Author Archives: i4lead

Henry Ford’s quote, “If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself,” is one of my personal favorite quotes on teamwork. 

Because it’s true: Teamwork has the incredible power to increase productivity, job satisfaction, and even each person’s individual performance. 

To inspire your team to band together and celebrate collaboration, we’ve gathered some of our favorite quotes on the power of teamwork. Check out the full list of inspirational quotes below,  including some remarks about hard work to keep your collaborative juices flowing.

Teamwork Quotes to Inspire Collaboration

1. “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” – Helen Keller (Click to Tweet!)

2. “If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.” – Henry Ford (Click to Tweet!)

3. “Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than the one where they sprang up.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes (Click to Tweet!)

4. “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” – Isaac Newton (Click to Tweet!)

5. “No one can whistle a symphony. It takes a whole orchestra to play it.” – H.E. Luccock (Click to Tweet!)

6. “Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.” – Andrew Carnegie (Click to Tweet!)

7. “It is the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) that those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.” – Charles Darwin (Click to Tweet!)

8. “Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success.” – Henry Ford (Click to Tweet!)

9. “Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.” – Michael Jordan (Click to Tweet!)

10. “The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.” – Phil Jackson (Click to Tweet!)

 

11. “The best teamwork comes from men who are working independently toward one goal in unison.” – James Cash Penney (Click to Tweet!)

12. “Politeness is the poison of collaboration.” – Edwin Land (Click to Tweet!)

13. “Find a group of people who challenge and inspire you, spend a lot of time with them, and it will change your life.” – Amy Poehler (Click to Tweet!)

14. “Effectively, change is almost impossible without industry-wide collaboration, cooperation, and consensus.” – Simon Mainwaring (Click to Tweet!)

Want more? Read about Fun Corporate Team-Building Activities & Outing Ideas Everyone Will Enjoy.

15. “Teamwork begins by building trust. And the only way to do that is to overcome our need for invulnerability.” – Patrick Lencioni (Click to Tweet!)

16. “You need to be aware of what others are doing, applaud their efforts, acknowledge their successes, and encourage them in their pursuits. When we all help one another, everybody wins.” – Jim Stovall (Click to Tweet!)

17. “The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don’t play together, the club won’t be worth a dime.” – Babe Ruth (Click to Tweet!)

18. “There is no such thing as a self-made man. You will reach your goals only with the help of others.” – George Shinn (Click to Tweet!)

19. “It is literally true that you can succeed best and quickest by helping others to succeed.” –Napolean Hill (Click to Tweet!)

20. “The whole is other than the sum of the parts.” – Kurt Koffka (Click to Tweet!)

21. “A group becomes a team when each member is sure enough of himself and his contribution to praise the skills of others.” – Norman Shidle (Click to Tweet!)

22. “The ratio of We’s to I’s is the best indicator of the development of a team.” – Lewis B. Ergen (Click to Tweet!)

23. “Individual commitment to a group effort — that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.” – Vince Lombardi (Click to Tweet!)

24. “One piece of log creates a small fire, adequate to warm you up, add just a few more pieces to blast an immense bonfire, large enough to warm up your entire circle of friends; needless to say that individuality counts but teamwork dynamites.” – Jin Kwon (Click to Tweet!)

25. “No matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, if you’re playing a solo game, you’ll always lose out to a team.” – Reid Hoffman (Click to Tweet!)

 

26. “Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.” – Mark Twain (Click to Tweet!)

27. “If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.” – Booker T. Washington (Click to Tweet!)

28. “Great things in business are never done by one person; they’re done by a team of people.” – Steve Jobs (Click to Tweet!)

29. “Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean.” – Ryunosuke Satoro (Click to Tweet!)

30. “Cooperation is the thorough conviction that nobody can get there unless everybody gets there.” – Virginia Burden (Click to Tweet!)

31. “None of us, including me, ever do great things. But we can all do small things, with great love, and together we can do something wonderful.” – Mother Teresa (Click to Tweet!)

32. “It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.” – Harry Truman (Click to Tweet!)

33. “It takes two flints to make a fire.” – Louisa May Alcott (Click to Tweet!)

34. “The way to achieve your own success is to be willing to help somebody else get it first.” – Iyanla Vanzant (Click to Tweet!)

35. “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” – African Proverb (Click to Tweet!)

36. “Success is best when it’s shared.” – Howard Schultz (Click to Tweet!)

Need help collaborating effectively? Take a look at 21 Marketing Collaboration Tools to Improve Productivity and Teamwork.

Hard Work Quotes to Inspire Determination

37. “Hard work beats talent if talent doesn’t work hard.” – Tim Notke (Click to Tweet!)

38. “We think, mistakenly, that success is the result of the amount of time we put in at work, instead of the quality of time we put in.” – Ariana Huffington (Click to Tweet!)

39. “When the ideas are coming, I don’t stop until the ideas stop because that train doesn’t come along all the time.” – Dr. Dre (Click to Tweet!)

40. “Someone once told me growth and comfort do not coexist. And I think it’s a really good thing to remember.” – Ginni Rometty (Click to Tweet!)

41. “Hard work keeps the wrinkles out of the mind and spirit.” – Helena Rubinstein (Click to Tweet!)

42. “Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment.” – Mahatma Gandhi (Click to Tweet!)

43. “I’m a greater believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.” – Thomas Jefferson (Click to Tweet!)

44. “Diamonds are nothing more than chunks of coal that stuck to their jobs.” – Malcolm Forbes (Click to Tweet!)

45. “The dictionary is the only place that success comes before work.” – Vince Lombardi Jr. (Click to Tweet!)

I hope these quotes have inspired you to work better with your teams. Remember — teamwork isn’t just about the people, it’s about the tools and processes that will help you minimize redundancies and maximize output. For tools that help you work better, not harder, learn about how HubSpot can help you. 

Excel is a great tool for all of your marketing needs. You can create graphs to visualize your data, use formulas to calculate conversion rates, or even create social media calendars.

You can also monitor trends in your marketing campaign data and, in this post, we’ll explain how to do so with the sparklines tool.

Already know what you need? Jump there with our Table of Contents.

• How to Add a Sparkline in Excel
• Create a Column Sparkline in Excel
• How to Ungroup Sparklines in Excel
• How to Mark Data Points in Sparkline Charts
• How to Color Code Excel Sparkline

What are sparklines in Excel?

Sparklines are charts in individual cells that provide visual representations of trends in your sheet data. For example, if you track month-over-month progress, a sparkline can show you how each month compares to the other.

There are three different ‌sparklines you can add to your Excel spreadsheets: line, column, and win-loss. The image below is an example of a line.

For this walkthrough, we’ll use a sample data table (shown below) that tracks views, conversions, and leads generated from a marketing campaign‌.

Let’s go over how to add your own.

How to Add a Sparkline in Excel

1. Select the cells you want represented in your sparkline chart. In this example, I’ve selected all the cells between B2 and I2.

2. In the header toolbar, select Insert, then Sparklines.

3. You should then see a dropdown menu where you can select the type of sparkline chart you want: line, column, or win-loss. I selected a line for this example.

4. After you select your preferred chart, you’ll see a dialogue box appear (as shown below). In the Select where you want to place the sparkline box text field, enter the cell that you want the sparkline chart in.

It’s best practice to have the sparkline immediately next to the string of cells you’re creating the chart for so you can get a full visualization and quickly refer back to your data.

For this example, I selected cell J2.

5. Your sparkline chart should appear in the cell you selected. The image below is the sparkline for my sample data set, and it shows the trend in views over time for my marketing campaign.

Below we’ll go over the steps to creating a different type of sparkline.

Create a Column Sparkline in Excel

If you want to use a column sparkline in Excel, repeat steps one and two from above. When the sparkline selection box opens, select column instead of line. The image below is a column sparkline.

Follow the same process if you want a win-loss sparkline. The image below is an example of what this chart looks like.

How to Ungroup Sparklines in Excel

You’d want to ungroup sparklines in Excel if you want each of your rows to have a different sparkline. For example, if you want rows two and four to have a line chart, but row three to have a column. Let’s go over the steps.

1. Right-click on the sparkline you want ungrouped. For this example, I right-clicked on column J3.

2. In the popup menu, select Sparklines, then Ungroup.

3. Click on the sparkline you want to change, navigate to the Sparkline header toolbar, and make your chart selection.

The image below is an example of what it looks like when you ungroup sparklines and use different charts.

Format a Sparkline Chart in Excel

A benefit to using Excel is that you can always format your spreadsheets to your liking, and this goes for Sparklines too. Let’s go over some formatting changes you can make.

How to Mark Data Points in Sparkline Charts

1. Select the sparkline you want to edit and navigate to the Sparkline header toolbar and select your preferred data marker, as shown in the image below.

If I select High Point, my corresponding sparkline chart will have a marker displaying the month with the highest view count.

How to Color Code Excel Sparkline

Select the sparkline you want to edit and navigate to the right-hand side of the Sparkline header toolbar, as shown in the image below.

You have the option to change the color of your sparkline, the color of your markers, and the weight of your sparkline.

Over To You

Now that you know how to create a sparkline chart, you can expertly monitor trends in your marketing campaigns that will help you quickly view the success of your processes.

Think about all the times you’ve signed up for things in your life. Did you once download Evernote? Dropbox? Spotify? Maybe you’ve even taken a class on General Assembly.

Each one of these signups is likely a result of an effective call-to-action (CTA).

Think about it: If you hadn’t been drawn in by the copy or design of the CTA, or been guided so eloquently through your sign-up process, you would probably use a lot fewer apps and websites than you do now.

It’s really important to guide your visitors through the buying journey using strategic CTAs.

What is a CTA in Marketing?

As a marketer, CTAs are relevant because they encourage your audience to take action on a marketing campaign.

Ultimately, the goal of any marketing campaign is to guide your audience in the buyer’s journey so they eventually make a purchase.

However, each marketing campaign might have a different action for the audience to carry out because there are several tactics you can use to guide your audience in their journey.

Below are a few examples of the types of CTA button copy you might use in marketing:

The above types of CTAs all serve a designated purpose, but keep in mind the language they use can vary. And today, marketers everywhere have put some creative spins on their calls to action to generate the leads their businesses depend on.

To help you identify what’s effective and what’s not, we’ve listed out examples of CTAs that totally rock. These call-to-action examples are broken out into three categories:

• Simple and effective CTAs
• CTAs with great call-to-action phrases
• CTAs that balance multiple buttons on one page

Best Call to Action Examples of 2022

1. HubSpot

Image Source

One of the perks of using HubSpot is the wealth of free resources they offer. This slide-in CTA found in an article discussing marketing intelligence, demonstrates how a well-placed CTA can improve user experience.

It’s unobtrusive and comes in midway through the article, not only prompting readers to “download now” but offering a useful and free resource. The marketing kit offers an out-of-the-box solution for those who may not know where to start.

Why this CTA Works

This slide-in CTA offers a free resource that is directly related to the topic of the article it appears on. Readers can finish the article and then download the guide with templates to get started making a marketing kit of their own. (Click here to learn how to add slide-in CTAs to your blog posts.)

2. The Budgetnista

Image Source

Run by personal financial educator and author Tiffany Aliche, The Budgetnista is a one stop shop for personal finance. In addition to providing content that delights her audience, she’s also a pro at creating inviting CTAs.

Instead of simply putting a sign up CTA to promote her newsletter, she uses language that entices the reader to click. “Sign Up For Weekly Goodies” sounds a whole lot more interesting than “sign up for my newsletter.” Who doesn’t want weekly goodies?

Why this CTA Works

The friendly and creative use of language encourages visitors to take the desired action. It also mirrors Aliche’s personality, which is a nice touch and helps personalize the interaction.

3. Glossier

Image Source

Beauty brand Glossier has its marketing image down, showcasing realistic images of women with a variety of skin types. Who can forget their boy brow campaign? Their website is clean with lots of white space that make the photos of the models and makeup pop.

Their CTA is an overlay that appears when you start scrolling down their site. While many would quickly click out of the pop up, the language Glossier chooses makes you want to stick around. “Let’s take this to your inbox” is a clever way to ask folks to sign up for your newsletter. If you’re down to join simply click “i’m in” and you’re done.

Why this CTA Works

Like The Budgetnista, Glossier uses clever phrasing that makes the brand more relatable and entices people to take action. The image of a model with great Glossier makeup and the illustrations included also aid in making this CTA appealing.

4. 310 Creative

Image Source

Growth agency and HubSpot partner 310 Creative aims to help B2B companies scale and refine the buyer’s journey to increase sales. Knowing that visitors to the site may not quite know what specific services they need, 310 Creative makes use of a CTA that removes confusion.

The slide-in CTA solicits visitors to book a free assessment to get some clarity on where their business may be falling short and discover why these outcomes are happening.

Why this CTA Works

Not only does it remove barriers by explicitly stating the service is free, this CTA also demonstrates empathy for the visitor. By describing an issue followed by “If this sounds familiar, let’s talk” it demonstrates that 310 Creative is here to help and understands the user’s frustration.

5. Heyday

Image Source

Heyday is a bit of a rebel in the facial industry. Its minimalist, no-frills approach has made it a favorite among those who just want to see an aesthetician without the fuss and upselling.

That minimalist, but friendly approach shows up in their CTA too. Making great use of some models with glowing skin, this CTA entices viewers to sign up for their newsletter with a discount. The “sign up and save” button is persuasive, along with the humorous “No thanks, I prefer full-price skincare” hyperlink to opt out.

Why this CTA Works

Heyday employed beautiful aesthetics, a discount, and humor to encourage visitors to take the desired action.

6. VRBO

Image Source

If you love browsing beautiful vacation homes in your spare time, VRBO is a great place to do it. The brand makes great use of aspirational aesthetics and gorgeous locales.

The dark blue CTA pops against VRBO’s white background, drawing the reader in. Then the “discover your escape” button adds a touch of adventure for those who may be interested in renting a vacation home.

Why this CTA Works

VRBO makes great use of color and phrasing. It’s not a vacation, but rather an adventure where they can serve as your trusted guide.

7. Hulu

Image Source

Streaming giant Hulu went for a dramatic approach with this CTA. The dimmed background shows off all its television and movie offerings, while the green and white text of the CTA draws your attention to the promotion.

It’s a sign-up and upsell in one, informing users that they can get a discount add-on with Disney+ and ESPN+.

Why this CTA Works

This CTA entices visitors with the impression they’re getting a deal with the bundle. Instead of just having a sign up button, it’s “get the disney bundle.” It puts the emphasis on providing value to get visitors to take action.

8. Hija De Tu Madre

Image Source

Apparel company Hija De Tu Madre, keeps it fresh with a clean, pink and white color scheme that exudes youthfulness and freshness. Most of what makes their CTAs so appealing is the clever play on words, mixing both spanish and english, an ode to their target audience.

Image Source

Because they’re so dialed into their audience, Hija De Tu Madre can extract more information from their visiors. Instead of just having a CTA that requests an email (first image), they’ve introduced a mobile phone request in a second CTA. How do they persuade folks to hand over their digits? By offering them a chance to win merch — specifically their popular denim jackets.

Why this CTA Works

Offering something visitors consider valuable in return for their personal information — in this instance a coveted denim jacket, will make people more likely to share more information. The key is to know your audience and tap into their interests.

9. Wool and the Gang

Image Source

This CTA from Wool and the Gang will make you feel all fuzzy on the inside. The collage background of customers donning their Wool and the Gang garments plus a cute pup really draws the reader in and fits with the brand’s audience.

The CTA button states “share your knits #woolandthegang” which encourages customers to share what they’ve made using Wool and the Gang products, working as both brand promotion and customer engagement.

Why this CTA Works

This CTA not only grabs the visitor’s attention, it creates a sense of community and entices visitors to join. This particular CTA also doubles as brand promotion as more customers share their kits across social media.

10. Tweak It Studio

Image Source

Home decor and design company Tweak It Studio showcases the importance of having fun, but clear CTAs.

They get the visitor’s attention with “Just Dropped” in big bold letters to inform readers on new products on offer, then combine it with a CTA button that states exactly what the item is — in this case “personalized wood names.” It’s much more effective than just having a button that simply states “buy now.”

Why this CTA Works

This CTA uses urgency with “just dropped” to get visitors to check out new items in the store and also communicates clearly in the button where the visitor is headed next after clicking.

Want more CTA design inspiration? Check out some of our favorite call-to-action examples below.

1. HubSpot CTAs [Free Templates]

Looking for inspiration to help build better CTAs? Use our professionally designed CTA templates to generate more clicks, submissions, and leads from your content.

2. Evernote

CTA: Sign Up

Image Source

“Remember Everything.” Visitors can immediately understand that message the moment they land on this page. The design on Evernote’s website makes it super simple for users to see quick benefits of using the app and how to actually sign up to use it. Plus, the green color of the main and secondary CTA buttons is the same green as the headline and the Evernote logo, all of which jump off the page.

How to Replicate this CTA

Consider using a bright color that contrasts well with the elements on your web page to make your CTA stand out.

3. Dropbox

CTA: Sign up for free

Image Source

Dropbox has always embraced simple design with a lot of negative space. Even the graphics on their homepage are subtle and simple.

Thanks to that simple design and negative space, the blue “Sign up for free” call-to-action button stands out from everything else on the page. Since the CTA and the Dropbox logo are the same color, it’s easy for the visitor to interpret this CTA as “Sign up for Dropbox.” That’s one effective call-to-action.

How to Replicate this CTA

Negative space can work in your favor if used correctly. Use it to your advantage by allowing your CTA to stand out using your bold, brand colors

4. OfficeVibe

CTA: Subscribe

Image Source

Here’s a slide-in call-to-action that caught my attention from OfficeVibe. While scrolling through a post on their blog, a banner slid in from the bottom of the page with a call-to-action to subscribe to their blog. The best part? The copy on the slide-in told me I’d be getting tips about how to become a better manager — and the post it appeared on was a post about how to become a better manager. In other words, the offer was something I was already interested in.

Plus, I like how unobtrusive slide-in CTAs are — as opposed to what my colleague Rachel Sprung calls the “stop-everything-and-click-here-pop-up-CTA.” I find these CTAs offer a more lovable experience because they provide more information while still allowing me to continue reading the blog post.

How to Replicate this CTA

You can create your own slide-in CTA using HubSpot’s marketing tools. After designing your CTA using our templates, and create a HubSpot account. Go to Marketing > Lead Capture > CTAs in your HubSpot account and follow the CTA instructions here.

5. Netflix

CTA: Join Free for a Month

Image Source

One big fear users have before committing to sign up for something? That it’ll be a pain to cancel their subscription if they end up not liking it. Netflix nips that fear in the bud with the “Cancel anytime” copy right above the “Join Free for a Month” CTA. I’d venture a guess that reassurance alone has boosted signups. Also, you’ll notice again that the red color of the primary and secondary CTAs here match Netflix’s logo color.

How to Replicate this CTA

Not only can you get a visitor’s attention with a stark contrast in color, but you can use language in your CTA that entices them to click. Consider using “Try for Free,” or something similar in your CTA that removes the risk for potential customers.

6. Square

CTA: Get Started

Image Source

To achieve effective CTA design, you need to consider more than just the button itself. It’s also super important to consider elements like background color, surrounding images, and surrounding text.

Mindful of these additional design components, the folks at Square used a single image to showcase the simplicity of using their product, where the hovering “Get Started” CTA awaits your click. If you look closely, the color of the credit card in the image and the color of the CTA button match, which helps the viewer connect the dots of what to expect if/when they click.

How to Replicate this CTA

You can use color to help visitors connect the dots whether it’s coordinating similar tones like in this image, or by using brand colors like the Dropbox example.

7. Prezi

CTA: Give Prezi a try

Image Source

The folks at Prezi are also into the minimalist design look on their website. Other than the green dinosaur and the dark brown coffee, the only other color accompanying the predominantly black-and-white design is a bright blue — the same blue from their main logo. That bright blue is strategically placed on the homepage: the main “Give Prezi a try” CTA, and the secondary “Get Started” CTA, both of which take users to the same pricing page.

How to Replicate this CTA

This page took a minimalist color scheme, but incorporated two CTAs with the same color button that direct visitors to the same landing page. If your page has a clean, minimalist design consider trying two CTAs with different text to draw visitors in.

8. Full Bundle

CTA: Our Work

Image Source

Full Bundle is another company that uses negative space to make their primary CTA pop. The white “Our Work” call-to-action stands out against the dark greys of the background. Their choice of CTA is strategic, too. Given that they primarily exist to build out clients’ online presences, it’s important for them to showcase their work — and that’s what most folks are going to their website for.

How to Replicate this CTA

Make creative use of negative space like Full Bundle’s gray tones. As you can see, the different shades of gray make triangles, adding a subtle design element that makes their white CTA pop out at the bottom.

9. Panthera

CTA: Join

Image Source

The folks at Panthera are looking for users who really care about wild cats around the world and want to join a group of people who feel the same way. To target those people in particular, we love how they use language that would speak to big cat-lovers: “Join the pride today.” The page itself is super simple: an on-page form with two, simple fields, and a button asking folks to (again) “Join.”

How to Replicate this CTA

Establish a connection with your target audience by using vernacular related to your brand that would appeal to them in your CTA.

10. EPIC

CTA: Let’s start a new project together

Image Source

The folks at the agency EPIC use their homepage primarily to showcase their work. When you arrive on the page, you’re greeted with animated videos showing some of the work they’ve done for clients, which rotate on a carousel. While there are plenty of other places users might click on their site — including their clients’ websites — the main call-to-action stands out and always contrasts with the video that’s playing in the background.

I love that it features friendly, inclusive language —”Let’s start a new project together” — which gives a hint to users looking for a creative partner that they’re an especially great team to work for.

How to Replicate this CTA

Use inviting language. It’s easy to make a button that just says “join us,” but that’s not very convincing. Consider something friendlier like “let’s work together” or something specific to the service you offer.

11. Aquaspresso

CTA: Send Me Specials Now!

Image Source

The whole point of a call-to-action is to direct your site visitors to a desired course of action — and the best CTAs do so in a way that’s helpful to their visitors. The folks at coffee company Aquaspresso really nailed that balance here with the pop-up CTA on their main blog page.

Here, the desired course of action is for their blog readers to check out what they’re actually selling (and hopefully buy from them). There are many ways they could have done this, including putting out a CTA that urges people to “Check out our most popular products!” or something very direct. But we love what they’ve done instead: Their CTA offers blog readers something much more helpful and subtle — an offer for “today’s specials” in exchange for the reader’s email address.

Adding that the specials are for today only is a great example of a psychological tactic called scarcity, which causes us to assign more value to things we think are scarce. The fear that today’s specials are better than tomorrow’s might make people want to fill it out and claim their offer while they can.

How to Replicate this CTA

The call-to-action above was created using HubSpot’s templates. Consider introducing a sense of urgency for website visitors by using scarcity in your CTA. You can use phrases like “limited time offer” or “get today’s deals” to motivate visitors to take the desired action.

12. QuickSprout

CTA: Are you doing your SEO wrong? Enter your URL to find out

Image Source

No one wants to be wrong. That’s why a call-to-action button like QuickSprout’s slide-in CTA on their blog is so clickworthy. It asks the reader, “Are you doing your SEO wrong?” Well, am I? All I have to do is enter my URL to find out — seems easy enough. It’s language like that that can really entice visitors to click through.

Plus, having the CTA slide in mid-blog post is a great tactic for catching readers before they bounce off the page. Traditionally, many blogs have CTAs at the very bottom of each blog post, but research shows most readers only get 60% of the way through an article.

How to Replicate this CTA

Use language in your CTA that grabs the visitor’s attention or speaks to a pain point they may be having. The case above uses SEO, but you could use something like “Having trouble converting leads?” and then position your service as the remedy. (Click here to learn how to add slide-in CTAs to your blog posts.)

13. Grey Goose

CTA: Discover a cocktail tailored to your taste

Image Source

Here’s a fun, unique call-to-action that can get people clicking. Whereas site visitors might have expected to be directed to product pages or press releases from the homepage, a CTA to “Discover a Cocktail Tailored to Your Taste” is a pleasantly surprising ask. People love personalization, and this CTA kind of feels like an enticing game. The play button icon next to the copy gives a hint that visitors will be taken to a video so they have a better idea of what to expect when they click.

How to Replicate this CTA

Personalization works wonders for establishing a connection with visitors. Consider implementing a CTA that suggests a personalized experience for visitors based on the product or service you offer. For example, you could say “Explore plans that fit your budget,” or “choose a design tailored to your brand.”

14. Treehouse

CTA: Claim Your Free Trial

Image Source

A lot of company websites out there offer users the opportunity to start a free trial. But the CTA on Treehouse’s website doesn’t just say “Start a Free Trial”; it says “Claim Your Free Trial.”

The difference in wording may seem subtle, but think about how much more personal “Claim Your Free Trial” is. Plus, the word “claim” suggests it may not be available for long, giving users a sense of urgency to get that free trial while they can.

How to Replicate this CTA

If you offer a free trial for your service, instead of just using a button that says “free trial,” personalize the experience by using “start your free trial.”

15. OKCupid

CTA: Continue

Image Source

OKCupid’s CTA doesn’t seem that impressive at first glance, but its brilliance is in the small details.

The call-to-action button, which is bright green and stands out well on a dark blue background, says, “Continue.” The simplicity of this term gives hope that the signup process is short and casual. To me, this CTA feels more like I’m playing a fun game than filling out a boring form or committing to something that might make me nervous. And it’s all due to the copy.

How to Replicate this CTA

People enjoy games so if it works for your produt or service, try to gamify your CTA to spark interest.

16. Blogging.org

CTA: Countdown Clock

Image Source

Nothing like a ticking timer to make someone want to take action. After spending a short amount of time on blogging.org’s homepage, new visitors are greeted with a pop-up CTA with a “limited time offer,” accompanied by a timer that counts down from two minutes.

As with Aquaspresso’s example in #10, this is a classic use of the psychological tactic called scarcity, which causes us to assign more value to things we think are scarce. Limiting the time someone has to fill out a form makes people want to fill it out and claim their offer while they can.

Curious, what happens when time runs out? So was I. Hilariously, nothing happens. The pop-up CTA remains on the page when the timer gets to zero.

How to Replicate this CTA

Similar to Aquaespresso, consider using scarcity to give visitors to your site a sense of urgency to take action.

17. IMPACT Branding & Design

CTA: What We Do

Image Source

CTAs can feel really pushy and salesy (yes, that’s a word…) if the wrong language is used. I like IMPACT‘s educational approach, where they challenge visitors to learn what the company does before pushing them to take any further action. This call-to-action is especially intriguing to me because they don’t even use an action verb, yet they still manage to entice people to click.

How to Replicate this CTA

Entice visitors to learn more about your business by using language in your CTA that persuades them to see what you do. Use something like “see our past projects,” “what we do,” or “view our work.”

18. Huemor

CTA: Launch (Do Not Press)

Image Source

If you went to a website and saw a “Launch” CTA accompanied by the copy “Do Not Press” … what would you do? Let’s be honest: You’d be dying to press it. The use of harmless reverse psychology here is playful, which is very much in keeping with Huemor’s brand voice.

How to Replicate this CTA

If your brand is more playful or in the creative industry, you can use that to your advantange in a CTA using gamification or reverse psychology like Huemor’s example.

19. Brooks Running

CTA: Find out when we have more

Image Source

How many times have you hotly pursued a product you love, only to discover it’s sold out? Well, as you might know, it’s no picnic for the seller either. But just because you’ve run out of an item doesn’t mean you should stop promoting it.

Brooks Running uses a clever call to action to ensure their customers don’t bounce from their website just because their favorite shoe is out of stock. In the screenshot above, you can see Brooks touting an awesome-looking shoe with the CTA, “Find out when we have more.” I love how this button turns bad news into an opportunity to retain customers. Without it, Brooks’ customers would likely forget about the shoe and look elsewhere.

When you click on the blue CTA button depicted below, Brooks directs you to a page with a simple code you can text the company. This code prompts Brooks to automatically alert the visitor when the shoe they want is available again.

How to Replicate this CTA

For ecommerce businesses, sending customers to a page that states the item is out of stock can be a turn off for customers and cause them to bounce. Consider adding a CTA that says “notify me when restocked,” or “find out when we have more” to keep them engaged and gain their email information.

20. Humboldt County

CTA: Follow the Magic

Image Source

Humboldt County’s website is gorgeous on its own: It greets you with a full-screen video of shockingly beautiful footage. But what I really love is the unconventional call-to-action button placed in the bottom center, which features a bunny icon and the words “Follow the Magic.”

It enhances the sort of fantastical feel of the footage, making you feel like you’re about to step into a fairytale.

What’s more, once you click into that CTA, the website turns into a sort of choose-your-own-adventure game, which is a fun call-to-action path for users and encourages them to spend more time on the site.

Image Source

How to Replicate this CTA

Great for travel companies and creative firms, CTAs like Humbolt’s lure reader in. If your brand has some creative leeway, use it. You could try a phrase like “find your next adventure,” or “plan your trip.”

21. Uber

CTA: Sign up to drive | Start riding with Uber

Image Source

Uber’s looking for two, very distinct types of people to sign up on their website: riders and drivers. Both personas are looking for totally different things, and yet, the website ties them together really well with the large video playing in the background showing Uber riders and drivers having a good time in locations all over the world.

I love the copy of the driver CTA at the top, too: It doesn’t get much more straightforward than, “Make money driving your car.” Now that’s speaking people’s language.

How to Replicate this CTA

Targeting two types of customers? You can create CTAs for each of their personas similarly to Uber.

22. Spotify

CTA: Go Premium | Play Free

Image Source

As soon as you reach Spotify’s homepage, it’s pretty clear that their main goal is to attract customers who are willing to pay for a premium account, while the CTA for users to sign up for free is very much secondary.

It’s not just the headline that gives this away; it’s also the coloring of their CTA buttons. The “Go Premium” CTA is lime green, making it pop off the page, while the “Play Free” CTA is plain white and blends in with the rest of the copy on the page. This contrast ensures that visitors are drawn to the premium CTA.

How to Replicate this CTA

If you offer both a paid and free version of a service, consider using two separate CTAs, choosing a color that pops for the paid option versus something more understated for the free version.

23. Ugmonk

CTA: Send me the coupons | I’m not interested

Image Source

Exit CTAs, also known as exit intent pop-ups, are different than normal pop-ups. They detect your users’ behavior and only appear when it seems as though they’re about to leave your site. By intervening in a timely way, these pop-ups serve as a fantastic way of getting your reader’s attention while offering them a reason to stay.

Ugmonk has a great exit CTA, offering two options for users as a final plea before they leave the site. First, they offer a 15% discount on their products, followed by two options: “Yes Please: Send me the coupon” and “No Thanks: I’m not interested.” It’s super helpful that each CTA clarifies what “Yes” and “No” actually mean, and I also like that they didn’t use guilt-tripping language like “No Thanks: I hate nature” like I’ve seen on other websites. Finally, notice that the “Yes Please” button is much brighter and inviting in color than the other option.

How to Replicate this CTA

Exit intent CTAs are extremely useful for ecommerce. You can offer a discount on services or something else of value to entice visitors to convert.

24. Pinterest

CTA: Continue with Facebook | Sign Up

Image Source

Want to sign up for Pinterest? You have a couple of options: sign up via Facebook or via email. If you have a Facebook account, Pinterest wants you to do that first. How do I know? Aesthetically, I know because the blue Facebook CTA comes first and is much more prominent, colorful, and recognizable due to the branded logo and color. Logically, I know because if you log in through Facebook, Pinterest can pull in Facebook’s API data and get more information about you than if you log in through your email address.

Although this homepage is optimized to bring in new members, you’ll notice a very subtle CTA for folks with Pinterest accounts to log in on the top right.

How to Replicate this CTA

Allow users to sign up with Facebook or Google in your CTA. This saves visitors time signing up and you’ll be able to gain more information about them.

25. Madewell

CTA: Take me there | What’s next?

Image Source

Madewell (owned by J.Crew) has always had standout website design, taking what could be a typical ecommerce website to the next level. Their use of CTAs on their homepage is no exception.

When you first arrive on the page, you’re greeted with the headline “I’m Looking For …” followed by a category, like “Clothes That’ll Travel Anywhere.” Below this copy are two options: “Yes, Take Me There” or “Hmm… What’s Next?” The user can choose between the two CTAs to either browse clothes that are good for travel, or be taken to the next type of clothing, where they can play again.

This gamification is a great way to make your site more interesting for users who come across it without having a specific idea of where they want to look.

How to Replicate this CTA

Use gamification in your CTA to persuade visitors to explore your site further. They may not know specifically what they are looking for or how your company can help. Creating fun prompts can help visitors find what they are looking for.

26. Instagram

CTA: Download on the App Store | Get it on Google Play

Image Source

Since Instagram is a mainly mobile app, you’ll see two black CTAs of equal size: one to download Instagram in Apple’s App Store, and another to download it on Google Play. The reason these CTAs are of equal caliber is because it doesn’t matter if someone downloads the app in the App Store or on Google Play … a download is a download, which is exactly what Instagram is optimizing for. If you already have Instagram, you can also click the CTA to “Log In” if you’d prefer that option, too.

How to Replicate this CTA

If you have an app, consider adding a CTA for each platform visitors can download it from. This remove friction and makes it easier for visitors to download your app without having to search.

27. Barkbox

CTA: Get Started | Give a Gift

Image Source

The two CTAs on Barkbox’s homepage show that the team there knows their customers: While many people visiting their site are signing up for themselves, there are a lot of people out there who want to give Barkbox as a gift. To give those people an easy path to purchase, there are two, equally sized CTAs on the page: “Get Started” and “Give a Gift.”

As an added bonus, there’s an adorable, pop-up call-to-action on the right-hand side of the screen prompting users to leave a message if they’d like. Click into it, and a small dialogue box pops up that reads, “Woof! I’m afraid our pack is not online. Please leave us a message and we’ll bark at you as soon as pawsible.” Talk about delightful copy.

How to Replicate this CTA

Similar to Uber, you can use multiple CTAs to serve different audiences. Play with language and come up with phrases that work best for your brand voice.

28. t.c. pharma

CTA: Find out more | View products

Image Source

Turns out Red Bull isn’t its own parent company: It’s owned by Thailand-based t.c. pharma, a company that makes popular energy drinks, electrolyte beverages, and functional drinks and snacks.

Its homepage features two call-to-action buttons of equal size: “Find out more” and “View products” — but it’s clear by the bright yellow color of the first button that they’d rather direct folks to “Find out more.”

How to Replicate this CTA

Use color to persuade visitors to take a desired action. If you have a preferred button that you’d like people to click, make it the more prominent of the two.

29. General Assembly

CTA: View Full-Time Courses | Subscribe

Image Source

As you scroll through the General Assembly website, you’ll see CTAs for various courses you may or may not want to sign up for. I’d like to point your attention to the CTA that slides in from the bottom of the page as you’re scrolling, though, which suggests that you subscribe to email updates.

Although this feels like a secondary CTA due to its location and manner, I actually think they try to sneak this in to become more of a primary CTA because it’s so much more colorful and noticeable than the CTAs for individual classes.

How to Replicate this CTA

When you create your own CTAs, try using bolder colors — even ones that clash with your regular stylings — to see if it’s effective at getting people’s attention. (Click here for a tutorial on how to add slide-in CTAs to your webpages.)

30. charity: water

CTA: Give by Credit Card | Give by PayPal

Image Source

Charity: water’s main goal is to get people to donate money for clean water — but they can’t assume that everyone wants to pay the same way.

The CTAs featured on their homepage take a really unique approach to offering up different payment methods by pre-filling $60 into a single line form and including two equally important CTAs to pay via credit card or PayPal. Notice how both CTAs are the same size and design — this is because charity: water likely doesn’t care how you donate, as long as you’re donating.

How to Replicate this CTA

For payment CTAs, consider giving visitors options for how to pay. What matters most is that they make the purchase.

31. Hipmunk

CTA: Flights | Hotels | Cars | Packages

Image Source

When you land on the Hipmunk site, your main option is to search flights. But notice there are four tabs you can flip through: flights, hotels, cars, and packages.

When you click into one of these options, the form changes so you can fill out more information. To be 100% sure you know what you’re searching for, Hipmunk placed a bright orange CTA at the far right-hand side of the form. On this CTA, you’ll see a recognizable icon of a plane next to the word “Search,” so you know for sure that you’re searching for flights, not hotels. When you’re on the hotels tab, that icon changes to a hotel icon. Same goes with cars and packages.

How to Replicate this CTA

Use icons to provide further explanation of your CTA to users.

32. MakeMyPersona

CTA: Grab the template! | No thanks

Image Source

Here’s another example of a great pop-up with multiple calls-to-action — except in this case, you’ll notice the size, color, and design of the users’ two options are very different from one another. In this case, the folks at MakeMyPersona are making the “Grab the template!” CTA much more attractive and clickable than the “No, I’m OK for now, thanks” CTA — which doesn’t even look like a clickable button.

I also like how the “no” option uses polite language. I find brands that don’t guilt-trip users who don’t want to take action to be much, much more lovable.

How to Replicate this CTA

Being friendly shouldn’t just be for getting visitors to take the desired action. Using friendly language is just as important in CTAs for those who would like to opt out. Consider using a phrase like “no thanks” or something similar to what MakeMyPersona used to keep it cordial even if customers aren’t ready to make a purchase yet.

33. TeuxDeux

CTA: Get Started for Free | Try for Free

Image Source

Another example of simplistic design, TeuxDeux’s main website features one phrase and two CTA buttons.

That’s it.

Using the company’s colors, the background is just a splash of red and some black.

The CTA buttons stand out against the color and emphasize that you can try the product for free.

I like these CTAs because they show that the company understands its audience. Whenever I’m researching to-do list apps, I always want to try it before I buy it. It’s something that people are very particular about and want to test-drive. TeuxDeux’s CTAs shows that they understand this about their audience.

How to Replicate this CTA

Know your audience and allow them to test drive your service. Tap into their needs and interests and include them in a CTA to help them navigate to what they need faster, risk-free. It could be something like “get started for free,” “download templates for free,” or “try for free.”

34. Betabrand

CTA: Get involved

Image Source

Betabrand is a clothing company that sells yoga/dress pants for women. Usually, clothing brands tend to use similar CTAs such as “Shop Now.”

However, Betabrand’s homepage CTA is unique in that it involves the audience. Here, users can vote and impact the design of new products.

This is a fun way to get the audience involved and do something different.

How to Replicate this CTA

Encourage visitor participation by using a voting or survey type CTA when appropriate. It helps customers develop a personal relationship to the brand because they are contributing to the decision making process.

35. Fabletics

CTA: Limited Edition

Image Source

This Fabletics CTA uses several marketing tactics: scarcity and a holiday.

On the homepage, the brand announces a limited edition collection that’s tied to a holiday (Mother’s Day).

Additionally, the CTA uses a bright color so the CTA stands out on the simple homepage.

How to Replicate this CTA

Combine CTA types when it makes sense. For example you could use scarcity with a limited time only promotion for a grand opening, holiday, or to celebrate a new product launch.

36. Ashley Stewart

CTA: Shop the Lookbook

Image Source

Ashley Stewart is a clothing brand catered to plus-sized women. In this CTA, the company uses a fun design to entice website visitors. The entire collage of images looks like a behind-the-scenes camera roll, which is interesting to look at.

Additionally, the CTA copy is straight to the point, which is helpful for visitors who are looking to browse.

How to Replicate this CTA

Sometimes short and sweet is the best approach. Use your CTAs to get to the point and get visitors what they want. You could use something like “shop this look,” or “download the guide now.”

37. Amazon Music

CTA: 3 months free

Image Source

This is a great example of several of the elements we’ve talked about in one CTA.

Amazon uses two strategically placed CTAs, colorful, yet simple design, and offers the product for free.

With this CTA, Amazon is promoting one of its own products and services on its homepage instead of other products listed for sale on the site.

The only message they want to get across? That you can try their product, Amazon Music, for free for three whole months. This CTA accomplishes that goal with a simple design.

How to Replicate this CTA

Offering a free trial? Make it known by using a prominent CTA that pops and eliminating unnecessary features that clutter the landing page.

38. Barnes and Noble

CTA: Shop Now

Image Source

Barnes and Noble uses a simple CTA to entice visitors to shop a limited collection during the Mother’s Day holiday.

I like this CTA because the landing page design is so cohesive with the branding of the overall company.

Additionally, the graphics and the fonts are all interesting and match the brand’s messaging.

How to Replicate this CTA

Create a cohesive look that appeals to your audience and aligns with your brand voice. Play with fonts and colors that compliment each other and are pleasing to the eye. Keep the CTA simple with a “shop now,” or “download now” button.

39. Slack

CTA: Learn More | Contact Us

Image Source

Slack uses beautiful, simple design on its homepage to entice visitors to click on one of the two CTA buttons.

I like this example because Slack has two CTA buttons for two different audiences. If you’re just getting started in your research, you can click “Learn More.” However, if you’re a repeat visitor and know that you want to talk to a sales person, you can click “Contact Us.”

This is a great example of serving two audiences with your CTAs on your homepage.

How to Replicate this CTA

Serve two audiences with separate CTAs on the same landing page. You can make them distinct using color to contrast the two buttons or draw more attention to the desired choice.

40. Nintendo

CTA: Compare Features

Image Source

On Nintendo’s website, the company is focused on answering any questions a visitor might have.

In fact, one of the main CTAs is “Compare Features.” With this CTA, Nintendo answers one of their most popular questions because they understand that many visitors are still doing their research before purchasing a product.

How to Replicate this CTA

Have multiple pricing or feature options? Consider using a CTA that helps users compare their choices so they can make a more informed decision.

Create Your Own CTAs

There you have it. Now you can see just how important a few small CTA tweaks can be. Take inspiration from the examples above and create CTAs that convert.

Full Disclosure: We don’t have data to know if these are all scientifically successful, but these examples all follow our best practices. If you decide to recreate these CTAs on your site, please remember to test to see if they work for your audience.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in June 2014 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Wouldn’t it be great if creating infographics was as simple as writing text-based blog posts? Usually, it would take a lot of time, effort, and skill to make them — but that doesn’t have to be the case.

Considering the popularity and effectiveness of visual content in marketing today, you shouldn’t throw in the towel just yet.

That’s why we decided to do most of the work for you. With HubSpot’s Free Infographic Templates in PowerPoint, you can create high-quality, professional infographics in under an hour. Feel free to take a look at the resource below:

You can add your own content to premade outlines in a cinch, and if you need a helping hand, we’ll demonstrate how to personalize your infographic in PowerPoint in this post. Keep reading to learn how to make a memorable infographic with ease.

1. Choose your desired infographic template.

First things first, you have to choose an infographic template appropriate for representing that data. The important thing is to choose a template that specifically works for the type of data set/content you want to present. As you saw pictured above, you can download our 15 infographic templates in PowerPoint and choose whichever template you’d like.

Download for Free

Some of your template options in the offer linked above include a timeline, flowchart, side-by-side comparison, and a data-driven infographic. Here are some basic ideas for choosing an infographic template that suits the story you want your data to tell:

• Side-by-side comparison infographic: This infographic design can help prove the advantage of one concept over another, or simply explain the differences between two competing entities.
• Flowchart infographic: This design is perfect for presenting a new workflow for your organization, or how a linear or cyclical process works across your industry.
• Timeline infographic: This design can tell a chronological story, or history, of a business, industry, product, or concept.
• Graph-based infographic: This design is suitable for content creators publishing a high volume of data and statistical information, making it a good fit for expert-level audiences, too.
• Image-heavy infographic: This design caters to content creators who are trying to reveal trends and information from shapes, designs, or photography — rather than just numbers and figures.

2. Identify the audience for your infographic.

Infographics don’t sell themselves on design alone. You need to deliver “info” that’s just as compelling as the “graphic,” and to do that, you need to know the audience your infographic intends to reach.

According to Harvard Business Review, five possible audiences can change how you choose and visualize your data: novice, generalist, managerial, expert, and executive. Start by comparing your infographic’s ideal reader with one of these five audiences — which one applies to your reader?

When thinking about the data you want to visualize, let the five audiences above dictate how advanced your data will be. For example:

• A novice audience might need data whose meaning is more obvious at first blush.
• A generalist may want to better understand the big picture of a concept.
• A managerial audience might need to see how different groups or actions affect one another.
• An expert might be more interested in getting into the weeds of your numbers and posing theories around them.
• An executive has more in common with a novice audience in that they only have time for the simplest or most critical information, and the effect it’ll have on the business.

3. Collect your content and relevant data.

Using the audience you’ve chosen above, your next step is to organize all the content and data you’ll use in the infographic. You can either collect third-party data or use your own original data. If you use third-party data, just be sure you properly cite your sources — just like in any other good piece of content.

• Choosing your data: Compelling data needs to be “comprehensive” enough to give your readers proper context around the data you’re presenting. For example, a spike in website traffic from one month to the next doesn’t mean much — until, say, you reveal that traffic was on a steady decline over the previous three months. Suddenly you have a story of how you were able to reverse a downward trend.
• Organizing your data: When collecting your data, make sure you know what story you want to tell through this information. Data for the sake of data won’t add value to your infographic at all.
• Citing your sources: To keep your infographic uncluttered by a ton of different source URLs, a great way to cite your sources is to include a simple URL at the bottom of your infographic that links to a page on your site. You can also list the individual stats used in your infographic, and their sources — such as the landing page to the full offer on which you’re basing this free infographic.

That way, your infographic looks clean and professional, and people will still be able to access the sources no matter where the infographic gets shared or embedded. It may also even drive visitors back to your site.

4. Download your template to PowerPoint.

For the sake of time (remember, our mission is to create an infographic in under an hour), I’m going to create an infographic based on a compilation of steps and best practices we put together in our guide, How to Run an Inbound Marketing Campaign.

For this, I’ve picked the “World’s Greatest Timeline” infographic template from our collection of infographic templates, which is best suited for my data set since it will allow me to outline each step of the campaign creation process in chronological order.

5. Customize your infographic.

This is the most time-consuming part — plugging in the content you already have.

Come up with a catchy title, plug in your data/content, and adjust your font sizes and formatting. Feel free to switch up the graphics and colors, too, so they’re relevant to your brand and the data you’re providing. To customize the look of the infographic even more, you might add or change the colors or font styles to your liking.

In this example, you’ll notice that I’ve inputted my text and changed the font colors to HubSpot’s signature orange and dark blue:

You’re not limited by what the template includes, either. You can use the tools in PowerPoint’s software to create bar graphs, pie charts, and other visuals to support your data. (Note: Download our free infographic templates for a cheat sheet for using PowerPoint’s various features and tools.)

6. Include a footer with your sources and logo.

Finally, I included a link to my source (which can be found here) and the company logo so people recognize branded content from HubSpot if it gets shared in social media or embedded on other websites. After all, one of the main benefits of creating infographics is their shareability.

7. Add embed code and a Pinterest button, and publish it.

The only thing left to do is to publish and promote your awesome new infographic. As I mentioned earlier, we recommend using your blog to publish it (including your list of sources), including a
Pinterest button for visitors to easily “pin” your infographic on Pinterest, and create and add an embed code for visitors to share it on their own websites and blogs, as we did above.

Share This Image On Your Site

<p><strong>Please include attribution to blog.hubspot.com with this graphic.</strong><br /><br /><a href=’https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/create-infographics-with-free-powerpoint-templates’><img src=’https://blog.hubspot.com/hs-fs/hubfs/free_infographic_template_custom-1.png?t=1519094621186&width=1138&height=3412&name=free_infographic_template_custom-1.png’ alt=’free_infographic_template_custom-1′ width=’660px’ border=’0′ /></a></p>

With the infographic complete and published, that’s a wrap. It won’t take you long to create some impressive infographics of your own once you get started — but before you begin, there’s some guidelines you should keep in mind.

Tips for Creating a Great Infographic

1. The information you communicate matters more than its design.

You can make the most visually appealing infographic of the year, but if it doesn’t clearly communicate a purpose or message, then what’s the point?

Not to say that the infographic’s design is unimportant, but the information available on it should always be the priority. A good infographic tells the audience what they need to know, and is given adds more depth or dimension when coupled with a good design.

2. Know who you’re making the infographic for.

Speaking of the audience, you have to know the type of reader that’s looking for the information you have to offer. We already discussed the different types of audiences you write for, but we just wanted to reiterate it once more.

3. Avoid adding clutter to your infographic.

It’s easy to get carried away with icons, graphics, and word art, but if it’s becoming distracting to the reader, then it’s defeating the purpose of the infographic in the first place.

Keep your infographic looking clear and skimmable, the reader shouldn’t have to navigate it like a puzzle to find the information they need.

4. Ensure the visuals add value to your data.

Echoing our last point, the visuals that do make it to your infographic should be there to add value to the data beside it — this is the concept behind information design.

Whether it’s graphs, diagrams, icons, or real-life imagery, it should take the numerical value of information shared and contextualize it. This way there’s an emotional element behind the messaging than just bolding percentages.

Share Your Professional Infographic Today

This whole thing took me under an hour to put together — much less time (not to mention more professional looking) than it would’ve taken me if I’d started from scratch. Plus, it’s less expensive than hiring a designer and using the resources you might want to save for larger campaigns.

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

In the world of social media marketing, there are hundreds of tools and software with features capable of helping you with different aspects of your social media strategy. These tools — also known as social media management tools — can assist with social media creation, collaboration, planning, scheduling , sharing, analysis, and more.

In this blog post, we’ll cover what social media management tools are, how your team can benefit from them, and 12 of the best options available today.

Let’s get started.

Get certified in social media strategy with a free social media marketing course.

Social Media Management Tools

As mentioned above, there are a plethora of social media management tools available today. Some are meant to help with a wide array of social media management needs. Meanwhile, other tools are meant for specific types of social media management (e.g. tools for agencies) or facets of social media management (e.g. social listening or analytics). No matter your needs, goals, or industry, there’s a social media management tool for you.

 

Why use social media management tools?

Social media management tools assist with your social media strategy — typically, they have scheduling, publishing, collaborating, listening, and/or reporting capabilities. They also often have the ability to streamline interactions with followers cross-platform, offer access to all of your social accounts via a single dashboard, and analyze your success. They may also integrate with other tools your team uses such as your Marketing Software or CRM.

The 12 tools below are separated into categories based on what they’re meant for — as you read their descriptions, keep in mind that some of them overlap categories. For example, many of the general tools are great for small businesses — and many of the free tools are too.

Best General Social Media Management Tools

The following tools are ideal for all social media management teams — you can customize them to help you meet your specific needs and goals.

1.HubSpot Social Media Management Software

Key Feature: Manage your entire social media marketing strategy on one platform.

HubSpot monitors all interactions, conversations, and audiences on your Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn profiles. It allows you to effectively target specific audiences with personalized messaging using context from the contact database in your CRM as well as data from your Marketing Software. Meaning, with HubSpot, you can manage your entire social media strategy — from planning to sharing to analysis — from a single and central location.

You can also use HubSpot’s Social Media Management software to turn your content offers into social posts, schedule posts weeks in advance, and monitor trending keywords that are relevant to your brand and audience. 

2. Sprout Social

Key Feature: Social listening tools that help you learn more about your audiences behavior on the platforms you use.

SproutSocial is a social media management tool that assists with social listening, publishing, engagement, and analysis. The tool streamlines the processes of sharing relevant content on social platforms as well as creating and sending personalized messages to prospects, customers, and followers — all of this support frees up valuable time for social media managers.

Customer service features exist to help you offer assistance to customers on social when they want and need it. With Sprout Social you’ll be able to develop a better understanding of who your audience members are and what they want from you on social as well as how you can improve upon your current strategy.

(Note: Sprout Social’s customer care functionality integrates with HubSpot.)

3. Falcon.io

Key Feature:: Customer service dashboard helps you respond to and stay on top of all customer queries.

Falcon.io is a social media marketing platform with a social media management solution that saves you time by helping you maximize reach, impact, and engagement among your audience.

The software has social listening capabilities to help you identify target audience members and prospects, understand what people are saying about your brand on social media, identify opportunities for engagement, and efficiently respond to any customer comments or concerns.

There’s also a content calendar that makes cross-platform social media planning easy and quick. Plus, you can view and respond to all customer messages and questions on one dashboard so no queries go unresolved.

(Note: Falcon.io integrates with HubSpot so you can easily sync customer data for campaigns, create custom audiences, and offer effective customer service via social media.)

Best Free Social Media Management Tools

Here are some effective free social media management tools. It’s not uncommon for tools to have a free version as well as paid plans that you can upgrade to as you grow and require greater functionality from your tool.

1. Hootsuite

Key Feature:Social media scheduling for up to 30 social posts, for free.

Hootsuite is a social media marketing and management tool. It has a dashboard through which you can manage all aspects of your social media strategy. Although there are paid plans with more capabilities, Hootsuite offers a free plan that works well if you’re a small business. With the free plan, you can schedule up to 30 social posts in advance.

You’ll also be able to manage three different social profiles from your dashboard with Hootsuite’s free plan. Lastly, this option works for small businesses because only one person has access to the account.

2. TweetDeck

Key Feature:Manage all of your business’ different Twitter accounts in one dashboard.

Although TweetDeck is just for Twitter users, it’s a powerful social media management tool if you’re on the platform. This free tool allows you to simultaneously manage multiple Twitter profiles via a central dashboard.

Schedule Tweets ahead, monitor your competition, set alerts for your most important Tweets and Twitter activity, and manage your lists with ease. You can also customize your timelines as well as view and respond to conversations and Tweets in real-time via your dashboard.

3. Buffer

Key Feature:Create a custom posting schedule for each of your business’ platforms.

Buffer has a free plan that you can move to once you’ve completed your free trial with the software. Similar to Hootsuite, Buffer’s free plan works well if you have a small business with a small social media presence. This plan offers the ability to manage three social channels. You can schedule 10 posts in advance and only one user has access to your Buffer dashboard.

Best Social Media Management Tools for Small Businesses

Here are some social media management tools meant for small businesses.

1. Everypost

Key Feature:Cross-post social media content on all of your profiles for maximum reach and impact.

Everypost is a social media tool that allows you to manage multiple profiles and accounts at once. Customize your social posts, schedule them in advance, and share them all via a single platform.

Tailor social content for different platforms and then cross-post it from Everypost to streamline the process of sharing content across profiles. Use the tool to collaborate internally and manage roles — this way, you can delegate content to certain people on your team as needed.

2. Agorapulse

Key Feature:Access to metrics that help you understand the ROI of your social media tactics.

Agorapulse is a social media management platform that helps you improve social engagement and relationship building across your social profiles.

With this tool, you can schedule your content, interact with followers, and get reports to determine the success of your strategy and ROI of your engagement. There’s also a single inbox through which you can view, share, and respond to customer comments and questions.

Real-time collaboration makes it easy to send different team members customer inquiries and work on content together. Take advantage of the flexible scheduling features to either schedule individual posts or bulk schedule posts.

Additionally, the Agorapulse CRM that this tool automatically comes with tracks followers and their interactions with your brand so you can learn from those engagements now and reference them in the future.

3. ContentCal

Key Feature:Pull content from your other marketing tools to share on social media.

ContentCal is a social media management tool meant for planning and publishing content. There’s an easy-to-use visual calendar you can pair with approval flows to ensure specific posts are shared at the right time.

Pull in content from other tools — such as Facebook, Slack, Google Drive, or Dropbox — to share on social. You can also collaborate with team members and ask for their feedback easily using the tool’s comments feature.

Best Social Media Management Tools for Agencies

The following social media management tools are ideal for agencies.

1. Sendible

Key Feature:Content suggestion feature gives new ideas for content that is sure to resonate with your clients audience. 

Sendible is a social media management platform specifically designed for agencies. The tool has an interactive and customizable content calendar so you and your team can view and collaborate on all social posts that are created, planned, and shared.

Use the content suggestion feature to get new ideas for content that’s likely to resonate with your client’s audience. There’s also a single-view inbox so you can look at all client messages at once — plus a priority filter option which allows you to filter and prioritize chats.

Lastly, set up user hierarchies and workflows to set permissions for certain team members — this way, certain people have to sign off on client content prior to it going live.

2. Nuvi

Key Feature:Workflows allow for easy collaboration between agencies and clients.

Nuvi is a social media management, marketing, and customer experience (CX) platform. It includes management tools for social listening, planning, publishing, engaging, reporting, and more — all with an end goal of creating an excellent experience for your customers and clients. Add permissions to your workflows so team members at your agency can collaborate and ensure all content is reviewed by the necessary people prior to it going live.

Create, plan, and schedule your content so it goes live when it needs to. Then, measure performance and keep an eye on competitors to understand what social media strategies are working best for them.

The engagement feature will make it easy to prioritize social media engagement and allow you to organize, prioritize, and share those engagements internally with the correct team members. Plus social listening features will ensure you don’t miss a beat across any of your accounts.

3. HeyOrca!

Key Feature:Create content mock-ups so clients can seamlessly give approval and feedback before publishing.

HeyOrca! is a social media management tool for agencies. The platform allows you to manage all of your social content and clients in a central location so you can offer a seamless and memorable customer experience.

The content calendar allows you to share your plans for scheduled content easily with team members and/or clients. Create multiple content calendars — each with unique team members and social profiles — for each of your clients to keep things organized.

Create mock ups of all content you plan to share on social so your team members and clients can give the go-ahead prior to it being shared. You can also easily share your content with clients via HeyOrca! to get their feedback (and you can choose which versions of that content you want your clients to be able to see or not see).

Lastly, offer clients easy-to-understand reports to show them how successful the content you’re creating for their social media profiles is.

The management tools we reviewed above have the power to help you reach (and exceed) your social media goals. Determine what you need out of a tool to help you identify which option has the capabilities and features needed to help you achieve those goals.

The first marketing email was sent in 1978, resulted in $13 million in sales, and kicked off what has become one of the most highly used marketing channels even to this day.

Given its early beginnings, email isn’t as shiny as some newer channels like messaging and social, but it is an effective way to build an owned audience that gets results.

Your customers don’t give their information lightly, and — if used right — email marketing can be both a relationship-building and profit-building tool.

So, how does email marketing actually work anyway?

Now let’s review when you should use email marketing and some benefits and statistics that support the reason why email marketing is so valuable.

Master the fundamentals of email marketing with a free online course.

When to Use Email Marketing

There are many ways to use email marketing — some of the most common including using the tactic to:

• Build relationships: Build connections through personalized engagement.
• Boost brand awareness: Keep your company and your services top-of-mind for the moment when your prospects are ready to engage.
• Promote your content: Use email to share relevant blog content or useful assets with your prospects.
• Generate leads: Entice subscribers to provide their personal information in exchange for an asset that they’d find valuable.
• Market your products: Promote your products and services.
• Nurture leads: Delight your customers with content that can help them succeed in their goals.

Email Marketing Benefits

• There are over 4 billion email users worldwide, so if you’re looking for a way to reach your customers, email is the perfect place to find them.
• As of 2020, email generates $36 for every dollar spent.
• 79% of marketers list email marketing in their top 3 most effective marketing channels.
• Email visitors are the most likely to convert on forms.
• Perhaps the best reason to use email marketing is that you own the channel. Outside of compliance regulations, there is no external entity that can impact how, when, or why you reach out to your subscribers.

3. Build your email list.

You need people to email, right? An email list (we’ll cover how to build your email list in the next section) is a group of users who have given you permission to send them relevant content.

To build that list, you need several ways for prospects to opt-in to receive your emails.

Don’t be discouraged if you only have a few people on your list to start. It can take some time to build. In the meantime, treat every single subscriber and lead like gold, and you’ll start to see your email list grow organically.

4. Choose an email campaign type.

Email campaigns vary and trying to decide between them can be overwhelming. Do you send a weekly newsletter? Should you send out new product announcements? Which blog posts are worth sharing?

These questions plague every marketer. The answer is subjective.

You can start by learning about the types of email campaigns that exist, then decide which is best for your audience.

You should also set up different lists for different types of emails, so customers and prospects can sign up for only the emails that are relevant to them.

5. Make a schedule.

Decide how often you plan to contact your list and inform your audience upfront.

This way, they’ll know exactly what to expect ahead of time. Forgetting to do this can lead to high unsubscribe lists and can even get you in their spam.

In addition, once you set a schedule, be consistent. It will build trust and ensure you stay top of mind for your audience.

6. Measure your results.

This should come as no surprise. As marketers, we measure everything. Being meticulous about every key metric will help you make small changes to your emails that will yield large results.

We’re going to touch on the exact KPIs to monitor in a bit (or you can jump ahead).

Now that you understand the steps to creating an email marketing strategy, we’ll look at what’s involved in building your email list.

How to Build Your Email List

Now to the fun part: filling your email list with eager prospects that are excited to hear from you.

There are many creative ways to build your email list (and, no, purchasing emails ain’t one). Tactically speaking, list building comes down to two key elements that work cohesively to grow your subscriber numbers: lead magnets and opt-in forms.

Featured Resources

• The Email Newsletter Lookbook

• How to Create Email Newsletters That Don’t Suck

Here’s how to get started building and growing your email list.

1. Use lead magnets.

Your lead magnet is exactly as it sounds: something that attracts prospects to your email list, usually in the form of a free offer. The offer can take a number of formats, should be valuable to your prospects, and is given away for free in exchange for an email address.

There’s just one problem: People have become hyper-protective of their personal information. You can’t expect to receive an email address without exchanging it for something valuable.

Think about a lead magnet that is relevant, useful, and makes your prospects’ lives easier.

Here are a few types of lead magnets you could create:

• Ebook
• Whitepaper
• Infographic
• Report or Study
• Checklist
• Template
• Webinar or Course
• Tool

If you’re short on resources, you can even repurpose your existing content to create lead magnets.

How to Create a Great Lead Magnet

Remember that your lead magnet should be relevant to your prospects. Here are a few guidelines to ensure you’re creating a valuable asset for your potential list.

Make your offer solution-oriented and actionable.

Provide practical information that solves a problem and creates a realistic way to achieve the solution.

Ensure that the asset is easy to consume.

Lead magnets should be delivered in a digital format. Whether it’s a PDF, a webpage, a video, or some other format, make it easy for your new lead to obtain and consume it.

Create your offer with future content in mind.

There’s nothing worse than signing up for a great offer only to be disappointed by the content that follows. Make sure your offer is aligned with the value that you will provide throughout your relationship, otherwise you risk damaging trust.

Treat your lead magnet as a stepping stone to your paid solution.

The point of your email list is to eventually guide subscribers to a paid offer. You offer free content to demonstrate the value that you provide as a company, and those free offers should eventually lead to your product or service.

Create offers that are relevant to each stage of the buyer’s journey.

Every new lead will be at a different stage of the buyer’s journey, and it’s your responsibility to know which.

Segment your list from the beginning by providing separate opt-in offers that pertain to each stage of the buyer’s journey. You can tell a lot about a prospect’s mindset by the content they consume.

2. Create an enticing opt-in form.

Your opt-in form is how you get a prospect’s information to add them to your list. It’s the gate between your future leads and the incredible asset that you created with them in mind.

Here are some tips for creating an enticing opt-in form:

Create an attractive design and attention-grabbing header.

Your form should be branded, stand out from the page, and entice people to sign up. You want to excite readers with the offer.

Make the copy relevant to the offer.

While your goal is to get people to enter their information, it isn’t to deceive them. Any information on your form should be a truthful representation of the offer.

Keep the form simple.

This could be one of your first interactions with your prospect. Don’t scare them away with a long form with several fields.

Ask for only the most essential information: first name and email is a good place to start.

Set your opt-in form for double confirmation.

It may seem counterproductive to ask your subscribers to opt in to your emails twice, but some research on open rates suggests that customers may prefer a confirmed opt-in (COI) email more than a welcome email.

Ensure that the flow works.

Take yourself through the user experience before you go live. Double-check that the form works as intended, the thank you page is live, and your offer is delivered as promised.

This is one of your first impressions of your new lead — make it a professional and positive one.

Next, let’s take a moment to cover some universally-accepted email marketing best practices regarding how to send marketing emails.

If all goes well, you’ll have built a robust list of subscribers and leads that are waiting to hear from you. But you can’t start emailing just yet unless you want to end up in a spam folder, or worse, a blocked list.

Here are a few extremely important things to keep in mind before you start emailing your list that you worked so hard to build.

1. Choose an email marketing service.

An email marketing provider (ESP) is a great resource if you’re looking for any level of support while fine-tuning your email marketing efforts.

For example, HubSpot’s Email Marketing tool allows you to efficiently create, personalize, and optimize marketing emails that feel and look professional without designers or IT.

There are a variety of features to help you create the best email marketing campaigns and support all of your email marketing goals.

Additionally, you can analyze the success of your email marketing so you can share the data that matters most to your business with your team. The best part? You can use HubSpot’s Email Marketing service for free.

Here are examples of features services like HubSpot offer to consider when choosing an email service provider:

• CRM platform with segmentation capabilities
• Good standing with Internet Service Providers
• A positive reputation as an email service provider (ESP)
• Easy-to-build forms, landing pages, and CTAs
• Automation
• Simple ways to comply with email regulations
• Ability to split test your emails
• Built-in analytics
• Downloadable reports

2. Use email marketing tips.

While you probably don’t think twice about the formatting or subject line of an email you send to a friend, email marketing requires a lot more consideration. Everything from the time you send your email to the devices on which your email could be opened matters.

Your goal with every email is to generate more leads, which makes crafting a marketing email a more involved process than other emails you’ve written.

Let’s touch on the components of a successful marketing email:

Copy: The copy in the body of your email should be consistent with your voice and stick to only one topic.

Images: Choose images that are optimized for all devices, eye-catching, and relevant.

CTA: Your call-to-action should lead to a relevant offer and stand out from the rest of the email.

Timing: Based on a study that observed response rates of 20 million emails, Tuesday at 11 AM ET is the best day and time to send your email.

Responsiveness: 55% of emails are opened on mobile. Your email should, therefore, be optimized for this as well as all other devices.

Personalization: Write every email like you’re sending it to a friend. Be personable and address your reader in a familiar tone.

Subject Line: Use clear, actionable, enticing language that is personalized and aligned with the body of the email.

Featured Resource

• 100 Email Subject Lines We Actually Clicked

3. Implement email segmentation.

Segmentation is breaking up your large email list into sub-categories that pertain to your subscribers’ unique characteristics, interests, and preferences.

Our subscribers are humans, after all, and we should do our best to treat them as such. That means, not sending generic email blasts.

We talked about segmentation briefly above. The reason why this topic is important enough to mention twice is that, without it, you run the risk of sending the wrong content to the wrong people and losing subscribers.

Why should you segment your email list?

Each person who signs up to receive your emails is at a different level of readiness to convert into a customer (which is the ultimate goal of all this).

If you send a discount coupon for your product to subscribers that don’t even know how to diagnose their problem, you’ll probably lose them. That’s because you’re skipping the part where you build trust and develop the relationship.

Every email you send should treat your subscribers like humans that you want to connect with, as opposed to a herd of leads that you’re trying to corral into one-size-fits-all box.

The more you segment your list, the more trust you build with your leads and the easier it’ll be to convert them later.

How to Segment Email Lists

The first step in segmentation is creating separate lead magnets and opt-in forms for each part of the buyer’s journey. That way, your contacts are automatically divided into separate lists.

Beyond that, email marketing platforms allow you to segment your email list by contact data and behavior to help you send the right emails to the right people.

Here are some ways you could break up your list:

• Geographical location
• Lifecycle stage
• Awareness, consideration, decision stage
• Industry
• Previous engagement with your brand
• Language
• Job Title

In reality, you can segment your list any way that you want. Just make sure to be as exclusive as possible when sending emails to each subgroup.

4. Personalize your email marketing.

Now that you know who you’re emailing and what’s important to them, it will be much easier to send emails with personalized touches.

Sure, you’re speaking to 100+ people at one time, but your leads don’t need to know it.

A 2021 report by Litmus revealed that 80% of customers are more likely to make a purchase from a brand that provides personalized experiences.

To really drive this point home, consider this: Personalized emails have higher open rates. In addition, 83% of customers are willing to share their data to create a more personalized experience.

You’ve gathered all this unique data. Your email marketing software allows for personalization tokens. You have no excuse for sending generic emails that don’t make your leads feel special.

Here are a few ways to personalize your emails:

• Add a first name field in your subject line and/or greeting.
• Include region-specific information when appropriate.
• Send content that is relevant to your lead’s lifecycle stage.
• Only send emails that pertain to the last engagement a lead has had with your brand.
• Write about relevant and/or personal events, like region-specific holidays or birthdays.
• End your emails with a personal signature from a human (not your company).
• Use a relevant call-to-action to an offer that the reader will find useful.

5. Incorporate email marketing automation.

Automation is putting your list segmentation to use.

Once you’ve created specific subgroups, you can send automated emails that are highly targeted. There are a couple of ways to do this.

Autoresponders

An autoresponder, also known as a drip campaign, is a series of emails that is sent out automatically once triggered by a certain action. For instance, when someone downloads your ebook.

You’ll use the same guidelines for writing your emails that we discussed previously to ensure that your readers find your emails useful and interesting. You should decide how far apart you’d like your emails to be sent, say every few days or weeks or even months.

The great thing about autoresponders is that you can set it and forget it. Every user that is part of your autoresponder will receive each email that you’ve added to the series.

Workflows

Workflows take autoresponders a step further. Think of Workflows like a flow tree with yes/no branches that will execute actions based on the criteria that you set.

Workflows have two key components:

• The enrollment criteria, or the action that would qualify a user for the workflow.
• The goal, or the action that would take a user out of the workflow.

Workflow tools are smart enough to know if a user opened an email or downloaded an offer, and it will set off a series of actions based on that behavior. That means, it can send an email series, or even change a prospect’s lifecycle stage based on what a user does.

Here’s an example of how a workflow could be set up:

HubSpot

The key difference from an autoresponder is that workflows are smart: They can change the course of your automated series based on what your prospect will find useful.

For instance, if a new subscriber receives a welcome email and the subsequent email is set up to send them an offer that they already found and downloaded on your site, the workflow tool will know and adapt. In an autoresponder, a user receives a specific set of emails at specific time intervals no matter what action they take.

Why is this important? Sending the right email at the wrong time is detrimental to your bottom line.

6. Use email marketing templates.

Email marketing templates — like these ones from HubSpot — are another great resource to help you with your email marketing.

Unless you’re a designer and developer on top of being a skilled marketer, templates will save you a ton of time — they take the design, coding, and UX-definition work out of crafting your emails.

Just one caveat: when making your selection, choose email templates that are proven to be effective.

The highest-quality templates come from the most reputable ESPs that have tested them against thousands of alternatives. So, stick with the professionals.

And speaking of things like quality work and great reputation, there are some email regulations to be aware of when crafting emails and developing your marketing strategy.

Email Regulations

Email regulations are consistent with consumers’ desires to know how and why their information is being used. If there’s anything we care about, it’s complying with what our customers—or potential customers—want.

1. CAN-SPAM Compliance

Technically, CAN-SPAM is an acronym for Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing (because sometimes the two go together).

In practice, it’s a way to protect your subscribers’ right to only receive emails that they’ve requested.

The law was passed in 2003 and applies to any commercial emails used for business purposes.

Here are the ways to ensure that your emails are CAN-SPAM compliant:

• Include your company name and address in every email.
• Place visible unsubscribe links within your emails.
• Use real email addresses in the “From” and “Reply to” fields.
• Write subject lines that indicate the contents of the email.

Please note: This is not to be confused for legal advice. See the FTC’s site for more specific legal information regarding CAN-SPAM laws.

2. GDPR Compliance

While some may view these newly implemented email regulations as burdensome and unnecessary, General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) actually moves us closer to building long-lasting and trusting relationships with our customers.

GDPR is about giving your customers the right to choose. They choose your emails. They choose to hear from you. They choose your products. And that is exactly what inbound marketing is about.

Something important to note about GDPR is that it only applies to businesses that operate in the European Union and businesses that market to EU citizens. Noncompliance will result in significant fees that aren’t worth the risk, so make sure to read the GDPR guidelines entirely.

Here’s an overview of how you can comply with GDPR laws:

• Use clear language when requesting consent to store personal information.
• Only collect contact data that is necessary for and relevant to your business.
• Store contact data in a secure manner and only use it for the agreed-upon purpose.
• Retain data for justifiable business purposes only.
• Delete contact data on request.
• Make it easy for contacts to unsubscribe from your list or update their preferences.
• Comply promptly to a contact’s request for access to their data.
• Keep company records to prove GDPR compliance.

These regulations will be taken seriously (as they should), so it’s a good idea to create a GDPR strategy for your business before you start sending out emails.

3. Avoid Spam Filters

You spend time creating the perfect email and adhering to regulations, so the last thing you want is to end up in a spam folder.

You’ll want to avoid the spam folder because:

• It hurts your deliverability rates across the board.
• Your contacts will likely miss all of your emails.
• You won’t be able to accurately measure your email marketing effectiveness.
• Your analytics will be skewed.

You can avoid being deduced to spam by:

Getting whitelisted.

A whitelist is the opposite of a blacklist, meaning it’s a list of approved senders that are allowed to reach the subscriber’s inbox. The easiest way to accomplish this is to have your new subscriber add your email address to their address book. Include directions on how to do this in your welcome email.

Minding your copy.

Avoid using all caps and multiple exclamation points, as well as spam trigger words, like “opt in”, “click below”, and “order”, that are easily detected and marked down by Internet Service Providers (ISPs).

Using a reliable email service provider.

Your email service provider’s reputation affects your deliverability, so stick to established, well-known companies.

Implementing a double opt-in.

Once someone opts in to your email list, send an email asking them to confirm. This ensures that your new subscriber is genuinely interested in your emails and will likely be more engaged.

(Check out more ways you can avoid the spam filter.)

And last but certainly not least, you need to consistently measure the success of your email marketing efforts. There are a number of options you can choose from when it comes to your business’s email marketing analytics.

Email Marketing Analysis

By diving into your email marketing analytics, you’ll be able to make better decisions that are sure to positively impact your business’s bottom line, resonate with your subscribers, readers, and customers, and justify your work to the rest of your company.

Here are the best ways to analyze the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns.

1. A/B test your marketing emails.

Not all email lists are created equal. Some audiences prefer personalization and others will think it’s spammy. Some audiences will like bright, eye-catching CTA buttons, and others will prefer a more subtle call-to-action.

You’ll never know what type of people make up your email list until you test the variables. That’s where A/B testing comes in handy.

Surprisingly, not many brands leverage it. A 2021 Litmus study found that 44% of marketers rarely A/B or multivariate test their emails. Only 19% do it often or always.

A/B testing, or split testing, is a way to see what type of email performs best with your audience by analyzing the results of email A against email B.

Here’s the step-by-step process for A/B testing your emails:

• Select one variable to test at a time, e.g., subject line, CTA, images.
• Create two versions of the email: one with and one without the variable.
• Allow your emails to be sent out simultaneously for a period of time.
• Analyze your results and keep only the version that performed better.
• Test a new variable and repeat the process.

Most email service providers will have A/B testing built into their software, which will make it easy for you to compare email results without much manual work.

Featured Resource

• The Complete Guide to A/B Testing

2. Set email marketing KPIs.

There are four key metrics to pay attention to when evaluating the effectiveness of your email marketing campaign.

• Deliverability measures the rate at which emails reach your intended subscribers’ inboxes.
• Open rate is the percentage of people that open your email once it reaches their inbox.
• Clickthrough rate (CTR) is the percentage of people that click on your CTAs.
• Unsubscribes measures the number of people who opt out of your email list once they receive an email from you.

3. Adjust email components to improve results.

Many factors impact your KPIs, and it’s going to take some experimentation and guesswork to figure out which tweaks to your emails will yield the biggest changes.

If you aren’t getting the numbers you want, try playing with these variables to improve your email results.

Deliverability

• Ensure that you’re following best practices when it comes to avoiding spam filters.
• Remove inactive people from your email list to keep only engaged subscribers.
• Check which emails hard bounced and remove those email addresses from your list.

Open Rate

• Play with the language in your subject line to entice people to click on your email.
• Adjust the time and day that you send your email to see what works best.

Clickthrough Rate (CTR)

• Evaluate your offer to ensure that it provides value to your segmented list.
• Rewrite your copy to make sure that it’s clear what you want the reader to do.
• Try different CTAs, e.g., graphic versus Inline copy, bold versus subtle.

Unsubscribes

• First, consider if this is a blessing in disguise, as uninterested parties are removing themselves from your list.
• Evaluate whether the email you sent is aligned with your brand.
• Ensure you haven’t performed a bait-and-switch by promising one thing and delivering another.
• Make sure your emails are providing value to your audience before trying to upsell.

4. Use an email marketing report template.

Your data does no good if you can’t report it in an organized fashion.

An email marketing report is a spreadsheet where you can record your results in one place to help you make inferences from your KPIs and take action to improve them.

Here’s how you should organize your report:

Metrics:

• Total number of emails sent
• Number of emails delivered
• Deliverability Rate
• Bounce Rate
• Open Rate
• Clickthrough Rate
• Unsubscribe Rate

Data:

• Subject line
• Length of the email body
• Offer
• CTA (inline or graphic)
• List segment

Questions To Ask:

• Was your deliverability rate high in comparison to previous periods?
• How did your CTR compare to your open rate?
• Were your unsubscribe numbers consistent with other emails?
• Did a certain subject line perform better than others?
• Does the length of email make a difference in CTR?
• Could another style of CTA perform better?
• Was the offer appropriate for the list segment?

Beginning Email Marketing

While there are many rules to sending a marketing email, the most important is this: Treat your subscribers like humans.

You can achieve all of your email marketing goals if you keep this golden rule top-of-mind in every autoresponder, lead magnet, and subject line.

When in doubt or if you’re ever in need of inspiration, turn to some of the greatest email marketing examples. You can also take a look at some quick additional tips in this video by HubSpot Academy:

And remember, your subscribers want to hear from you and they want to relate to you. Be a genuine resource, and they will look forward to opening an email from you just like they would any friend of theirs.

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

If you had to describe yourself in less than five words, what would you say? For people, these words are the foundation of a personality. But for companies, they refer to the brand essence.

All successful businesses have a core spirit that makes up the soul of the brand. At Dyson, it’s efficiency. At Disney, it’s magic.

Defining brand essence is essential for building a cohesive brand identity, creating impactful marketing campaigns, and connecting with customers. Considering that over 75% of consumers buy from brands that share the same values, it’s important for companies to signal what matters most to them.

Brand essence is just one part of creating a strong, memorable brand, but it sets the stage for every other aspect of your identity. So before you design a logo or craft company values, you have to understand what brand essence is and how to shape a strong essence statement. (Don’t worry, there are plenty of examples along the way to inspire your brainstorming). Let’s get started.

What is brand essence?

Brand essence is the soul of a brand and acts as a foundation so the brand appears consistent and authentic. It defines what a brand stands for, shapes the overall identity, and aims to invoke a particular thought, feeling, or emotion in consumers. Typically, it’s expressed in two to three words.

Like people, brand essence can’t be fake. Consumers can tell when a brand isn’t being true to itself, which can hurt sales and long-term customer loyalty. That’s why companies use brand essence as a guidepost for all future branding efforts, from designing a logo to choosing images for a social media campaign.

Consider the brand essence statements of well-known companies:

• Airbnb – Belong Anywhere
• Patagonia – Responsible and Sustainable
• Starbucks – Rewarding Everyday Moments
• McDonald’s – Consistency
• BMW – Driving Pleasure
• Nike – Authentic Athletic Performance
• The Nature Conservancy – Saving Great Places

All great brands have a distinct essence that keeps customers coming back. Brand expert and author Kevin Keller refers to this as a “brand mantra” and says its purpose is to “define the category of business for the brand and set brand boundaries. It should also clarify what is unique about the brand. It should be memorable…it should be short, crisp, and vivid in meaning.”

If you create a brand essence that’s unique and leaves a lasting impression on customers, you’re sure to see a number of benefits.

Importance of Brand Essence

Most marketers know that strong branding can bring in customers and build life-long loyalty. But its essence is what makes people fall in love with a brand and continually choose it over competitors. Beyond driving sales, here’s how brand essence can elevate your business.

• Inform brand decisions: It’s much easier to create values, define a mission statement, write taglines, design new products, and build marketing assets when your brand has a north star guiding every decision. Without a clear brand essence, your company can take more time than necessary to make key decisions. This can cause frustration for your team and confusion for customers as everyone struggles to understand what your brand truly values.
• Define your competitive advantage: Your brand can’t be everything to everyone, but a brand essence helps you figure out what target audience to focus on. For BMW, this means attracting buyers who want a great driving experience. But for Volvo, it’s finding customers who prioritize safety. Knowing your competitive advantage hones your efforts and makes it easier to show customers what sets your brand apart.
• Build trust: A study by Edelman found that 81% of consumers need to trust a brand before making a purchase. A brand essence can help build trust by highlighting the emotive and human elements of your brand. For instance, consumers trust Apple to “Think Different” because of its consistent branding and innovative product track record. When choosing your essence, consider words that reflect the brand and embody the human characteristics of your target audience.

Now that you understand how brand essence influences your company’s efforts and customers’ perceptions, let’s go through a few examples to inspire your brainstorming.

5 Brand Essence Examples

It’s easy to think of a favorite brand’s tagline or logo, but the brand essence isn’t always so obvious. As you look through the brand essence statement examples, see if you can connect the company’s spirit to its marketing campaigns, visual identity, or product offerings.

1. Dyson: “Efficiency”

Efficiency is the crux of Dyson’s DNA. The company that gave us the first bagless vacuum makes brand essence clear through its line of vacuums, hand dryers, hair care, lighting, and air cleaners. All of the products are designed to make customers’ lives more efficient by getting rid of cords and bags and combining multiple products into one.

2. Arc’teryx: “Unrivaled Performance”

Arc’tryx is a Canadian outdoor gear company that’s known for its high prices and high-quality products. The brand essence revolves around unrivaled performance, which translates into an innovative product design process that combines science, engineering, and craftsmanship. Not surprisingly, the brand is named after the first reptile to develop the feather for flight, furthering its core as a company that’s constantly evolving.

3. Trader Joe’s: “Outstanding Value”

Everything about this grocery store centers around providing customers with value — from the products offered in stores to the way it bargains with suppliers. Trader Joe’s takes value to heart, which is why it doesn’t offer coupons, loyalty programs, or membership cards. Instead, the brand outlines the steps it takes to keep costs low and shoppers happy.

Image Source

4. Ralph Lauren: “Success and the American Dream”

What you wear matters to Ralph Lauren customers — it signals status and a commitment to the American Dream. The brand captures this feeling in its brand essence statement by focusing on the Lauren family story and creating ad campaigns that feel like snapshots into the life of America’s elite.

Image Source

5. Adobe: “Creativity for All”

Adobe caters to a wide variety of customers, but creativity is at the core of every product and campaign. This brand essence has helped Adobe become one of the top choices for creatives, from product and web designers to artists. It’s easy to see how creativity unites the brand’s identity and attracts anyone looking for design software.

Image Source

While a strong brand essence is essential, it takes work to create one. You can get started by following the guidelines below.

Brand Essence Framework

To come up with a brand essence that fits your company and resonates with customers, you want to make sure it includes several elements. As you work through each guideline, try to find a balance between being authentic and aspirational to build trust and evoke an emotional connection.

• Make it relevant – Brand essence is a feeling or attitude that customers desire. For instance, Apple used the rise of personal computers to introduce its “Think Different” attitude and compete against Microsoft by targeting young contrarians.
• Make it timeless – An essence should be relevant today and consider how the brand may expand in the future. You don’t want to change your brand essence often (or ever) since it’s the core of your company’s identity. If Jeep suddenly changed its essence from “Adventurous” to “Luxury,” buyers would be scratching their heads when comparing the off-road SUV to a plush Lexus.
• Make it memorable – People remember short, succinct, and punchy messaging, like Nike’s “Just do it.” While that’s the company’s tagline, it highlights the importance of keeping your brand essence statement two to three words. Branding experts Al and Laura Ries put it best when they said “a brand becomes stronger when you narrow its focus.”
• Make it distinct – A brand’s uniqueness highlights how it’s different from competitors. Travelers who look for unique stays on Airbnb are usually not the same people who get elite status through the Hilton Honors program.
• Make it believable – Your brand essence must be authentic for customers to believe in it and hand over their hard-earned dollars. If every experience with Disney wasn’t full of wonder, people would doubt the brand’s “magical” essence. You can earn people’s trust by keeping all brand touchpoints consistent so the essence is always there and always clear.

Shaping a strong brand essence is no simple task, but it’s worth the effort to build a reputable brand. Once you distill your company’s core down to its most basic essence elements, you’ll be able to define your brand identity, make quick brand decisions, and build customers’ trust.

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the internet and social media helped us connect with our coworkers, friends, and loved ones during times of extreme isolation.

But, our web-based lifestyle wasn’t perfect. While you could see and talk to people, interactions still felt distant and impersonal. And, despite having every delivery app at our fingertips, we still missed going outside, exploring the world, and experiencing life to its fullest.

And, for a small — but growing — group of people, that’s where the metaverse came in.

Although metaverses are nothing new, we started hearing more buzz than ever about futuristic virtual reality worlds that could allegedly supplement or expand on our own. As more people began to dive deeper into online gaming, social media, and purchasing VR headsets and accessories, the opportunities of the metaverse gained even more intrigue.

Then, in late of 2021, Mark Zuckerberg shocked the world when he announced the change of his company’s name from Facebook to Meta, adding that it would represent a new evolution of the company’s offerings.

Soon after, Meta’s first metaverse, Horizon Worlds was opened up to anyone with an Oculus or Meta headset. Almost immediately, fans began to refer to this as “the metaverse.”

But, there’s more to the story of the metaverse, and a lot of things you’ll need to know before even asking yourself, “Is investing in a trendy VR world right for my brand?”

In this post, I’ll walk you through what “the metaverse” really is, how you can access all sorts of virtual worlds, and where the brand potential lies in this emerging space.

Does Meta own the Metaverse?

Because Facebook changed its name to Meta, and has a thriving virtual reality platform, you might think the company owns “the metaverse.” In reality –- and virtual reality –- Meta owns one of many metaverses. While Meta’s VR universe is called Meta Horizon Worlds, and is accessed through the company’s Meta VR headsets (formally titled Oculus), there are many other metaverses that early adopters have been using for years.

What happens in the Metaverse?

To explain what happens in the metaverse, we’ll dive into a few types of metaverses and explain what you or your brand can do in each. But, before we dive deeper, here are some definitions you’ll want to remember (and links to more context, courtesy of the HubSpot Blogs and our partners at The Hustle):

Metaverse Terms to Know

• NFT: The much-buzzed-about non-fungible token is a finite or unique digital token, such as digital art, avatar clothing, or VR-based objects, that you can purchase ownership of or stake in. Deep in its blockchain-based coding, there’s a certificate saying that you own or have ownership in the item. (And, yes. There’s much more complexity here than a quick definition can explain.)
• NFT Real-Estate: A non-fungible digital house or piece of land in the metaverse that can be invested in, sold, or even rented out. Buyers get a digital deed or certificate saying they own the real estate.
• Blockchain: A digital ledger of transactions, certificates, and contracts.
• Cryptocurrency: Digital money that you can invest in, sell, or use to purchase products online or in a metaverse. Each type of digital coinage has different values. Popular examples include Bitcoin, Ether, and Dogecoin.
• Open-source: Open to all users for editing and not usually controlled by a brand or single entity. Open-source metaverses can be founded by developers who market and do maintenance on the world, but might not have an obvious company owning them – or customer service when something goes wrong. However, they often allow much more freedom to the users.

Now that you have those quick definitions, let’s take a look at some of the most discussed metaverses out there.

3 Popular Metaverses (And What You Can Do in Each)

While there are many metaverses out there, and we’d love to talk about them all, I’ve focused this post around the three metaverses that are most buzzed about today.

And, because many metaverses have a lot of similar opportunities for brands, I’ll break down brand opportunities (and show you examples of them) in the following section.

Meta Horizon Worlds

Meta’s universe can be accessed by Meta headsets sold by the company (which were previously called Oculus headsets). While this universe can only be accessed by headsets at the moment, Mark Zuckerberg has already discussed trying to expand the experience to contact lenses and even holographic experiences in the far term. Although this metaverse is potentially the most well-known to late adopters and marketers, it is one of the newest major metaverses.

Once you enter Horizon Worlds, you can do almost anything that all earlier metaverses allowed users to do, including:

• Creating your avatar or virtual likeness.
• Talking to other people in the Meta Horizons world.
• Playing games with other Meta Horizons users.
• Asking a Meta support rep (also in the metaverse) questions.
• Teleporting to different locations and experiences within the universe.
• Purchase digital products, such as virtual clothing, from the Horizons Marketplace.

Two key things that make Horizon Worlds different from other major metaverses we’ll discuss below are:

1. That it’s centralized, which means it has a known owner who regulates and manages the platform. When you’re in Horizon Worlds, you agree to terms of use and must follow rules or you can be ejected. Meanwhile, other decentralized metaverses have minimal rules, management, and regulations since they usually have initial creators or developers, but no current or obvious owners. In fact, to ensure that users are behaving and learning how to use the Horizon Worlds space, virtual Meta staffers are usually present in each public space:
2. You can’t buy land or monetize your brand in Horizon Worlds just yet. While Horizon Worlds does offer a general marketplace, there are no other clear ways to generate revenue on the platform. Meanwhile, on other metaverses that we’ll discuss below, one major goal of users is to buy, sell, or monetize virtual real-estate.

The Sandbox

The Sandbox is one of the oldest decentralized gaming metaverses. Created by gamers around the globe, the platform has gained interest from VR and NFT investors. Once you enter this metaverse, your character can buy and build on land with crypto called MANA. From there, you can sell your land, rent it out, meet people, make connections, and even get paid and buy more land via Sandbox jobs – like architect or landlord. Sandbox, which reminds me of an extreme LEGO universe, is pretty easy to access and create an account on when visiting its website.

Because of its age and credibility in the VR world space, Sandbox is home to many affluent early adopters who already own real estate there, including major gaming companies like Attari and the rapper Snoop Dogg. Additionally, because land plots and the number of SAND tokes that will be created in the game are considered “finite,” the price of the real estate and tokens in this metaverse have skyrocketed in recent years.

Image Source

Decentraland

One of the most popular metaverses that early adopters have explored and invested in is Decentraland. Created in Argentina by developers Ari Meilich and Esteban Ordano, has been notable for its vast cities and millions of dollars in virtual land and NFT real estate. In fact, a simple Google search reveals that there are already a number of virtual real-estate agencies that specialize in selling NFT land in Decentraland and other metaverses.

As its title would hint, Decentraland is also decentralized, meaning that it has no specific owner or manager and anyone can create in this virtual open platform. Unlike Horizon Worlds, it can only be accessed by personal computers.

A lot of information to consider and unsure where to start? Below is a comparison chart to help. 

Metaverse Comparison Chart
Name	Meta Horizon Worlds	Decetraland	Sandbox
Years Active	Last than 1 year	5 years	10 years
Estimated Number Users	300K reported users (unknown daily users)	300K reported users (18,000 reported daily users)	1 million reported users (16,000 reported landowners)
Owner	Meta	Decentralized (no known owner)	Decentralized (no known owner)
Availability	US and Canada for 18+ users only	Unknown but likely global	Unknown but likely global
Equipment Needed to Access	A Meta or Oculus VR headset	Various VR Headsets or a personal computer	Various VR Headsets or a personal computer
Cost to Access	Accessed with an Oculus or Meta headset (prices vary)	Free to access, but users need a digital wallet with tokens called MANA and LAND to access most experiences.	Free to access, but users  need a digital wallet with tokens called SAND to access most experiences.
How to Get Around	Teleportation	You must purchase a virtual car or teleportation device	You must purchase a virtual car or teleportation device
Gaming Opportunities	Various free team and individual games	Users can play and create games that other users can play.	Users can play and create games that other users can play.
Social interactions with other users	Yes	Yes	Yes
NFT Art/Product Shopping	Not yet.	Yes	Yes
NFT Real Estate	Not yet.	Yes	Yes
Virtual Events	Yes	Yes	Yes
Virtual customer service available?	Yes	No	No
Crypto-currency and USD conversion (as of March 2022)	You can’t make purchases in Horizon Worlds.	MANA (1 MANA = $2.69 USD)	SAND (1 SAND = $3.14 USD)
Price of Land	You cannot purchase real estate in Horizon Worlds.	By the end of 2021, 1 plot of land cost over 4,000 MANA or $15,000 USD	By the end of 2021, 1 plot of land cost more than 3,150 SAND or $9900 USD

5 Early Opportunities for Brands in the Metaverse [+Examples]

While each virtual world has slightly different experiences, environments, and audience targets associated with it, many of them host a handful of opportunities for brands that want to embrace emerging marketing strategies. Here are just a few ways brands can leverage some of the metaverses that exist today:

1. Inbound Sales and Networking

Today, many marketers and sales reps alike find ourselves messaging, zooming, and emailing prospects to tell them about our product or service. And, rarely, we might go to a networking event or meeting where we talk to prospects face to face.

Now, imagine doing all of this – but digitally with avatars. In almost all metaverses, you can explore a place and talk to other users for free. This means that if you sell or market a B2C product, you could casually discuss the product in conversation, as you would with anyone else you’re networking with, and then tell users where they can learn more. While you still might not be able to send them to a branded experience, virtual shop, or have them click a link to your website just yet, you can still spread the word to multiple people on a more personal level than an email without leaving your seat.

If you work in the VR or metaverse space, you could also leverage sales in a more extreme way by selling NFT items, like art, real estate, or virtual cars. While it seems many virtual salespeople don’t record transactions and post them for the world to see, here’s a video of someone buying a car from a dealership salesman in a metaverse.

If you’re wondering, “Where could I go to ensure I’m talking to the right people?”, one opportunity is attending virtual events, which I’ll discuss next.

2. Virtual Events

While virtual events are still being developed for general businesses on Horizon Worlds, Decentraland, Sandbox, and other virtual worlds host many landowners that are will to rent out their virtual space for events or virtual parties. Similarly, some companies and entrepreneurs have also built their own lands with the goal of using them for events like NFT art shows, conferences, or meetups.

If you can afford to run, host, or even sponsor part of an event, you can gain crypto revenue or awareness from users who are interested in the topic, while also gaining awareness for your product or service.

For example, here’s a video of a TikTok user who attended an Afro Tech conference in a metaverse.

While INBOUND and HubSpot haven’t hosted a conference in a metaverse just yet, we too are embracing the possibility of virtual events by building out a similar platform for INBOUND 2022‘s hybrid attendees. If you’d like to get a virtual conference experience without committing to a metaverses digital currency or platform, consider registering for our event.

If you don’t have the budget for creating virtual events just yet, you can still consider attending, buying a ticket for one, or even speaking at one. While there, you can use it as a networking opportunity to get to know others in your industry or potential prospects who might even buy your product outside of VR.

3. Influencer and Community Marketing

In any metaverse, you could potentially talk to a handful of people at once, while casually mentioning your product or even wearing NFT clothes with your logo. You could also pay people who are familiar with their metaverse or selling in the metaverse to continue to spread the word about your brand or services for you.

But, influencer and community marketing might not just stop there. If you find that your metaverse has an audience of users that are interested in your product, service, or industry, you can work to bring them together – even if you can’t afford or figure out how to schedule a virtual event.

For example, you could host a meetup on your brand’s virtual land or in a free-to-access metaverse space for those who want to chat about topics rated to your industry or product. And, while you’re there, you could just open the door to casual conversation. Or, you could all join a fun game and bond, then get to know each other in a less active space.

Not only will you network, show credibility, and spread the word about your product, but you’ll build a group of people that are interested in your industry, similar topics, or your brand.

4. Owning Branded Locations, Games, Avatar Fashion, and/or Shops

In many metaverses, including Decentraland and the Sandbox, brands with a solid budget can buy and brand real estate, such as art galleries or stores where you can purchase NFT products. While Meta Horizon Worlds doesn’t allow this opportunity yet, it will no doubt be an expanded feature eventually, but might be more structured than decentralized worlds that have no owners or rules.

One example that a brand that embraced the metaverse, VR, and NFTs to drive both awareness and crypto revenue was Gucci who sponsored a “Gucci Garden” on the platform Roblox. When entering the Gucci Garden, a VR avatar could walk up to a wall of Gucci products, select clothing, accessories, or bags they wanted to buy, and purchase them as an NFT.

Although Roblox falls more into a gaming category rather than a full metaverse, something similar could be done in Decentraland, Sandbox, or even Horizon Worlds (if brands gain more advertorial opportunities in the future.)

Another more experiential example is the prospect of Welmart stores in Meta Horizon Worlds. In 2021, Walmart released a demonstration of how they envisioned a metaverse store that helps people in VR order physical Walmart products that would then be shipped to their actual home addresses:

Although Horizon Worlds is just exploring how to monetize experiences for businesses, Decentraland and Sandbox, among other metaverses, have had digital shops (primarily for buying NFTs), car and teleportation device dealerships, art galleries, and paid brand experience locations for years.

5. Advertising on or Sponsoring Metaverse Content

While this might be more challenging and a tad riskier in decentralized metaverses, brands can provide money to creators, events, games, experiences, shops, and galleries to get their products, logos, or NFTs featured or mentioned.

One way to get started could be by researching NFT land owners with a history of advertising, which can be done on the web, as well as in VR. One business I came across while doing research for this piece was NFT Plazas. The brand claims to own NFT real-estate and plazas where many avatars spend time and will project ads, QR codes, or special digital experiences on their buildings or plaza signs.

Here’s a reel that highlights some of its work in Decentraland:

While this is a great way to spread the word about your brand if you don’t have the means to build your own virtual land, you’ll ideally want to make sure you know who the creators are in the real, non-virtual world, ensure you trust them, look out for scams, and use easy-to-understand paper trails or contracts whenever you can.

Remember, when you’re in a decentralized world, there won’t always be a customer service rep or legal entity to reach out to if you provide coinage to avatars that can’t be found later.

Should you invest in the metaverse?

Today, metaverse audiences are still growing, there’s still a learning curve for users, and some brands and audiences won’t be able to afford virtual world investments in the near future.

But, it’s important to remember that the metaverse is getting both the same hype and skepticism as social media did when MySpace and Facebook began to launch. In a world where technology is quickly evolving and improving, what’s not accessible to all today will be used by most people in the future.

If you’re an enterprise brand that can afford to take risks and explore emerging virtual worlds, it might be worth considering some of the marketing strategies above, or even creating a task force to determine if the metaverse is a worthy investment for you.

For other brands, it might be a while before you really need to start considering metaverse opportunities. But, that doesn’t mean you should wipe it from your emerging trend radar completely. In the coming year, a few things could really change the game for brands in the VR space, including:

• New Meta Horizon Worlds Features. Everytime Meta has launched or purchased a platform, its next major step has been figuring out how to monetize the content and build brand tools for it. Horizon Worlds could be no different. And, because Meta platforms have been a trusted source for ad revenue and brands for years, expect to see brands flocking here when and if monetization tools are launched.

• Metaverse competition: Like social media platforms, there are also new metaverses popping up all the time, and their creators (even if we don’t know them) all want them to be superior to pull in more users. This could create metaverse competition and these worlds could see new features aimed to pull in more users and more monetization opportunities for all sorts of brands. Similarly, large companies that specialize in VR might opt out of using decentralized worlds and might follow-suit of Meta by developing their own worlds.
• More accessible technology: Currently, VR users must have an incredibly strong internet connection and a computer, while Horizon Worlds users must have an Oculus or Meta headset (starting at $300). While most people around the globe can access the internet, millions still struggle to access high speeds that would allow for VR. But, as VR gains more interest and we see the launch of technology like 5G and Web3 in many global regions, these experiences could require less machinery and lower finances to access.

Ultimately, the metaverse is vast, complex, and growing. And although we’ll do our best to keep you up to date, you’ll need to do some digging and understand your persona to know if investing time, money, or crypto in it is right for your brand.

To keep up with the latest emerging trends and tips, subscribe to daily emails from the HubSpot Blog for industry-specific advice, or The Hustle for general news and trends.

During my days as a journalist, I saw many different forms of recruitment take place. It was common to see reporters and photographers recruited from all over the country to work with the team.

It was also common to see employees move to different positions internally. A reporter could go from reporting outside to producing a show in-house. Associate producers could rise in rank and become executive producers.

This type of internal recruitment isn’t common only in newsrooms. Many companies recruit from their current roster of employers rather than recruit externally. Internal recruitment is often faster and less time consuming. On average, the cost to hire someone is about $4,000, according to SmartRecruiters, but hiring internally can cost much less.

With that in mind, you may wonder if internal recruitment is the right move for your business. Here’s everything you need to know:

The internal hire might be from a different department within the company or have a different job title on the same team. This new role could be a promotion in which there is more responsibility and a higher salary. If not a promotion, the change could be a lateral move in which the employee maintains the same level of seniority but may not see a change in compensation.

A company may choose to open job postings only to internal applicants or it may do so before opening the posting to external candidates. This can save time and money — and also ensures folks within your organization have a shot at the upward mobility they desire.

In other cases, internal candidates can apply for the open position, but recruitment efforts may focus on external candidates. This may be because of a lack of interest in the posting among current employees or because the desired skill set doesn’t exist internally.

4 Internal Recruitment Methods

1. Promotions

As mentioned before, a promotion entails moving an employee into a higher position of seniority in which they’re given more responsibility and a higher salary. For example, when the lead news director at my newsroom took a job elsewhere, the assistant news director was recruited internally to take over the role.

2. Transfer

A transfer is when an employee remains within the company but moves to another location. For example, the station I once worked for was owned by a company called TEGNA. TEGNA owned multiple televisions across the country, and it was common for journalists from my station to transfer to other TEGNA stations in a different city or state while still maintaining their same role.

Transfers are often the result of a change in business needs or the employee’s desire to make a change, such as working closer to family or living in their desired climate.

3. Reorganization

It’s normal for businesses to grow, shift priorities, or merge with other entities. In these cases, reorganization might occur. It can take the form of employees being shifted to other teams or leadership taking on less administrative duties and working directly with employees to keep up with increased demands.

An example of reorganization happened back in 2017 when Dow Jones announced that its flagship publication, The Wall Street Journal, would be reorganized to shift its focus away from print and into a digital strategy. New jobs were created and employees were re-allocated into new roles that were focused on the publications digital presence and goals.

4. Role Change

Usually, a role change is not a promotion. In this case, an employee may be recruited laterally, meaning they maintain the same level of authority but are operating in a different role.

This is a great solution if an employee is showing skills and interests outside of their current role. An example of this occurred when a television producer at my former TV station showed immense talent for creating content for the station’s website and social media. When a digital producing role opened up, that television producer was selected and a lateral move was made from television producer to digital producer.

Legal Implications

Regardless of the method of internal recruitment used, employers must create a policy that is fair and equitable for internal applicants, according to the Society of Human Resource Management.

In this policy, clear expectations must be established for employees who wish to apply. These expectations must be implemented consistently and communicated effectively throughout the company.

It’s also important to remember that federal laws prohibit employment discrimination based on:

• Age
• Citizenship
• Disability
• Family and/or medical leave use
• Genetic information
• Military service
• National origin
• Pregnancy
• Race
• Religion
• Sex, gender identity, and/or sexual orientation

3 Advantages of Internal Recruitment

1. Talent Retention

Hiring within your company can send a message to your employees that there are clear opportunities for advancement. This can motivate your best employees to stay long term because their hard work will pay off.

2. Cost Effectiveness

Often, the benefits of hiring externally cannot outweigh those of hiring from your current pool of employees. That’s because internal recruitment eliminates costly job board fees, time-consuming rounds of interviews, and pricey background checks.

3. Shorter Learning Curve

Chances are that whoever you hire internally will already have a solid understanding of the company’s culture, practices, and processes, thus lessening the time it would take to get acclimated to a new role.

3 Disadvantages of Internal Recruitment

1. Workforce Gap

When a position is filled internally, you’re moving an employee from one role to another. This effectively closes one gap but creates another that needs to be filled.

2. Stagnation

One of the perks of recruiting externally is that employees from outside the company can bring unique perspectives and innovative processes to propel the company forward.

This can be the opposite for internal hires who are likely to work using the same processes and ideas they’ve been using throughout their time in the company. Lack of fresh approaches and ideas can create stagnation in the workplace and can put the business behind competitors.

3. Lack of Skills

With internal recruitment, there is a chance your current roster of employees may not have the right set of skills for the position you’re looking to fill. And while internal hires typically require less training than external hires, you may run the risk of spending more time and money training the internal hire if they don’t possess all the qualities to succeed in their new role.

In those cases, it would be better to recruit externally to find a candidate who already has the necessary skills from previous experience.

So, is internal recruitment right for your business?

Ultimately, there are many factors that determine whether internal recruitment is the right choice over external recruitment. If your company has a position to be filled and you have one or more employees who could be successful candidates, then recruiting internally could be a timely and cost effective choice. However, if your employees do not currently seem to be the right fit, or you’re concerned about limiting your candidate pool, then it wouldn’t hurt to expand to external recruiting.

Every marketer faces different challenges. And, ever since 2020, the ways we’ve had to pivot, adjust campaigns, and address challenges has been unlike anything many of us have had to do before.

And, even if you’ve somehow navigated the past two years without any surprising or tough marketing challenges, there’s likely at least one task, tactic, or strategy you’ve always wanted to improve upon. 

Today, marketing is so fast-paced that it can be difficult to identify which areas you’ll want to develop to facilitate stronger growth in 2022 and beyond. For that reason, it’s important to pause for a moment and reflect on the biggest challenges marketers feel they’re facing this year.

Below, let’s review the current global marketing issues impacting the industry, according to data from HubSpot’s 2022 Marketing Industry Trends Report and marketing experts.

1. Training Marketing Talent

While you might expect the top challenge to involve one of the many KPIs marketers are goaled around, our research shows the top barrier facing marketing teams today is actually much more fundamental than quantifiable goals or simply hiring top-tier talent who will easily hit them.

In fact, according to our survey of over 500+ marketing professionals, the top overall challenge marketing departments are facing is team training.

Why? When you hire someone or get hired by your dream company, your the work needed to grow doesn’t just stop at the offer letter.

If you’re a manager or marketing leader, you’ll need to take time to teach that employee how your company works. This could include voice and messaging training, helping them understand buyer personas, or getting them acclimated to the tech stack or processes you use. 

Meanwhile, regardless of whether you’re a seasoned marketing team employee or new hire, you might wish your company had more opportunities for training, onboarding, or professional development that could allow you to excel and learn while also hitting your KPIs.

Why It’s a Challenge

Unfortunately, in the fast-paced world of marketing, it can be challenging for leaders to find the time to train while employees might not have the time or money to access professional development outside of their day to day tasks. 

That’s why it’s not shocking that 30% of marketers say that team training was the biggest challenge of 2021 and 21% say it will continue to be athe top challenge for marketing departments in 2022. 

What Can You Do?

The first step to solving this problem, regardless of whether you’re an individual contributor or manager, is reframing what “training” means to you. Remember that even the most top-tier, ROI-generating unicorn marketer will need time to get used to how your company works and grow as an employee and potential leader.

Ultimately, businesses should think of training and professional development offerings as indirect ROI-generators. Ultimately, even the most top-tier, unicorn talent will need time to get used to how your company works.

On one end of the spectrum, companies and leadders can retain employees and save money on talent searches because of their offerings. Meanwhile, their talent will learn more, grow more, become even more competitive, and — most importantly — feel more fulfilled and supported in their role. Additionally, you don’t always have to hire instructors or take time out of your day to train. For example, you can:

• Encourage project managers or individual contributors looking for visibility to present experiments, strategies, or learnings at events, weekly meetings, or annual team conferences.
• Book an annual professional development day during a slow season where all employees are asked to take a free online course of their choosing and report back on how it went.
• Consider hosting quarterly or bi-annual new employee or new manager training days where newer hires and new managers can plan to go to in order to train with minimal impact on their quarterly projects. 
• Create evergreen training videos, internal quizzes, or other resources that you can send to new or newly promoted employees on their first day.
• Have managers develop 100-Day Plans for new hires or those that transfer to their team which includes training assignments, resources to read through, and a contact list of people to meet or schedule training with.  

On the other hand, if you’re an individual contributor, participating in your company’s professional development training and/or taking free or affordable courses online could help you negotiate a stronger role and salaries for yourself at your company or elsewhere. 

If your company doesn’t offer training or reimbursement for it, check out this list of free courses. 

2. Generating Traffic and Leads

While you might have been surprised by the top challenge, you probably aren’t surprised by No. 2. As you might expect, generating traffic and leads is always top of mind with marketers. And, even if teams are doing well with these metrics, they’ll always want to improve them. 

In our survey, 27% of marketers across industries believe generating traffic and leads will be their top challenge in 2022. 

Why It’s a Challenge

John Lee, Head of Evangelism at Microsoft Advertising, believes that generating leads will be a particularly big challenge for marketers. He told me, “Getting quality traffic isn’t a challenge today, and likely won’t be tomorrow. There has been growth in search and content marketing in 2021. New channels continue to surface and show promise, too (TikTok or audio chat rooms anyone?).”

Lee adds, “‘Sea change’ is the phrase that comes to mind for the state of digital marketing today. Change in the realm of privacy, identity, and changes to cookies. Change in the form of lost data clarity (will cookie-based conversion tracking continue to work, GA4, access to search queries, etc.). And all of this sits within the context of change to how and where we work and economies in flux as the world continues to move through the pandemic.”

Fortunately, privacy changes don’t mean the end of generating leads — it simply means learning how to re-think strategy.

As Lee told me, “To weather this storm of change, marketers need to be vigilant in monitoring and understanding industry-wide acceptance of privacy protocols and updates to search, social, and display/native platforms (consumer-side and marketing/advertising-side). And last, but not least — lean into the power of peer support and networking for sharing best practices and learning.”

Additionally, marketers are struggling with producing enough demand for their content. And as the year’s progress and competition stiffens, this will only become truer. With so many options of platforms for marketers to publish their content and even more ways to promote it, it’s hard to know where to focus your efforts.

What Can You Do?

When it comes to creating content that produces enough traffic and leads, marketers should ask themselves two questions: Are you truly creating high-quality content — the type of content people would pay for? And, do you know the type of content your audience actually wants?

For instance, when asked how they’d most like to learn about a product or service, 69% said they’d prefer to watch a short video over a text-based article, infographic, or ebook. This means, if most of your product-related content is in ebook format, you could be missing out on the majority of consumers who prefer video.

Additionally, the length of videos produced by businesses has increased (albeit more slowly than the increased creation rate of short video). While short-form video is still King/Queen, the number of videos in the 30-60 minute category grew 140% in 2021, compared to 2019 — suggesting that long-form video content is still a viable option for companies.

To ensure you’re creating content that resonates best with your audience, you’ll want to refer to analytics often. Use effective tools to properly track the types of content that perform best with your audience to generate more leads in 2022.

Additionally, once you know you’re creating the type of content your audience wants, the focus shifts to promoting it in a way that makes your audience take notice.

More than ever before, people are being flooded with content. Consumers don’t have to use a search engine to find answers. Instead, articles fill their news feed or buzz in their pocket via mobile notifications. To keep up, consider exploring alternate distribution methods — like social media or podcasting — to increase brand awareness.

Lastly, if you have the budget for online advertising, one example of a helpful distribution method is by promoting your content with HubSpot’s LinkedIn Ads Integration. Learn more about it here.

3. Demonstrating ROI of Marketing Activities

Measuring the ROI (return on investment) of your marketing activities has remained a top marketing challenge globally year-over-year.

In our survey. 28% of marketers saw it as their top challenge in 2021 while 21% of marketers expect to see this continue to be their biggest issue in 2022. 

Measuring and gaining ROI continues to be a vital way for marketers to understand the effectiveness of each particular marketing campaign or piece of content. It also can be what decision-makers at your company rely on when determining if they’ll invest more in your project, deparment, or team headcount in the future. 

Ultimately, proving ROI often goes hand-in-hand with making an argument to increase budget: No ROI tracking, no demonstrable ROI. No ROI, no budget.

Why It’s a Challenge

Although return on investment is a crucial stat that shows your campaigns success or progress, tracking the ROI of every single marketing activity isn’t always easy, especially if you don’t have two-way communication between your marketing activities and sales reports.

What Can You Do?

Providing ROI often comes down to using effective analytics measurement tools. For instance, Beautiful.ai Director of Marketing Kim Giroux told me, “Marketers are constantly challenged to illustrate the ROI of their efforts and [this year] is no exception. Proving ROI doesn’t always have to mean extra work or effort though. In fact, certain technologies bake ROI into existing work processes.”

Giroux adds, “Take presentation software, for instance. Savvy marketers today can create and use pitch decks with built-in presentation analytics that offer real-time data — such as how much time was spent viewing individual slides. Armed with these insights, marketers can better gauge stakeholder interest, inform their strategies, and adjust their campaigns.”

Christina Mautz, CMO of Moz, believes measuring ROI comes down to redefining the marketing process as a whole. She told me, “My biggest challenge, and one all marketers face in providing ROI, is the prospect of meeting traditional KPIs in the modern workspace.”

Mautz says, “Instead of leads and trade show success, marketing wins are now largely digital: engaging prospects and generating more clicks, downloads, and page visits.”

CMO of Moz Christina Mautz says, “To better measure marketing progress, we have to redefine the marketing process, encouraging collaboration with sales and reaching KPIs together.”

“For example, statistics such as page visits per sale or rising higher in the search engine results page (SERP) give marketers and SEOs tangible evidence as to how their work is meeting their ROI. New buying patterns and a customer-centric world require a divergence from the old, but measuring ROI will look far different than it did before and some leaders may not understand how or why.”

When it comes to providing ROI, there’s a strong case to be made for dedicating time and resources to establishing links between marketing activities and sales results.

This means using both marketing software (like HubSpot) and a CRM solution (like HubSpot’s free CRM) and then tying them together to close the loop between your marketing and sales efforts with a service-level agreement (SLA). That way, you can directly see how many leads and customers are generated through your marketing activities.

4. Justifying Your Budget

How can you create a winning marketing campaign without a budget? The truth is, it’s pretty hard. But, even when you have a great, revenue-generating idea, you still usually need to get your budget approved by a higher-up.

As the global pandemic began, some companies didn’t have the means to increase marketing budgets or shifted budgets to other key priorities like paying staff or operations teams.

But, in 2022, marketers are running into a good problem to have. With the importance of marketing, online content, and digital media being proven time and time again for businesses during the pandemic, marketers actually began to see budget increases.

In 2021, more than 80% of marketers’ budgets increased or stayed the same as in 2021 (with over 40% saying budgets increased). Moving into 2022, 48% of marketers expected their budget to increase in 2022. 

While this is great news for marketers, it poses a new set of unique challenges that they might not have dealt with before. 

Why It’s a Challenge

Securing a budget has always been a pressing challenge for marketing globally. And, while marketers seem to be getting what they need for budget in 2022, companies could be eager to shift back to pre-panddemic strategies of placing money into sales, facilities, and other departments in the future. 

Now that marketers have their budget, they’ll need to fight to keep it and grow it even more. 

And often, getting and keeping more budget is easier said than done — especially for smaller organizations that aren’t working with sizable or flexible marketing spend.

But the key to securing more money for your team might not be that complex. Here’s what you can do.

What Can You Do?

The key to unlocking budget lies in being able to prove the ROI of your marketing efforts (as we’ve noted above). Use your whole budget to demonstrate need, but also ensure you’re spending money on things that will provide high performance, like high-traffic, lead-gen, or revenue-generating projects or headcount.

According to our research, organizations that can calculate ROI are more likely to receive higher budgets.

Again, success with inbound marketing also plays a large role in driving higher budgets. Effective strategies obviously produce results and make a strong case for increasing your budget. But remember, inbound marketing is a long game. If you get off to a slow start, you shouldn’t back off — in fact, you might consider doubling down.

To learn more about how to understand and leverage marketing ROI, check out this simple guide.

5. Managing Your Website

In 2021, 64% of companies said they were investing in website upgrades. Meanwhile, 27% of survey participants said that managing their website was the top challenge in that year, with a chunk more saying they will continue to rise to this challenge in 2022. 

And, honestly, this isn’t surprising. If you have an online presence for your business, your website serves as a key place that consumers will go to when researching your brand. And, there, they might find company information, marketing content, and other resources that nurture them into becoming a lead or buying your product. On the marketing end, your site can also be a tool that can help you drive search result and social media awareness when it is optimized and shared around the web. 

Although managing a website is consistently a challenge to marketers, it seems to be growing less threatening. While website management was the third-biggest challenge facing marketers in 2021, it didn’t even make the Top Five Challenge list for 2022. 

However, we’re still placing this challenge in the fourth slot because — more than ever — businesses need to continue growing, improving, and optimizing web experiences, especially on their website. 

Why It’s Still a Challenge

Chances are, your website’s performance is high on your list of priorities — particularly since website speed and performance plays a major role in your website’s SEO ranking. It’s an asset that works around the clock to draw in visitors, convert them, and help you hit your goals.

Issues with website management include a variety of different factors, from writing and optimizing the content to designing beautiful webpages. Here are a few things marketers can do to deal with this challenge.

What Can You Do?

First, try HubSpot’s free website grader to determine how your website stacks up on key metrics including SEO, mobile, and security performance — and how you can improve it. 

If your primary challenge with managing a website has to do with the skills and resources you have available, you aren’t alone. This is especially true for small companies who don’t have all the talent in-house required to cover content, optimization, design, and back-end website management.

One solution? Hire freelancers and agency partners. To find freelancers, we recommend:

• Tapping into your personal and professional network by posting on LinkedIn, Facebook, and other social networks with a description of what you’re looking for.
• Browsing freelance writers and designers based on their portfolios and areas of interest. 
• Browsing HubSpot’s Services Marketplace, which lists a wide variety of designers from partner companies and agencies we’ve deemed credible.

Overall, you can make website management easier on your team by hosting your website on a platform that integrates all your marketing channels like HubSpot’s COS.

Finally, for the projects you want to keep in-house, here is a list of ebooks and guides that might be helpful to your team:

• Run a Website Grader report
• Ebook: Website Redesign Guide
• Ebook: 77 Brilliant Homepage Design Examples
• Ebook: How to Design and Optimize Landing Pages
• Blog: 27 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Website
• Ebook: The Ultimate Workbook for Redesigning Your Website
• Ebook: The Marketer’s Guide to Mobile

6. Reaching Global Audiences

Targeting is a key component of all aspects of marketing.

With 65% of marketers currently marketing internationally, it’s important to have an international strategy.

But, international marketers face a whole bunch of challenges that can make it difficult for your brand to gain awareness globally. And, even if you aren’t on an international marketing team, knowing this data can still help you help them. 

That’s why we asked international marketers specifically about their biggest challenges. The top three they pointed out were:

• Cultural differences (44%): Creating content and marketing campaigns can be different from country to country, or require different strategies entirely due to cultural differences, trends in different regions, and even regulations in different areas. 
• Exchange rates (43%): Creating, tracking, and updating pricing for products, services, or resources can be tricky when exchange rates change nearly all the time. 
• Localization (43%): Along with taking cultural differences and geographical trends into account when creating content, brands going global need to have a localization strategy to ensure their content is readable, searchable, and discoverable in different languages, which can cost a great deal of time and money. 

Why It’s a Challenge

Building or maintaining an international marketing strategy can be a big challenge not only when figuring out the best ways to target and market to different regions, but it can also be hard to organize and optimize your site so it can be easily navigated in different countries.

What Can You Do?

Download our free ebook, The Global Marketing Playbook. There are some really helpful tips in there that’ll help give you some direction on global marketing, including how to identify your top three growth markets, how to explore local trends, and tips on choosing the best localization providers.

Additionally, when marketing to a new region, the most common tactic marketers use is to shift their product offering.

Remember, your website visitors might speak a plethora of different languages and live in totally different time zones.

To make your content appealing to a wide audience, you’ll need to keep your global visitors top-of-mind when creating all your content. This means being aware of seasonal references, translating units of measure and monetary references, and giving translators the tools and permissions to customize and adapt content for a specific audience when they need to.

When in doubt, solve for local or cultural challenges by hiring locally. With a newly hybrid workforce, physical location is no longer a limit to who you can hire. 

Finally, be sure you’re optimizing your website for international visitors, too. For more SEO-related tips and resources on global marketing expansion, take a look at How SEO is Different Around the World, According to HubSpot Content Strategists.

7. Hiring Top Talent

As we mentioned above, 21% of marketers expect hiring top talent to be their biggest challenge in 2022. And, we’re not too surprised. Hiring talent with a great track record takes time, effort, and money — which many marketing teams do not have. 

While hiring is a challenge marketing teams have faced throughout the past five years or so, concerns are continuing to grow even more with news of worker shortage and recruiters competing for applicants that have chosen to shift roles following the global pandemic. 

Why It’s a Challenge

Many companies are shifting more resources to inbound marketing, which means higher and higher demand for top marketing talent. But supply simply isn’t keeping up. From sourcing the right candidates to evaluating for the right skills, finding the perfect person could take months … or more.

What’s more, the type of marketing talent companies are looking for is changing, too. According to a report from LinkedIn, employers are seeking marketers with soft creative skill sets as well as hard technical skills. And the quick rate at which the demand for these jobs are rising has caused a marketing skills gap, “making it difficult to find candidates with the technical, creative, and business proficiencies needed to succeed in digital marketing.”

What Can You Do?

Stefanie Grieser, co-founder of Shine Bootcamp, a professional speaker accelerator for women, understands the challenge of hiring top talent.

She told me, “When I talk to high-growth companies or marketing agencies (and the marketers running those teams), I’ve found that hiring not only top talent, but diverse top talent is extremely challenging. In fact, I was just having a conversation with an agency owner who hires SEO and paid marketers, and he told me, ‘Hiring is still the biggest challenge we face.'”

In 2022, hiring talent can be incredibly difficult — particularly as more companies become competitive with 4-day work weeks, transparent salaries on job descriptions, and the adoption of remote work, which enables companies to hire anywhere.

Fortunately, Grieser provided me with a few tips for employers to stand out from the crowd. She told me, “My suggestion here is for marketers to invest heavily in their employer brand for the long-term. Just like you need to market your product, you also need to dedicate resources, time and energy into marketing your company as an employer.”

Grieser adds, “I would suggest Diversity Tech Co, Tech Ladies, and Girlboss as go-to resources to post jobs. These organizations are run by incredible individuals who really care about diversity, equity, inclusion and intersectionality. I’m also seeing niche communities and job boards pop up. For marketers specifically, I would post your open roles here: Dave Gerhardt Marketing Group, Hey Marketers, and Superpath (which is focused on content marketers specifically).”

While it might seem random to discuss employer branding in a post about marketing challenges, it isn’t — since it’s often the marketing team that cultivates a strong employer brand.

As Grieser points out, “Airbnb has an Engineering and Data Science blog, Intercom has an Instagram dedicated to their design team, and Dooly posts short, LinkedIn posts (see an example here) interviewing their fun team with a few fun hashtags #doolydreamteam and #meetadooligan.”

“Guess who leads this initiative? The marketing team. Think about how you and your team can showcase your work and your team’s work. I won’t try to assume that employer brand falls solely in your court, but as a marketer, you have natural skills that will lend themselves to marketing the company as whole.”

LinkedIn data shows that the number one reason candidates will consider or accept a job is career growth. This means that job listings and a company culture that offers employees a plan for growth will see the most interest from talent.

Other Common Challenges

While our survey identified the biggest challenges in marketing, teams are still facing dozens of other challenges that are worth mentioning, but weren’t ranked as a top concern. Here are just a few:

Content Marketing Challenges

The content marketing world is vast and full of different strategies. And, each major tactic comes with its own challenge. 

For example, if you’re a blogger or video creator, SEO and ranking on Google will likely be one of the biggest hurtles and opportunities your team will face because both blogs and videos are always competing for the covered first-page of search results on Google.

Meanwhile, if you focus on multimedia, such as videos, podcasts, or design, views, view-time, and shareability could be key to nurturing a lead. And, as many marketers struggle with demonstrating ROI — your efforts will be no different. While bloggers could include a form, purchasing link, or landding page URL in their posts which are easier to track, you won’t always be able to easily determine the ROI of content that doesn’t allow URL embedding in it. 

As a content marketer, it’s important to determine which goals are most important to your team and company’s growth and focus first on the challenges that will hinder reaching them. 

Email Marketing Challenges

Over the last year, email marketers have run into all sorts of challenges, such as pandemic-related low engagement and Apple iOS 15‘s privacy protection policy impacting open tracking and open-rate based strategies. 

But, by far, the biggest challenge email marketers will probably always face is gaining and retaining subscribers. In fact, our research found that 19% of marketers see email and social media list growth being a top challenge throughout the year. 

If you identify with our participants, check out this post with more data on why consumers subscribe and unsubscribe from email. 

Affiliate Marketing Challenges

Sometimes, spreading the word requires the help of partners (or affiliates). These could including other companies willing to feature your brand on their site, thought leaders or influencers who will share links to your products and even happy customers who will spread the word in order to get a reward. This is why affiliate marketing has grown much more popular over the years. 

However, despite its popularity, affiliate marketing takes work. To launch a campaign, you’ll need a clear message, process, a commission budget for your partners, and — oh yeah — affiliates who will help you reach your goals. To learn more about how to execute successful and effective affiliate marketing, read this guide. 

Some of these challenges aren’t new.

If you’re a marketer who sees the same challenge year-over-year, it might be a barrier worth putting on your radar. However, some challenges can be industry-wide. Year-over-year challenges across the industry are incredibly important to note, regardless of whether they impact you or not.

Why? These challenges might not just be something you’re facing, but could also be faced by your competitors. If you can figure out how to navigate a reoccurring industry challenge effectively, you could have a leg up against the competition. 

With that said, let’s look back at some of the data we gained las year, 

In 2021, I surveyed over 120 marketers on our HubSpot Marketing Blog subscriber list to gauge the biggest challenges affecting the industry. Here’s a quick graph highlighting what they said. 

By far, “Generating traffic and leads” was marked by nearly half as the biggest challenge marketers are facing this year. 

This challenge was followed by 21% who said “providing ROI for your marketing activities” was their biggest challenge. 

“Delivering an account-based marketing strategy” (8%), “securing enough budget” (6%), and “managing your website” (5%) were the other three notable challenges marketers feel they’re facing in 2021. 

It’s important to note, a few other marketers marked “targeting content for an international audience”, “training your team”, and “hiring top talent” as their top challenge … but these three challenges were marked by less than 3% of the respondent pool, so they’re less statistically significant. 

Identifying Your Marketing Challenges

A thorough analysis of your marketing strategy and its current performance will help you discover where your biggest marketing opportunity lies. This will allow you to focus on improving the areas that need the most attention, so you can start making your marketing far more effective.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in November 2012 and has been updated annually to include new, exclusive HubSpot data and expert insights.