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In just 5 years, Daily Harvest, which provides healthy, easy-to-prep meals to customers based on algorithmic flavor preferences, disrupted the food industry and earned more than $250 million in revenue.

And, even before the acceleration in home food deliveries in 2020, the health and sustainability-conscious brand had already raked in $43 million in funding from investors who aligned with the company’s vision.

In a recent episode of HubSpot’s podcast, The Shake Up, our hosts Alexis Gay and Brianne Kimmel spoke with Daily Harvest founder and CEO Rachel Drori to learn what inspired her to build the brand, how she navigated investor pitching, how algorithms fuel the business, and how she thinks about the brand’s marketing mix.

Below are just a few highlights from the podcast:

Daily Harvest on Growing Its Brand and Customer Base

Daily Harvest’s Mission to Serve Healthy Food

[00:21:26] Rachel Drori: We’re not a meal kit. We’re more like a [00:21:30] modern CPG than a meal kit. Our food doesn’t rotate. You don’t have to really cook it. It’s already prepped.

[00:21:42] Alexis Gay: Would you say you’re defining a new category?

[00:21:45] Drori: Absolutely. I got into it because I’m absolutely a foodie. …. I wanted food that was convenient because that’s what makes fruits and vegetables hard. … But I also wanted food that was jam-packed with all the stuff that I know is good for me. … Hippocrates said, “Let food be thy medicine,” right? We’ve ended up with a Hippocratic oath for medicine being a medicine. Whereas food is kind of lost its way. So we’re really here to change that.

… The way that Big Food is set up is very systemically broken. … Investors in big food companies, the big CPGs of the world, are really focused on things like margin, accretion, and slow, steady returns dividends. … When you think about how that translates to food … it’s pretty ugly. And the way that they’re structurally set up is not to innovate. A case in point is Kraft in recent years, right? Their big innovation last year was launching pink macaroni and cheese. … They’ve just completely lost touch with the customer and they don’t have the structural agility to be able to move with modern times.

What drives demand for Daily Harvest?

[00:23:57] Gay: What drives the demand for your product? … Is it that younger generations are focusing on healthier food options? Is that the traditional family dinner is not as much part of our culture, is it because of the struggles of the restaurant industry? What do you think?

[00:24:15] Drori: I think there’s a few things. We’re kind of at the crossroads of a bunch of — I hate using this term — megatrends, right? … I think people are just smarter and there’s enough education out there where people are realizing that if I stick to the basics — like things my grandparents ate, things my great grandparents ate — then I’m going to be okay. So our whole food ethos is really based on this idea where we’re not going to tell you what not to eat.

… We are including everybody’s eating habits and everybody’s eating values, but we’re going to provide a base of fruits and vegetables. So our goal is to get everybody to eat more fruits and vegetables. And then, if you want to add a piece of chicken to your harvest bowl … we think that’s great.

Navigating Tricky Investment Pitches

[00:25:42] Gay: In 2017, you had $43 million in investments, which is incredible. But in order to get that type of cash infusion, it starts with a pitch. And I want to hear a little bit about one of those pitch meetings back then in 2017, how were you approaching, crafting the pitch around Daily Harvest?

[00:26:02] Drori: 2017 was the point when we felt like we had reached true product-market fit. So pre-fundraising — previous to that point — I would say it was incredibly difficult. People didn’t understand how the collections that we had laddered up to this bigger picture to this platform. There was a lot of friction in the fundraising process, especially because the people from who I was trying to raise money just didn’t see that there was a problem. They were like, “Well, why, why wouldn’t I just buy a Jamba Juice?” I’m like, “I don’t even know where to begin.”

[00:26:40] Gay: Did you ever feel discouraged

[00:26:41] Drori: After meetings like that? Oh, discouraged wouldn’t even cover it. I think that fundraising is the most demoralizing process.

[00:26:58] Gay: What was the key message you were really trying to land with the people you were seeking investment from.

[00:27:05] Drori: There were two things. The message I was trying to land was just this big picture. That big food is completely broken and that there’s this opportunity and that big food is not meeting customers. … Where I would say it got really tricky wasn’t necessarily with the problem statement. It really was that a lot of people got tripped up on the frozen.

[00:27:32] Gay: Why do you think that is?

[00:27:34] Drori: They still do, but everyone’s like, “Oh, so you’re disrupting frozen food?” and I’m like, “Soup is not a frozen category. Lattes are not a frozen category. Breakfast cereal is not a frozen category. How is that your logic?” Frozen is how we make food incredibly clean, unprocessed, convenient, and sustainable. … You know, we’re really trying to focus on that, that big picture to paint this story that we’re not going after frozen food.

… Eventually, we did it. The other thing that I was really looking for in that round was values alignment from our investors. … I wanted to make sure that we were never going to end up in a position where some of the investment community in big food causes a lot of health challenges. … There was a lot of insuring that our investors were going to have values that aligned as well.

Finding Like-Minded Investors

[00:29:10] Kimmel: How did you actually reverse the pitch and ask those investors questions to give you a real feel if they were going to add value and be a valuable person to help you scale Daily Harvest?

[00:29:25] Drori: One of the tricks, when you’re pitching, is that you’re also always selling. So one of the things that I did was I showed that there was great customer demand for these things — like sustainability is now table stakes. It wasn’t five years ago. Just showing where the customer demand was going and showing that there was also a business revenue opportunity tied to everything that we were hoping to do on the sustainability side … was a really important part of the story. Some of the questions that we asked just to make sure that people were aligned actually weren’t to the investors directly. it was always to other companies that they invested in and not the ones that they introduced us to.

… Those back-channel calls where you ask about a time where there was a really difficult decision that you had to weigh: Margins versus doing what was right for the customer, right? For me, that’s one of the hardest tensions and I was always going to focus on what was best for the customer — and what’s best for the Earth is also best for the customer.

Building Out the Business

[00:32:08] Kimmel: What were the next steps that had to happen to make Daily Harvest truly scalable?

[00:32:19] Drori: A lot of it sat in our supply chain. … We had a lot of amazing farmers that we engaged directly with. We still, to this day, do all of our own sourcing and work directly with everyone. But a lot of that story was very idealistic. …  It was a hard thing to do at that scale.

… Even like our packaging, right? We have these like grand plans to have completely home-compostable packaging. There’s a lot of storytelling there because there’s a scale problem. So you always have this chicken or egg problem when you’re talking about physical goods, where in order to make something cost-effective so that you can think about things like profitability, you have to have the scale to be able to justify those big swings.

Personalizing the Customer Experience

[00:34:15] Gay: A lot of companies that are offering food delivery in some capacity are keeping their offering really simple, focusing on just dinner or just one type of food. But you have over 60 items for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Was that a conscious decision you made to offer so many more?

[00:34:32] Drori: Because we have this direct link with our customers. What we’re able to do is we actually phenotype taste beds and we understand what every single customer wants and needs down to an incredible level of detail that allows us to create food for each individual. We don’t look at customers as averages. We really look at each individual and we create food to meet the needs of those customers.

… We have smoothies for different tastes, preferences, and different tea, eating values, and different profiles. As we expand into this collection depth, we see different groups consuming over different days. So it’s really systematic the way that we think about it. And it’s really served as well to increase share of stomach over time,as we’ve been able to take this data and turn it into meeting the needs of our customers.

[00:35:41] Gay: How did you build that?

[00:35:45] Drori: We have an incredible algorithms team who has really been a key part to our food delivery and then the personalization tied to that development to make sure that we’re matching the right people with the right food. That was creative.

[00:38:00] Kimmel: How do you balance qualitative insights as well? Like, do you have a great team that’s reading customer support tickets? Do you have focus groups? How do you collect a lot of Individual insights from each Daily Harvest user?

[00:38:14] Drori: There are two ways in which we do that. One is we have an incredibly passionate care team. … We’ve really emboldened our care team to be a part of this co-creation journey and adding the context behind what we’re seeing in the data. That’s a huge piece of what we do. Then we have a in-house research team that takes the data that we see and ties it together with the emotional, the psychological, the why behind what we’re seeing. … And it’s an incredibly powerful combination.

Daily Harvest’s Changing Marketing Mix

[00:41:20] Gay: I want to talk a little bit about your marketing mix. … In a world where startups rely so heavily on Facebook, Google, and Amazon for sales, you have invested in TV ads in influencer partnerships. … I would love to know what was your decision-making process in making some of those bets?

[00:42:11] Drori: It was easy to scale on Facebook. Now it’s a whole different ball of wax. The landscape has changed significantly … the landscape is always changing, it’s a complete moving target and something that works today will not work tomorrow. It’s just how you have to live in this world. We went out really aggressively into every channel you can imagine to give us that optionality and that agility where we can change our spend in different channels based on what happens to be working at the time.

… Influencer marketing is part of our mix, TV is a part of our mix, but I think the most important thing is — even if one thing is working really well — that you keep your spend and you keep the other channels engaged enough where if something changes you can always pivot and change that mix.

[00:43:57] Kimmel: How do you think about some of the branded Daily Harvest stuff versus like engaging with influencers and people that are likely to use Daily Harvest anyway, because it falls into like this new category of just easier, healthier.

[00:44:27] Drori: People always say like, “What’s the secret to your really fast growth?” And I actually talk about our supply chain, which is not the answer that people want to hear, but the reason why is … if you’ve ever seen a Rogers bell curve, it’s a normal bell curve, but if you think about the way normal product development works, you have an insight and then can take up to a year to ring something to market.

… Climbing up that curve, by the time you get to the top. That’s usually when big companies are going to market. Right? Our supply chain agility and our data allows us to go to market when an early adopter is interested in something and our early adopters because we listened to them, became these evangelists

… And what’s really powerful is that it spurs this virtuous marketing cycle that rides itself up that curve, as opposed to facing headwinds on the way down, where you have to like hire Justin Timberlake to shake his tushy on television. … Of course, we pay for some influencers, but really, what you’re seeing is us co-creating with our customers and our customers being so glad that we listened to them and gave them what they wanted.

To hear the full conversation or check out other episodes of The Shake Up, click here.

Your customers, leads, and audience members want valuable content from your business. And that content needs to reach audience members in a way that feels natural and organic versus being disruptive. Content marketing helps businesses do this, and it describes the process of attracting, engaging with, and delighting your target markets.

By honing in on effective content marketing, you can do just that — and as a result, increase conversions, improve brand awareness, boost revenue, establish yourself as an industry leader, and more.

Whether you’re just starting to devise a strategy or you’re refreshing your existing one, it never hurts to re-assess your process and come up with new ways to create and share the content your audiences want. In this guide, we’ll give you a birds-eye-view of content marketing, types of content marketing, content marketing examples, and how to get a strategy going.

Content Marketing

Today, outbound marketing strategies (or anything that interrupts your audience members) aren’t as effective at resonating with and converting audience members as they once were.

Today, your content needs to reach your audience in a way that feels natural (a.k.a. inbound). A common way of doing this is by creating a narrative for your content — or telling a story. In doing so, your content will feel more authentic, engaging, and tailored to your audience.

So, what defines content marketing anyway?

Why is content marketing important?

• Educate your leads and prospects about the products and services you offer
• Boost conversions
• Build relationships between your customers and business that result in increased loyalty
• Show your audience how your products and services solve their challenges
• Create a sense of community around your brand

Now let’s look at the various types of content marketing.

Types of Content Marketing

There are many types of content marketing that you may choose to incorporate in your strategy — here are some of the most common:

1. Social Media Content Marketing

With over 3.6 billion global social media users, it’s easy to understand why so many businesses invest in social media marketing. There are a number of platforms (e.g. Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Snapchat) to work with and several ways you can create and share content on each of them (e.g. photos, live videos, pre-recorded videos, stories).

Featured Resource: Social Media Content Calendar

2. Infographic Content Marketing

Infographics display content, information, and data in an easy-to-understand, graphic format. With a mix of simple wording, short statements, and clear images, infographics are a great way to effectively communicate your content. They work well if you’re trying to distill an educational and/ or complex topic down so all audience members can understand it.

Featured Resource: 15 Free Infographic Templates

3. Blog Content Marketing

Blogs are a powerful type of inbound content and allow for a lot of creativity in terms of their purpose and topic. With a blog, you can do things like promote other internal and external content and blog articles via links, add social share buttons, and incorporate product information.

Featured Resource: Start a Successful Blog

4. Podcast Content Marketing

A 2020 survey found that 49% of 12-to-32-year-olds in the U.S. had listened to a podcast within the last month, with an average of six listening hours a week. For this reason, many businesses and media outlets have begun creating and sharing their own podcasts.

Podcasts allow for a lot of creativity as they can be about any topic of choice. Additionally, you determine other factors related to the podcast such as cadence of episodes, who’s on the podcast, where you advertise the podcast, and how long episodes are.

Featured Resource: How to Start a Podcast

5. Video Content Marketing

According to Wyzowl research, 69% of consumers say they prefer to learn about a brand’s product or service through video. Additionally, video marketing can boost conversions, improve ROI, and help you build relationships with audience members. You may choose to share your video content on social media platforms, landing pages, or on a co-marketer’s website.

Featured Resource: The Ultimate Video Marketing Starter Pack

6. Paid Ad Content Marketing

Paid ads can help you reach a broad audience and allow you to position yourself in all of the places you want to be seen — paid ads are especially beneficial when paired with inbound marketing. There are many places you can share paid ads including on social media, landing pages, banners, and sponsored content.

Featured Resource: The Ultimate Google Ads PPC Kit

Next, let’s look at some content marketing examples that are associated with those types of content marketing we just reviewed.

Content Marketing Examples

The following examples will give you a better understanding of how you can incorporate content in your greater marketing strategy.

1. Example of Instagram Content Marketing

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Lush Cosmetics’ Instagram account is on-brand and complements the rest of their marketing content — if the page didn’t say “Lush Cosmetics” anywhere on the profile, customers would likely still know the profile belongs to Lush.

The Instagram page shares the Lush product line, displays different color and scent options for the products, and shows the various ways each product can be used. The profile feels and looks colorful and uniquely Lush, and depicts members of their wide customer base.

2. Example of Infographic Content Marketing

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IBM created an infographic when they launched their Cloud marketplace. Their infographic is on-brand, well-organized, and easy to read. It clearly explains what they’re doing with their Cloud marketplace and how customers can benefit from it. It also tells audience members how they can access the marketplace and get started using it.

3. Example of Blog Content Marketing

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Expedia has a blog called “[Out There Starts Here]” that shares travel-related information including hotel recommendations, great places to visit, and travel-related activities you can take part in around the globe.

Expedia regularly publishes their blog content to keep readers interested and engaged. It includes a wide range of topics related to any type of trip you could imagine.

The blog is on-brand and all articles relate to the travel technology company’s goal and mission of gaining customers and boosting brand awareness. They do this by linking to their services and writing about customers who have already had positive experiences with the company.

4. Example of Podcast Content Marketing

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Harvard Business Review (HBR) has a weekly podcast called HBR IdeaCast which features industry leaders in both business and management. You can either subscribe to consistently receive their hundreds of podcasts or pick and choose which ones you want to listen to.

The podcast is on-brand and complements the rest of HBRs published content. It also serves as a great way for HBR to connect with their target audience, enhance brand awareness, and gain a following of audience members through a medium that differs from their typical work (e.g. podcast versus HBR article).

5. Example of Video Content Marketing

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Much of Dollar Shave Club’s video content has gone viral. Their marketing efforts are on-brand, humorous, and entertaining. In fact, one of their videos has over 27 million views on YouTube. By establishing a name for themselves via online video content, Dollar Shave Club has experienced impressive growth and brand recognition.

6. Example of Paid Ad Content Marketing

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Revolve — a clothing and accessories company — uses paid and sponsored ads on social media (like this one on Facebook) to reach their target audience while they browse their news feeds.

The content ads feature some of their products as well as details about their free shipping and return policy to drive target audience members to their site (and, hopefully, convert them into paying customers).

Lastly, let’s cover your content marketing strategy. By implementing a strategy, your content marketing efforts will be impactful and effective in converting leads and reaching your target audience.

7. Example of Twitter Content Marketing

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HubSpot uses Twitter to market software as well as create a community among customers, target audience members, and industry leaders and experts.

HubSpot shared product information, relevant tips, industry knowledge, and original research on Twitter. HubSpot also interacts with users and ensures anyone in need of customer support knows exactly where to go for help.

8. Example of TikTok Content Marketing

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Chipotle is a very active brand on TikTok — the company uses the platform to reach and engage their customers and target audience members. In addition to reacting to others’ Chipotle-related TikTok content, the brand posts TikToks of their menu items, recipes, people enjoying their food, their restaurants, and more. They have over 1.6 million followers and over 30 million likes.

9. Example of Viral Content Marketing

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This viral content marketing example was one that came from a TikTok video — Nathan Apodaca’s original TikTok video included him sipping Ocean Spray cranberry juice while skateboarding and listening to “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac.

As a result of the viral video, TikTok used part of Apodaca’s video in their ads, Ocean Spray used Apodaca in their ads, Ocean Spray saw a bump in sales and brand awareness, Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” was number one on iTunes, and there were thousands of videos posted by other TikTok users who bought the cranberry juice and recreated Apodaca’s original video.

You can think about your content marketing strategy as you would your content marketing plan — let’s dive into the steps you’ll want to work through in order to develop an effective strategy.

1. Set SMART goals.

The first part of your content marketing strategy is to set SMART goals. These should be specific to your business — they’ll likely complement your broader marketing and company goals.

Here are some SMART goal examples:

• Improve brand awareness
• Boost revenue
• Increase conversions
• Improve brand loyalty
• Increase customer engagement
• Build rapport and trust among prospects and customers
• Attract strategic partners

2. Determine your KPIs.

Next, set key performance indicators (KPIs) for your SMART goals. KPIs are quantifiable data points you can use to measure your actual performance against your goal.

smart goal	related kpi
Brand awareness	Site traffic, social media followers, subscription sign-ups, mentions (by customers and partners)
Revenue	Daily sales, site traffic
Conversions	Conversion rate, shopping cart abandonment rate, associated shipping rate trends, competitive price trends
Brand loyalty	Returning customers, promoters, product reviews, referrals
Customer engagement	Likes, shares, follows, mentions, backlinks
Rapport and trust	Returning customers, promoters, followers, mentions
Strategic partners	New partnerships, mentions, backlinks

3. Decide on the type of content.

Next, choose the type of content you’ll create. To do this, start by thinking about your target audience and buyer personas.

Answer the following questions about your target audience to help you narrow down the right types of content for them:

• What do they need from you?
• What challenges are they looking to overcome?
• Why do they need your product or service?
• How can you help them succeed?
• Where do they spend their time?

Then, take a look back at the various types of content we reviewed earlier to decide which types of content you’ll create.

4. Choose your content channels.

Once you’ve decided on the type of content you’ll market with, it’s time to choose your specific content channels. Where will you share your content? Where will it live and be shared from?

For some of the content types, the channel you need to work with will be obvious. For example, if you’re creating Facebook content, your channel will be the social platform itself.

5. Set a budget.

Now, set your budget. Think about the type of content you’re creating and which channels you’re marketing that content on.

Then, ask yourself the following questions to determine your budget:

• Do you need to purchase any software or technology to create the content (such as graphic design software like Adobe Photoshop, a subscription to Canva, a camera to take high-quality photos and videos)?
• Do you need to hire any content marketers or designers (such as artists, writers, editors, designers)?
• Do you need to pay for ad space?
• Do you need access to specific tools or resources to enhance or measure your specific type of content?

Make note of how your responses impact your budget — whether that’s an increase or decrease in what you may have already estimated.

6. Create and distribute the content.

Create and distribute your content so your audience members can consume it — and possibly convert. To ensure you’re consistently producing content and sharing it among your prospects and customers, use a social media calendar or an editorial content calendar.

This will help your team stay on top of all of the content being created as well as allow you to schedule it ahead of time.

Use a free editorial calendar to schedule and optimize all of your marketing content to help you boost conversions.

7. Analyze and measure results.

Lastly, analyze and measure your results so you can make any necessary changes to enhance your content marketing efforts and reach more audience members.

Look at your SMART goals and KPIs to determine the success of your content marketing strategy. Did you achieve your goals and KPIs? Were you close to reaching them, or were you off in your estimations?

Here are some tools to help you with your content marketing strategy analytics and results:

• HubSpot Marketing Analytics Software
• HubSpot Social Media Management Software
• Mention
• SharedCount
• Sprout Social
• Google Analytics

There are hundreds of thousands of tools available today that qualify as excellent content marketing resources. For the sake of this article, we’re going to keep things simple by providing a handful of our favorite options today.

1. HubSpot Academy for free education on how to become an effective content marketer.
2. HubSpot’s Free Content Creation Resources for access to resources that will propel your content marketing strategy towards success.
3. Content Marketing Institute for access to some of the best content marketing online education, print, and events available today.
4. Blog articles on content marketing, trends, strategies, and tips by industry experts (like HubSpot).
5. Podcasts about content marketing, such as This Old Marketing, or business trends, such as HBR IdeaCast, to inspire your content marketing strategy.
6. Google Trends, which allows you to search for trends across broad topics like content marketing or for niche topics within content marketing.
7. Ebooks and case studies about content marketing or content marketing strategies, like this one by Mention.
8. Latest content marketing statistics by a reputable database source like Statista.
9. Easy to use visual content and design software, such as Canva.
10. Free or paid social media management tools, such as HubSpot, Buffer, or Sprout Social, to help you create and share your social content.
11. Free or paid content and project management tools, like Trello or Asana, to plan and organize your content marketing strategy.
12. Free or paid marketing software to connect your content marketing team, plan, strategy, and results to your greater marketing plan (and even your CRM).
13. Free or paid email marketing software, like HubSpot or Mailchimp, to handle all aspects of your email campaigns and content.
14. Your network, on platforms like Twitter or LinkedIn, where you can connect with those in your industry to discuss relevant trends, answer each other’s questions, and provide or ask for feedback.

And speaking of tapping into your networks on sites like Twitter and LinkedIn, here’s some inspiration from a few of the greatest content marketers to follow on both platforms today.

3 Marketers to Follow on LinkedIn

1. LinkedIn: Luvvie Ajayi Jones

Luvvie Ajayi Jones is a best-selling author, digital strategist, podcast host, and speaker. She’s known for combining humor with her experiences and background in marketing, communications, and new media. Her LinkedIn is sure to inspire you whether you’re thinking about/working on culture, authenticity, leadership, content, marketing strategy, and more.

2. Zontee Hou

Zontee Hou is a digital marketer and strategist, speaker, and consultant. She works with scaling companies to help them establish effective marketing strategies that work for their unique goals and audiences. On her LinkedIn profile, Hou shares her expertise in content marketing, social media marketing, marketing analytics, and digital marketing.

3. A. Lee Judge

A. Lee Judge is a co-founder and digital marketing strategist at Content Monsta. He’s also a podcast and video producer, speaker, and rev ops practitioner. On his LinkedIn profile, he covers a wide range of topics related to lead generation, social media marketing, how to apply marketing analytics and data, digital experiences, multi-channel marketing, the importance of sales and marketing alignment, and more.

3 Marketers to Follow on Twitter

4. Ann Handley

Ann Handley, Head of Content at MarketingProfs, is a bestselling author and speaker. She provides education and training around marketing that businesses can learn from and apply. She offers in-person and virtual trainings for companies on content marketing, storytelling, lead generation, and branding – all of which are topics she alson talks about, and shares content about, on her Twitter page.

5. Neil Patel

Neil Patel is a bestselling author, marketing expert, speaker, and website and SEO consultant. He’s a thought leader and industry expert in content and digital marketing. His Twitter page includes information about his trainings and services, industry trends, marketing strategy tips and resources, and questions/conversational topics meant to engage followers and other industry experts.

6. Guy Kawasaki

Guy Kawasaki is a marketing strategist, author, entrepreneur, venture capitalist, podcast host, and the chief evangelist of Canva. On his Twitter account, Kawasaki asks followers thought-provoking business questions as well as provides links to, and information about, new podcast episodes, industry trends, marketing strategy tips, and insights based on his experiences.

Engage Your Target Audience With Content Marketing

With effective content marketing, you can reach your target audience and increase conversions. There are several ways to market with content to boost revenue, grow your brand awareness and recognition, and build relationships with your prospects and customers.

And don’t forget to extract more value from every piece of content you create.

To get started, determine which type of content works best for your business and audience, and develop a content marketing strategy to begin boosting your bottom line today.

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

Growing up, a few of my baseball coaches were some of the most ruthless and demanding people I’ve ever met. They used fear to push my team to our physical and emotional limits, intimidated us with cruel ultimatums, and didn’t really seem to care about us as people. They did everything they could to win — and punished us when we didn’t.

When I started doing internships in college, I expected my managers to be just like my coaches. Since businesses actually have to make money, and not just win a few games, I was scared to mess up.

But at the end of my last internship, I realized I’ve never really felt afraid to fail in the working world because my managers were the complete opposite of my coaches. They were patient, understanding, and, most of all, nice. It seemed like they cared about me just as much as they cared about their job, even though there’s a lot more at stake in the office than on a high school baseball field.

Although my managers have treated me well, there are still managers out there who are just like some of my baseball coaches: fear-mongering, intimidating, and mean. These tactics might produce short-term results, but, in the long-term, all they lead to are unhappy employees, underwhelming results, and a high turnover rate.

You don’t want to be a jerk at work, especially if you’re a manager, so check out this overview of the best leadership styles to adopt — and the worst ones to avoid.

1. Visionary Management Style

A visionary manager communicates a purpose and direction that her employees believe in, which convinces her team to work hard to execute her vision.

After setting their team’s vision and overarching strategy, visionary managers usually let their employees get to work on their own terms, as long as they’re productive. Managers will mainly check in on their team to make sure they’re on the right track or to share new insights.

This gives their employees a great sense of autonomy, which all managers need to provide — after all, self-direction is a basic psychological need. When humans work on tasks that they have more control over, they feel more satisfied and motivated to complete them. Letting their employees’ personal motivations determine the direction of their work is the best way for managers to boost their team’s engagement and confidence.

Visionary managers are also known to be firm yet fair. Their vision is usually set in place, but they’re always open to listening to their employees’ ideas and willing to change their plan if a great idea is presented.

To better execute their vision, visionary managers give a lot of feedback to their employees about their performance and praise them when their performance meets or exceeds expectations.

This type of management style is hard to pull off, though. It’s crucial that you sell your employees on the purpose of your vision before you expect them to execute it. If you don’t, they won’t be inspired to turn your vision into a reality.

Example of the Visionary Leadership Style in Action: Elon Musk

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It takes a clear vision and persistent leader like Elon Musk to transform a company like Tesla into the tech giant it is today. While some may mock the CEO’s cryptocurrency hobby and scoff at his larger-than-life plans to send everyday people to space, there’s no denying that his visionary leadership style has impacted not only his employees but the global community.

2. Democratic Management Style

In democratic management, the majority rules. Managers let their employees participate in the decision-making process because they value their team’s diversity of ideas, and understand that people are the key to a team’s success.

Democratic managers ultimately approve of all decisions, but since their employees are so involved in the decision-making process, their team has a lot of influence in their manager’s decision.

Employees are so heavily involved in the decision-making process because managers know it makes their team feel valued, boosts their morale, and forges a healthy, trusting relationship between the two. It also makes it easier for managers to convince their employees to buy into a team’s vision — after all, they’re executing a plan that they’ve created together.

Many employees like this leadership style because their managers trust them with a lot of responsibility and real work, which lets them use their skills to their full potential.

But when executed poorly, a democratic management style can be inefficient. Managers who keep mulling over a decision even after consulting their whole team about it can slow down progress. And if you want your employees to feel like they’re all leaders of your team, you need to make sure they’re helping you make progress. Or else they might start thinking you’re just making empty promises.

Example of the Democratic Leadership Style in Action: Judy Vredenburgh

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Judy Vredenburgh is a democratic-style leader and President and CEO of Girls Inc., a nonprofit that inspires young women to be their best selves. Because this NGO relies on its board of directors, volunteers, and members to achieve its mission, it’s critical that she carries out her responsibilities in a way that is fair, equitable, and proves that the organization’s leadership and staff are good stewards of the donated resources that Girls Inc. receives.

3. Transformational Management Style

Transformational managers’ are innovators. They usually believe change and growth is the only way to stay ahead of the curve, so they push their employees past their comfort zone, making them realize they’re more capable than they originally thought. This motivates employees to keep raising the bar, leading to improved team performance.

Employees led by transformational managers are usually more dedicated and happy — their managers constantly challenge them and motivate them with the idea that they can reach their potential if they just keep pushing themselves. These managers are also right by their employees’ side, doing whatever they can to help them get better and succeed.

These teams are innovative, so they can adapt to drastic industry changes. But they can also risk moving too fast and spreading themselves thin. Constantly challenging the status quo is crucial for innovation and staying ahead of the curve, but, as a manager of people, it’s important to know how far you can push each of your employees before they start burning out.

Example of the Transformational Leadership Style in Action: Brian Halligan & Dharmesh Shah

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You know HubSpot as the powerhouse CRM tool that supports marketing, sales, service, and ops teams in scaling and enterprise businesses, but the company wasn’t always this way. In 2006, Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah identified an issue with the way companies were generating leads. Outbound marketing simply wasn’t creating remarkable customer experiences.

Rather than finding a new way to bombard people with advertisements, the two created a platform that would bring customers to the companies that had solutions to their problems. Thus, “inbound marketing” became a corporate war room name, thanks to Halligan’s and Shah’s transformational leadership approach.

4. Coaching Management Style

Just like a sports coach, a coaching manager strives to improve their employees’ long-term professional development. They have a passion for teaching and watching their employees grow. And they’re more patient with short-term failure, as long as the team learns and improves as a result.

Coaching managers motivate their employees with professional development opportunities, like a promotion or more responsibility — these rewards make employees hungry for knowledge, and their steady development improves the team’s performance.

By constantly teaching their employees new things and offering career opportunities, coaches can build strong bonds with their employees. But doing this could also create a cutthroat environment that’s toxic for their team’s relations.

Leaders with a coaching style have two main focuses: overseeing employees’ individual development and bringing your team together. The best teams are the most united teams, and an employee experiences the most professional growth when both their coach and teammates invest in their development.

Example of the Coaching Leadership Style in Action: Bozoma Saint John

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When it comes to trailblazing a path for women of color to become leaders in the workplace, Bozoma Saint John truly shows up. As Netflix’s current CMO, she leverages her position as a tech executive to coach other women on their path toward professional success. Through authentic storytelling, Bozoma reaches her team and the greater tech industry with her visible and motivating leadership style.

1. Autocratic Management Style

Autocratic management is the most top-down approach to management — employees at the top of the hierarchy hold all the power, making decisions without collaborating or informing their subordinates. After the leader delegates action items, they expect immediate acceptance and execution from their subordinates, with no questions asked.

If one of their employees doesn’t follow orders, they’ll punish them by chewing them out or threatening their job. They’ll even publically humiliate them in front of their peers if they really want to make a statement to their team. Fear, guilt, and shame are an autocratic manager’s main weapons of motivation.

Autocratic managers are also the ultimate micromanagers — they police their employees every move to make sure they’re obedient, allowing little to no flexibility at work. Employees do what they’re told, and managers don’t want to hear their feedback. They see their conduct as a means to end for great financial success.

Teams and companies led by autocratic managers don’t usually reach great financial success because they can’t innovate. The same few minds call the shots which leads to groupthink and a stagnant ideation process. If they won’t let their employees, who have many different perspectives than them, share their new and possibly breakthrough ideas, then they’ll only leverage the same strategies that they’ve always been comfortable with.

The autocratic management style allows managers to make decisions extremely fast, but employees hate working under it. It’s also one of the most ineffective management styles: underdeveloped employees feel overwhelmed — they won’t get any help — and the most skilled employees can’t let their talents shine in such a rigid environment. Everyone’s professional growth is stunted.

Another problem with autocratic managers is that they don’t try to convince their employees to buy into their vision. Instead, they force them to do it. Even though coercion might work in the short-term, it won’t last in the long-term. No one likes to be controlled. And if people don’t know why they’re supporting the company’s vision, morale will plummet, leading to low-quality work and a high turnover rate.

The only time this management style is effective is when it’s temporary. For example, an organization might experience a crisis situation and needs to make important decisions — fast.

2. Servant Management Style

Servant managers put people first and tasks second. They prioritize their employees’ well-being over their team’s results, so they can foster a harmonious relationship with their employees and keep them as happy as possible. They do everything they can to support and encourage their team, and, in return, they expect their employees to be motivated to work hard.

But since servant managers don’t prioritize performance and avoid confronting their employees, even when they do a lackluster job, there’s no pressure to succeed. This can make employees complacent, leading to average or even sub-par work.

Servant managers also might spend too much time on team bonding rather than work, which could frustrate employees who are goal-oriented. They’ll feel like they can’t perform to their full potential because they have to spend a bunch of time doing trust falls.

3. Laissez-Faire Management Style

Laissez-faire managers monitor their team’s activities, but they’re completely hands-off — they expect their team to perform up to a certain level even though they don’t proactively help or check-in with their employees.

Employees led by laissez-faire managers hold all the decision-making authority, working on whatever they want with minimal to no intervention — which is a nice perk. They can also seek their manager’s guidance when they need help.

But most of the time, the team barely has any guidance or vision. Employees might feel pulled in every direction, so they can’t accomplish anything worthwhile. This is the least desirable and effective management style because, without any guidance or vision, most employees feel neglected.

4. Transactional Management Style

Transactional managers use incentives and rewards — like bonuses and stock options — to motivate their employees to carry out their commands. Their motto is “If you do this for me, I’ll do this for you.”

But psychological research tells us that extrinsic motivation, like financial rewards, wears off in the long-term and could even diminish your team’s intrinsic motivation to succeed at work.

After a while, rewarding intrinsically motivated employees with external incentives will trigger a self-perception loop. Employees will base their attitudes about their motivation at work off their behavior at work — making them think they were motivated to succeed because their manager rewarded them with some stock options and not because they had a passion for the team’s mission.

Intrinsic motivation is a stronger motivator than extrinsic motivation because the former is a better indicator for producing quality work, while the latter is a better indicator for producing a higher quantity of work.

Effective Management Styles for a Thriving Team

Management is one of the hardest jobs in the working world. There’s a reason why we’ve all had at least one terrible boss, but it doesn’t have to be this way. Now that you know the four leadership styles to adopt and which ones to avoid, you’ll be better equipped to lead your team through challenging and successful times.

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

With more than 2.8 billion monthly active users, Facebook is a major player in the world of social networking. Businesses looking to market using Facebook have one major tool at their disposal: the Facebook Page.

Facebook Pages were specifically engineered for businesses. They provide a public home on Facebook for your brand, allow you to publish content, and let you see comments and feedback from fans and customers.

Facebook Pages are a simple tool, but they offer countless interesting business opportunities. There are some companies out there who really take advantage of the cool stuff you can do on a Facebook business Page to connect, engage with, and delight fans, as well as drive traffic to specific parts of their website.

So, we combed through the web to find the top pages to inspire your Facebook marketing strategy. But first, we answer the quintessential question: What makes a good Facebook page?

What makes a good Facebook Page?

A good Facebook business Page accurately represents your brand, focuses on the customer, and answers for potential followers’ needs. The page should also entice potential followers to engage more meaningfully with your brand — whether by visiting your website, signing up for a free event, or joining your company’s Facebook Group.

In your Facebook page, you should have:

• A name that reflects your business in a professional and succinct way.
• An accurate page category that immediately tells users what you do.
• A description that establishes the benefits of following your Page.
• A profile picture that represents your brand and its colors.
• An engaging and descriptive cover photo that speaks to your customer’s core desire or pain point.
• A constant and steady stream of recently published posts that have links to other company assets and properties.

Not sure how to use Facebook for business? At a loss for how to be engaging on Facebook?

Check out our free Facebook marketing course to nail down the basics; then, check out the Pages below for inspiration.

Best Facebook Pages

1. L.L. Bean

Page Likes: 1.17M

L.L Bean is an outdoor equipment store whose Facebook Page effectively focuses on the customer and engages visitors beyond inviting them to like the posts. The content it posts is highly relevant for its target audience: cool photos, videos, and tips for outdoor adventures, each with a link and a hashtag. The Page also includes tabs dedicated to events, open job opportunities, and stores.

The description is especially notable, telling users the value they’d receive if they follow the Page:

“Welcome to the official Facebook page for L.L.Bean! Follow along for inspiring outdoor stories and photos, expert tips and advice, and a community devoted to helping make the most of every moment outside. #BeanOutsider”

2. Intrepid Travel

Page Likes: 601K

Travel agency Intrepid Travel has put together a great Facebook Page — complete with a special tab that shows trip and tour reviews, and one that lets users search and save trips without having to leave the Page. For instance, if you’ve been dreaming of a family holiday in Scotland, you can save it and come back to it later. This ensures users return to Intrepid Travel and its offerings every time they visit Facebook.

The brand also consistently posts compelling videos and testimonies that’ll have you itching to pack a bag and hit the road.

3. Shopify

Page Likes: 3.8M

Shopify is an ecommerce website platform whose Facebook Page features engaging multimedia. While the photos section consists of branded infographics that share data from the industry, the video section is full of how-to clips you’d normally see in article form.

The company’s case study series, “My First Sale,” is what really helps the Page shine. Check out just one of Shopify’s case studies from its Facebook Page below.

4. Salone Monet 

Page Likes: 1.2K

Salone Monet is a footwear brand that has tons of great images on its Page. Most notably, the cover photo features the types of shoes it sells, and even more, the image reflects the founder’s mission: To create “color-inclusive nude shoes to match you & all your favorite outfits.” It also includes a “Shop” tab where you can begin browsing the brand’s shoes.

All in all, Salone Monet does a great job of creating a fantastic brand experience that doesn’t require the user to leave Facebook. Plus, the Page has a widget above the “About” section that prompts visitors to ask them a question, increasing engagement right from the moment a visitor lands on the Page.

5. Essence

Page Likes: 2.9M

For a traditionally print magazine, Essence is almost all video now. But combined with its mesmerizing images and pop-culture-friendly articles, this publisher has turned its Facebook Page into the ultimate hub for hot takes on the latest entertainment industry news.

It doesn’t even matter what medium you consume Essence in now — it’s all just solid content to have on your news feed. And for as prolific and diverse as the publication is, its Facebook Business Page balances all of it quite nicely.

The company also broadcasts from Facebook Live every month. Check out its live video library below.

6. Dang Foods

Page Likes: 22.8K

The folks at Dang Foods have the unique challenge of having to find an infinite number of ways to feature a small collection of products so its social media content stays fresh and interesting. The key to its success? A wide variety of interesting visual content.

Much of its video and photographic content is centered around the ways its snacks are different from others in the industry. The products are Asian-inspired, and the brand is Asian-owned.

For instance, in the following post, it announces it’s one of the Asian-owned brands featured in a subscription snack box:

The one thing that its Facebook page is missing is more customer-centric content — but by centering its posts on company news, it can establish itself as a buzz-worthy newcomer to the industry.

7. Zappos.com

Page Likes: 2.4M

Zappos.com is known for great customer service, and it keeps that reputation going on its Facebook Page. For example, it has a badge in the “About” section that says it’s “Very responsive” to customer messages. That’s a great honor — especially considering the fact that it has nearly 2.4 million followers. That’s a lot of people the company could potentially need to respond to.

The Page also has a small section dedicated to visitor posts, which features customer testimonials about Zappos’ great customer service on and off Facebook. Not to mention, the brand is committed to responding to comments — and it isn’t afraid to have fun with the responses:

Customer service aside, Zappos has also fully taken advantage of Facebook’s call-to-action button feature by placing a “Shop Now” button at the top of its Facebook Page.

8. McBride Sisters

Page Likes: 32.6K

McBride Sisters is a wine and spirits brand that immediately greets users with its Black Girl Magic line of wines in the cover photo. In doing so, it immediately appeals to its customers and exhibits its commitment to representing excluded voices in the industry.

While it mostly shares company news as opposed to customer-centric tips, it strikes the right balance by only sharing what its customer base cares about. For instance, in the following post, the company shares an upcoming event. If you’re a fan of Patti LaBelle and a lover of wine, you’d be compelled to attend — even if you don’t yet plan to buy a bottle of wine from McBride Sisters.

9. JetRockets

Page Likes: 119

First things first: JetRockets, a small web development agency, has an illustrated cover photo that is so fun to look at. As a result, the company gives visitors an early glimpse into its versatility and attention to detail.

As you can see from the image above, the company also features a call-to-action (CTA) button below the cover photo that tells users to “Call Now.” Right away, the button invites visitors to engage with the brand. With how quickly you must act to get customers’ business, this is a valuable feature of JetRocket’s business Page.

While the Facebook Page’s photo section is rich with employee photos showing off the company’s culture, its feed is filled with a mixture of company news and testimonies that prove the effectiveness of its services and offerings.

10. Glamnetic

Page Likes: 67K

Glamnetic rocks Facebook. Its Page prioritizes the things it knows users care about most when visiting Facebook: tutorials, live streams, discounts, and giveaways. At every turn, it gives users the chance to get Glamnetic products for free.

Not only that, it’s constantly putting out relatable and compelling visual content that gets high levels of engagement from its fans. For example, it partners with a wide collection of influencers who represent its customer base, and it also presents its new products in time for the upcoming season.

11. BET

Page Likes: 7.5M

BET, a news and entertainment company, leans on social media sites like Facebook to share its newest articles.

It does a great job of keeping its Facebook content fresh and up-to-date, which is especially important for a broadcasting company. Not to mention, each article it posts gains a ton of traffic as a result of its Facebook marketing strategy.

The folks that run the Facebook Page always find clever ways to keep the BET family connected and engaged using hashtags like #BETBuzz:

12. Helen Keller International

Page Likes: 17K

Helen Keller International is a charity organization that’s committed to decreasing poverty and preventing vision loss. It does a fantastic job engaging its volunteer and donor bases on Facebook. It right away invites donations by including a “Donate” button right underneath its cover photo, and its posts and photos feature the personal stories of patients who were helped thanks to the generosity of people like its Facebook Fans.

Its Page also offers tabs that allow you to create a fundraiser, browse careers, look at photos, and more.

13. Starbucks

Page Likes: 36.5M

Starbucks was an early social media adopter, and it comes through in the polish and features of its Facebook Page. The “International” tab leads you to its local Facebook Pages, so non-English-speaking fans can easily navigate to their country’s Starbucks Page.

Beyond that, Starbucks uses its Page to showcase rich visual content, run contests for seasonal products, highlight job openings, and interact with followers. It takes a fairly minimalist approach and uses short captions, like it does in the post below:

It also offers a slick store locator that allows you to find the location nearest to you.

14. Hint

Page Likes: 3.2K Likes

Hint is a Mexico-based marketing agency with a simple but effective Facebook business Page. Part of this impression comes from the company’s consistent and on-brand posts. It immediately invites users to message the brand via WhatsApp, one of the biggest messaging platforms in Latin America.

One of this Page’s premiere features, shown below, is its “Services” section, offering branded tiles that briefly describe Hint’s lines of business. From the unique and location-specific call-to-action to the warm color scheme, this business Page effectively engages users.

15. Adobe

Page Likes: 1.3M

Adobe is a computer software company that could post all about software and technology all the time … but it does a great job of catering its content to Facebook users, who tend to log on to socialize, read or watch fun content, or read the news. 

Its posts strike the right balance between conversational and authoritative. For instance, in one of its posts, it uses fun emojis while inviting users to celebrate World Emoji Day with an interdisciplinary artist:

16. Canva

Page Likes: 1.6M

Your customers can be your best sources for market research. The Canva Facebook Page places its Review tab at the forefront, whereas most Pages place the “About” or “Photos” tabs in the same spot. Customers have the option to post their unfiltered thoughts, recommend Canva, and share their opinion on their own Facebook Pages.

It also has a running series called “Design Stories,” where it shares touching anecdotes. 

17. EasyLunchboxes

Page Likes: 272K

With all that space in the cover photo, why not pair colorful visuals with a strong value statement? That’s exactly what EasyLunchboxes does. It puts it all out there as soon as a user lands on its Facebook Page.

In addition to posting fun pictures, videos, and tips like “lunch box hacks,” the Page also includes tabs that let users ask questions, sign up for the newsletter, follow the brand’s blog, and even get recipe and meal ideas. Overall, the Page is on-brand and clearly displays the utility of the product.

18. Pure Barre

Page Likes: 334K

For a company that’s been around for over 20 years, Pure Barre has shown that it can keep up with the times on its Facebook Page. Its posts include a mixture of testimonies, challenges, and reposts from current Pure Barre customers. Overall, it keeps engagement high by posting lots of content, much of which features members’ inspirational fitness journeys.

It also has a handy “Store” locator app within the page so that prospective members can easily see whether there’s a location nearby. To ensure that users engage as quickly a possible with the brand, it includes a “Sign Up” button right below the cover photo.

Pure Barre also knows its target customer base quite well. For many, seeing people’s progress is key to making a fitness investment, so the Page includes reviews right next to the Home tab.

19. Stella & Dot

Page Likes: 530K

As a company based on creating flexible entrepreneurial opportunities for women, Stella & Dot relies on platforms like Facebook to help grow its business via word-of-mouth marketing. It’s a great example of an organization that’s successfully built a community on Facebook.

Stella & Dot uses its Page to share styling tips with its social community, show how its pieces are designed and made, and post videos on how to wear its jewelry. All of its visual content is vibrantly colored and beautifully shot.

It has also taken advantage of Facebook Live by posting live videos of trunk shows, which can help prospective trunk show hosts learn how to do one — or just bring entertainment to anyone watching.

(Read this article for more awesome Facebook Live use cases.)

20. Mabel’s Labels

Page Likes: 215K

Like Zappos, Mabel’s Labels — creators of high-quality labels for the stuff kids lose — has also taken advantage of Facebook’s call-to-action (CTA) button feature with its “Shop Now” CTA, linking to its homepage.

In terms of content, it has mastered the art of posting the perfect balance of engaging videos, photos, and GIFs that align with the interests of its target audience: Moms who want their children to have a stress-free and positive childhood. For example, check out this photo it posted about the inclusivity of its products:

Mabel’s Labels has also taken advantage of Facebook Live and posted tons of videos that would be of interest to its audience. 

21. UNICEF

Page Likes: 12M

UNICEF’s Facebook Page is all about teaching Facebook users about its mission and giving them opportunities to get involved. For instance, they can click on the “Learn More” call-to-action button to visit the official website, or they can navigate to the “Guides” tab to browse through the organization’s guides on humanitarian values.

UNICEF also lets you create a Fundraiser straight from the Facebook page. The organization is known for creating powerful content to spread awareness and positive messages about current events. During the pandemic, for example, it created a video series to help individuals navigate hardship.

22. Black Lives Matter

Page Likes: 744K

Black Lives Matter is an organization whose Facebook Page is founded on uplifting historically excluded voices. In the same way, you can create a Page that highlights external experts on industry topics.

The organization’s posts include a mixture of Black history, organizational news, and political activism. Its video tab includes videos that bring attention to American issues, such as voting and abolition. In doing so, it effectively appeals to its followers and target audience.

23. Innclusive

Page Likes: 17.5K

Innclusive, an Airbnb competitor, uses its Facebook page to bring awareness to an issue by including an attention-grabbing statistic in its description. “A few months ago,” the Page’s description says, “a study conducted by Harvard University found that Airbnb hosts are 16% less likely to book users with ‘distinctively African-American names.’” In doing so, the Page immediately shows why the company’s services are needed.

It also invites users to book with them using a simple but effective line: “Come stay with us!” Another successful aspect of this page is its CTA button under the cover photo inviting visitors to sign up on the Innclusive website.

24. Rebundle

Page Likes: 363

Rebundle is a plant-based hair extension company that effectively conveys its ecologically centered products in its cover image and profile picture. It also invites users to engage immediately by including a “View Shop” button, which takes you to a page with pictures of its products in use.

In its posts, the Page shares company news, videos from other users, and photos of its customers successfully using the hair extensions.

25. Rhymes with Reason

Page Likes: 860

Rhymes with Reason is an education-technology startup that uses hip-hop music to teach vocabulary to students. It effectively uses its Facebook Page to spotlight stories from current and upcoming customers, share the Word of the Week, and highlight the artists it features on the platform.

Rhymes with Reason’s Page is an excellent example of striking the right balance between serving your target customers and sharing company news. In all of its posts, it uses its brand colors and aesthetic; that way, visitors can expect a consistent experience every time the brand publishes a post.

In its Community section, the brand allows anyone and everyone to tag them in posts, encouraging conversation and engagement.

Best Facebook Page Names

Your Facebook Page name would ideally be your business name — no frills and no keywords cluttering up the name. It should also be highly unique. Keep it simple like in the examples below:

• Rebundle
• Innclusive
• Canva
• Adobe

These names work well because they directly reflect the brand and are simple to remember.

If you need name ideas for your business, check out more business name ideas to inspire you.

Let These Winning Facebook Pages Inspire You

Use these awesome Page examples as inspiration to finally create a Facebook Page for your business or as motivation to improve your existing Page. You don’t have to do everything. Instead, focus on the core needs of your fans and customers, keep your messaging and imagery consistent, and watch your Facebook Page grow exponentially.

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

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Manual data entry might be one of the most tedious and inefficient tasks in the corporate world. Not only does it put you to sleep, it also wastes precious time and resources, slashing your productivity to bits.

Fortunately, there’s technology that can automate these mind-numbing tasks, eliminating human error and letting you focus on the work that actually matters — workflow automation.

By leveraging self-operating processes that run manual tasks, workflow automation can help your business save time and money, diminish errors, and boost productivity.

How does workflow automation work?

Workflow automation typically relies on a series of if/then statements to trigger another task. It then branches off depending on the action that was taken by a lead, employee, or another stakeholder.

Let’s walk through an example workflow for turning a form submission into a deal opportunity.

• A website visitor submits a form.
• The action automatically enrolls the visitor in a drip campaign. It creates a new deal and sets the status to “New.”
• The first email of the drip campaign is sent to the lead, requesting to schedule a meeting.
• The lead clicks through to the meeting scheduler and creates an appointment.
• A thank you email is sent to the lead, confirming the date and time.
• The CRM creates a new task and assigns it to a sales rep.
• The sales rep then reaches out personally, ending the automated workflow.

Here’s what a workflow can look like from start to finish.

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Almost every department in your business can benefit from workflow automation. Whether it’s marketing, human resources, or finance, the technology can help you work smarter, not harder.

Below, we’ll cover some of the most popular workflow automation examples.

Workflow automation can be used in virtually any team and in any business scenario. While it’s mostly related to marketing and sales, it can also be used in customer service, operations, human resources, and finance.

Marketing Workflow Automation

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Some of the most repetitive tasks in marketing, such as sending emails and posting social media updates, can be automated with workflow automation. With marketing automation software, you can schedule your entire social media calendar and set up workflows that nurture certain types of prospects with email offers.

Automated workflows in marketing include:

• Subscribing a user to a drip campaign when they download a resource from your website
• Welcoming a user to your company after they purchase a product
• Reminding a user to check out after they’ve added various items to their cart
• Scheduling social media posts across multiple platforms
• Distributing marketing tasks across team members

Additional Reading

• Beginner’s Guide to Marketing Automation
• Marketing Automation Benefits
• B2C Marketing Automation
• Email Marketing Workflows

Sales Workflow Automation

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Sales workflow automation streamlines tedious lead and prospect management tasks, so that reps can focus on selling, not entering data. Aside from taking leads automatically through the pipeline based on their actions, an automated sales workflow can enroll prospects in drip campaigns and update deal stages as the deal moves forward.

Automated tasks in sales include:

• Placing each lead at a different stage of the pipeline when they take a certain action
• Moving a lead out of the pipeline if they’ve stopped responding to emails
• Sending an introduction email from a sales rep to a lead after they download an ebook
• Updating the deal stage once the lead has scheduled an appointment or meeting
• Creating tasks for sales reps once a lead has scheduled a meeting

Additional Reading

• Beginner’s Guide to Sales Automation
• Sales Automation Stats
• Sales Force Automation
• CRM Automation

Customer Service Workflow Automation

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Workflow automation is incredibly useful in customer service. Aside from launching surveys, workflow automation can take care of tickets, cases, and common questions by sending a series of emails or creating tasks.

Automated tasks in customer service include:

• Creating a new ticket in the system when someone reaches out through social media or email
• Onboarding customers with a series of helpful emails
• Sending NPS® surveys and enrolling them into different email campaigns depending on their rating
• Assigning tickets a priority label depending on the tone of the message or email
• Resolving and archiving tickets once a resolution has been reached

Additional Reading

• Beginner’s Guide to Customer Service Automation
• Customer Relationship Automation
• Customer Service Software Tools
• AI Chatbots Tools

Operations Workflow Automation

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Operations is the lifeblood of any organization, and it, too, can be automated to reduce instances of manual data entry.

Automated tasks in operations include:

• Deleting duplicates once they have been detected or merging two properties if they’re the same
• Managing team permissions for new team members
• Establishing priorities for different businesses processes
• Automatically compiling reports at the end of every quarter
• Creating tasks in third-party tools such as Asana, Slack, or Zoom

Additional Reading

• Guide to Business Process Automation
• Ultimate Guide to Operations Hub

Human Resources Workflow Automation

Instead of having to manually enter all your new hires’ personal information — like addresses, social security numbers, and other employee information into payroll, expense, and insurance systems — HR automation software can do it for you in minutes.

Automated tasks in human resources include:

• Removing candidates from the database if they’ve been inactive for a period of time
• Sending emails to candidates that haven’t made it to the final round
• Filtering candidates with certain keywords in their job history
• Sending W2s to current employees
• Collecting employees’ feedback after they’ve been at the company for a period of time

Finance Workflow Automation

By allowing you to build forms, design workflows, and track processes, finance process automation software can streamline all of your travel requests, reimbursements, and budget approvals.

Automated tasks in finance include:

• Taking an expense approval process from start to finish
• Managing vendor and contract approvals
• Assigning priorities to ACH and wire requests
• Managing travel expense requests depending on location and activity
• Approving budgets based on a predetermined set of parameters

Now that you know everything about using automated workflows, let’s take a look at the top tools you can use.

Best Workflow Automation Software in 2021

1. HubSpot: Best All-in-One Workflow Automation Software

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HubSpot’s marketing, sales, service, and operations software operates on a single platform, making it one of the best choices for all-in-one workflow automation. Everything is linked together, allowing you to align all of your teams’ processes and reducing friction from task to task.

You can easily hand leads from marketing to sales, connect a service ticket with an existing contact record, and clean up customer data — all in one user-friendly platform.

Best for: HubSpot is highly recommended for growing businesses that have yet to try workflow automation and for enterprise businesses with established processes. You can begin with a Starter subscription, then upgrade as you require more functionalities. Especially recommended for marketing, sales, service, and operations departments.

Pricing for Marketing Hub: Free; $50/month (Starter); $890/month (Professional); $3,200/month (Enterprise)

Pricing for Sales Hub: Free; $50/month (Starter); $500/month (Professional); $1,200/month (Enterprise)

Pricing for Service Hub: Free; $50/month (Starter); $400/month (Professional); $1,200/month (Enterprise)

Pricing for Operations Hub: Free; $50/month (Starter); $800/month (Professional)

2. Nintex: Best Enterprise Workflow Automation Software

With over 3 million workflow applications operating on their platform right now, Nintex helps more than 8,000 enterprise customers manage, automate, and optimize their business processes, with no coding experience required.

By offering a multitude of workflow automation tools — like process mapping, advanced workflows, and process intelligence — your business is able to map out each of your processes, execute them, and monitor their performance.

Best for: Nintex is highly recommended for enterprise businesses with established processes. It’s a robust software that pairs a user-friendly workflow design tool with powerful integrations that will connect every single one of your apps. Especially recommended for IT, law, HR, and finance departments.

Pricing: $910/month (Standard); $1,400/month (Enterprise)

3. Kissflow: Best Beginner-Friendly Workflow Automation Software

Trusted by over 10,000 companies, including Domino’s, Michelin, and Pepsi, Kissflow offers an all-in-one workflow automation software that lets your business create workflows that automate tasks in your human resources, sales, finance, administration, marketing, and purchase departments.

With over 50 pre-installed business process management apps — such as expensing and sales orders, conditions and triggers, and reporting dashboards for your workflows — Kissflow can streamline almost all your business processes.

Best for: Kissflow is highly recommended for small companies that are just now starting to try workflow automation. The tool’s simplicity and user friendliness will make it easier to begin automating processes. Especially recommended for procurement, HR, and finance departments.

Pricing: $200/month (Basic); $495/month (Advanced); $1,900/month (Fully Loaded)

4. Integrify: Best Everyday Administration Workflow Automation Software

Integrify is a workflow automation software that lets you build workflows in a drag-and-drop builder and run parallel or sequential flows. By being able to collaborate on tasks and requests, test your processes, and set up reminders, you can easily streamline your business processes and automate manual tasks.

Integrify also offers workflow examples and a user knowledge base, a rest-based open API that allows you to integrate with external databases, and the ability to import and export data from Excel and even PDFs.

Best for: Integrify is highly recommended for small-to-medium businesses that are looking to automate everyday tasks. Its drag-and-drop “Process Builder” makes it simple and easy to take a process from start to completion. Especially recommended for administration departments.

Pricing: Pricing available upon request

5. Zapier: Best Workflow Automation Software for Connecting Apps

With the ability to connect to and share data with over 1,000 web apps, like Facebook, QuickBooks, and Google Drive, Zapier can automate almost any type of business process. All you have to do is build a workflow in their editor, pick the apps you want to include in your workflow, and design it.

For example, if you want to be able to save all your attachments in Dropbox, you can design a workflow that automatically copies any attachment from your Gmail inbox to Dropbox and then sends you a Slack message about the download.

Best for: Zapier is highly recommended for freelancers and small-to-medium businesses that use a wide variety of tools that aren’t talking with each other. For instance, if you’re using MailChimp to send emails and Typeform to collect leads, you could connect those two tools using Zapier. Especially recommended for marketing and service departments.

Pricing: Free; $19.99/month (Starter); $49/month (Professional)

6. Flokzu: Best Project Management Workflow Automation Software

Without writing any code, Flokzu allows you to create tasks, deadlines, business rules, and notifications. Their software also sends pending tasks to each of your project’s assignees’ inboxes, and as each stage of a workflow is complete, it’ll automatically assign each new task to a user or role.

Additionally, Flozku offers a reporting dashboard that displays your business processes’

performance and metrics, like the amount of currently delayed tasks there are, tasks assigned to each user and role, tasks completed, and the time each task took, which will give you the necessary data to refine and optimize your future workflows.

Best for: Flokzu is highly recommended for individual teams that want to optimize their time management and task workflow. A key feature of this tool is that users will receive pending tasks in their inbox, making it an excellent project management tool. Recommended for any team.

Pricing: Free; $19.99/month (Starter); $49/month (Professional)

Workflow Automation Will Help You Grow Better

Workflow automation is critical for businesses that want to scale and grow without letting anything fall through the cracks. By letting technology complete manual tasks, you can effectively grow your business without any growing pains.

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

The word “guerrilla,” in its written form, seems very intense. It conjures images of rebellion and conflict. Put it next to the word “marketing,” and it makes a lot of people ask, “Huh?”

But guerrilla marketing isn’t some sort of combative form of communication. In fact, it’s actually a very unconventional form of marketing in that it raises brand awareness among large audiences without interrupting them.

The term itself was created in the early 1980s by the late business writer Jay Conrad Levinson, who wrote several books about guerrilla tactics in a number of professional areas. Of course, at that time, marketing in general looked very different, and while guerrilla marketing is still used today, the ever-growing digital landscape is changing what it looks like.

Roots of Warfare

When we hear the term “guerrilla marketing,” it’s hard not to think of guerrilla warfare — which makes sense, since that’s where this style of marketing got its name. In the warfare context, guerrilla tactics depend largely on the element of surprise. Think: “Ambushes, sabotage, raids,” according to Creative Guerrilla Marketing.

But how does that translate into the work we do every day? In marketing, guerrilla techniques mostly play on the element of surprise. It sets out to create highly unconventional campaigns that catch people unexpectedly in the course of their day-to-day routines.

Budget-Friendly

What marketers really enjoy about guerrilla marketing is its fairly low-cost nature. The real investment here is a creative, intellectual one — its implementation, however, doesn’t have to be expensive. Michael Brenner summarizes it nicely in his article on “guerrilla content,” where he frames this style of marketing in the same context as repurposing your existing content, like taking certain segments of a report, and expanding each one into a blog post. It’s an investment of time, but not money, per se.

In a way, guerrilla marketing works by repurposing your audience’s current environment. Evaluate it and figure out which segments of it can be repurposed to include your brand.

Types of Guerrilla Marketing

As niche as it might seem, there are actually a few sub-categories of guerrilla marketing, as outlined by the firm ALT TERRAIN:

• Outdoor Guerrilla Marketing. Adds something to preexisting urban environments, like putting something removable onto a statue, or putting temporary artwork on sidewalks and streets.

• Indoor Guerilla Marketing. Similar to outdoor guerrilla marketing, only it takes place in indoor locations like train stations, shops, and university campus buildings.

• Event Ambush Guerilla Marketing. Leveraging the audience of an in-progress event — like a concert or a sporting game — to promote a product or service in a noticeable way, usually without permission from the event sponsors.

• Experiential Guerilla Marketing. All of the above, but executed in a way that requires the public to interact with the brand.

We know — without context, the whole idea of guerrilla marketing can be a little confusing, so let’s see how it’s been executed by a few other brands.

Guerrilla Marketing Examples to Inspire Your Brand

1. Bounty’s Giant Popsicle

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By installing life-sized “messes” throughout the streets of New York — a giant, knocked-over coffee cup and a gigantic melting popsicle — Bounty found a unique way to advertise its product and the solution it provides, with minimal words.

You might ask, “Wouldn’t a concise billboard ad accomplish the same thing?” Well, not really. Culturally, we’re starting to opt for every possible way to eradicate ads from our lives. That’s why we love things like DVR and ad-free options on streaming services like Hulu and YouTube. This campaign, unlike an ad, isn’t as easy to ignore. After all, if you stumbled upon a melting popsicle the size of your mattress on your way to work, would you stop and look? We would.

The big takeaway: Identify the biggest problem that your product or service solves. Then, find an unconventional way to broadcast that to the public — preferably without words.

2. Deadpool’s Tinder Profile

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Some Tinder users were surprised to see none other than comic anti-hero and legend Deadpool showing up on their Tinder. With “cheeky” pics and witty profile copy, Deadpool broke the fourth wall and met potential movie-goers ahead of the movie’s Valentine’s Day release.

If the Tinder user “swiped right” and matched with the character, they received a link to purchase tickets.

While Tinder isn’t the best way to generate buzz — it’s limited in its reach to a small subset of users, and you’re technically not allowed to use the platform for promotion — screenshots of this gag quickly made it to social media, garnering a ton of attention.

The big takeaway: Promotions that use “interruptive” techniques aren’t frustrating if they create unexpected delight.

3. Childish Gambino’s Ice Cream Pop-Up

 

 

 

 

 

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Have you ever seen how powerful of a motivator free food can be? Make it a sweet treat, and you have yourself a winning combination.

Childish Gambino likely had this in mind for his “Summertime Starts Here” pop-up events where free ice cream was given away. As people queued up in the heat for some delicious ice cream, Gambino’s two singles played on a loud speaker.

It was a great way to expose listeners to his EP, Summer Pack.

The big takeaway: Sometimes you have to draw an audience in with incentives to earn attention.

4. The GRAMMYs Singing Posters

Okay, this one might not be entirely fair, since it wasn’t pulled off “in real life.” But how cool would it be if it was? To promote the nominees for its Album Of The Year category, the GRAMMYS music awards show created a video to show what would happen if posters for the nominated artists just began singing.

It might sound impossible to actually carry out something like that. But imagine — what if you could create musical posters for your brand? Again, it’s different than a billboard ad because, when we walk by a wall of paper advertisements in, say, New York City, we don’t expect them to start moving. Now, we’ll admit that this idea isn’t exactly a budget-friendly one, as it might require some technical work to bring to fruition. But even if you could include a single moving or digital image among a sea of still ones — in a place where it would come as a surprise, like a brick wall — it would catch people off guard and, therefore, get their attention.

The big takeaway: Think about the things that your audience might just pass by every day — and make those things do something that’s both unexpected and interactive.

5. Frontline’s Interactive Floor Ad

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When I first saw this photo, I’ll admit that I fell for it. “Someone, get that dog away from those flies!” I frantically thought. Then, I realized that the dog wasn’t real, and neither were the flies. The former was a photo, and the latter were actually humans.

That’s because Frontline, the makers of flea and tick prevention products for dogs, were able to fill the entire floor of this large, public space with this image. The brand knew that many people walk across that space every day, and that a good number of people would also see it from the building’s upper levels, creating the dog-and-insect illusion. It’s hard to miss — and to not look twice.

Again, this campaign is different than traditional marketing because it’s not just plastering a single message somewhere that’s likely to be ignored. It creates a form of accidental human interaction that reminds the viewer what the product does.

The big takeaway: Figure out how humans might involuntarily interact with your marketing messages. While your product or service may not address the issue of, say, insect removal, there are ways to make people part of the campaign.

6. Public Breakup on Burger King’s Instagram

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Breaking up is hard to do in person, let alone when it’s publicly played out online. That’s what happened — allegedly — when one Instagram user left a comment on one of Burger King’s Instagram posts sharing a tale of his “girl” procuring food from Burger King. There was just one problem. This guy does have a girlfriend, but she was nowhere near a Burger King. So, who was he referring to? The drama ensued, via Instagram comments:

After the comments began to make headlines, many speculated that the entire exchange may have been staged by Burger King. And if it was, we can’t help but salute them — what a way to get your brand into the zeitgeist.

Burger King has roughly one million followers on Instagram. And while we’re not sure how many followers the former had before this famous breakup, it makes sense to assume that this at least drew more attention to its social media presence, at least on this particular platform. People may have already been observing the brand on Instagram, but before now, were they actively discussing it?

The big takeaway: Guerrilla marketing has gone digital. Think about where your audience already exists digitally — then, give ’em a show. While we can’t condone lying, we can applaud creativity, so don’t be afraid to use the comments to get people talking.

7. UNICEF’s Dirty Water Vending Machines

I’m as guilty as anyone of wasting money on bottled water. I have no excuse. I have a reusable one. My workplace offers filtered water from a machine, not a traditional cooler, and yet, it remains a bad habit.

That’s why this guerrilla marketing campaign from relief organization UNICEF resonated with me. It posed the question, “What if those bottles of water you waste money on were filled with dirty water?” It was a way of reminding the privileged masses that in too many parts of the world, entire populations have no access to clean drinking water.

So instead of frivolously spending that money on bottled water, UNICEF suggested putting it toward efforts to bring clean drinking water to these areas. It did so by creating makeshift vending machines that sold bottled dirty water, with each button labeled as a disease caused by a lack of clean drinking water.

The big takeaway: Guerrilla marketing works in the not-for-profit sector, too. And while scary, saddening images are often an impactful way of communicating your mission, there’s a way to convey it by creating something less in-your-face and interactive for the public.

8. GoldToe’s Giant Briefs

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Are you an underwear company looking for an unconventional way to market your product? Why, just try placing an enormous pair of briefs on an iconic charging bull statue.

Really, we can’t make this stuff up.

It’s so simple, in theory, that it sounds like fiction. But when the GoldToe brand needed a way to tease and promote the launch of its new undergarments, that’s exactly what it did — casually placed these new items of clothing on statues throughout New York. And while we can’t be sure that it’s the route GoldToe took, we sincerely hope that those bull-sized briefs were made with leftover manufacturing fabric, helping to make this campaign even budget-friendlier.

The big takeaway: Don’t overthink it. Sometimes what looks like your silliest idea might be the best one.

9. Fiji Water’s #FijiGirl

How is this real? #FijiGirl #GoldenGlobes pic.twitter.com/Fko3XMmupa

— Daniel Howat (@howatdk)
January 7, 2019

Strategic product placement is one guerilla marketing tactic to gain attention in subtle ways. One such example includes Fiji Water’s presence at the 2019 Golden Globes where models wore blue and carried trays of water for thirsty attendees.

It didn’t end there, though. One model — Kelleth Cuthbert — positioned herself in the background during photoshoots, effectively photo-bombing high-profile celebrities.

When the photos started appearing on social media, people began noticing Cuthbert as a common denominator, dubbing her #FijiGirl. Ultimately, she became one of the highlights of the evening, winning over fans and drawing attention to Fiji Water’s brand.

The big takeaway: Your brand doesn’t need to be the focus of an event for it to stand out.

10. Greene King’s Candid Videos

When pub and brewing company Greene King feared that small, neighborhood establishments — notably, the pub — would start to be overtaken by large corporate retail, it launched a campaign to communicate just how important these local businesses really are. Even better, the content was almost entirely created by those who understand this predicament best: Pub owners, bartenders, and patrons.

These individuals were given cameras to capture video of the most meaningful moments and gatherings they’ve experienced inside these local pubs — from weddings, to funeral receptions, to birthdays. These videos were shared on Greene King’s YouTube profile and posed the question, “Without these neighborhood meeting places, where would we share these moments?”

The big takeaway: It’s okay to get a little sentimental with guerilla marketing. Think about the emotions invoked by what you offer. Then, invite your audience to create content around what your brand means to them.

11. BBC’s Dracula Billboard

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When I think of Count Dracula, I conjure the penultimate villain synonymous with everything that goes bump in the night. The BBC wanted to capitalize on this feeling to promote their show, Dracula.

By day, their billboard was designed to be minimalistic with red text on a white background with a few bloody stakes. However, like its subject, the billboard changed completely every time night fell.

The stakes were actually strategically placed — to cast a shadow of Dracula himself.

The installation ended up being featured in Adweek and had some viral success for its creativity and skillful implementation.

The big takeaway: Think outside the box for your advertising materials. In this case, light and shadow were enough to convey the message and capture attention.

Guerrillas in the Wild

Starting to make a little more sense?

Hopefully, you’ll be inspired by these examples, especially if you’re promoting a smaller brand. Don’t be afraid to crowdsource the content for these campaigns, for example — after all, it’s creative approaches to your work that help maintain guerrilla marketing’s budget-friendly, inbound nature. Remember: Catch people where they are, and insert your brand there. Don’t interrupt, but invite them to participate.

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

Now more than ever, businesses are focusing on creating delightful mobile website experiences.

Google has been heavily favoring mobile-friendly websites since 2015 when it updated its ranking algorithm, then started indexing mobile sites in March 2018, and has conducted mobile-first indexing since 2019. This is crucial, as there have been more search queries on mobile devices than on desktop for several years now.

Going forward, Google will only continue to raise the bar for what it considers to be mobile-friendly (including page load time) in its algorithm updates. So, if you haven’t been focusing on improving your mobile experience, you should start now or see your search ranking fall off.

To help inspire any mobile website design changes you’ll be making, here’s a list of 21 companies who really nailed their mobile web experience.

1. Shutterfly

Why it works: Shutterfly’s mobile website is easily navigable, highly visual, and intuitive for new visitors and experienced customers.

Shutterfly is an online service that allows users to create photo books, personalized cards, stationery, and other similar products. Because more and more people are taking photos and then accessing them using their smartphones, Shutterfly recognized the need to create a great mobile experience for their customers.

Shutterfly accomplishes two key goals on their mobile website. First, it’s easy for users to find out information about their offerings. Second, this information is complemented by beautiful imagery.

When you arrive on the mobile site, you’ll see Shutterfly’s latest promotion front and center as well as a finger-sized top navigation menu, neither of which overpower the user experience.

Scroll down and you’ll see large buttons that make it easy for users to quickly select which type of product they’re interested in. Once users click through to one of those options, they’re greeted with large photos showcasing what Shutterfly is capable of for easy browsing.

2. Google Maps

Why it works: The mobile website for Google Maps brings the same functionality, visuals, and performance as its mobile app counterpart.

Everyone has their favorite map or directions application. Mine is Google Maps, which I use whether I’m walking, driving, biking, or taking public transportation. What’s special about its mobile website is that it’s virtually indistinguishable from their downloadable mobile app.

These screenshots below are taken of their mobile website, but if you’re familiar at all with the app, you’ll notice they look exactly the same. Not only is the appearance identical, but the mobile website has the speed and functionality of the app.

3. Typeform

Why it works: Type form simplifies their mobile website to improve load times and deliver a simpler user experience.

Typeform is a Barcelona-based tech company with one simple mission: to “make forms awesome.” Their desktop website is beautifully designed, greeting visitors with succinct copy, relevant animations, and other complex design components.

But for mobile users, Typeform recognized that this complex design could significantly affect page load time, among other difficulties. That’s why they actually removed many of them, decluttering the site and simplifying the overall mobile experience. The mobile site is a simpler version of the desktop website, and it’s still beautifully designed.

Take note of the large buttons on their menu page — perfect for tapping with your finger on a mobile screen.

4. Etsy

Why it works: This mobile site pushes its most important features — site search, item categories, and trending products — on the homepage while avoiding clutter.

Etsy is an ecommerce website where people can buy and sell vintage or handmade items. Most buyers who visit Etsy’s website are there to do one of two things: Either they’re searching for a specific item, or they’re browsing items in categories that interest them.

The mobile website caters to both types of visitors from the very beginning. When you first go to their mobile website, you’re greeted with an option to search for specific items, shops, or categories.

Immediately below are thumbnail images of trending items that showcase some of the most popular things you can buy on Etsy. Mobile users can view these trending items in a collage format, and the images are large enough to easily tap with a finger.

5. Adrian Zumbrunnen

Why it works: Adrian Zumbrunnen takes a unique approach to the personal website, creating an experience that is entirely tailored for mobile users.

This is the personal website of Adrian Zumbrunnen, a UX designer, writer, and speaker. When you visit his website, you’ll notice right away there’s something very unique about it: It’s a conversational website.

It almost looks like a text message conversation you’d normally have on your phone, including the ellipsis to show he’s “typing.” Users are given two response options at the end of every exchange, so it’s akin to a “choose-your-own-adventure” experience.

While the mobile and desktop experiences are similar, the desktop website feels like it was made primarily for mobile — which could be the direction sites will go in the future.

And if you’d prefer not to engage in the conversation-like exchange, you can simply scroll down for details.

6. Elf on the Shelf

Why it works: The Elf on the Shelf mobile site makes its wide selection of products visible from the get-go and uses emotional, highly visual product displays to win visitors over.

Elf on the Shelf is, relatively speaking, a fairly new Christmas tradition based on a children’s book. If you’re unfamiliar, the basic premise is this: The book tells the story of Santa’s scout elves, who are sent by Santa to watch over children in their homes all over the world and report back to Santa.

Parents can purchase an elf figurine, which they’ll subtly place somewhere in their house where their kids can see it. Every night leading up to Christmas, parents move the elf to a different location around their house to “prove” that the scout elves are real and always looking over them.

When you arrive on Elf on the Shelf’s website, you’ll see there are actually numerous products you can purchase. But instead of forcing users to scroll through each product individually, the web designers package each product into a large, enticing tile describing the goal of each buyer’s journey, with the featured item displayed on the front.

You’re not buying your own elf or pup, you’re adopting it. It’s a truly empowering experience on such a small screen.

7. BuzzFeed

Why it works: BuzzFeed caters to its mobile users with a website that directs them to their topics of interest.

BuzzFeed is known for its viral content and popular quizzes. It also happens to be one of my favorite sources of entertainment during my commute to and from work.

And where do you think I’m checking BuzzFeed during my commute? You guessed it: my phone. BuzzFeed knows that a lot of their visitors are visiting their site on mobile, so they’ve taken great care to create a smooth experience for their on-the-go readers.

When you arrive at BuzzFeed’s mobile website, the first thing you’ll see is some of their most popular pieces of content displayed in a simple, collage-like format using large images that are easy to tap.

For users interested in specific categories, there’s a menu at the top of the screen that lists out all the post categories. Each category has its own directory page with clickable filters along the top.

8. Evernote

Why it works: With a clear conversion path and clean design carried over from desktop, Evernote’s mobile site makes clear what it does and how you can join.

Evernote is an application that allows you to store notes, images, and web articles and then access them across all your devices. Because users tend to download the app or access the website on multiple devices including desktop computers, smartphones, and tablets, it’s essential that Evernote gets the mobile experience right.

If you look at Evernote’s homepage on your desktop computer, you’ll notice how clean the design is. The value statements are short and to the point, and the graphics add to the brand’s positioning but don’t clutter the page.

When you look at Evernote’s mobile website, you can see they’ve kept their color palette and general brand style entirely intact. The company’s mobile website is clean, simple, and doesn’t detract at all from the value of the app. Evernote’s conversion path is obvious from the centered call-to-action: “Sign up for free.”

9. Pixelgrade

Why it works: Pixelgrade’s WordPress themes are mobile-friendly, minimal, and sleek. Specifically, the Pile theme is perfect for WordPress portfolio websites.

Pixelgrade’s Pile theme allows you to properly showcase your services and previous work and doesn’t sacrifice mobile design. The theme is optimized for mobile devices while delivering on your content’s intended message and aesthetic at the same time.

10. Huffington Post

Why it works: The well-known publication condenses its content to better fit mobile screen dimensions and serve readers on the move.

The Huffington Post is a news outlet that reports everything from politics and current events to entertainment and technology. What makes their mobile website unique is that they actually alter their headlines slightly for mobile users so their content is more easily scannable.

If you compare the desktop versus mobile websites, you’ll notice that the mobile website has fewer words on the homepage. The headlines are shorter and much more digestible — perfect for someone skimming or reading on a small screen.

There’s also a clickable menu in the top left-hand corner of the screen listing out all the post categories.

11. Express

Why it works: Express cleverly utilizes images to create a more realistic product viewing experience — users simply swipe to view products from different angles before committing to a purchase.

Express is a clothing store that caters to young men and women. Because their audience often comes to their website to browse clothing, it’s important for their website to include big, clear images of their clothing — especially on mobile devices, when users will need to tap items on the screen with their fingers to click through for purchase information.

Express takes its mobile experience a step further than most online retail sites. If you slide your finger from left to right across an image showing a piece of clothing, the image will change so you can see the clothing in a different view. In other words, users don’t have to load another page to see multiple pictures of the same article of clothing.

Look at the image on the top right in the following two images to see how it changes when you swipe to one side:

12. Nationwide Insurance

Why it works: This mobile site serves two different types of clientele and divides its mobile website accordingly. Whether you’re an individual or a customer, it’s clear where you should go.

Nationwide Insurance provides insurance and financial services. You might think a financial company would have a complicated website, but on mobile, Nationwide Insurance nails the simple user experience.

When you arrive on Nationwide’s mobile site, you’ll see two tabs at the top allowing you to identify as one of two types of users right away to customize your experience: Personal or Business. Or, alternatively, you can “Find an Agent” or “Find a financial advisor” to learn more information about their services.

Although limiting the experience to these two options excludes Nationwide’s more in-depth features, it makes for a much easier experience for visitors using small screens. This is a great technique to lead potential customers in the right direction if they’re not yet account-holders and are visiting the website for the first time.

13. Squaredot

Why it works: This mobile site nails the color palette, font choices, and interactive elements on the homepage. It’s simple, engaging, and playful.

Squaredot is an agency based in Dublin, Ireland that helps marketers build out their inbound marketing strategies. Their mobile website is colorful, simple, and makes for easy navigating.

What sticks out to me most is the visually pleasing color combinations as well as the large clickable menu that expands to reveal each of the organization’s services.

Farther down the page, there are entirely swipeable regions. The one pictured below presents client success stories and adds another dimension to the mobile site.

14. Zappos

Why it works: The Zappos mobile website is very easily searchable, which is critical given its huge inventory. The latest offerings are also clear on first page load.

Zappos is an online vendor for shoes and clothing known for its stellar customer service. Their top priority on mobile is to help users search easily for the items they’re looking for on their website, so they’ve put a large search bar at both the top and bottom of their mobile website to make it super easy for them.

This is what the top of their mobile site looks like:

15. ABC

Why it works: This mobile site’s dark theme is a contrast to many other popular mobile sites, bringing a theater-like feel to the experience. The highly navigable pages help viewers find their content of choice or simply browse.

ABC is a television broadcasting company known for popular shows like The Bachelorette, The Rookie, and General Hospital. Users visiting ABC’s desktop website are greeted with these options and more. View the network’s television schedule, check out the most recent Emmy winners, watch some of your favorite television shows, or even look at entertainment news relating to those shows.

But because nearly every household today is a multi-screen household, ABC knows its experience on a mobile device should be both simple and ready for viewing.

When you visit the ABC website on a mobile device, you’ll see a dark background for a theatre-like experience with tiles for each program you might want to stream. Users can scan through these options and click into any show they want based on genre, alphabetical order, what’s popular, and similar categories you’d also find on your TV’s streaming platform.

16. Lean Labs

Why it works: Lean Labs utilizes fly-in animations and distinct content sections to tell a story as users scroll down.

Lean Labs is a marketing agency that creates engaging, responsive, and high-conversion web solutions. (They were also featured on the hit TV series Shark Tank.) The folks there do a great job of providing a smooth experience for mobile users, especially with regard to their design techniques.

Notice how Lean Labs’ mobile website uses scale, contrast, and typeface to distinguish certain elements of their page. It even incorporates fly-in animations for its images to enhance the scrolling experience.

17. SAP

Why it works: Despite its plethora of offerings, SAP reigns it in on its mobile website and simplifies its CTAs and menus.

SAP is an enterprise software company that manages business operations and customer relations. The business enhances its mobile experience by condensing information and combining some of their calls-to-action into sliders, whereas their desktop website has these CTAs laid out horizontally.

This helps keep things simple so mobile users aren’t overwhelmed with a lot of information at once, and it also ensures none of the CTAs are too small to read.

18. KISSmetrics

Why it works: KISSmetrics uses color to separate content sections from each other and to create prominent CTAs that stick out, even on smaller mobile screens.

KISSmetrics provides analytics software for businesses. On their homepage, there’s a lot of information explaining what the software does along with a testimonial.

But their mobile site is displayed a little differently: On a mobile device, the information on their site is shown in a list with alternative dark and light modules. This makes it easy for users to skim the page without getting lost in text.

They’ve also made the text and fields on their forms large and easy to read:

19. idig Marketing

Why it works: idig prioritizes accessibility on its website, presenting a sticky accessibility menu where users can adjust various display options.

idig Marketing is a development and communications provider. Their mobile website is laid out similarly to their desktop website, but I especially liked the readily available accessibility options menu on the right side of the screen.

Tapping this blue icon reveals a menu where users can adjust settings like enhanced visuals.

20. IndiaMART

Why it works: This company’s mobile website is both conveniently browsable and searchable, depending on what visitors are looking to do on the site. It displays trending items prominently as well.

IndiaMART is the largest online B2B marketplace in India, and its simple category-based mobile store makes it one of the best mobile websites we’ve ever seen in the ecommerce industry.

The company’s mobile homepage puts the search bar right at the top so you can always retreat to a custom search if browsing no longer suffices to find the item you’re looking for.

But, IndiaMART makes it easy to peruse its digital aisles by sorting each item by item type, and then sub-types within each item type — a smart design move to encourage users to explore your site further. Under “Apparel & Garments,” for example, you have easily clickable tiles to check out more specific categories of clothing, such as menswear, women’s dresses, and even suits, sarees, and similar garb native to India.

Underneath IndiaMART’s browsing tiles, the company has its own trending section specifically for merchandise people are paying most attention to — similar to a trending list of news on a social media platform. Each trending category has a mobile-friendly call-to-action button allowing users to get price quotes for the product they’re interested in.

21. Pipsnacks

Why it works: Finally, the mobile website for Pipsnacks doesn’t sacrifice its visuals for smaller screens. Even on your smartphone, you’re immersed in the snack food company’s lighthearted branding.

To close out our list, Pipsnacks brings the vibrant colors and textures of their desktop site to the mobile screen. Products are listed as large, clickable images that bring you to their respective product pages, and the mobile site is enhanced with minimal but effective animations that add to the experiences without hurting load time.

Mobile Websites to Inspire Yours

These days, having an effective mobile website isn’t just a nice perk — it’s a necessity, at least if you want to rank in search results and get found. If you neglect your mobile site, that might just put off half your audience.

Fortunately, today’s website builders and platforms let anyone make a site that’s both desktop-ready and mobile-friendly. But, it’s the little details you add on top that will make yours truly exceptional.

Want more information on how to optimize your business with a creative mobile web design? Download the free kit on mobile marketing below.

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

Let’s set the stage: I’m about to dig into the best darn pile of spaghetti and meatballs I’ve ever seen. Just as I twist my fork in the pasta, spear a mouth-watering meatball, and go in for my first savory bite…the phone rings. “May I speak to Lindsay Kow-low-witch?” asks the telemarketer on the other end. “This is an important message regarding your oven preferences.”

This frustrating interruption is why we’re here to discuss inbound lead generation — a solution that can save your business or organization from being that annoying, disruptive cold caller that is ruined by spaghetti night.

Let’s start with defining a lead, and then we’ll cover what online lead generation is, why you need lead generation, how you qualify someone as a lead, how to label lead types — such as sales qualified leads, how you generate leads, and why inbound lead generation is much more effective than simply buying leads.

What is a lead?

A lead is any person who indicates interest in a company’s product or service in some way, shape, or form.

Leads typically hear from a business or organization after opening communication (by submitting personal information for an offer, trial, or subscription) … instead of getting a random cold call from someone who purchased their contact information.

Let’s say you take an online survey to learn more about how to take care of your car. A day or so later, you receive an email from the auto company that created the survey about how they could help you take care of your car. This process would be far less intrusive than if they’d just called you out of the blue with no knowledge of whether you even care about car maintenance, right? This is what it’s like to be a lead.

And from a business perspective, the information the auto company collects about you from your survey responses helps them personalize that opening communication to address your existing problems — and not waste time calling leads who aren’t at all interested in auto services.

Leads are part of the broader lifecycle that consumers follow when they transition from visitor to customer. Not all leads are created equal (nor are they qualified the same). There are different types of leads based on how they are qualified and what lifecycle stage they’re in.

Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)

Marketing qualified leads are contacts who’ve engaged with your marketing team’s efforts but aren’t ready to receive a sales call. An example of an MQL is a contact who fills out a landing page form for an offer (like in our lead generation process scenario below).

Sales Qualified Lead (SQL)

Sales qualified leads are contacts who’ve taken actions that expressly indicate their interest in becoming a paying customer. An example of an SQL is a contact who fills out a form to ask a question about your product or service.

Product Qualified Lead (PQL)

Product qualified leads are contacts who’ve used your product and taken actions that indicate interest in becoming a paying customer. PQLs typically exist for companies who offer a product trial or a free or limited version of their product (like HubSpot!) with options to upgrade, which is where your sales team comes in. An example of a PQL is a customer who uses your free version but engages or asks about features that are only available upon payment.

Service Qualified Lead

Service qualified leads are contacts or customers who’ve indicated to your service team that they’re interested in becoming a paying customer. An example of an service qualified lead is a customer who tells their customer service representative that they’d like to upgrade their product subscription; at this time, the customer service representative would up-level this customer to the appropriate sales team or representative.

 

These lead generators are just a few examples of lead generation strategies you can use to attract potential customers and guide them towards your offers. (We talk about more strategies later.)

Whenever someone outside the marketing world asks me what I do, I can’t simply say, “I create content for lead generation.” It’d be totally lost on them, and I’d get some really confused looks.

So instead, I say, “I work on finding unique ways to attract people to my business. I want to provide them with enough goodies to get them naturally interested in my company so they eventually warm up to the brand enough to want to hear from us!”

That usually resonates better, and that’s exactly what lead generation is: It’s a way of warming up potential customers to your business and getting them on the path to eventually making a purchase.

Why do you need lead generation?

When a stranger initiates a relationship with you by showing an organic interest in your business, the transition from stranger to customer is much more natural.

Lead generation falls within the second stage of the inbound marketing methodology. It occurs after you’ve attracted an audience and are ready to convert those visitors into leads for your sales team (namely sales-qualified leads).

As you can see in the diagram below, generating leads is a fundamental point in an individual’s journey to becoming a delighted customer.

Lead Generation Process

Now that we understand how lead generation fits into the inbound marketing methodology, let’s walk through the steps of the lead generation process.

1. First, a visitor discovers your business through one of your marketing channels, such as your website, blog, or social media page.
2. That visitor then clicks on your call-to-action (CTA) — an image, button, or message that encourages website visitors to take some sort of action.
3. That CTA takes your visitor to a landing page, which is a web page that is designed to capture lead information in exchange for an offer.

   Note: An offer is the content or something of value that’s being “offered” on the landing page, like an ebook, a course, or a template. The offer must have enough perceived value to a visitor for them to provide their personal information in exchange for access to it.)

4. Once on the landing page, your visitor fills out a form in exchange for the offer. (Forms are typically hosted on landing pages, although they can technically be embedded anywhere on your site.) Voila! You have a new lead. That is, as long as you’re following lead-capture form best practices.

See how everything fits together?

To sum it up: Visitor clicks a CTA that takes them to a landing page where they fill out a form to get an offer, at which point they become a lead.

By the way, you should check out our free lead generation tool. It helps you create lead capture forms directly on your website. Plus, it’s really easy to set up.

Lead Generation Marketing

Once you put all of these elements together, you can use your various promotional channels to drive traffic to your landing page to start generating leads.

But what channels should you use to promote your landing page? Let’s talk about the front-end of lead generation — lead gen marketing.

If you’re a visual learner, this chart shows the flow from promotional marketing channels to a generated lead.

There are even more channels you can use to get visitors to become leads. Let’s go into depth on these and talk about a few others.

Content

Content is a great way to guide users to a landing page. Typically, you create content to provide visitors with useful, free information. You can include CTAs anywhere in your content — inline, bottom-of-post, in the hero, or even on the side panel. The more delighted a visitor is with your content, the more likely they are to click your call-to-action and move onto your landing page.

Featured Resource

• HubSpot Ebook Templates

Email

Email is a great place to reach the people who already know your brand and product or service. It’s much easier to ask them to take an action since they’ve previously subscribed to your list. Emails tend to be a bit cluttered, so use CTAs that have compelling copy and an eye-catching design to grab your subscriber’s attention.

Featured Resource

• The Beginner’s Guide to Email Marketing

Ads and Retargeting

The sole purpose of an ad is to get people to take an action. Otherwise, why spend the money? If you want people to convert, be sure that your landing page and offer match exactly what is promised in the ad, and that the action you want users to take is crystal clear.

Blog

The great thing about using your blog posts to promote an offer is that you can tailor the entire piece to the end goal. So, if your offer is an instructional video on setting up Google Search Console, then you can write a blog post about how to select your marketing metrics … which would make your CTA highly relevant and easy to click.

For a quick video overview on the HubSpot Blog’s expert lead generation tips, check out our video guide.

Featured Resource

• 6 Free Blog Post Templates

Social Media

Social media platforms make it easy to guide your followers to take action, from the swipe up option on Instagram stories to Facebook bio links to bitly URLs on Twitter. You can also promote your offerings on your social posts and include a call-to-action in your caption. Learn more about social media campaigns in this post.

Product Trials

You can break down a lot of barriers to a sale by offering trials of your product or service. Once a prospect is using your product, you can entice them with additional offers or resources to encourage them to buy. Another good practice is to include your branding in your free versions so you can capture other potential customers, too.

Referral Marketing

Referral, or word-of-mouth, marketing is useful for lead generation in a different way. That is, it gets your brand in front of more people, which, in turn, increases your chances of generating more leads.

Whatever channel you use to generate leads, you’ll want to guide users to your landing page. As long as you’ve built a landing page that converts, the rest will handle itself.

Why not just buy leads?

Marketers and salespeople alike want to fill their sales funnel — and they want to fill it quickly. Enter: The temptation to buy leads.

Buying leads, as opposed to organically generating them, is much easier and takes far less time and effort, despite being more expensive. But, you might be paying for advertising anyway … so, why not just buy leads?

First and foremost, any leads you’ve purchased don’t actually know you. Typically, they’ve “opted in” at some other site when signing up for something, and didn’t actually opt into receiving anything from your company.

The messages you send them are therefore unwanted messages, and sending unwanted messages is intrusive. (Remember that disruptive call I got when I was trying to eat my spaghetti? That’s how people feel when they receive emails and other messages from people they didn’t ask to hear from.)

If the prospect has never been to your website and indicated an interest in your products or services, then you’re interrupting them … plain and simple.

If they never opted in to receive messages specifically from you, then there’s a high chance they could flag your messages as spam, which is quite dangerous for you. Not only does this train to filter out emails from you, but it also indicates to their email provider which emails to filter out.

Once enough people flag your messages as spam, you go on a “blacklist,” which is then shared with other email providers. Once you get on the blacklist, it’s really, really hard to get back off of it. In addition, your email deliverability and IP reputation will likely be harmed.

It’s always, always, always better to generate leads organically rather than buy them. Read this blog post to learn how to grow an opt-in email list instead of buying one.

How to Qualify a Lead

As we covered in the first section, a lead is a person who has indicated interest in your company’s product or service. Now, let’s talk about the ways in which someone can actually show that interest.

Essentially, a sales lead is generated through information collection. That information collection could come as the result of a job seeker showing interest in a position by completing an application, a shopper sharing contact information in exchange for a coupon, or a person filling out a form to download an educational piece of content.

Gauging a Lead’s Level of Interest

Below are just a few of the many ways in which you could qualify someone as a lead. Each of these examples shows that the amount of collected information used to qualify a lead, as well as their level of interest, can vary.

Let’s assess each scenario:

• Job Application: An individual that fills out an application form is willing to share a lot of personal information because he/she wants to be considered for a position. Filling out that application shows their true interest in the job, therefore qualifying the person as a lead for the company’s recruiting team — not marketing or sales teams.
• Coupon: Unlike the job application, you probably know very little about someone who has stumbled upon one of your online coupons. But if they find the coupon valuable enough, they may be willing to provide their name and email address in exchange for it. Although it’s not a lot of information, it’s enough for a business to know that someone has interest in their company.
• Content: While the download of a coupon shows an individual has a direct interest in your product or service, content (like an educational ebook or webinar) does not. Therefore, to truly understand the nature of the person’s interest in your business, you’ll probably need to collect more information to determine whether the person is interested in your product or service and whether they’re a good fit.

These three general examples highlight how lead generation differs from company to company, and from person to person. You’ll need to collect enough information to gauge whether someone has a true, valid interest in your product or service — how much information is enough information will vary depending on your business.

Let’s look at Episerver, for example. They use web content reports for lead generation, collecting six pieces of information from prospective leads.

Episerver provides a great example for what to ask for in a lead gen form:

• Full Name: The most fundamental information needed to personalize your communication with each lead.
• Email: This serves as a unique identifier and is how you will contact your lead.
• Company: This will give you the ability to research your lead’s industry and company and how the lead might benefit from your product or service (mainly for B2B).
• Role: Understanding an individual’s role will help you understand how to communicate with them. Every brand stakeholder will have a different take and perspective on your offering (mainly for B2B).
• Country: Location information can help you segment your contact by region and time zone, and help you qualify the lead depending on your service.
• State: The more detailed information you can obtain without sacrificing conversions, the better. Knowing your leads state can help you further qualify them.

If you’d like to learn more intermediate-level tips on information collection and what you should ask for on your lead gen forms, read our post about it here.

Lead Scoring

Lead scoring is a way to qualify leads quantitatively. Using this technique, leads are assigned a numerical value (or score) to determine where they fall on the scale from “interested” to “ready for a sale”. The criteria for these actions is completely up to you, but it must be uniform across your marketing and sales department so that everyone is working on the same scale.

 

 

A lead’s score can be based on actions they’ve taken, information they’ve provided, their level of engagement with your brand, or other criteria that your sales team determines. For instance, you may score someone higher if they regularly engage with you on social media or if their demographic information matches your target audience.

Borrowing from the examples above, you might give a lead a higher score if they used one of your coupons — an action that would signify this person is interested in your product.

The higher a lead’s score, the closer they are to becoming a sales-qualified lead (SQL), which is only a step away from becoming a customer. The score and criteria is something you may need to tweak along the way until you find the formula that works, but once you do, you’ll transform your lead generation into customer generation.

Lead Generation Strategies

Online lead generation encompasses a wide range of tactics, campaigns, and strategies depending on the platform on which you wish to capture leads. We talked about lead capture best practices once you have a visitor on your site … but how can you get them there in the first place?

Let’s dive into lead generation strategies for a few popular platforms.

Facebook Lead Generation

Facebook has been a method for lead generation since its inception. Originally, companies could use outbound links in their posts and information in their bios to attract strangers to their websites. However, when Facebook Ads was launched in 2007, and its algorithm began to favor accounts that used paid advertising, there was a major shift in how businesses used the platform to capture leads. Facebook created Lead Ads for this purpose. Facebook also has a feature that lets you put a simple call-to-action button at the top of your Facebook Page, helping you send Facebook followers directly to your website.

Get some lead generation tips for Facebook.

Featured Resource

• 50 Facebook Ad Examples We Actually Clicked

Twitter Lead Generation

Twitter has Twitter Lead Gen Cards, which let you generate leads directly within a tweet without having to leave the site. A user’s name, email address, and Twitter username are automatically pulled into the card, and all they have to do is click “Submit” to become a lead. (Hint for HubSpot users: You can connect Twitter Lead Gen Cards to your HubSpot Forms. Learn how to do that here).

Learn some lead generation tips for Twitter.

Featured Resource

• How to Use Twitter for Business (+ Follower Tracking Template)

LinkedIn Lead Generation

LinkedIn has been increasing its stake in the advertising space since its early days. When it comes to lead generation, LinkedIn created Lead Gen Forms, which auto-populate with a users profile data when they click a CTA, making it easy to capture information.

Get tips from our experience using LinkedIn ads.

PPC Lead Generation

When we say pay-per-click (PPC), we’re referring to ads on search engine result pages (SERPs). Google gets 3.5 billion searches a day, making it prime real estate for any ad campaign, especially lead gen. The effectiveness of your PPC campaign relies heavily on a seamless user flow, as well as your budget, target keywords, and a few other factors.

Learn more about how to setup successful PPC ads.

B2B Lead Generation

B2B is a particular business model that requires a particular approach to lead generation.SmartInsights found that referrals are the top source for capturing business leads. Not to mention, effectiveness varies by channel.

Learn the B2B lead generation techniques for every channel.

Tips for Lead Generation Campaigns

In any given lead generation campaign, there can be a lot of moving parts. It can be difficult to tell which parts of your campaign are working and which need some fine-tuning. What exactly goes into a best-in-class lead generation engine? Here are a few tips when building lead gen campaigns.

Use the right lead generation tools.

As you saw in our data, the most successful marketing teams use a formal system to organize and store their leads. That’s where lead generation tools and lead generation software come into play.

How much do you know about the people visiting your website? Do you know their names or their email addresses? How about which pages they visited, how they’re navigating around, and what they do before and after filling out a lead conversion form?

If you don’t know the answers to these questions, chances are you’re having a hard time connecting with the people who are visiting your site. These are questions you should be able to answer — and you can with the right lead generation tools.

There are a few different tools and templates out there that’ll help you create different lead gen assets to use on your site:

• CTA Templates: 50+ free, customizable call-to-action (CTA) templates in PowerPoint that you can use to create clickable CTA buttons to use on your blog, landing pages, and elsewhere on your site.
• Lead Generation Software Tools: This free tool from HubSpot includes lead capture and contact insights features, which will scrape any pre-existing forms you have on your website and add those contacts to your existing contact database. It also lets you create pop-ups, hello bars, or slide-ins — called “lead flows” — that’ll help you turn website visitors into leads immediately.

Example of a slide-in lead flow.

• Visitor Tracking: Hotjar has a heatmap tool — a virtual tool which creates a color-coded representation of how a user navigates your site — that helps you understand what users want, care about, and do on your site. It records visitors and tells you where they spend the most time on your site. You can use it to gather information on your lead generation forms, feedback forms and surveys, and more.
• Form-Scraping Tool: A form scraping tool that collects submissions on your website’s existing forms helps you automatically consolidate all your leads into your contact database, regardless of which form visitors submitted on your website. HubSpot customers can create and embed forms using HubSpot, which automatically populate into your CMS. Non-HubSpot customers can use a form creation tool like Contact Form 7, JetPack, or Google Forms, and then use HubSpot’s free collected forms feature to automatically capture form submissions and input them to a contact database.

Create amazing offers for all different stages of the buying cycle.

Not all of your site visitors are ready to talk to your sales team or see a demo of your product. Someone at the beginning of the buyer’s journey might be interested in an informational piece like an ebook or a guide, whereas someone who’s more familiar with your company and near the bottom of the journey might be more interested in a free trial or demo.

Make sure you’re creating offers for each phase and offering CTAs for these offers throughout your site.

Yes, it takes time to create valuable content that teaches and nurtures your leads down the funnel, but if you don’t offer anything for visitors who aren’t ready to buy, then they may never come back to your website. From checklists to templates to free tools, here are 23 ideas for lead generation content to get you started.

If you want to take personalization a step further — which will help boost your conversion rate — try using smart CTAs. Smart CTAs detect where a person is in the buyer’s journey, whether they’re a new visitor, a lead, or a customer, and display CTAs accordingly. Personalized CTAs convert a whopping 202% better than basic calls-to-action.

Keep your messaging consistent and deliver on your promise.

The highest-converting lead gen campaigns are the ones that deliver on what they promise and create a seamless transition from ad copy and design to the deliverable itself. Make sure that you’re presenting a consistent message throughout the process and providing value to everyone that engages with your lead capture.

The aspects of your lead gen campaign should mirror everything else on your website, on your blog, and within the product that you will eventually try to sell. If not, you’ll have a difficult time getting your lead to the next lifecycle stage. Your campaign should be about more than just obtaining an email address — it should be about developing a new customer.

Link your CTA to a dedicated landing page.

This may seem obvious to you, but you’d be surprised how many marketers don’t create dedicated landing pages for their offers. CTAs are meant to send visitors to a landing page where they can receive a specific offer.

Don’t use CTAs to drive people to your homepage, for instance. Even if your CTA is about your brand or product (and perhaps not an offer like a download), you should still be sending them to a targeted landing page that’s relevant to what they are looking for and includes an opt-in form. If you have the opportunity to use a CTA, send them to a page that will convert them into a lead.

If you want to learn more about how to build and promote high-converting landing pages, then download our ebook on optimizing landing pages for conversions.

Get your sales team involved.

Remember when we talked about lead scoring? Well, it isn’t exactly doable without your sales team’s input. How will you know what qualifies a lead for sales without knowing if your defined SQLs are successfully sold? Your marketing and sales teams need to be aligned on the definitions and the process of moving a lead from MQL to SQL to opportunity before you even begin to capture leads.

Also, be open to evolving your relationship with sales and how you guide leads along your funnel. Your definitions will likely need to be refined over time; just make sure to keep everyone involved up-to-date.

Use social media strategically.

While marketers typically think of social media as best for top-of-the-funnel marketing, it can still be a helpful and low-cost source for lead generation as shared in the lead gen strategies above. The key is using social media strategically for lead generation.

Start by adding links directly to the landing pages of high-performing offers within your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media posts. Tell visitors that you’re sending them to a landing page. That way, you’re setting expectations. Here’s an example from one of our Twitter posts:

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You can also do a lead generation analysis of your blog to figure out which posts generate the most leads, and then make a point of regularly linking social media posts to them.

Another way to generate leads from social media is to run a contest. Contests are fun and engaging for your followers, and they can also teach you a ton about your audience. It’s a win-win. Read our step-by-step guide for growing your email list using social media contests, which covers everything from choosing a platform, to picking a winner, all the way to analyzing your results.

Remain flexible and constantly iterate.

Your lead generation strategy needs to be as dynamic as the people you’re targeting. Trends change, behaviors shift, opinions morph … so should your lead gen marketing. Use A/B split testing to see what CTAs perform best, which landing pages convert better, and which copy captures your target audience. Experiment with layout changes, design, UX, content, and advertising channels until you find what works.

Lead Generation Trends & Benchmarks

So … you’re getting web traffic and generating leads. But how are you doing compared to other companies in your industry? Read on to discover what other marketers are doing with lead generation in 2021, along with important stats to consider.

Lead generation is the top marketing priority.

HubSpot State of Marketing Report 2021 found that marketers report that their top marketing priorities for the next 12 months is generating more leads. Converting these leads to customers is another top priority, according to SmartInsights.

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Marketers are making use of digital automation tools for lead generation.

Digital lead generation spend is expected to reach 3.2 billion by the end of 2021. Forbes predicts that automation will play a large part in this increase, as automation will become a large part of lead generation strategies, specifically when it comes to streamlining the lead qualification and predictive scoring. If you’re looking to automate your processes, discover high-quality lead generation tools in this blog post.

Most B2B leads come from referrals.

B2B marketers say that 65% of their leads come from referrals, 38% from email, and 33% come from Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

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If you’re interested in getting in on this trend, it’s worth considering revamping your referral strategy and helping existing customers bring you new leads.

Content marketing helps drive leads.

Marketers also report that content marketing has helped themsuccessfully generate demand and leadsover the past 12 months. To get in on this trend, readthis helpful blog poston creating content for different stages of the buyer’s journey.

Grow Better with Lead Generation

There you have it, folks. Now that you know more about how to generate leads for your business, we recommend you try HubSpot’s free lead generation tool. Use it to add simple conversion assets to your site (or scrape your existing forms) to help you learn more about your site visitors and what content prompts them to convert.

The basics we’ve gone over in this blog post are just the beginning. Keep creating great offers, CTAs, landing pages, and forms — and promote them in multi-channel environments. Be in close touch with your sales team to make sure you’re handing off high-quality leads on a regular basis. Last but not least, never stop testing. The more you tweak and test every step of your inbound lead generation process, the more you’ll improve lead quality and increase revenue.

If your ecommerce business isn’t offering your customers multiple ways to make payments online, you’re leaving money on the table.

While there’s no way to escape some transaction fees and currency fees, there are ways to reduce payment processing costs and receive payments online for free.

In this post, we’ll talk about the software options available today for accepting free online payments as well as details about how to actually go about accepting those payments.

But first, let’s review some additional reasons you’d want to use a payment processing software.

Why should you use payment processing software?

Here’s a look at some of the advantages payment processing software will bring to your business.

1. Convenience

Convenience is one of the main factors that influence conversion rate. The more steps a customer has to take to make a payment, the more likely they are to abandon their purchase and go elsewhere.

2. Speed

Payment processors can transfer most payments between shoppers and sellers instantly. On the other hand, transfers to and from bank accounts can sometimes take 24 hours or more.

3. Trust

Many payment processors are brands that are globally recognized. If a customer already uses payment software, they’re more likely to trust your payment system.

4. Security

Payment processing companies add an extra layer of protection to online transactions. You can set limits, flags for activity on your account, and sometimes even a time frame to recall payments.

5. Record-Keeping

With payment processors, you’ll have access to your account online and can manage your contacts, recurring payments, and other account activity via desktop or mobile.

Top Online Payment Processing Providers

Once you’ve developed a strategy for accepting payments online, you’ll need to decide which payment processing provider to use. Here are seven of the most popular options:

1. PayPal

Price: 3.49% plus $0.49 per transaction (as of August, 2021).

PayPal is one of the most trusted and widely recognized payment processing companies. It’s free to join and they provide all the tools you’ll need to integrate PayPal payments into your website and set up a secure payment gateway for visitors. Additionally, comprehensive coverage makes the platform a good choice for international companies.

2. Stripe

Price: 2.9% plus $0.30 per transaction.

Stripe offers a wide range of options for online businesses such as customizable checkouts as well as subscription management and recurring payment features. Stripe supports all major credit cards, mobile paying apps, wallets, and more.

3. Square

Price: 2.9% plus $0.30 per transaction.

Square entered the payment processing space by introducing a dongle that sellers could insert into a mobile phone to accept credit card transactions.

They’ve since expanded their software to cover all the major payment processing options and have included some useful tools for online businesses as well as high-street stores.

You can even create a basic website for free and integrate all of their point-of-sale (POS) solutions at the same time. They also have paid options for a custom website.

4. Google Pay

Price: Google Pay doesn’t charge any fees — merchants only pay transaction fees as usual with credit/ debit sales.

Google Pay has a payment tool for businesses, websites, and apps. Google Pay’s APIs work to create a delightful checkout and payment experience for your customers.

If you use Google Pay on your website, you’ll gain secure and easy access to hundreds of millions of cards saved to Google Accounts worldwide so customers can pay for your products safely and at the touch of a button.

5. Apple Pay

Price: Apple Pay doesn’t charge any fees — merchants only pay transaction fees as usual with credit/ debit sales.

Apple Pay can be used on websites, in stores, by app, and via Business Chat or iMessage. It allows Apple users to quickly and safely input contact, payment, and shipping information during checkout.

Rather than having your ecommerce customers look around for their credit cards, Apple Pay allows them to checkout at the click of a button within apps and websites. On a website, an Apple users will simply click “Apple Pay” as their payment option, confirm the payment with one tap (via their iPhone, Apple Watch, etc.), and they’re good to go.

6. Venmo For Business

Price: 1.9% plus $0.10 of the payment.

Venmo For Business is a mobile payment software and app owned by PayPal. You can choose to allow users to pay via your mobile app or your website.

You can set up a business profile on Venmo so users can quickly find your profile on the app. And if you add Venmo to your website, it’ll appear as a payment option right next to where it’ll give customers the option to pay with PayPal.

Once a customer selects the Venmo option at checkout, they’ll be directed to their Venmo app to complete the transaction. The Venmo payment option can be added to any of the pages of your ecommerce site that would also show the option to pay with PayPal, including your product pages, shopping cart page, and checkout page.

7. Helcim

Price: 2.38% plus $0.25.

Helcim is an online payment solution for ecommerce businesses — you can choose to start an online store from scratch or add a payment solution to your current website.

The easy-to-use and secure online payment system integrates on your website, shopping cart, billing system, and/or app, thanks to Helcim’s API. In addition to in-app and via website, Helcim works over the phone, in person, and by invoice, and it integrates with your accounting tools to save you time when it comes to bookkeeping.

Next, let’s cover the steps involved in receiving payments online for free.

1. Create a secure online payment gateway.

There are a couple of ways you can approach creating a secure online payment gateway. You can hire an outside developer or use your website development team to create a bespoke gateway. Or, you can use third-party software.

Setting up a secure gateway is essential. You’re also putting automated processes in place, which will save time on manual processing, especially as you scale your business and handle more transactions.

The more payment methods you make available within your payment portal, the wider the audience, and the easier it’ll be for your customers to send you money.

2. Facilitate credit and debit card payments.

Although it may change as mobile payments become more prevalent, using debit/ credit cards is still the most popular way people pay for products and services online.

You can easily facilitate accepting card payments through established payment providers such as PayPal or Stripe. These will accept the most-used credit cards worldwide — Visa, MasterCard, and American Express.

3. Set up recurring billing.

If you offer subscription plans or ongoing monthly services, the most efficient and reliable way to invoice and receive payments is via recurring billing.

Most of the major payment processing software also includes recurring billing features. For example, Growth Marketing Pro built an SEO tool that charges subscribers on a monthly basis and they used Stripe to set this up.

Sites like Paysimple also offer a suite of tools to set up custom, automated recurring billing if you already have a payment processing system in place.

Using automation is essential. It removes most human error and the stress of keeping track of invoicing and payments.

Your customers can commit to recurring payments with just a few clicks, and you won’t have to worry about manually managing your customer base.

4. Accept mobile payments.

These days, people are often more likely to have their phones on hand than debit cards — plus, mobile payment apps are more convenient than ever.

For instance, Apple Pay has quickly become one of the most popular mobile payment systems in the United States. With an estimated 43.9 million users, you’d miss out if you didn’t accept Apple Pay.

Google Pay, Venmo, and PayPal also have mobile apps with a decent market share.

5. Accept cryptocurrency payments.

If you’re okay with handling cryptocurrencies, it’s a way you can extend your reach to a broader online audience.

Sites like Bitpay provide all the tools you need to accept crypto payments online, send invoices, request payments, and receive money on the go-through apps.

Because they’re a decentralized exchange, cryptocurrencies offer some unique benefits for businesses. You can accept payments from anywhere in the world without incurring currency exchange fees or bank handling fees. There’s also a reduced risk of fraud.

6. Use email invoicing.

Email invoicing is a proactive way to request payments. You can share a payment form through email or add a link redirecting the recipient to a payment portal.

However, there are a couple of issues with this method: Email isn’t the most reliable form of communication, and customers can have trust issues making payments via email.

Expect a failure rate, but it’s a vital part of payment processing for a lot of businesses.

7. Accept electronic checks (eChecks).

To accept eChecks for payment, you need a form where the user can input their information, which you can see using payment processing software.

It’s basically a way to pay by check online. It’s a quicker and more reliable way than sending a paper check through the post, so offering this to your customers will make the process run smoother.

Start Accepting Payments Online For Free

No matter which payment processing software you choose, the most important part is making it easy for the customer to pay. And the more ways they can pay, the more likely your customers will follow through on a purchase.

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

Google’s pretty good at surfacing relevant content based on your search query. But sometimes you need something so specific that a general keyword phrase doesn’t really do it for you, especially if you’re a marketer on the hunt for a particular piece of content.

That’s where a site search comes in handy.

A site search is performed on a search engine and allows you to search one domain – not the entire internet – for a term.

We’ll talk more about why site searches are helpful and how to perform them in the sections below.

How to Google Search Within a Website using Site Search

1. Go to Google.com.

2. In the search box, enter site:www.website.com with your search term.

Make sure you consider the domain and subdomain when performing a site search. For instance, if I search the term “SEO” on www.hubspot.com and www.blog.hubspot.com/marketing, I’ll get two different sets of results.

The first will show results that include all the subdomains while the latter will only show results pertaining to the blog subdomain.

The same goes for the path: www.hubspot.com/about will provide different results than www.hubspot.com/pricing.

With this in mind, it’s important to know where you’re looking for your search term.

3. Refine your search.

For instance, in Step 2, I searched our blog for a broad topic: SEO. Various subtopics came up, ranging from SEO blogging strategies to tips from SEO experts.

From there, I can filter my results by topic or even date.

In the example below, I added “2021” to my search time to refine my results and get more recent data.

Site Search Best Practices

When it comes to a site search, a good rule of thumb is to start wide and narrow down little by little.

This will make it easier to find what you’re looking for and avoid narrowing down too early. For instance, say you want to search a competitor’s site for SEO-related content.

Start by looking up SEO to see the range of subtopics they cover. From there, you can dive into each subtopic and examine which ones they cover more and which ones they don’t cover much.

This method will help you find ideas for your own content and get competitive on the SERP.

Now, say you’re on the opposite end – you have a website and want to make site searches easier for your visitors.

In ecommerce in particular, site searches are very important, as they help consumers find the products they’re interested in.

In this case, here are a few tips:

• Categorize your content on the backend to make search results more accurate.
• Use autocomplete and autocorrect to assist visitors when typing into the search box.
• If the query yields no results, offer related queries the user may be interested in or direct them to elsewhere.
• Optimize the terms on your site to reflect the language of your target consumers. For instance, say you sell baby items and your core audience resides in the UK, your website would likely use the term “cot” instead of “crib.”

How Site:Search Can Make Your Life Easier as a Marketer

There are many use cases for this tool, but here are the most common ones.

• Search for data – I like to use data to support and strengthen my content. With a site search, I can quickly find a stat I had read in an article weeks or months earlier. I can perform a search on our own blog or other sites I visit, like eMarketer, for instance.
• Search for new topic ideas – Let’s say you want to pitch an article idea and verify that your angle hasn’t been covered before on your site. You can do a site search and read all the articles relating to the topic. If you’re a freelance writer, you can also take this approach before you pitch a story to a publisher to make sure it’s original and aligns with their content strategy.
• Surface related content to link to – If you want to link to a piece of content within your own content, a site search is a great way to resurface it or even find some new pieces of content you didn’t know existed.
• Conduct competitive analysis – Reviewing your competitors’ content is plays a big role in developing your content strategy. A site search will allow you to see how your competitors are covering specific topics, from the angle to the length and use of media.