROI.

Tracking your performance is essential for any marketing activity, and SEO is no exception. When you have an SEO budget, it’s even easier to understand each tactic’s ROI.

For example, when you know exactly how much you spent on link building and content optimizations for the month, you can calculate the ROI to see which activity was most beneficial.

From there, you can determine which activity was most successful and refine your budget as necessary.

How to Create an SEO Budget

Since I’ve never created an SEO budget myself, I reached out to the experts. Here are the steps they recommend for creating one.

1. Conduct an SEO audit.

The first step is to conduct an SEO audit.

Audits are a necessary part of any new strategy or budget planning. They help you identify where your SEO is excelling and what needs improvement.

Take a look at all areas of your SEO performance, from keyword rankings to site speed to domain authority.

Once you know what’s working well or what needs attention, you can determine where the budget should be allocated.

2. Research the competition.

After you’ve audited your own performance, it’s time to see how your competitors are doing.

Not only does this help you see how they’re ranking or which keywords they’re targeting, but this step can also help you identify opportunities they aren’t addressing.

If you’re a newer business competing with legacy businesses with strong domain authority, it might not be feasible to outrank them for certain keywords right out of the gate.

However, there may be different opportunities you could aim for, suggests Alan Muther, a digital marketing specialist and founder of Ardoz Digital: “If it looks like your competitor is killing it with content marketing, it might be smarter to double down on link building instead of trying to outdo them in content right off the bat.”

3. Set SEO goals based on business strategy.

It’s also important to align your SEO budget with your current business strategy.

For example, let’s say I run a local pizza restaurant and plan to expand into new markets within the next year. I can use local SEO to get in front of my new target audiences before I open.

In other words, when you know what your business goals are, you can plan your budget around them.

4. Determine how much work needs to be outsourced.

Once you know your goals and what it takes to meet them, ask yourself: Do you have the resources internally to execute them?

Brandy Hastings, an SEO Strategist at SmartSites, a marketing agency that’s generated over $100M in sales for its clients, suggests investing in SEO tools early into the process if you don’t have the budget to outsource.

“Depending on your time and resources, [tools] could make the difference between successfully DIYing your SEO and keeping it in-house instead of outsourcing to expensive freelancers or agencies,” says Hastings.

However, SEO campaigns can take a lot of time and resources, so it isn’t always feasible for an in-house marketing team to handle it all — especially when you have other marketing activities on your plate.

Think about your SEO goals and which tactics you want to focus on. Consider what your expertise is and which tactics may be stronger if you handed them off to an expert.

For instance, if you want to improve your domain authority through quality backlinks, you might want to hire a PR firm to help secure thought leadership opportunities. Speaking as a former PR person, I can tell you that media outreach is a specialized skill that’s definitely worth outsourcing.

5. Allocate based on the highest impact.

To maximize ROI, you should start by allocating your money to areas with the highest impact.

For example, let’s say you already have a strong content marketing engine and are ranking for several target keywords. It might be worth it to double down on creating SEO blog posts to improve your rankings if you already have a chance of reaching the top spot in the SERPs.

Another example would be if you’ve identified keywords that your competitors aren’t using. You could target these keywords for pay-per-click (PPC) to get ahead of the competition.

Budgeting is a numbers game and it may take some adjusting to get to the right formula. But if you focus on impact, you can get the most out of your money.

6. Track KPIs.

Tracking your performance can help you refine your spending.

This is why it’s important to have an analytics dashboard where you can keep an eye on all of your metrics in one place. Once you see what has a positive ROI and what isn’t working as well, you can refine your spending.

Keep in mind that SEO is a long game. Hastings emphasizes that it can take months to see results, and marketers shouldn’t be hasty about switching tactics if the initial outcome isn’t what they expected.

“If you quit after two months because the needle hasn’t started moving and you need a return today, you’ll be tossing your efforts down the drain,” Hastings says. “Consider how you’ll balance the need for more revenue now and invest in PPC to supplement your traffic until you’re bringing in enough organically.”

7. Leave room for unexpected costs.

SEO is an ongoing investment. While a budget can help guide your process, you should also leave room for unexpected costs.

From AI content making its way into search to Google’s frequent updates, marketers are familiar with how quickly the search algorithm can change. Make sure you’re prepared to adjust your content optimizations to meet those updates.

Pro tip: A common mistake is to set a fixed percentage of your total marketing budget for SEO.

According to Muther, “this isn’t the best approach because different stages and channels might need different funding levels, and these needs can change over time. For example, early on, it might make more sense to invest more in social media or content marketing to build up your presence.”

4 Costs to Consider When Creating an SEO Budget

1. Tools

SEO tools are essential throughout the process. Tools like Semrush and Ahrefs can help you research keywords, track your site‘s and competitors’ rankings, and generate content ideas.

Some are free but have limited features, while others have a more powerful paid version.

Google Analytics, for example, is free to use, while Semrush and Ahrefs are paid tools. Plans for these tools cost anywhere from $130-$500 per month.

If you’re working with a limited budget, HubSpot offers a free SEO Starter Pack which includes expert insights and an on-page SEO template.

2. Services

If you choose to outsource any of your SEO efforts, make room in your budget. SEO pricing ranges depending on what services you need and how much work is involved.

For example, you may want to focus on technical SEO and on-page optimizations in-house, but want to hire an SEO agency to help with link building or content marketing to improve keyword rankings.

Once you know which elements you want to outsource, get some quotes so you know how much to allocate for your budget.

3. Maintenance

As I mentioned before, SEO is an ongoing investment. Your SEO strategy will require maintenance and adjustments based on campaign performance, algorithm updates, and competitor performance.

4. Content creation

Again, if you want to outsource any part of your content creation — case studies, blog posts, industry reports — factor that into your budget.

This is especially important if you have a small marketing or SEO team. You may have big goals, and those goals may require additional support, tools, and services to be achieved.

Getting the Most Out of Your SEO Budget

My biggest takeaway is that if you want to get the most out of your SEO budget, you can’t skip the planning and research steps.

If I were to create an SEO budget today, I’d spend the most time on auditing and competitive analysis.

I’d dig deep into my past performance to conduct a comprehensive SEO audit, and check out all of my competitors’ SEO activity to compare. I’d use SEO tools to uncover keyword opportunities, and use templates to organize my findings.

Following these steps ensures you’re creating an SEO budget with max ROI, and that’s what every SEO marketer dreams of, right? Take advantage of tools, auditing, and services to get the most out of your SEO budget in 2024.

Before becoming a marketer, I was a journalist who loved the opportunity to tell stories about my community and share perspectives that would otherwise go unnoticed.

When I left the journalism business, I thought my storytelling days were over; however, visual storytelling is critical in the marketing world.

Visual storytelling allows brands to connect with audiences on an emotional and personal level by sharing stories accompanied by stunning imagery.

So, keep reading to learn how to incorporate visual storytelling into your marketing campaign. I‘ve included some of my favorite examples to help inspire you. Let’s go!

Table of Contents

• What is visual storytelling?
• Why is visual storytelling important?
• Elements of Visual Storytelling
• How to Use Visual Storytelling for Marketing
• Visual Storytelling Examples

The company, which specializes in short—and long-term homestays, posted a video on its YouTube channel telling the story of a displaced family that got a fresh start by securing temporary housing through Airbnb.

The YouTube video interweaves interviews with the family with b-roll footage of their daily lives, former home, and the natural disaster that changed their lives forever.

The story tugs at my heart, and the rich imagery and thoughtful edits enhance it. All while marketing Airbnb as more than just an alternative to hotels; it is an option for people who need temporary shelter.

Why is visual storytelling important?

Visual storytelling can build an authentic, emotional connection between your brand and its audience, leading to loyal consumers who are invested in your story, products, and services. Let’s go back to my Airbnb example.

Consumers may see this heartwarming story of how Airbnb helped a family in need and may decide to book their next vacation stay with Airbnb not just because of its services but because they want to keep the business thriving so they can help other families.

Visual storytelling can also build brand recognition that can last for years to come. My favorite example of lifelong brand recognition is Dawn Dish Soap’s “The Big Picture” docuseries—which I’ll explore more in-depth later.

Elements of Visual Storytelling

So what elements do you need to flawlessly execute visual storytelling in your campaign? Well, let’s start with the obvious —the visuals and story.

Visuals

Whether you’re telling a story through graphics, photos, or video, compelling imagery is essential to bringing your story to life. Some of my favorite examples of gorgeous visuals come from the Sydney Opera House.

The world-famous opera house temporarily closed its doors during the COVID-19 pandemic, and for the first time in years, the venue was empty of visitors and performers.

During this time, the opera house underwent repairs and updates, and a local photographer, Daniel Boud, was invited inside.

Boud took gorgeous photos of an unusually empty Sydney Opera House, a site most people may never see again.

The photos conveyed a sense of nostalgia for the many performances that have taken place at the decades-old opera house.

They also told a story of unease and melancholy, reflecting the wave of uncertainty that swept the world of live performance at the start of the pandemic as many venues closed their doors (some for good).

Photos of construction workers updating the opera house also reflected a glimmer of hope for the future as they spruced up the venue for future performances despite not knowing when they’d ever happen.

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Story

Of course, you must think of the story you’re trying to tell before you can even get your visuals together.

The Sydney Opera House wanted Boud to tell the story of how one of the most lively and loud places on the planet stood silent and empty but still showed hope for the future of its livelihood and that of the performance art industry.

What story do you want to convey to your audience? Perhaps you want to share how your brand came to be or how your organization has made a difference in the local community.

Perhaps your brand has experienced some bad press, and you want to show how you‘ve turned things around and massively improved your products or services, like Domino’s Pizza.

Years ago, the company received backlash for the quality of its pizza and was the butt of many jokes.

In the video below, Domino’s uses interviews, a b-roll, genuine consumer reactions, and a peek behind the kitchen to show that the company is using a new recipe and that consumers can now enjoy their newly improved delicious pizza.

Emotions

Your visual story must make your audience feel something that generates an emotional connection. As I said earlier, the photos of an empty Sydney Opera House made viewers uneasy.

How could such a powerhouse become so desolate? How could things change so suddenly?

The photos also conveyed isolation from artists, the performing arts community, and the world.

These feelings fostered an emotional connection with viewers because they were the same feelings that people felt worldwide as the pandemic forced many to stay indoors and avoid gatherings with loved ones.

Think about an issue your audience is experiencing and find a way to tell a story that illustrates their feelings and shows that, above all, you understand them.

Authenticity

Whatever story you‘re trying to tell needs to come from a genuine place. What’s a real problem that your audience often experiences? How can you visually show that your brand offers a real solution?

What’s the real story of how your brand came to be? Can real customers offer testimonials of how your product or service helped them?

The Sydney Opera House truly did shut down temporarily during the pandemic, and the photos taken during its time of silence were real and not staged. So, for lack of better words, keep it real regarding visual storytelling.

Purpose

Finally, what do you want your audience to do after discovering your story? At the end of its articles featuring Boud’s photography, the Sydney Opera House included a link calling for viewers to donate.

The photos were taken to show viewers that the opera house’s doors were closed but would reopen with a whole new look; in the meantime, donate to keep the performance arts iconic beacon alive!

Domino‘s Pizza wanted its target audience to know that it received their feedback and made positive changes to its recipe, so they’re ready for a second chance to impress.

What’s the purpose of your story?

How to Use Visual Storytelling for Marketing

The examples below will give you insight into how you can use visual storytelling in your marketing strategy, off the top of my head, I know you can use the concept in marketing to:

• Share your mission and vision with your audience
• Reflect on positive changes coming to your brand
• Show alternative uses for your product and services
• Show where your brand stands on important issues concerning your target audience

To inspire you, I‘ve compiled a list of my favorite examples of visual storytelling, both old and new. Let’s dive in!

Visual Storytelling Examples

1. Dawn Dish Soap – “The Big Picture”

I told you I’d revisit this example! This campaign is an oldie but a goodie because it remains a core part of Dawn’s branding to this very day.

In 2013, the dish soap company released a nine-part documentary called “The Big Picture,” which followed rescuers and volunteers using Dawn to clean and care for wildlife.

The first episode famously showed rescuers using Dawn to clean ducks caught in the crossfire of oil spills.

More than a decade later, ducklings dubbed “the Dawn Ducks” are pictured on almost all of Dawn’s products and are still featured in advertisements.

What I like: The docuseries features interviews with real rescuers interspersed with a b-roll of oil birds being cleaned using the soap.

I also love how the documentary cleverly showed how the soap is tough enough to cut through oil but gentle on the skin.

2. Dove – The Code | Dove Self-Esteem Project

In 2024, Dove released a short film called “The Code” as part of the Dove Self-Esteem Project. It shows a young woman of color asking AI to generate images of what beautiful, confident women look like.

The young woman is then shown AI-generated images of white, blond-haired women who fit within very narrow, unrealistic beauty standards. She later types in the same query but instead adds “according to Dove Real Beauty Ad.”

From there, she is shown more diverse, realistic images of confident and beautiful women.

What I like: The film drives home Dove‘s point in just one minute, capturing the audience’s attention without overstaying its welcome.

I also love that Dove included statistics about AI at the start and connected it to the ad‘s purpose: to show that Dove will not use AI to create or discord women’s images.

This film was a creative and heartwarming way to establish trust and transparency between the company and its audience.

3. Airbnb

I already covered why Airbnb‘s YouTube video about Ula and her family is an excellent example of visual storytelling, so I won’t rehash the same details.

Instead, I encourage you to think about ways your brand or organization has shown up for your community or those in need.

Then, reach out to the people or families who have benefited from your services and highlight their testimonials in a visual medium like film or photography.

4. Gemini

Coinciding with the 2024 Olympics, Google released an Olympic-themed ad showcasing the many uses of AI, Gemini. The ad features a father telling the story of how his daughter is inspired by Olympic sprinter Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone.

As the father narrates the ad, viewers are shown quick clips of Gemini generating a training routine for his child.

The ad ends with the narrator asking Gemini to help his daughter write a letter to Sydney saying she‘s an inspiration and she plans on breaking her record when she’s older.

What I like: Google found a way to connect a current, trending topic (the Olympics) to its product while showcasing Gemini’s many uses.

5. Amazon – “Saving Sawyer”

Amazon’s “Saving Sawyer” ad shows a dog who enjoys spending time with his family as they lock down during the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, after the lockdown ends and the family returns to school and work, the dog soon becomes restless, lonely, and destructive.

The ad shows the family shopping for a dog kennel on Amazon as the dog (and audience) nervously looks on.

Fortunately, it turns out the kennel wasn’t for the dog but for a new pup that would be joining the family and keeping lonely dog company.

What I like: Amazon does an excellent job of connecting a relatable scenario to its service. During the pandemic, nearly one in five households nationwide adopted a new dog.

These pets became used to their families being home with them all day, and many Americans struggled to adopt their animals to being home alone as people began returning to school and work.

Amazon incorporated this fact into its visual storytelling and showed audiences that Amazon carries many products that can be helpful for pits, including an electronic treat distributor and a kennel for bringing a new pet home to keep your original fur baby company.

I also admire how the ad played on emotion by making the audience worry about the dog‘s fate (I’m assuming his name is Sawyer?).

6. Purina Service Dog Salute

Purina’s moving documentary follows three real-life veterans and their service dogs.

Throughout the documentary, the veterans describe their time in the military and their struggle to move forward into civilian life while managing their mental health.

The documentary shows the difference service dogs make in their lives. While telling the stories, viewers can see quick shots of the dogs eating Purina dog food to have the energy and nutrition to help their owners.

What I like: The documentary features real interviews with real veterans, and footage of Purina bags is incorporated into the film in a natural way.

And, as the daughter of two veterans, I was able to emotionally connect to the video’s subjects.

7. Gibson – “The Process”

Gibson Inc. wants its consumers to know the guitars they sell are expertly crafted and of the highest quality.

To drive those points home, the guitar company started a digital series called “The Process,” which takes viewers behind the scenes of crafting a Gibson guitar.

What I like: I enjoy the exclusive look into the art of crafting a guitar. It‘s a peek behind a curtain that even the most talented players aren’t always granted.

Think about the process of creating your product and consider ways you can take viewers behind the scenes.

8. Nike – What Are You Working On?

Each episode of Nike’s web series “What Are You Working On?” highlights an athlete as they share their unique journeys. The subjects narrate the episodes, which show them playing their sport, training, and working to achieve their goals.

What I like: Each athlete is seen lacing up their Nike shoes and sporting Nike gear as they train, showing the audience that Nike plays a role in their journey as well and is designed with athletes in mind.

9. Subaru – Subaru Loves Learning

A lot of the examples I‘ve shown you involve big, expensive productions, highly stylized footage, and almost movie-level editing.

But don’t worry; Subaru‘s short-form video for Subaru Loves Learning proves that you don’t need all that for impactful visual storytelling.

The video features real voice messages from educators thanking Subaru for adopting their classrooms and providing the necessities to their students.

The raw voice messages are accompanied by photos of the classrooms Subaru adopted and the supplies they received.

What I like: Creating a video like Subaru’s is simple and quick to make. You only need audio, photos, and basic editing skills (or an intuitive app to edit the video for you).

10. McDonald’s Anime Commercial

I‘m a huge anime fan, so I really enjoyed this McDonald’s anime ad that aired in Japan several years ago. The animated ad shows a young woman who gets a job at her local McDonald’s and is mentored by her manager.

As time goes on, the woman develops important skills that help her mentor the next generation of employees and move on to higher-paying opportunities in the future.

The ad encourages people to apply to their local McDonald’s to gain skills for other careers.

What I like: I love that the ad uses gorgeous animation to portray McDonald’s as more than a fast food restaurant, but as a place young people can go to grow and develop key skills.

Think about what your brand brings to its community that goes beyond products and services.

As you can see, visual storytelling can be used in many ways to get people invested in your brand. Just start with a vision, story, and purpose.

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

 

B2B social media marketing often gets a bad rap.

It’s treated like the strict school principal of business. It’s seen as boring and “unfun.” It won’t let you tell jokes, talk to your friends on social media, or break with tradition. (And it certainly wouldn’t let you chew gum in class if it could.)

However, if my last decade of helping marketers promote their businesses has taught me anything, it’s that these are all just nasty rumors.

B2B (business-to-business) marketing, especially social media marketing, can be just as creative, relatable, and exciting as B2C (business-to-consumer), and frankly, it has to be to be successful.

Thankfully, there are a number of B2B social media marketing strategies and tips that make it possible, regardless of your industry. Let’s talk through some of the best and look at examples from brands like Google, Slack, Shopify, and more.

Table of Contents

• What is B2B social media marketing?
• So, how is B2B social media marketing different from B2C?
• B2B Social Media Marketing Strategy Best Practices
• B2B Social Media Marketing Tactics That Work for Any Industry

What is B2B social media marketing?

To understand B2B social media marketing, you really just need to understand the difference between B2B and B2C.

Simply put, B2B means a business’ offering is intended to be bought and used by another business. It has a professional purpose.

B2C, on the other hand, refers to goods and services intended to be bought by individual consumers for personal use.

Pretty straightforward, right?

Knowing that, B2B social media marketing is when your business uses social media platforms to promote its product, service, or brand to other businesses that may buy them.

Think Shopify targeting eCommerce businesses or Slack, businesses that need real-time digital communication.

But let’s be real — it’s not like Slack or Shopify themselves are scrolling through your Instagram feed or slapping subscribe on YouTube. It’s still an individual.

So, I usually recommend my fellow marketers to think of B2B social media marketing as when a business uses social media to reach individuals who make purchases on behalf of businesses or can influence those purchases.

So, how is B2B social media marketing different from B2C?

Even though B2C and B2B social media marketing both technically speak to individuals, there are still some key differences.

And they all primarily come back to what messages and content you share.

In B2B social media marketing, you speak more about professional and organizational pain points and goals (i.e., profitability, productivity, and team morale) and very rarely about personal goals (i.e. better home life, improved health, or beauty).

B2B is also less about developing personal, one-on-one relationships on social media like B2C and more about communicating value and bottom-line results to a greater organization.

However, none of this is to say that B2B social media marketing is cold, heartless, or impersonal.

If you’re working B2B social for the first time, it simply means you want to focus on the collective interests, not personal ones.

Share customer success stories or content that speaks to common organizational pain points or experiences. Post data or actionable advice businesses can use in their projects or initiatives.

Slack does a great job of this across its social media.

Now that you know what B2B social media marketing is, how can you do it successfully?

B2B Social Media Marketing Strategy Best Practices

First, you need a solid B2B social media marketing strategy to guide you. Let’s discuss a few best practices for creating yours.

1. Shape your strategy around SMART goals.

Like any marketing strategy, a B2B social media strategy must be shaped around goals to succeed. Goals guide you and ensure you’re working toward the right things.

Whether your goals are focused on brand awareness or acquisition, the best way to outline them for your team is using the SMART methodology — specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound.

This helps your team know exactly what it’s trying to do and by when, how it will track its progress toward achieving it, and why it’s something they can actually do.

Let’s illustrate with an example. Say your goal is “To build brand awareness on social media.”

Thinking this through with the SMART methodology, this becomes:

• Specific: I want to boost our company’s brand awareness by posting regularly and frequently on X, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. I will increase our posts on X from once to four times a day, post daily on Instagram, and increase weekly publishing frequency on LinkedIn and Facebook from four to seven times per week.
• Measurable: Our goal is a 4% increase in engagement rate across the board.
• Attainable: Our engagement rate increased by an average of 2% last month when we increased our weekly publishing frequency and spent more time on thoughtful, engaging copy.
• Relevant: By increasing the engagement rate, we’ll boost brand awareness and generate more leads, giving sales more opportunities to close.
• Time-Bound: End of this month.

Putting that all together makes our SMART goal:

“By the end of this month, we will increase our average engagement rate across our social media channels by 4% by increasing our post frequency and concentrating on thoughtful, engaging copy.”

See the difference?

Pro tip: If you need help thinking through the SMART methodology, we have a template to help.

Available as an Excel and Google Sheet, this template provides step-by-step instructions for setting a SMART goal, calculates achievable numerical targets, and helps you evaluate the roadblocks to achieving your marketing goals.

2. Take inspiration from your competitors.

Social media can give you a glimpse into your competitor’s marketing strategy. Monitoring them should definitely be part of your routine.

You want to know what campaigns they run, how audiences respond, what new products or features they may launch, and what questions or problems audiences may have.

All of this insight helps you better understand what you’re up against and how you may need to adjust your strategy.

You also want to “Find a white space,” as HubSpot Senior Social Media Manager Emily Kearns advises.

“The B2B landscape is relatively straightforward, similar, and dull. Deep dive into your competitors, see how they’re executing on social, and try to determine a unique area where you can add value and stand out.”

If your competitor isn’t responding to trending news, then maybe your brand can lead the way. If they find success sharing videos with actionable advice, how can you incorporate a similar style and improve upon it?

Look for opportunities to emulate things that are doing well and differentiate yourself.

3. Establish a unique brand and voice.

You also need to develop a consistent voice on social media. Not only does this make your feed look more organized, cohesive, and professional, but it also allows visitors to recognize your content even out of context.

For example, you can spot a Canva post from a mile away with its consistent fonts and colors.

Ask yourself:

• What makes your business different?
• How will its content look and feel?
• What would make someone be able to recognize it even if it wasn’t on your platform?
• What emotions and words do people associate with you?

The answers to these questions will form the foundation of your voice. If you want more tips for building your brand voice from the ground up, here is a helpful slideshow to get you started.

Pro tip: LinkedIn found that 64% of executives prefer “a more human, less formal tone of voice” over “an even-toned, intellectual voice.” So, keep it natural and conversational.

“Think of your brand as a person, a friend to your audience,” details HubSpot Senior Brand Social Team Lead Chi Thukral.

“What would they sound like, what would they be interested in talking about, how would they be at work, what would their FYP look like? This all will humanize your content. B2B doesn’t have to be serious and dry.”

While you want your social media voice to be consistent with your greater brand and company culture, you’re still talking to fellow human beings. Post accordingly.

4. Post on a consistent schedule.

Along with your voice and visual brand, aim to be consistent with your posting schedule.

Having a set time to post content gives you a deadline to follow and gives your audience a specific time to anticipate hearing from you.

Create a content calendar for as far into the future as you can. I recommend mapping out at least two weeks and having your content ready a week before publishing, so you aren’t left scrambling at the last minute.

HubSpot has a social media calendar template to help you get started.

Pro tip: Another way to maintain consistency is to schedule posts ahead of time using a social media tool.

HubSpot’s social media management software allows you to run all your social media from one central location, including scheduling to Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), and LinkedIn.

5. Focus on original, thought leadership content.

Looking at the success of all the meme accounts on social media, you may think curating content from other sources is a quick ticket to success — but this approach is short-sighted.

You may get a like or share today, but why should anyone follow you over the original source long-term? Sharing third-party content showcases the talent, unique value, or expertise of its original creator, not you.

So, rather than just curating content from others, aim to share high-quality, original content on a regular basis. Your audience will be more inclined to share original content, in turn exposing your name and knowledge to new audiences.

But what kind of original content should you post?

Consider your audience’s interests, questions, and goals, and create content that addresses them with your unique perspective. Provide answers and points of view only your organization can; insights from your team’s experience.

The possibilities are endless, but if you’re having trouble coming up with ideas, you’re not alone. Creating engaging content is the #1 challenge marketers expect with social media in the next year, but it doesn’t have to be.

We’ll get into specifics in the next section, but you can also head to The Ultimate Guide to Content Creation for some inspiration.

6. Diversify your content mediums.

There’s a reason we social media marketers get excited when platforms launch new features. They’re new mediums to play, get creative with, and maybe strike a chord with our audiences.

Instagram Stories, Facebook polls, TikTok Slideshows, and LinkedIn documents are all examples of multimedia formats that added new ways to engage with audiences on their platforms and diversified content mixes.

But why does this matter? Think of it this way — If you scrolled through Instagram and only saw photos, you’d probably get bored pretty quickly. Or if you only created the same format everyone else was, you’d likely get lost in the crowd.

Part of the reason Instagram keeps people hooked is because of its variety. In a 10-second scroll, you might come across a meme, a Reel, a Story, an image with a poll, a carousel, or a live video. There’s a potpourri of options to keep people interested and interacting.

This is something you should emulate on your brand’s specific page.

Different people enjoy consuming information in different ways, so if you only create one type, you may be ignored by many in your target audience.

Plus, not every topic lends itself to every format. For example, a software tutorial is likely best suited for a video rather than a series of photos. So, let your subject matter guide you as well.

Office space provider Regus uses a healthy mix of different mediums across its social media profiles. On Instagram, you’ll find short-form videos, Stories, single photos, carousels, and even graphics to diversify its feed and highlight offers in different ways:

And their LinkedIn follows suit with videos, slideshows, and graphics:

Pro tip: Repurpose your existing content for different mediums with artificial intelligence (AI). Repurposing is one of smartest ways to get the most out of the work you’ve already done and it doesn’t have to be time consuming, thanks to AI.

Share a blog article with ChatGPT and it can quickly spin up drafts for social media posts or captions. It can even create video scripts or even images and graphics.

There are also an increasing number of AI tools being explicitly built with content repurposing in mind like HubSpot’s Content Remix.

With Content Remix, Professional and Enterprise-level users of Content Hub can repurpose existing content into new formats.

This can be materials you have hosted on HubSpot (i.e. images, social posts, text messages, ads, and blog posts) or new content you upload to the tool.

7. Use AI — but sparingly.

Speaking of AI, it can dramatically help you save time in B2B social media marketing in a number of ways. It can help you:

• Generate images
• Create videos
• Respond to social media engagement (via tools like ManyChat)
• Conduct platform, competitor, and audience research
• Brainstorm post ideas
• Write posts and captions (with HubSpot’s Free AI Content Generator)
• And much more.

As tempting as it can be, however, use AI strategically in your B2B social media activity as it does have its shortcomings.

For instance, when it comes to writing, the convenience and speed also comes with concerns of plagiarism, privacy, and even bias. In fact, our research found that 96% of the time, the content AI creates isn’t ready to use as-is. So, by all means, use it to get you started, but be prepared to edit.

Take what the tool gives you and shape it into your final product with your brand’s specific voice, personality, and original thought.

As for social media engagement, modern audiences can usually spot automation, like this message from Lyft, from a mile away.

Messages like this can come off as cold and inauthentic, especially on social media platforms where the goal is connection. So, keep your activity as organic and human-to-human as possible, whenever possible.

Learn more about how AI to in your B2B marketing.

8. Lean into the right platforms.

There are dozens of social media platforms, but that doesn’t mean you have to be on all of them.

Kearns explained, “You don’t need to do everything on all social channels. Start small and focused and put resources behind one platform to understand how your audience engages with that content.”

According to our research, the top five channels for B2B marketers are Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, and X.

She continued, “Get to know your audience: It’s critical to research to understand where they’re spending their time online, what their interests are, and what they’re looking for in social. This should be the foundation of your content strategy and channel strategy.”

B2B Social Media Marketing Tactics That Work for Any Industry

With your strategy set, let’s dive into specific tactics.

9. Share data and facts.

Data is not just interesting, it’s hard to argue with. It adds an air of credibility to any message and can grab attention. That’s a formula for great B2B social media content if you ask me.

With this in mind, look into your analytics or, if you have the means, conduct original research. Pull the most compelling data or number-based facts related to what you do and share it with your audience in an eye-catching video or graphic.

What kind of data should you share?

Look for surprising trends and insights — ones that go against popular belief. This kind of information stops someone as they’re scrolling, makes them want to hit share, and even sparks a conversation.

Take this example featuring HubSpot’s State of Sales:

You can also share data to help your audience improve their work or make better decisions. Reddit for Business, for example, regularly shares user preference data to help businesses and advertisers deliver more effective content on its platform:

It also cleverly uses data to help “sell” its offering.

10. Give inspiration.

I’m not talking about the cliche, anonymous inspirational quotes we all see on Facebook from time to time, but professional inspiration.

Think quotes or keynotes from well-respected thought leaders in your space or individuals who have overcome relatable challenges.

Content like this resonates with your audience on a deeper level and gives them something to not only aspire to, but want to follow for more.

I’m a huge fan of how Shopify combines this strategy with social proof; sharing inspirational stories from its successful customers.

Speaking of which …

11. Showcase your customers.

People connect with other people, so even if you’re a B2B brand, it’s smart to incorporate human stories and relatable personalities into your social media content.

Have some really happy customers or fans of your products? Post about them on social media like Slack does on its LinkedIn company page:

These features act as social proof of your claims and help audiences better envision themselves as potential customers.

Plus, according to Gartner, 86% of businesses consider verified reviews critical in their purchase decisions, so having a real-life customer speak to your value can do wonders for sales.

Pro tip: Don’t be afraid to lean into user-generated content. When your fans or customers love your brand, they’ll often be happy to share their experiences and thoughts on social media.

Create a branded hashtag and encourage them to use it. Then you can then reshare this content to your own social media

12. Highlight your employees.

You can also introduce your social media followers to your employees. Spotlighting your team lets audiences to put faces to the company and humanize the brand.

This is important for small and large companies alike, because whether you’re selling computers or offer commercial cleaning services, customers like to know who their money is going to and also who will be there if they run into issues.

Google and Pinterest both do a wonderful job of this:

Additionally, highlighting your employees allows for employer branding—or the reputation your company has as a place to work. This can help attract talent and make you more likable to customers overall.

Showcasing your staff may also increase your reach and engagement. For instance, instead of just posting a photo of your new product, you might also post a photo of the 20 people who designed it.

This would likely get shared by those 20 people and seen by their networks if tagged.

At HubSpot, we’re no strangers to highlighting our employees on social media. In this example, we highlighted HubSpot employees who would be acting as “correspondents” for INBOUND this year.

By doing this, we get to acknowledge and show appreciation for some of our team members while also giving our audience real-life individuals to connect with at the event.

13. Partner with relevant brands and influencers.

According to Matter Communication, 69% of consumers trust messages from influencers, friends, and family over brands themselves. In other words, you need others to vouch for you.

Explore which influencers, creators, or other businesses your buyers engage with. Collaborating with them can boost your reach and the trust others have in you.

Figma regularly collaborates with influencers and real-life users of its software for engaging social media content:

Learn more about your options for influencer marketing.

14. Use relevant humor.

According to a recent study by HubSpot research, 97% of marketers plan to continue or increase their investment in funny content on social media in the next year. And why not?

They also reported that humorous content delivers more ROI than any other type.

Humor grabs attention, is memorable, encourages sharing, and makes you likable overall. So, look for ways to incorporate it naturally into your social media content like Sprout Social.

Shopify also does a great job on its Instagram profile:

Pro tip: Keep the humor you incorporate on brand and fit for your audience. As you can see in the Shopify example, they use some profanity, albeit censored. For their brand and audience, this makes sense, but it doesn’t work for everyone.

Humor is subjective. There’s always a chance your joke won’t land everyone, but the last thing you want to do is offend a potential customer. So, know your audience.

15. Start and engage in conversation.

Social media was created to help people make connections with other people. Even though brands have entered and occupied the space for a while now, that sentiment hasn’t changed.

Your brand won‘t be able to connect with your audience if all you’re doing is pushing your product at them. You need to fit in naturally and offer real value.

The key to staying relevant on social is to start and engage in the conversations your target audience is interested in having.

One of the easiest ways to do this is by asking questions. For instance, on LinkedIn, Shopify started with a poll.

This was a smart approach for several reasons:

• It took advantage of a fun, interactive medium to stand out in feeds
• It encourages conversation in the comments
• It also gathered original data in the process

You can also prompt questions or discussions in your photo or video captions or in texted-based posts like this tweet from HubSpot.

Image Source

While this particular topic isn’t necessarily related to HubSpot’s product or industry, it is related to business and digital marketing and is a discussion its potential customers are interested in.

This shows we understand our audience and what’s on their minds and are also up to date on what’s going on in the world.

16. Experiment and refine.

Clearly, there is no shortage of best practices for social media, but the truth is that every audience is different, so you’ll want to run experiments to figure out what works best for your brand.

HubSpot’s Kearns shared, “Social is the one channel where you have an opportunity to experiment and get audience feedback on a daily basis. Try new things, iterate, and optimize! Take learnings from your audience and apply them to future content.”

There are endless experiments you can conduct on your channels. Here are some ideas to inspire you:

• Use questions and statistics in your copy to see which pulls your audience in more.
• Test different link positions to determine if it makes users more likely to click.
• Add emojis to see if it increases interactions.
• Run ads to a video and a still image on the same topic to see which performs better.
• Segment a different part of your audience to test how they react to an ad.
• Test different hashtags to see if it affects impressions.
• Spend more time replying to posts to determine if it increases your follower count.

Experimenting with your content is how you figure out your own best practices, which will always be more personalized than industry standards.

Put the spark back in B2B social media.

With the tips and strategies we outlined, B2B social media marketing doesn’t have to be boring, stoic, or forgettable. The key is simply to know your audience and their goals and let their preferences guide you.

The more you listen to their feedback and take lead from their behaviors, the better equipped you will be to craft a social media strategy that drives real bottomline results.

Welcome to Creator Columns, where we bring expert HubSpot Creator voices to the Blogs that inspire and help you grow better.

When I lived in Argentina, I didn’t miss out on seeing any of the movies I wanted to see in the theaters. All the shows I wanted to see were playing to packed audiences in Buenos Aires in English with Spanish subtitles.

Here in the U.S., my Spanish-speaking husband and I recently went to see a new movie at the theater.

We were able to go because this specific theater had designated showings of the movie with the original English audio, along with Spanish subtitles.

As an inclusive marketing strategist and consultant and founder of Thompson Media Group, I often remind my clients that some people may have different aspects of their identity. But their dreams, desires, fears, and frustrations aren’t any different from the people they’ve grown accustomed to serving.

People with disabilities still like pizza. People with larger body sizes still like to wear cute clothes. And people who speak other languages still need tools and support to grow their businesses.

The entertainment industry has long leaned into the reality that people who speak other languages still want to watch the latest Marvel movie, Bridgerton season, or House of the Dragon episode at the same time as other people around the world.

As such, they bake global audience needs into the budget and development timelines so they can watch the content in their local language.

An increasing number of smart brands are embracing the idea that engaging their ideal customers who speak other languages is an effective way to attract and convert more customers.

If you need guidance on how to build a global marketing strategy, check out this Global Marketing Playbook from HubSpot.

How to Engage Consumers That Don’t Speak Your Brand’s Primary Language

A common misconception about engaging consumers who speak different languages is that all you have to do is translate your existing content.

However, the journeys consumers take to choose which brand to buy from are often more complex than it is for a typical media consumer. There are other factors to consider.

Federico Gagliardone is the co-founder of Mecenas, a media company that works to connect brands with Spanish speakers in the U.S. He told me that a common misconception brands have about engaging Spanish speakers is that all they have to do is translate the content.

Have a listen to this full conversation with Federico on how to effectively reach Spanish speakers in the U.S., including the role of Spanglish on this episode of the Inclusion & Marketing podcast.

Here are key elements to include in an effective multilingual content strategy, beyond translation and localization, that attracts and converts more customers for your brand.

1. Customer Intimacy

In marketing, one-size-fits-all approaches aren’t really effective. I am constantly reminding my clients that business is about belonging. Consumers will feel like they belong with you whenever you demonstrate that you see them, understand them, and have created products, content, and experiences with them in mind.

Taking content that was designed for one market, then plopping it in front of another market rarely yields the stellar results you desire.

Selim Dahmani is a Senior Growth Manager at HubSpot who focuses on the French-speaking market. He told me, “In my experience, native blog posts created with a regional SEO approach bring 4x more traffic on average than localized blog posts.”

This short video clip gives a specific example as to why a simple localization approach didn’t yield stellar results.:

Do this: Start with the customer you want to serve. Let insights about them guide your strategy. Spend time discovering what their dreams, desires, fears, and frustrations are. Uncover common questions they have, versus the ones you may be accustomed to getting in other markets.

Avoid focusing your efforts on figuring out what you need to do to “make it work” with what you already have for people who speak other languages, either in the same or different markets.

Then create inclusive and authentic content that speaks to the audience you want to reach in a manner and format that fits their preferences.

You can hear my full discussion with Selim on this episode of the Inclusion & Marketing podcast, which also has lots of other great in-the-trenches insights about developing and executing a multilingual content strategy.

2. Customer Journeys

Don’t assume that the journey customers take as part of your multilingual content strategy will be the same as it is in the primary language your brand operates in.

What you find about consumers during the customer intimacy phase may lead you to create a different journey.

For instance, while people in one market may be keen to sign up to get a lead magnet to take the next step forward with you, consumers in another market may have a strong preference to sign up for a call with you.

Build your funnel based on the needs and preferences of the people you want to serve, rather than just duplicating what has worked for people in other markets in the past.

Another consideration is that you may find that you need different assets, and possibly in a different order, in your overarching funnel.

Do this: Focus your energy on creating a minimum viable funnel with the content you need to attract and convert consumers first. During the customer intimacy phase, you’ll likely identify relevant keywords your ideal consumer is searching for in their preferred language.

A smart way to get started with that initial funnel is to create content based on those keywords, with the call to action to take the next step forward. This will help you communicate in a way that is most aligned with your consumers’ preferences in that market.

With a baseline funnel in place, you can start to expand outward to create more content and resources that help your desired audience convert.

3. Friction-free Customer Experiences

When it comes to developing your multilingual content strategy, it’s important to think about the customer experience you will deliver to the people you want to serve.

Friction harms conversions. And too often, brands deliver friction-filled experiences to people who have identities that are different from the ones they traditionally serve.

For instance, when one of my clients was trying to reach Spanish speakers in the U.S. I advised them to create separate social media accounts for English and Spanish speakers to deliver a better experience for all.

That way consumers wouldn’t click through an ad in Spanish and land on an English-speaking social media account. Multiple languages on one account are confusing and cause unnecessary friction for consumers.

Samsung features separate social media accounts for the different countries it operates in. There’s a main Samsung page, as well as pages for various local markets including Samsung Espana, Ecuador, and Egypt.

Another point of consideration in your multilingual content strategy is creating useful entry points to find your content.

For instance, in this video, a Spanish-speaking consumer typed a brand’s name into Google, and clicked through to the brand’s website (a landing page) from there. He landed on the brand’s English-speaking version of the page, and there weren’t any links that enabled him to translate the content. Friction.

When he went to the same brand’s homepage directly, the website automatically changed the content to the Spanish-language version of the website, which provided much less friction. However, that approach doesn’t come without its challenges either.

For instance, say a Spanish-speaking consumer uses a shared computer where the settings aren’t in Spanish. The automatic change of language wouldn’t happen, so it’s important to provide options in the navigation for consumers to easily choose their preferred language.

Do this: Conduct user testing for the customer experiences you’re designing with people in the markets who speak the language you want to start operating in. That testing will highlight any friction in the customer experience you’re planning.

You can use that feedback to ensure you develop and organize your content. This is a crucial step to make sure that your content meets the needs of the people you want to serve, in a manner that delivers as little friction as possible for them.

It’s Time to Activate a Multilingual Content Strategy for Your Brand

You can attract and convert more of your ideal customers. You just have to start engaging them with a well-thought-out content strategy in their preferred language.

Don’t make the common mistake of trying to convert customers who speak other languages with the least effort possible. Instead, focus your resources on developing a deeper degree of intimacy with the community you want to reach.

Then, use that insight to develop a thoughtful customer journey and friction-free customer experience to win their attention and earn their loyalty.