Author Archives: i4lead

A few weeks ago, I planned a trip to Charlotte. I booked my flights, and the day before I was supposed to leave, I tried to find my confirmation email.

I couldn’t find it anywhere. Panicking, I called the airline. “Ma’am, your payment was denied. We emailed you about this.”

Very quickly, I learned the importance of email whitelists.

Fortunately, I was able to book another flight. However, this didn’t save me from the stress or frustration I felt at the airline for being unable to contact me any other way.

At the end of the day, you don’t want a similar experience to happen to your customers. And, as a marketer, nothing is more frustrating than realizing your email marketing tactics, meant to engage and delight new prospects, aren’t working simply because they aren’t being delivered to your prospects’ inboxes.

Here, we’ll explain what email whitelists are, and how you can ensure your company is on the whitelists of your email recipients.

How To Get On Your Email Subscribers’ Whitelists

To get on your email subscribers’ whitelists, you can ask your subscribers to whitelist your email address. Consider using simple language that frames the extra step as a benefit to the recipient:

“To be sure our emails always make it to your inbox, please add us to your email whitelist.”

Ideally, you’d include this message in the first email you send new subscribers to improve email deliverability at the onset of a new relationship.

You might use your own flair and brand voice to craft a compelling email message. HubSpot Agency Partner Yokel Local does this well in their re-engagement campaign aimed at reconnecting with customers who may not be opening their emails:

While the email above is serving a specific function in an email marketing campaign, you can also include a more general whitelist reminder in the footer of all your communications like so:

Keep in mind that not all of your recipients may know what a whitelist is, so you might also want to incorporate steps they need to take. To make the process simple, you can include links to the instructions for the most common web clients like this:

“To be sure our emails always make it to your inbox, please add us as a contact or put us on your whitelist. If you have a Gmail account, follow these instructions. Alternatively, if you use Outlook, click here.”

Just be sure that you accommodate the typical email clients your recipients use, which could even include Apple Mail, Yahoo, and more.

If you want to provide more specific instructions in your email, or if you ever have a need to walk someone through the process, here are the steps for whitelisting and email in the two most common email clients, Gmail and Outlook:

1. Click the gear icon in Gmail and select “See all settings” from the Quick settings menu.

In your Gmail inbox, there is a gear icon in the top right corner. When you select it, you’ll either get a “Quick settings” menu (see below) or a drop-down with several options to choose from.

If you get the “Quick settings” menu, you’ll select See all settings. Otherwise, navigate to the Settings option.

2. Navigate to “Filters and Blocked Addresses” in the top menu.

Once you’re in your expanded settings area, you’ll want to click Filters and Blocked Addresses in the top menu. You’ll end up on a page that looks like this:

3. Select “Create a new filter.”

In Gmail, whitelisting an email actually involves creating a filter.

4. Add a specific email or a whole domain in the “From” field.

The “From” field is where you’ll specify what’s getting whitelisted. In Gmail, you can specify either a specific email address (e.g. [email protected]), or you can whitelist a whole domain by omitting everything before the at symbol (e.g. @domain.com). The former will whitelist one specific email address while the latter whitelists anyone who is sending email from that domain.

5. Click “Create filter.”

From there, you don’t need to input any additional information. Simply click the Create filter button at the bottom of the window (next to the blue Search button).

6. Check “Never send it to Spam” in the checkbox.

Clicking the button brings up a new window. Here’s where you’ll actually specify that what you’re doing is whitelisting. In Gmail, you do this by checking the Never send it to spam box. Doing so will ensure that emails that meet the criteria you specified never end up in Spam or Trash (unless you do so manually).

7. Click “Create filter.”

Once this information is specified, you click the “Create filter” button again, and this creates the whitelist within Gmail.

1. Click the gear icon in Outlook and select “View all Outlook settings.”

Sign in to the web version of Outlook. There will be a gear icon in the top-right corner.

When you select it, a drop-down menu will appear. At the bottom of the drop-down menu, you’ll choose View all Outlook settings.

2. Select “Mail” from the settings menu.

Once you have the Settings page expanded, you’ll want to select Mail from the menu on the right-hand side of the page.

3. Choose “Junk email” from the submenu.

Clicking on Mail gives you access to an expanded submenu where you’ll have the option to click Junk email.

6. Click “Add” under “Safe senders and domains.”

In the “Junk email” window is an option for adding safe senders and domains. Underneath this heading is the word Add with a plus sign next to it. Click this.

7. Enter the email address that you want whitelisted.

This is where you’ll specify what’s getting whitelisted.

8. Choose “Save.”

This will save your whitelist preferences and ensure that emails that fit the criteria don’t make it to your junk email folder in Outlook.

Whitelisting as a Best Practice

Encouraging your email recipients to whitelist your email or domain from the outset of the relationship is an email marketing best practice that can help you improve the deliverability of your messaging. After all, your prospects and customers will likely not take this action on their own unless they are reminded.

However, whitelisting is not the only factor that can help you increase deliverability. You can help mitigate the possibility that your recipients’ email providers mistake your emails as spam by following email marketing best practices, such as:

• Using inbound methods to populate your database rather than buying email lists and sending spam email
• Segmenting your email database to ensure you’re always sending the right email to the right recipients
• Keeping your contact information clean and removing defunct or nonresponsive emails

All of this is so important in ensuring that your message is heard by your prospects and customers so that you stay top of mind and grow your business.

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

In marketing, it seems like the word “brand” is used a lot — the leading brand, off-brand, personal brand … you get the picture.

But there’s often confusion around its meaning in business. What does it entail? Should you hire an expert? Most of all — branding is expensive, right? Not exactly.

As it turns out, there are some creative ways to brand your business effectively without a ton of cash. While it does require time, the ROI won’t go unnoticed — in some cases, it can actually help you save money, while also growing your business.

Building your brand is a crucial part of developing your business. It’s the foundation that will give your organization a voice, identity, value, and awareness among consumers.

Thanks to the plentiful number of resources, tools, and platforms available today, brand building might not be as burdensome (or costly) as you may think.

Read on to learn what makes up a brand and how to develop one on a budget.

How to Brand Your Business

A brand is made up of tangible and intangible elements. For instance, your logo is a visual representation of your company. It evokes emotion and speaks to your brand’s personality. Your identity, on the other hand, isn’t something concrete but it is integral to building a connection with your audience.

These elements work together to create consumers’ perception of your company. So, you must take time crafting each element to ensure your business resonates with your ideal customer.

Don’t know where to start? Alicia Collins, brands campaign manager and copywriter at HubSpot, has a few tips.

She recommends developing a brand playbook that includes:

• Your brand story and positioning
• Your company tagline
• Your company mission statement and key values
• Your target audience
• Information on the voice and tone you want to use when communicating with customers
• High-level copy your team can use in assets

“This playbook will help your team talk about your company clearly and consistently,” said Collins.

Once you know your identity, build strategic messaging to appeal to your audience. Your messaging should convey what makes your brand unique, what you offer, and why consumers should want your products or services. It should also reflect the attributes your target audience wants to see.

Take Oatly, the oat milk brand known for its witty, self-referential marketing campaigns.

The brand’s identity is rooted in ethical food production and sustainability without taking itself too seriously. Oatly reinforces these ideas in its product packaging, social media, and interactions with consumers.

Is this business advice from ‘The Richest man in the world’!? We’re oat’ver the moon to hear you drink so much oat drink, but not everyone wants to consume 2-3 litres within a 5 day window pal. And the last thing we want is to create food waste. Love, Oatly

— Oatly (@oatly)
April 23, 2021

Next up: your brand assets, such as your logo, typography, packaging, colors, visual designs, and content.

A 2019 survey by Promotique found that even if consumers hear positive things about a brand, three out of five won’t use the company if they think its brand image is terrible. The study also revealed that most consumers believe the look and feel of a logo can make or break the brand.

This shows just how important your assets are to brand perception.

“The aim is to use visuals that reflect your brand in a way that also tells your audience what you’re about,” said Harriet Van Tongeren, Canva’s Creative Lead for Nonprofits. “Having timeless but memorable brand livery helps retain awareness of your brand, and consistency helps to develop trust.”

So, don’t skimp on your creative assets. They are an investment that will contribute to the longevity and growth of your brand.

“A great way to ensure consistency on a budget is by developing Canva templates,” said Collins. “With Canva, your team can create beautiful graphics quickly using pre-approved layouts.”

She adds that your team should use the same Hex color codes in your designs, to ensure a consistent visual identity.

Lastly, build a photo library to have images ready to use for your marketing efforts. Once you edit them, use the same editing style to create a cohesive library. 

A theme you may have noticed in this article by now is the importance of consistency.

Van Tongeren says forgetting about this key element is the biggest mistake brands can make. 

“Everything that comes from your brand should be cohesive and feel like part of one family – the language, the tone, everything,” said Van Tongeren.

“The best way to think about this,” she adds, “is by asking whether your audience would be able to tell the material is coming from your brand, even if the logo was removed.”

According to a 2019 State of Brand Consistency study by Lucidpress, brands estimate that their revenue would increase by 33% if they maintained brand consistency across all platforms. 

Having consistent branding helps consumers recognize and identify with your brand. Another way to solidify your brand is by building a community. This can look like:

• Setting up a platform where your audience can meet and interact with you and others in the community, such as a Facebook Group or Slack channel.
• Engaging your audience on social media, through comment sections, polls, and surveys.
• Organizing events, such as webinars and meet-ups.
• Involving your followers in your process behind the scenes.

And as you build your brand, remember that it’s not solely a marketing play.

“Brand extends beyond marketing,” said Collins, “so make sure your brand strategy style aligns with your product strategy, sales strategy, service strategy, and more.”

7 Steps to Market Your Brand on a Budget

You don’t have to break the bank to grow and maintain a brand. In fact, you can complete most of these tips without spending money.

Two things to always remember: Keep your customers in mind and deliver messages that support your company’s mission.

Below, let’s discuss a budget-friendly way to grow better on a budget.

1. Create a persona to understand your audience.

You’ve probably heard that knowing your audience is the key to creating marketing messages that appeal to them. A great way to get to know them? Create a buyer persona: a semi-fictionalized representation of your ideal customer’s values and characteristics.

“The job of the brand assets or ‘livery’ is to visually communicate what each brand wants to tell its audience,” said Van Tongeren. “Before you even think about the visual component, you need to know who your audience is and how you want to be perceived by them.”

Personas also outline your customer’s challenges and where your business fits into solving them.

Below is an example of a buyer persona, Marketing Macy. Notice how my persona lists demographics, like age and education, as well as tools needed for their day-to-day responsibilities, like a CRM.

The needs, goals, and behavior of your potential customers dictate how you convey your product or service. So for Macy, I want to focus on a B2B strategy that caters to her goals of lead generation and brand building.

Understanding those goals helps you determine what kind of media your personas are consuming, what motivates them, and where they “live” online. With this information, you can also develop a compelling, effective brand that reaches the right people.

Make your own buyer persona with HubSpot’s free MakeMyPersona tool, which guides you through a series of questions about your ideal customer.

The tool is fun, interactive, and gets you thinking critically about who you want to reach with your brand and how you want to reach them.

2. Develop an identity and voice for your brand.

Once you’ve identified your buyer personas, your brand can start to take shape.

Create a brand identity — what makes your brand, your brand — and its voice, which is the tone you use in any marketing copy or public communication.

Developing a brand voice and identity is similar to constructing your personas.

But instead of answering questions about your target audience, you’re answering questions that are more introspective to your brand: What are your company’s values, what do they represent, and how do you want people to talk about you?

“The most important part of developing a brand is prework discovery,” said Van Tongeren. “If you’ve done the work and deep-dived into who you are as a brand, figured out what you want to be known for and what your brand personifies then you’re in a great spot to start.”

When you answer these questions, focus on creating content that supports them. Craft compelling emails, blogs, social posts, and multimedia that reflect your company’s mission, values, and how you want to appear to customers.

For example, if one of your values is to be accessible to customers, make your contact information available to users, engage them regularly, and answer their service questions in comment sections.

Developing your voice comes through in the copy of that content. Are you going to use conversational language that relates to customers? Or will it be more beneficial to reach your audience from a technical standpoint?

For example, a lifestyle company with a great understanding of brand identity is Fanm Djanm.

When you navigate to the brand’s website and social channels, what you’ll see is consistency in their branding. Warm and vibrant colors, powerful images of women, and copy that creates a sense of community.

It’s a direct reflection of the brand name, which translates to “strong women” and its celebration of sisterhood and self-love.

Even if you’re not starting from scratch, establishing a strong(er) brand voice can be valuable.

Just take operating system software service Android, for instance. Their 2019 rebrand was a logo re-up, making the design cleaner and modern:

Image Source

The logo came from a need to speak to a shift in audience. Initially, Android’s target audience was the developer, but instead, the company has become more consumer-facing. The change was bred from this analysis.

3. Map out a consistent social media presence.

So, we know who your personas are. And now, we have an idea of what and how to create messaging that connects with them. But where are they?

There’s a good chance you’ll find them on social media, and that’s an opportunity you don’t want to miss. We’ve talked about how effective it is to reach people where they’re already present, and that includes their online behavior.

A 2020 Sprout Social Index report found that 89% of consumers will purchase from the brands they follow on social media. The study also shows that social media users want to learn about brands’ new products and services. In fact, 57% of respondents said it’s the top reason they follow companies on social media.

Now that you have a clear picture of what your audience is interested in, the next step is figuring out where they’re spending the most time on social media.

Don’t worry, you don’t have to play Inspector Gadget to figure this out. Check out competitors — see where they’re most active (and how their language may or may not connect to audiences).

Additionally, look at each social platform’s demographic breakdown to better understand who you’re targeting and where.

For instance, the highest percentage of U.S. men and women who use Facebook are between the ages of 24 and 35. TikTok, on the other hand, tends to have a younger audience, with many users falling in the Gen Z population.

If you find the majority of your audience prioritizes one social network, you’ll have an idea of where to allocate your resources.

However, don’t ignore other sites. When you build a presence on multiple social media platforms, you’ll have an opportunity to diversify how you reach audiences.

Diversifying the methods and channels you use for obtaining new leads helps you to connect with as many potential customers as possible.

Maintaining a presence is just as important as building one — for example, have you ever gone to a brand’s Facebook page, only to find that nothing has been posted in the past three months? Chances are, it didn’t have a positive impact on your perception.

That can be avoided by planning and scheduling social media posts like you would with any marketing calendar. This free Social Media Content Calendar can help.

It’s also important to think ahead of time about the content you’ll be posting on social media and the interactions you want to have with your followers.

One of the top reasons why consumers unfollow brands on social media is irrelevant content and too many ads, according to the Sprout Social Index report.

If you’re wondering what they’re looking for, the survey respondents said it’s engagement first, followed by memorable content and compelling storytelling.

4. Start a company blog.

We’ve covered the importance of blogging before, and it can’t be emphasized enough. It’s a core part of the inbound marketing flywheel, especially the “attract” stage, which turns website browsers from strangers to visitors.

Image Source

Starting a blog is a fundamental step of inbound marketing. It helps you reach qualified customers, like your personas, by creating content that matches what they’re searching for. That’s why it’s so important to make blog posts relevant to audiences (and optimize them for search engines — here’s how).

“HubSpot’s success has been a direct result of our blog. In fact, we had a blog before we even had a product,” said Lisa Toner, director of content at HubSpot.

“Dharmesh and Brian always had the belief that in order to build a remarkable brand, you have to create remarkable content, and we’ve done that consistently on our blog ever since we started out in 2006.”

Senior Team Manager of the HubSpot Blogs Karla Cook adds that our blog is a big discoverability point for our target audience.

“It’s the very first interaction many people have with our brand – even before they learn about our products – and it helps us start that relationship off in a positive way,” she said.

Customers are looking for the information you’re able to provide. Plus, that content can serve as material to populate your social media networks.

To find what your audience is searching for, conduct keyword research, which will tell you what the most important topics for your audience are via search engines.

While blogging can be inexpensive, it does take time.

The inbound marketing version of that question would ask, “Would you rather blog for one hour each day and promote content created by and for your company, or several hours a day sourcing content for your ideal customer from your competitors?”

An editorial calendar is also helpful in maintaining consistent timing and fresh content on your blog. That’s why we put together a free blog editorial calendar template, complete with instructions and content management tips.

5. Make customer service a priority.

When we hear the name “Zappos,” most of us immediately think, “Unparalleled customer service.” The online apparel retailer built this level of service into its core approach to doing business.

Why is that so important? For Zappos, making excellent customer service the cornerstone of its brand actually saved money on marketing and advertising. That’s because it created word-of-mouth among existing and potential customers.

This is called earned media: The recognition that your brand has earned, not paid for, from people talking about something you did that was remarkable.

For example, when I’m shopping on a new website, the first thing I do is read reviews. If I see reviews that mention speedy shipping, friendly customer service, and high-quality products, I’m more inclined to purchase.

And I’m not alone. A 2020 Zendesk Customer Experience Trends study found that customer service is a top consideration for consumers when deciding whether to purchase from a brand – more than the product or service itself and convenience.

It only takes one bad experience to potentially lose a customer, with the report revealing that about half of consumers will switch over to a competitor after just one negative experience.

This revisits the importance of your identity and voice. As you go through these brand-building steps, think about the values that you want your audience to experience, like excellent service. Those values are what shape the brand’s culture, and that influence the voice you project to an audience.

Wondering what actionable steps you can take? Here are research-backed ways to improve your customer experience:

• Resolve consumers’ issues quickly, offer 24/7 customer support, and have friendly agents.
• Be proactive in engaging customers with notifications.
• Respond to customer service questions and complaints on social media.
• Allow consumers to call in for customer support, as it is still consumers’ preferred support channel.

6. Take advantage of co-branding.

I’ll never forget what my colleague, Lisa Toner, says about negotiating co-branding agreements.

“Larger companies may have a large reach,” she explains, “But what do they not have?”

When you’re just starting to build a brand, you might not have the reach that Toner’s talking about. You can take the steps to build it, but that takes time. Until then, one way to get your name in front of a broader audience is to partner with a brand that does have that reach.

“Working with a co-marketing partner (an external brand) can be a really valuable way of growing your audience while building a beneficial relationship with a partner,” said Margot Mazur, principal marketing manager of strategic partnerships at HubSpot.

“You don’t have to have a huge budget,” she adds. “Working with a partner means that you can split up the marketing duties.”

Let’s say you’re working with a partner on a lead generation campaign, such as a gated e-book, Mazur explains that one partner can take on copywriting duties and the other can take on design, or vice-versa depending on your resources.

“This way, you can save money on any freelance costs by working together on a project. Ideally, both you and your partner distribute the content piece to your audiences, driving visibility to an audience you may not have had access to,” she said.

“That saves you advertising costs and exposes you to a new set of people interested in your content.”

But don’t just pick any brand for a partnership. Make sure it’s one that’s aligned with yours, so it makes sense in the minds of your audience. Here are the questions we recommend asking when seeking a co-branding partner:

1. Will your partner’s audience be interested in your brand? Is this audience difficult for you to reach without this partnership?
2. Will your audience trust your co-brand? That’s crucial to getting them to listen to you, so make sure your partner reaches the audience in a way that instills confidence.
3. Do you have something to offer your co-brand? Just like Toner asks, “What do they not have?” The experience should be a win-win-win: For you, your co-brand, and the consumer. As an example, if you have an international audience that your partnering brand doesn’t, consider pointing to that when discussing the partnership.

Building a brand might seem like a huge undertaking, especially when resources are limited. However, there are plenty of economic ways to get started and continue the momentum.

A great starting point that’s both affordable and offers high ROI is video. Wondering how you can pull it off? Just use an iPhone or a smartphone with high camera capabilities and use free video editing software like iMovie.

Mazur explains that you can then script your video internally, share it on YouTube and promote it across all digital channels.

“Video marketing is incredibly effective – videos can go on your product pages, help pages, blog posts, social media posts, Product Hunt pages, etc.,” said Mazur.

She continues, “Work with your partner to split up the recording duties, as well as splitting distribution. You’ll get access to a whole new audience and have an engaging piece of content you can use across your channels.”

And don’t forget to have fun with the process.

Of course, there has to be a degree of strategy and logic involved — that’s why there are tools to help you determine the different pieces of your brand. But it’s a creative exercise, so keep that in mind if you get bogged down in technicalities.

7. Host a masterclass or webinar.

What are some of the talents the minds at your company display daily? Are they masters of email marketing? Do they excel at coding? Do you earn a “World’s Best Brand Strategist” superlative every year?

A fantastic way to grow your brand – and earn leads – is to leverage these talents into a masterclass or webinar, and promote them online.

By optimizing your class with hashtags and witty captions, you’ll find audiences who are interested in the talents for which you’re offering lessons. These masterclasses can be 45- to 60-minute sessions that provide an overview of your special expertise and showcase how to do it right.

For example, if I were to offer a webinar, it would highlight the art of using emojis for business, an experiment I’m passionate about. I would start by describing why engaging copy is important for attracting customers.

Then, I’d explain the pros and cons of emoji usage. Finally, I’d share the right and wrong times to include emojis in marketing messages.

After that, I would present an experiment and report on my findings. Whether the experiment supports or negates my thesis always leaves room for fruitful discussion — leading to the last portion, questions.

Voila – an outline for a masterclass that uses my talents to back up the credibility of a business that focuses on, let’s say, marketing or social media.

Running experiments doesn’t have to cost a dime, and hosting a webinar takes only about an hour of your day.

The result, however, is spreading the word about the value of a company, providing data that supports credibility, and promoting company values like delighting customers and giving helpful, educational content to your audience.

Branding on a budget? Absolutely possible. What counts, when you’re brainstorming ways to brand effectively, is how to use the resources you have to the best of your ability.

Keeping your audience in mind is the first step — after that, it’s about thinking of creative ways to engage those target customers.

Have fun building your brand. After all, this is a creative process and while every experiment may not work, you can always learn to improve. Good luck, and happy branding.

Does your professional bio make a statement?

In this article, we have great professional bio examples you should compare yours to — and a series of free bio templates you can use to make it perfect.

If you’re anything like me, you probably don’t think about your professional bio until you’re suddenly asked to “shoot one over via email.” You have approximately one afternoon to come up with it, and that’s when you scramble, and the bio ends up reading like this:

“Rodney Erickson is a content marketing professional at HubSpot, an inbound marketing and sales platform that helps companies attract visitors, convert leads, and close customers. Previously, Rodney worked as a marketing manager for a tech software startup. He graduated with honors from Columbia University with a dual degree in Business Administration and Creative Writing.”

Woof, that was dull. Are you still with me? I swear, not even adding a tidbit about his cats would liven that bio up.

To be fair, in certain contexts, your professional bio does need to be more formal, like Mr. Erickson’s up there. But in many cases, writing a readable bio — even conversational — is a really good thing. That means dropping that traditional format of listing your accomplishments like a robot and cramming as much professional-sounding jargon in there as you can.

Here, let’s dive into how you can create your own professional bio (with templates for both long and short bios). Then we’ll dive into the best professional bio examples we’ve ever seen. 

Skip to one of these sections if you know what you’re looking for: 

• Professional Bio Templates
• How to Write a Professional Bio
• Best Professional Bio Examples
• Short Bio Examples
• How to Write a Short Bio

When YouTube first launched, I was in 6th grade and all my friends were creating funny videos to upload.

See, back in the day, YouTube was mainly used for teens to upload funny, entertaining videos. Anyone else remember Smosh and Fred?

I’m aging myself, but I digress.

Back then, using YouTube for business and marketing was a new concept. Now, more than 15 years later, it’s entirely different. Brands and businesses use Youtube to engage and connect with their audience.

For marketers, this means your YouTube strategy needs to have evolved from the beginning days of the social platform. If you haven’t and are still using old YouTube strategies, you won’t benefit from having a channel.

Let’s review the top outdated YouTube strategies that you need to abandon and what you should do instead.

1. Focusing on selling products rather than helping your audience.

While YouTube might have been a place for entertainment before, it’s now also a place for people to learn new skills and conduct research.

Nelson Chacon, the principal marketing manager of YouTube at HubSpot, says, “Don’t sell, help. Users on YouTube like to be educated and not sold to.”

When businesses first started using social media sites, one of the older marketing tactics was to sell, sell, sell.

But users don’t want to be sold to. They want help. If they go to your business’s YouTube, they probably want information too.

The best way to abandon this strategy is to know what your audience needs help with. Think to yourself, “What does my audience want to learn from me?”

Then, create content that provides value.

Chacon explains, “Having a strategy to educate, empower, and provide some assistance can go a long way.”

2. Being robotic instead of human.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve seen a lot of businesses put out content that sounds robotic. It doesn’t sound human and it’s hard to pay attention to. In fact, I’d even say it’s not interesting and it’s not apparent why it’s useful to me.

That’s why Chacon recommends being human in your videos instead. He says, “YouTube is a very organic platform where people like and trust creators even more than corporations. This can be reflected in the content you make and the interactions you have with your audience.”

All the content you create for your marketing team should be helpful, human, and provide value to your audience.

3. Neglecting your audience.

Another outdated YouTube strategy is to neglect your audience. Some businesses have a bad habit of just putting out video content and not responding to comments or engaging with their viewers.

Additionally, many businesses don’t use social listening to understand what content their audience wants to see or what they’re paying attention to.

This isn’t going to help marketers.

Instead, Chacon recommends engaging and interacting with your audience. He says, “Users on YouTube like interacting with creators. Keeping up with your social listening and monitoring is vital for success.”

4. Not optimizing your videos.

When YouTube was created, SEO and optimization were fairly new concepts. Additionally, the industry (as is still true today) was constantly evolving.

That’s why many creators and businesses didn’t know they should optimize their videos. Nowadays, to optimize your videos you should pay attention to what your audience is searching for and add those keywords in your title and description.

Additionally, mentioning keywords in the video and adding CTAs are two great ways to keep your audience engaged with your content.

To up-level your YouTube channel, you should dive in and understand how you can optimize your videos for success on YouTube.

5. Not using influencers.

Am I the only one who remembers a time before influencers?

While the job of social media content creator was new back in the day, it’s not anymore and it’s not going anywhere.

That’s why companies should lean into it and use influencers that have a similar audience. On YouTube, a great way to use influencers is to find other content creators, collaborate on videos, and engage with them on their channels.

6. Not being consistent.

A great piece of general life advice is to be consistent. With marketing and YouTube strategy, it’s no different.

Being consistent is how your audience will build a relationship with your brand. Without consistency, then the relationship will be stilted and it won’t feel organic or natural.

Posting consistent content and engaging with your audience is the best way to find success on YouTube.

7. Relying on solely organic rather than promotion as well.

Of course, organic traffic and views are very important to your YouTube strategy. However, it’s important to use multiple channels to direct traffic to your channel.

A great way to do this is to cross-promote content to help your audience find your videos. However, this doesn’t mean you should just post a link on your Facebook or Instagram page.

Users don’t like when they see a social media page that’s sole purpose is to promote other content. Plus, this content gets little engagement.

What you should do is naturally find ways to cross-promote content. For instance, you could conduct a poll on your Instagram stories, and then include a swipe-up link to your YouTube video.

8. Not using analytics.

Not using analytics is one of the biggest outdated strategies that you need to drop. It’s vital to keep track of your success and measure what videos perform well and which ones don’t.

With analytics, you can find out when your audience is online, what they’re interested in, how long they watch your videos, etc.

Finding the “best time” to post shouldn’t be the goal anymore. Now the goal is finding the best time for your audience specifically.

9. Faking likes and comments.

I’m not sure if people still do this, but I remember this being a big strategy that companies were doing when I was younger.

So much so that most people in my generation don’t trust likes, comments, or even followers/subscriber counts.

Any younger generation that has grown up with social media, like millennials and Gen Z, will notice and quickly unfollow or unsubscribe if they notice these strategies.

That’s why you shouldn’t use auto-engagement bots, mass follow accounts only to unfollow the next day, or mass comment on videos asking for a follow.

This will hurt your reputation, could get you banned from social media sites, and your analytics won’t be trustworthy.

Plus, you won’t be building a relationship with your audience, which is the point. The point in these sites is to build a relationship so people are encouraged to purchase from you. If you don’t build a relationship with your audience, your vanity metrics don’t mean anything.

Instead, you should only follow legitimate accounts that are relevant to your brand. This way, you can actually increase brand awareness, build trust with your audience, and eventually generate revenue.

10. Using the wrong social media sites to promote your videos.

While it’s important to cross-promote your content, it doesn’t help to promote on a social media site that your audience isn’t on.

For instance, if your primary audience isn’t on Snapchat or Instagram, cross-promoting there won’t help build your traffic.

That’s why your social media strategy and YouTube strategy need to be reviewed every year. It’s important to align your strategy with the sites that your audience is active on.

While Gen Z and millennials turn to Instagram, only millennials or older generations really use Facebook as their main social media site. Older generations tend not to be on other sites like Snapchat.

Ultimately, YouTube is an amazing platform to use to connect with your audience. And it’s still growing in popularity. That’s why it’s important to update your YouTube strategies and drop the outdated techniques above.

As a Millennial, my experience with email has been quite interesting.

For a while, it’s where I received chain mail that I was forced to forward unless I wanted something terrible to happen to me or my family. Then, it was where I sent junk emails from brands I didn’t care about.

Today, I look forward to checking my email and hearing from my favorite brands on everything from the news and the marketing world to product launches and sales.

As this marketing channel continues to evolve, one thing users are looking for is interactivity. It makes emails more fun to read, and on the brand side, is a great way to convert users.

Let’s dive into how to use interactive elements in your emails and examples of brands getting it right.

So, why the push for interactive emails? Ashley Riordan, growth marketing manager at HubSpot says nowadays, users expect more.

“When you think about your own inbox – work or personal – the amount of emails we get in a day is a lot,” said Riordan. “Interactive emails, whether it’s a personalized element or multimedia feature, help attract readers’ attention, set your email out from the crowd, and cut through that noise.”

She suggests calling this era: email 2.0. Interesting email content isn’t enough – now it’s about taking it one step further to involve your audience in the emails they receive.

Studies show that consumers are welcoming this change, it’s marketers who are reluctant.

“91% of consumers want interactive content, but only 17% of marketers provide it,” said Megan Moller, director of content marketing at Litmus. “That could be a missed opportunity as competition for subscribers’ attention is at an all-time high, and marketers report seeing a 200% improvement in click-through rates when using interactivity.”

The possibilities are not exactly endless, but they’re pretty extensive. You can add interactivity in email by adding a form, faux video, embedded video, animated GIFs, or carousel.

However, Moller adds that you have to make sure these elements will work for your audience.

“Don’t just add them for interactivity’s sake. Not all email clients support interactivity – though there is growing support of AMP for email,” she added. “Discover what environments (email clients, devices, and more) your subscribers are on with a tool like Litmus Email Analytics, so you can know which interactive strategies are possible with your subscribers.”

3 Reasons to Create an Interactive Email Newsletter

We know interactive elements make emails more engaging and can increase your conversions. But when do you usually use them? Technically, you can implement them anytime but here are some of the most popular ways to leverage interactive elements.

1. Highlight new product features.

Want to announce updates to your products or tease upcoming products? Why talk about it when you can just show it.

Look at this example from Canva.

The graphic design platform regularly sends out emails to subscribers to share new features. By adding a simple GIF like this, users can quickly understand the new feature and get excited about what they could create on the platform.

Here’s another great example from Later.

2. Tease an upcoming event or announcement.

Let’s say you’re preparing for a big sale or upcoming event, you can use interactive elements to create some buzz and anticipation around your offers.

Adidas created an awesome GIF in honor of Mother’s Day, which shows a woman running with her two children in some Adidas gear.

It’s a great illustration of how to use GIFs in emails to pull the reader in while staying within your brand’s visual identity.

3. Increase your email engagement.

Sometimes, you may not have anything special to promote, but you want to improve your metrics.

Perhaps your clickthrough or open rate is low, and you want to encourage your subscribers to participate. That’s a great reason to add some interactivity to your newsletter.

Take The Daily Carnage, a daily newsletter that covers all things marketing.

With every newsletter comes a question of the day that relates to a topic covered in the email. Once you submit your answers, you can see how other subscribers answered the question.

This accomplishes two things: It gets users engaged and excited about the content and it helps the team at Carney learn more about their audience.

Interactive Email Examples

GIFs

GIFS are the perfect middle point between images and videos.

A video can weigh down your email and make your loading speed slow. If you want to add some movement to your email but don’t want to go as far as embedding a video, GIFs are the way to go. Plus, they’re attention-grabby.

“Compared to a static image, GIFs are more eye-catching and therefore more click-catching,” said Riordan.

At HubSpot, we’ve had great success using them.

When sending out welcome messages for new contacts, we’ve found that emails featuring GIFs have a clickthrough rate that’s twice as high as emails without.

In addition to capturing subscribers’ attention, they also convert.

Quizzes

As we covered in the previous section with The Daily Canage, you can increase your newsletter’s engagement rate by including quizzes and polls.

At HubSpot, we saw a 5% increase in open rate and a jump in unique clicks after adding a “Question of The Day” poll to one of our newsletters.

Here’s how it works: Users have to answer today’s “Question of the Day” to see the poll results from yesterday’s question. This approach, says Marketing Manager at HubSpot Clint Fontanella, creates this cliffhanger effect that keeps users engaged.

“This was our most successful test because it gave readers something in exchange for nothing. It gave them information and a little excitement and competition, in exchange for them visiting our blog,” said Fontanella, who used to manage the Service Blog newsletter. “It also gave them a reason to come back every day. By participating in today’s question, they could see yesterday’s results.”

Countdown Timers

Want to get your audience excited about an upcoming event or sale? Consider countdown timers.

Image Source

A countdown timer is a great way to create a sense of urgency and build anticipation. While this may require some HTML knowledge, it can be well worth the time.

In 2020, Riordan wanted to boost registrations and build some buzz around a webinar series. She ran a 50/50 test variation with one email including a countdown timer in the header image and another without.

The version with the countdown timer drove 30% more registrations.

A timer isn’t only useful for upcoming events or sales, you can use them for:

• Product or website launches
• Free trial notifications
• Milestone celebrations

Personalized Calculators

When we think of personalization in email, we usually think of adding the subscriber’s name in the subject line and email body. However, there are ways to take it one step further.

This website grader by HubSpot, for instance, is an interactive tool that sends prospects a customized report of their website performance along with specific recommendations and resources for improvements.

This is a great lead generation tool that can bring you one step closer to turning a subscriber into a customer.

Interactive Email Design Dos and Don’ts

Do keep it to one interactive element per email.

While it may be tempting, make sure you don’t overdo it with your interactive elements. A good rule of thumb is one per email.

“Your email recipients will likely be drawn to the interactive element which is the goal, but also means that other parts of your email might be overlooked,” said Riordan. “Try to center your email around one interactive factor, whether that be a poll, video, or GIF.”

She adds, “You don’t want to compete for attention in your own email – the interactive part should be the main message.”

Don’t be afraid to experiment.

With any new strategy you implement, there will be a learning curve.

You may have to try out a few interactive elements before you figure out what works best. And even when you determine the right strategy, it may change depending on the type of email you’re sending and the goals you want to achieve.

For instance, let’s say you want to generate more sales for a product. You’ve tried embedding videos of satisfied customers and adding photos of positive reviews but it doesn’t yield positive results. Then, you find that creating lifestyle GIFs of the product increase conversions by 10%. You use that strategy from then on.

However, as your goals change, so will the methods you try. Be flexible and always be willing to test out various strategies.

Do prioritize accessibility.

As you incorporate interactivity into your email, don’t forget to keep accessibility in mind. This ensures that visually impaired, deaf, and hard-of-hearing users can enjoy your emails without any trouble.

Here are some tips to keep in mind:

• Include descriptive alt text in every image, GIF, or any interactive element.
• Use colors that contrast well. Use this tool to check if you’re on the right track.
• Design your email with “Dark Mode” in mind.
• Add captions and transcripts to your videos.

Interactive Email Templates

1. Litmus

Litmus makes email marketing easy.

The platform offers a ton of interactive features and tools that you can customize based on the viewport (i.e. device) and email service. This includes hover effects, animated PNGs, and dark mode targeting.

In addition, the platform works for small to midsize businesses as well as enterprise-level companies. Pricing ranges from $99/month to $199/month, with custom pricing available for larger-scale organizations.

2. MailChimp

MailChimp is one of the top email marketing platforms on the market, known for its user-friendly interface.

On the platform, you can find over 100 campaign templates designed by professionals. All you have to do is fill in the gaps and hit “send.”

You can use the drag-and-drop feature to add interactive elements anywhere in your email and even import custom HTML templates.

MailChimp offers a free version for those who are just getting started with email marketing and goes all the way up to $299/month.

3. Stripo

If you want to skip coding when creating your email newsletter, find the templates you need at Stripo.

All you have to do is head to the website, find a template you like and customize it. It integrates with over 60 email service providers, making it easy for you to transfer your design.

You can start using Stripo for free. To take advantage of their premium features, you must subscribe to a monthly or yearly plan for $10/month to $34/month.

Most marketers know that Facebook is more than just another social media platform. It’s an essential business tool for companies of every size and industry.

With a daily active user base of over 1.8 billion (98.3% or 1.73 billion of which are on mobile alone), you know Facebook can help you reach new audiences you may otherwise have been unable to get.

Facebook can also help you get found more easily in search, create a community around your business, promote the content you create, and develop a strong brand identity.

But what about using Facebook for lead generation?

Attracting new leads using Facebook — leads that might eventually turn into paying customers — is one of the most intriguing reasons to use Facebook marketing. However, many marketers still fail to use Facebook to source leads. You’d be losing out on reaching thousands or millions of potential customers if you’re one such marketer.

Even if you’re currently generating leads on Facebook, we all could probably use a little boost in our lead generation efforts. And that’s why we created this guide.

To make sure we’re all on the same page, let’s start with what a lead is (and isn’t) and the two types of leads you can generate on Facebook.

What is a Facebook lead?

A lead is a person who has indicated an interest in your company’s product or services by giving you their information in some way. A lead can show interest in various ways: by filling out a form to download an ebook, requesting a demo, or completing an online survey.

Unfortunately, simply liking a status update, photo, or video on your Facebook page doesn’t qualify someone to become a Facebook lead. That type of action doesn’t indicate interest in your company or product/services, as it’s possible they just liked your post because it had a cute puppy in it, you know?

Below, let’s review the two types of leads you can capture on Facebook and what their differences are.

The 2 Types of Leads You Can Capture on Facebook

There are two types of leads you can generate on Facebook: direct and indirect leads.

Don't miss this live virtual event with Facebook and HubSpot on how to grow your business faster than ever with Facebook.

Direct Leads

A direct Facebook lead is generated by sharing content that links directly back to a lead form on your website. Visitors then share information in exchange for an offer — whether an ebook, coupon, infographic, or any other piece of content. This form is typically on a landing page dedicated to that specific offer.

Indirect Leads

Indirect leads are generated by using Facebook on the path to conversion. For example, if you share a blog post containing a call-to-action to a landing page at the bottom of the post, your initial Facebook share indirectly leads visitors to that landing page.

While directly promoting landing pages is an instant gratifier of leads generated, providing relevant content without a form makes your Facebook presence a friendlier home for content that your target audience will want to come back for again and again.

Let’s look at few ways to generate both indirect and direct leads in the section below. 

How to Generate Leads on Facebook

Lead Ads

Lead ads are arguably the most popular tool used on Facebook to generate leads. These are posts that are sponsored by your business and they appear on your audience’s News Feeds, Stories, Marketplace, and more. These ads target Facebook users who are most likely to be interested in your company based on the behaviors they display both on Facebook and off. Once a user clicks on a lead ad, they’re prompted to fill out a form and submit contact information to your company. 

Facebook Posts

Your Facebook posts are probably what got your audience’s attention in the first place. These can be one-off posts or a dedicated campaign that points viewers back to your website or Facebook page. You can include a link to a form within the actual post, or direct users to a landing page where they can submit their information. 

Facebook Messenger

Facebook Messenger is like a built-in live chat feature for your Facebook Page. Users can reach out to you in a private 1:1 conversation and ask questions about your brand and its products. 

Don’t have the time to manage a live chat channel 24/7? No problem. You can install a bot on your page to respond to customer inquiries. 

Whether it’s a bot or a person, your team can use Facebook Messenger to direct interested visitors to your website and landing pages so they can convert from prospects to leads. 

Facebook Events

Does your company host an annual networking event? Perhaps has a charity or a fundraiser that users can donate to? Share it on Facebook.

You can use the Events tool to create dedicated pages for your upcoming events. Your audience can sign up, fill out forms, and become leads all while registering for your event in one place. 

Facebook Live Video

If you’re looking for a more spontaneous approach to lead generation, you might want to try Facebook Live Video. Live Video creates a real-time, public stream that your audience can watch on their News Feed. Viewers react and comment on your video as it’s running and you can use this platform as a way to direct prospects to your marketing content.

For example, if you’re partnering with a local celebrity for an upcoming road race, you might ask them to “Go Live” on Facebook and show your followers what they’re doing to prepare for the race. Not only does this give people a behind-the-scenes look at the race prep, but it also gets the word out about your event. 

When you’re video is over, the recording is still available on your Facebook page. That way, people who may have missed the live version can catch the recording later on. 

Photo Albums

Keeping with our road race example, let’s your race when off without a hitch and it was a massive success. Your marketing team was there the entire time taking photos and capturing the most exciting moments from the day. 

But, the marketing team wasn’t just taking photos for fun. They’re planning to repurpose those images as lead generation content on your Facebook page. 

How? For starters, they can post a photo album on your company’s Timeline. This album would show followers how much fun and excitement there was at your race and it would motivate people to sign up for your next one. All you have to do now is include a link to your website in the comments, and you’ll be generating new leads in no time. 

These are just a few ideas for leveraging Facebook for lead generation. Read on for some more ways you can use this platform to generate leads for your business.

12 Ways to Generate Leads on Facebook

Now, let’s dive into some ways you can capture leads, whether they are direct or indirect.

1. Post landing pages for offers directly to Facebook.

One of the best lead generation ideas on Facebook is sending people directly to a landing page containing your offer. (If you don’t have many lead-generating offers yet, read this blog post for ideas.)

When you do this, make sure the offer has a compelling featured image that’s getting pulled into the Facebook post. To ensure Facebook pulls the right image from your blog post into your Facebook posts, you’ll need to optimize the image size and add the proper open graph tags to your website, which you can learn how to do here.

You’ll also want to make sure it’s clear to the reader where you’re sending them. If they think they’re clicking into a blog post and find themselves needing to fill out a form, they could get confused or frustrated.

Use phrases like “Download your ebook” or “Get your cheat sheet” to indicate where you’re sending them and the action they need to take.

Here’s an example from Sprout Social’s Facebook Page, which contains a “Download this toolkit” CTA.

In addition to using clear language, you may want to nix the stock photo from that image in favor of your custom image. Even the least design-savvy of marketers can easily create a custom image in PowerPoint or Canva that includes the name of the offer, just like we did in the example below. (Click here to browse through and download our collection of 100 free social media image templates.)

2. Post the blog posts that generate the most leads.

Another way of generating leads from your content is to pick and post the blog posts that generate the most leads. (Learn how to do a blog lead generation analysis here.)

The topic and title of the blog post will intrigue your audience to click and read, and then they’ll find a CTA within that post — preferably high up, near the intro — to either a solution to a problem they’re having or to something they want to learn more about.

Pro Tip: Our social media managers have found they can generate more leads from Facebook by posting blog posts containing anchor text CTAs in the introduction. If you aren’t using anchor text CTAs yet, you may want to read up on the study we did on anchor text CTAs and consider adopting the process yourself. In every post we tracked for that study, the anchor text CTA was responsible for between 47% and 93% of a post’s leads.

Here’s an example of a post from our Facebook page linking to a blog post that includes an anchor text CTA in the introduction:

And here’s that anchor text CTA, indicated by the red arrow. The blog post has a pop-up that prompts readers to download a free report containing more social media stats.

3. Include links to landing pages in your image captions.

Most marketers understand the importance of using visuals like images and videos in their Facebook strategy. For example, Facebook posts with images see a higher engagement rate when compared to those without images.

To turn these higher engagement rates into lead generation opportunities, consider including links to your website in the descriptions for your images — especially your profile picture and cover photo descriptions.

Whether it’s to a blog post, a piece of lead gen content, or just an “About Us” page, links help your audience get to know your company better. And the descriptions of your profile picture and cover photo are prime real estate to do it. That way, any time people view your cover photo directly, they can access the download link.

Make sure you shorten your links and add UTM codes so you can track clicks on them. Shortening and tracking features are available in the HubSpot Marketing Platform and with tools like Bitly.

Here’s an example from Social Media Examiner’s Facebook Page:

4. Use videos to promote lead generation offers.

Facebook’s organic reach dropped to around 5.2% in 2020, a massive dip from 52% in 2016, thanks to the tweaks in Facebook’s algorithm.

Without creating a Facebook ad, it’s almost impossible for your audience to see your content. To get as much engagement as possible, marketers have turned to videos.

Why? For starters, Facebook’s algorithm favors video content. As a result, video posts have an average engagement rate of 0.26%, which is higher than engagement rates of other post types.

So, if you’re trying to increase your lead generation efforts on Facebook, you’ll want to start using videos on your Facebook page to introduce and promote your content, whether they’re offers, events, courses, or something else.

In addition to the text CTA that you can add in the video’s description, you can also include a verbal CTA to “register” or “download,” both earlier in the video and at the very end.

Check out how L.L. Bean used a video to encourage sign-ups for its course:

Here’s another example from us here at HubSpot, in which we used a how-to video to introduce a gated offer:

We’ve also created videos specifically to promote lead generation content as we did here for our career assessment called The Next Five:

5. Use Facebook Live videos to remind people to register.

Videos can be pretty time-intensive to create, not to mention intimidating. But you don’t necessarily have to pull together the time and resources to create a perfectly scripted and edited marketing video to leverage the power of video on Facebook — especially if you’re a small business.

Facebook Live is a feature that allows anyone to broadcast videos from their mobile device straight to their Facebook News Feed. The best part about these live videos is that they’re meant to be a little scrappier and more spontaneous than regular marketing videos — making them more authentic and personal.

So, get the conversation going about your lead generation offers by creating a live video to promote them. You might promote an event by showing the setup live, for example. Or, you might promote an offer by hosting an open Q&A on live video where you interact with Facebook commenters live and on camera.

Just like you’d do with your standard videos, add a verbal CTA to the video in addition to the text CTA. In a live video, though, you’ll want to repeat that CTA even more than you would with a pre-recorded video. Why? Because when you first start live streaming, you may have zero people watching. Even a few seconds in, you could only have a handful of viewers.

As people find your video on their News Feeds, they’ll join in — but that means you’ll want to repeat the CTA a few times to catch people up. You can also add a text CTA in the video’s description.

6. Pin posts that link to lead generation offers to the top of your feed.

Pinning a post to the top of your Page’s Timeline allows you to highlight and showcase what would otherwise be a typical post. It’ll stay at the top of your Timeline for up to seven days, after which it’ll return to the date it was published on your Page’s Timeline.

You can identify a pinned post by an unmistakable “pinned post” marker at the top of the post. Any post you decide to pin should be valuable to your audience and relevant to your online objectives.

Here’s an example from Apttus’ Facebook Page:

You can pin any type of post, from text to images to videos, even live videos. If you pin a Facebook Live video, that video will simply show up at the top of your profile with the whole recording, indicating that the Page “was live” at a certain point.

Here’s an example of what that looks like from Refinery29’s Facebook Page:

7. Add a CTA button to your Facebook Page.

Adding a relevant CTA button to your Facebook Page is a crucial lead generation tactic that no marketers will want to miss out on.

Back in late 2014, Facebook added a feature to its business Pages allowing users to place a simple call-to-action button at the top of their Facebook Pages. This button is simple but powerful, and it can help drive more traffic from your Facebook Page to your website — including landing pages, contact sheets, and other lead generation forms. You can learn how to install and use the Facebook CTA button here.

You’ll find you have 17 pre-made button options to choose from. These options include “Sign Up,” “Shop Now,” “Contact Us,” “Book Now,” “Use App,” Watch Video,” and “Play Game.”

Once you choose a button and link it to a page on your website, it’ll appear up at a fixed location right below your cover photo and to the right.

While some marketers choose a CTA and keep it the same for weeks and months at a time, consider taking your marketing game a step further and switching up that button — and the web page it links to — to match your team’s and business goals and the campaigns you’re running at the time.

For example, you might align the CTA with your cover photo design and a pinned post around a single campaign

8. Ask for input from your Facebook audience about your products.

You can feed two birds with one scone (as my colleague Carly Stec would say) by posting a status update asking for feedback on your products/services and then linking to a landing page where people try your tool for free.

You’ll encourage sign-ups by linking directly to the landing page, and your followers will love the opportunity to give their two cents.

The obvious risk here is that you’ll be opening up the floodgates for negative commenters, so be selective on the tools and products you post for feedback.

Make sure you’re posting something you’re proud of and ready to receive feedback for. You’ll also want to have at least one or two people prepared to respond to Facebook comments as they roll in — both the positive and the negative.

If you do receive negative feedback, respond as quickly as possible to show you care and prevent them from turning into something more serious. If you get complaints about the product, use the “customer is always right” approach and say you’re sorry.

You’ll get respect from other customers for being upfront. Share your appreciation for folks’ feedback. Finally, ask how you can help — and then actually help. Take notes on the feedback you get and send it to the people who can make things happen.

(This post contains more tips for dealing with negative comments on social media)

9. Run a contest or giveaway.

People love contests and giveaways. Not only are they fun, but they can also teach you a lot about your audience — all the while engaging them, growing your reach, driving traffic to your website, and (drum roll, please) generating leads.

Since your giveaway aims to generate leads, you’ll need to publish posts that include an attractive featured image or video, compelling and straightforward copy, and a link to your giveaway page where they can fill out their details into your lead forms.

Read this post to learn more about running successful social media contests.

(Before you start your Facebook contest, though, make sure you can run it legally by reading through their Page Guidelines. Facebook has cracked down on contests due to liability issues, so read through their strict rules ahead of time.)

Below is an example from Zeamo’s Facebook Page:

And here’s another example, this time from Yoplait. It promoted its contest using a video to get more visibility on folks’ News Feeds. And you can tell the contest was a success considering the amount of engagement the post received.

You could also extend your giveaways throughout other platforms like Instagram and Twitter.

10. Create a Facebook event page for your next webinar.

While sharing landing pages with dedicated content offerings are effective, webinars are another great format for capturing leads. While you can promote your webinar’s sign-up form by posting them to your business Timeline. Another way to spread the word is by creating a Facebook Event with a separate registration page on your website.

Once you invite someone to a Facebook Event, you can encourage them to register on a separate page, where they’ll become a lead. In terms of reaching new audiences, Facebook Events are also more visible than standard posts on the News Feed.

Facebook also added new features that help businesses promote their events and see how they’re performing. For example, you can create ads for the desktop and mobile News Feed that boost awareness of events and drive responses.

Image Source

If you host events and webinars often, you can also use the Events tab on your Facebook page to share with your followers in a single view. That way, people visiting your page can scroll through your upcoming events and webinars. (If you don’t see the tab on your Page, click “Manage Tabs” at the bottom of your tabs and reorder them, so Events is one of the first to appear.) Read this blog post for more tips on hosting great webinars.

11. Run targeted ads to extend your content’s reach.

One of the best things Facebook can do for your business is to expand your reach to new audiences by running a targeted ad campaign for lead generation.

Thanks to Facebook’s very sophisticated targeting options, you create ads that target people based on their location, age, gender, interests — and even the things they do off Facebook.

There are three overarching formats for Facebook ads that I’ll cover here: boosted posts, right-hand column ads, and News Feed ads.

The main distinction here is the placement of the ad and the amount of writing and size of images they allow.

1. Boosted Post: This is Facebook’s way of letting marketers turn otherwise regular Facebook posts into ads by “boosting” them. The post will show organically to some users, but to get better reach, the admin will press “boost” (shown only to admins, not to other users) to deliver to a larger number of fans and targets you can select ahead of time.
2. Right-Hand Column Ads: This is the most traditional ad placement used to turn a user into a Facebook lead. The ad usually appears on the right side of a user’s News Feed. We often see less expensive clicks and conversions when using these ads, along with more advanced testing options.
3. News Feed Ads: These appear directly in a user’s News Feed and look more like native advertising, although you can also add a small CTA button. They’re part of a tactic called “dark posts,” which means using News Feed-style ads that don’t get published to the News Feed of your Page. In our experience, these ads have a higher engagement rate than right-hand column ads (which makes your Page look super healthy), but they can also be more expensive.

While we won’t go too much more in-depth on Facebook advertising (download our Facebook advertising ebook if you want to learn more), here are two examples of Facebook ads in users’ News Feeds. This first one is a boosted post that targets people based on their Facebook connections:

This second one is a News Feed ad, which lets you add a CTA button to the post — in this case, “Sign Up.” These CTAs are only available for News Feed ads.

Whatever the kind of ads you want to create for lead generation, you can always use HubSpot’s ad software to manage your ads from Facebook and other social media channels within your HubSpot CRM.

12. Run lead ads to simplify the mobile signup process.

As if Facebook’s addition of CTA buttons to its link ads wasn’t exciting enough, it added an entirely new feature called lead ads in 2015, which lets users sign up for lead-generating offers and content without leaving Facebook.

Facebook created lead ads specifically to simplify the mobile sign-up process by creating instant forms that make it super easy for mobile users to fill out their contact details.

Why? Because the forms will auto-populate instead of mobile users having to pinch-and-zoom and type into tiny form fields. When you click on a lead ad, a form opens with your contact information automatically populated based on what you’ve shared with Facebook already, like name and email address.

Talk about solving for a form of friction. Of course, you can edit your contact information before you click “Submit.”

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We won’t detail how to create lead ads here because we already have a guide that talks about how you can make them.

How do you extract the leads you get from lead ads? If you’re a HubSpot customer, you can integrate Facebook Lead Ads directly with your HubSpot account.

If you’re not a HubSpot customer, you can export a CSV straight from your Facebook Page, download them from Ads Manager or Power Editor, or request it directly through the API.

We hope you found these ideas for ways you can generate leads from Facebook helpful. Remember, though, that Facebook is constantly changing. While the ideas here are a solid start for success, nothing beats testing each strategy for your audience.

Did you know that people retain 65% of the information they see, but only 10% of the information they hear?

Also, people follow directions 323% better with a combination of text and illustration than instructions without illustrations.

That’s why, as a marketer, it’s important to display information in a combination of visual and text, in an easy-to-consume way.

A great way to do that is through infographics.

If you’ve wanted to create and publish an infographic, you’ve come to the right place. I know you might be thinking, “I’m not a graphic designer” or “I’ve never made an infographic before.” But you’re not alone.

And that doesn’t mean it can’t be easy for you to learn.

In this post, we’ll take you through everything you need to know about infographics, from what they are to what kinds of infographics there are to how to promote an infographic once you’ve created it.

Table of Contents

• What is an infographic?
• Infographic Examples
• Infographic Dimensions
• Infographic Ideas and Topics
• Infographic Tips
• Infographic Templates
• How to Share an Infographic

Infographics typically use engaging visuals to quickly and clearly communicate what the graphic is about.

People use infographics because they can provide a quick overview of a topic, explain a complex process, and display data easily. Infographics are also great for comparing two opposing concepts or ideas.

As a marketer, you might’ve experienced the feeling of indecisiveness when you want to create a marketing asset for a campaign, but you’re not sure the best way to disseminate the information. Is your idea best suited to a blog post, YouTube video, or social media post? The great news is that for any medium, in any industry, you can use infographics in your marketing.

Infographic Examples

1. What is Guerilla Marketing, by Invite Referrals

Below is a great example of an infographic by Invite Referrals, which focuses on describing guerilla marketing. Instead of making a blog post or video, the company decided to explain, in detail, the concept of guerilla marketing in an infographic.

With an infographic, the information is easier to digest because it uses succinct copy and visuals to help get the point across.

Additionally, this infographic has a clear headline that communicates what it’s about, so readers can instantly tell what they’re going to get from reading it.

2. Small Business and Marketing, by SEO.com

This is another excellent example of an infographic because it uses a combination of data and visuals to give information on small business marketing.

The creator, SEO.com, also broke down the information into sections, so readers can easily scan the graphic and see what information they want quickly.

One of the ways this graphic excels is that it knows its buyer persona. SEO.com, a site to help marketers, made this infographic that directly targets small business owners and marketers.

3. Video Marketing, by Visual.ly

In this example, Visual.ly uses data and visuals to communicate why video marketing is important. Additionally, the company uses bright colors to attract attention. If someone is scrolling social media, the color and design might make them stop to see what the graphic is about. It pulls the reader in.

With an infographic, you can hook readers with the visual design and communicate an idea in a way that doesn’t take up too much of your audience’s time.

Again, the concise copy and visuals will help readers get interesting information right away. And this information is exactly what marketers might want to learn about.

4. Modern Marketer, by Get App

This is an excellent example of an infographic because it uses concise copy and engaging visuals to communicate information.

My favorite element of this infographic is how it’s visually easy to understand and you can see the hard and soft skills of being a modern marketer without needing to dive into the topics. This is a quick, easy-to-scan infographic, which is what marketers are looking for when they’re working.

5. Content Marketing, by Ditto Digital

Another great example of an infographic is by Ditto Digital. This infographic focuses on giving tips to content marketers. What I like about this example is that the copy is easier to read than a blog post on the same topic might be.

The copy is concise and the visual elements of headers and subheaders make it easier to read. Additionally, this is visually interesting and has several graphics to pull your attention.

Infographic Dimensions

So, now that you know what an infographic is and have seen some examples, you might be wondering how to get started with your own infographic.

Before you can jump into designing, it’s important to understand what size your infographic should be.

The answer is that it depends on where you’re going to promote it. Below are the most common places you might post an infographic with the recommended sizes:

• Facebook: 1200 x 628 pixels
• Pinterest: 600 x 900 pixels
• Website/Blog: 600 x 1800 pixels
• Twitter: 1200 x 675 pixels
• Instagram: 1080 x 1080 pixels
• LinkedIn: 1104 x 736 pixels

1. Comparison Infographics

A comparison infographic is an infographic that compares two ideas. Infographics are a great way to compare and contrast because you can visually see things side by side.

Below is an example of a comparison infographic which compares bad posture with good posture. Not only can you visually see the difference, but you can also read the copy which explains how posture can impact your health, feelings, communication, and appearance.

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2. Marketing Infographics

A marketing infographic is a graphic whose main purpose is to build awareness for a brand and boost engagement.

With a marketing infographic, you can showcase business achievements, deliver news, display a new product or service, improve a course with handouts, drive interest on social media, show data, present quotes, summarize key points in a blog post, and more. The options are honestly endless.

Really, infographics can be used for anything. Whenever you’re thinking about creating a marketing asset, consider whether an infographic will help prove your point.

3. Process Infographics

A process infographic simplifies and explains the steps of a process in primarily visual terms.

Generally, it illustrates what happens during each step or phase with an intuitive layout that’s easy for the viewer to follow from start to finish.

A well-designed process infographic makes the concept you want to share more accessible and saves you and the audience time.

Below is an example of a process infographic which explains the process of mechanical recycling.

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4. Timeline Infographics

A timeline infographic is a way to quickly communicate important information — from key dates in your company’s history to upcoming project milestones or predicted market trends.

This type of infographic is what you would use if you were planning a product launch for example. Or perhaps you want to communicate a timeline of your business achievements for your website.

Featured Resource: 8 Free Timeline Templates for Business

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5. Statistical Infographics

A statistical infographic is a graphic whose main purpose is to show data and research. Let’s say that your company has first-party data about your industry. What better way to communicate that than with an infographic?

Now that we know what types of infographics there are, let’s give you a few tips on the process of creating one.

1. Find resources.

Before you start creating your own infographics, look for resources that can help you. This is particularly helpful if you aren’t working with a graphic designer.

For example, you can use PowerPoint templates or Canva templates. In fact, there’s really no shortage of design resources — charts, reports, and infographics. And, depending on your budget and needs, there are a plethora of options available, all of which have their pros, with very few cons.

2. Target your buyer personas.

When we went through the examples above, you might’ve noticed that I commented on infographics that correctly targeted their audience. With any marketing asset, it won’t accomplish what you want if it’s not created for the correct buyer persona.

Don’t forget what the purpose of marketing is: to deliver the right message to the right audience at the right time.

3. Keep it focused and simple.

Infographics are a great way to stay focused and use simple language to communicate a message.

The best messages are succinct and very specific to the audience. That’s why your infographics should be as focused and simple as possible.

As a marketer, it’s important to simplify your messaging whenever you can. Simple messages are easier to understand and retain.

4. Use visuals.

Of course, you can’t have a great infographic without visuals. In fact, the whole point of an infographic is to communicate a message with both text and visuals.

The goal of the visuals should be to hook the reader and make it easier to digest the information. And you don’t have to be a graphic designer to accomplish this.

In fact, you can use premade templates to make your life easier. Below let’s go over why templates are useful.

Infographic Templates

Infographics are a powerful tool for capturing the attention of your target audiences. In fact, businesses that publish infographics grow their traffic an average of 12% more than those that don’t.

The hard part, of course, is finding time and resources to create these infographics. That’s why HubSpot created fifteen fully customizable infographic templates that will give you the inspiration and foundation you need to build your own infographics right in PowerPoint or Illustrator.

Use these infographic templates to present data for your next meeting, promote an offer on social media, or in your next blog post. Visual information is becoming more and more popular — and now you have the resources to easily create this visual content.

Featured Resource: 15 Free Infographic Templates in Powerpoint (+5 Bonus Illustrator Templates)

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1. Optimize your infographic for search engines.

Infographics don’t go viral by accident — even if you’ve got the best infographic in the world.

Instead, strategically promoting your infographic by identifying the right people and the right websites can get your infographic in front of thousands of people fast.

But before we do that, you’ll want to make sure to optimize your infographic for search engines. SEO won’t necessarily help your infographic go viral, but it’s extremely beneficial because it will help increase your search engine rankings (which means more free traffic to your website).

Check out this infographic by Backlinko to help guide you while you’re optimizing your infographic(s) for search engines:

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2. Find websites and blogs that share similar infographics.

For example, if I had just published an infographic on email marketing, I would go to Google at type in: “Email marketing infographic.” What you’re looking for are websites and blogs that have published similar infographics made by other people.

After you’ve got a decent list of websites that you think will be willing to share your infographic, it’s time for some email outreach. First, start by identifying the authors from each of the websites that published similar infographics. You can usually find the author’s name in the article’s byline:

Once you’ve got a list of authors, use a tool like Viola Norbert or ContentMarketer.io to find email addresses so you can start sending personalized emails.

If you want to learn how the pros do email outreach, check out this article from Brian Dean at Backlinko. Part of that case study highlights the “Pre-Outreach” and “Content Roadshow” strategies he used to generate buzz for his content.

For example, check out Emil’s 2-step approach to email outreach. Instead of doing what most people do and asking for a backlink or share right away (1-step approach) here’s what he did:

And because he wasn’t being pushy, he gets responses like this from people asking to send his content over (2-step approach):

See the difference?

Now I’ll be the first to admit that email outreach is not the most exciting part about infographic marketing — but it’s crucial if you want to get more eyeballs on your work.

Plus, the long-term benefits from the relationships you’ll build with influencers and bloggers will become invaluable down the road.

3. Share infographic with the right bloggers and influencers.

The best tool to find these influencers is BuzzSumo. Just type in a topic or copy/paste a specific link to pull up content that is sorted by number of social media shares.

For example, if I were doing an infographic on gardening, I’d type in “gardening infographic” into BuzzSumo. Next, I would go through the results one by one and click “View Sharers” on any infographics that are similar to mine:

This will give you a list of the people who have shared that infographic, which is helpful because you can sort by number of followers to identify influencers with a large number of followers who have shared infographics that are similar to yours.

Like in the last step, find their email address and start reaching out one-by-one. Aside from Viola Norbert and ContentMarketer.io, another clever way to find someone’s email address is to subscribe to their blog — the welcome email and all future emails should come from an address that you can respond to.

As an alternative, if you can’t find someone’s email address, you can always use Twitter to reach out publicly:

Sam Hurley has hundreds of thousands of followers but still responded and shared content from Brian Downard:

See how he used the same 2-step outreach approach like the email example from above? He asked if they wanted to see it and then sent the link afterward.

Not being pushy is the key to getting responses and getting your content shared. You might also consider sending a friendly “thank you” note after an influencer shares your content to strengthen the relationship:

4. Submit your infographic to infographic directories.

These directories are basically websites that curate infographics for other people to see. And they are the perfect place to get your infographic discovered by people who might want to share it on their website.

Trouble is, there are dozens of these directories out there, so instead of manually doing each one by yourself, I recommend using Fivver to pay someone to do it for you. You don’t need to have someone submit your content to 50+ directories — just stick with the people who only add it to the top 10-30 infographic directories.

5. Promote through all your digital marketing channels.

Once you’ve added your infographic to the right directories, share it through all of your marketing channels:

• Share with your email lists
• Schedule multiple social media posts
• Paid ads / remarketing ads
• Add links to infographic on relevant website pages
• Share with industry partners
• Send to influencers/bloggers who’ve shared your content in the past
• Share with any brand or person you mentioned in your content

Infographics are a valuable resource that marketers can use to communicate with their audience in an easy-to-understand way. Next time you’re coming up with content, consider if an infographic is a better way to communicate your message.

When I first started blogging, I had no idea how to structure my posts to rank for search engines, or even why it was important.

I just threw in bolded words and phrases that looked good and hoped to be randomly selected for the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Now I know there is a science to blog optimization, and what I was throwing into my blog posts to make them look professional was called header/heading tags — and are an important tool for comprehension and SEO.

Here’s a quick guide on header tags and what they’re used for:

• H1 — The title of a post. They’re usually keyword-centric, focused around the “big idea” of a page or post, and crafted to grab a reader’s attention.
• H2 — These are subheaders that classify the main points of your paragraphs and separate sections. Consider using semantic keywords related to the “big idea” in your H1 while also helping the reader easily find the sections they want to read.
• H3 — These are subsections that clarify the points made in the H2 further. Alternatively, they can be used in formatting lists or bullet points.
• H4 —These are subsections that clarify the points made in the H3 further. Alternatively, they can be used in formatting lists or bullet points.

The “H” in H1, H2, etc. officially stands for “heading element,” though the SEO community also commonly calls these tags “header tags.”

As you can guess from the guide above, the numeral indicates the hierarchal relationship between each one (with H1 being the most important, H2 being less important, and so on).

Here’s an example of how this hierarchal structure might manifest in a blog outline:

Now that you understand that header tags provide structure to a page, let’s talk about them with greater specificity, starting with the H1 tag. 

Don’t make the mistake of using header tags as nothing more than stylistic elements. After all, they are structural in nature. Think of the H1 as you would a book title. Usually, there’s only one title for a book, so there should only be one title for your page or post. 

In addition, H1 tags should always be at the top of your page before the rest of your content, just as the book title is on the outside cover before you dive into the text inside.

To illustrate, the header tag in the example below is the title, “The Ultimate Guide to Product Marketing in 2021.”

The title is designated as the H1 for the page using HTML code. This code might manifest in the web page’s source code like so:

See the Pen H1 Example 1 by Christina Perricone (@hubspot) on CodePen.

However, as we alluded to earlier, there are other heading tags that also help with creating the structure of a page.

How many header tags are supported by HTML?

HTML supports up to six header tags (H1-H6) for you to use to structure your page as needed. They can be stylized visually according to your brand, and with the exception of the H1, you can have as many of these tags on a page as you want. 

Your headers should stick to the theme of what you’re writing about because they can help the reader (and the search engines) find the main points within the content and guide them through the flow of the page. When you’re formatting, use your best judgment when breaking up sections.

Below is a screenshot of a HubSpot blog post with examples of header tags indicated with arrows:

As you can see, every header tag looks different visually, and each header tag is used for a new idea.

Now that you know a little more about what header tags are, let’s get into how they’re used for SEO.

Header Tags and SEO

You may think that header tags are inconsequential in the grand scheme of website-related things. However, header tags can help provide structure to a piece of content and call attention to the most important ideas, themes, and (in effect) 
keywords in that content. As a result, header tags hold weight with keyword relevancy and readability. 

Consider this: Google finds content to serve up to its users by crawling web pages. As it does so, it analyzes the text, images, and other elements it finds to understand what that page is about.

When you put text into a header tag, you’re signalling that this text is important, and Google will use these to determine the context of the page, which then helps Google serve up results that are relevant to searchers’ queries.

That’s why it’s important when using header tags to make sure they’re correctly matching a keyword intent. If a post’s H1 tag doesn’t have a keyword, or if you put irrelevant text in H2 and H3 tags, Google will have a harder time understanding a page. As a result, that page won’t rank as well as it could. 

To illustrate, let’s say your keyword is “eCommerce.” You’d want this to be reflected in your H1 tag, so a title like “The Guide to Starting an eCommerce Business” would be ideal. That would tell Google exactly how to send web browsers to your post.

Search engines also look at header tags within your post, so it’s good to keep those keyword-centric, as well. For instance, you might create some H2 sections surrounding popular long-tail keywords related to eCommerce, like “five steps for creating an eCommerce business” or “best social media tools for eCommerce.”

You don’t have to think of keywords by yourself, either — in fact, you can do some easy keyword research to help you out or look into keyword research tools like SEMRush or Ahrefs. Just make sure that your header tags are friendly to both humans and the search engine robots.

Headers also make pages easier to read. Sectioning off different parts of a webpage keeps information organized and broken up in a comprehensible way. This helps readers find information they’re looking for but also search engines which are scanning along, too.

If your sections aren’t making sense, your page might not rank. Think of the sections in this post — do you think they were broken up in a readable way?

How to Add Header Tags in HTML

Adding header tags in HTML is a fairly simple process. If you want to notate an H1, you would type in <h1> and </h1>, putting the H1 text in-between those two tags. This is the same method for any type of header tag.

For example, if your h1 was “The Guide to Starting eCommerce,” it would look like this:

See the Pen H1 Example 2 by Christina Perricone (@hubspot) on CodePen.

This will work for HTML4 or older. If you’re working with HTML5, you might have to use a slightly different line to get the same result. The change is to give a heads up to Google about what the H1 is:

See the Pen H1 Example 3 by Christina Perricone (@hubspot) on CodePen.

You can also include punctuation between the two tags. For instance, you might have:

See the Pen H3 Example 1 by Christina Perricone (@hubspot) on CodePen.

Remember, Google will scan the HTML of header tags to tell web browsers what your page is about, so it’s important to look them over and see if your headers in HTML are formatted correctly.

Some blogging platforms, like WordPress and HubSpot, have an option on the toolbar to create header tags, so every time you want to add one, you don’t have to dig into the source code or HTML to do so.

The next time you create a post for your website, see if adding relevant header tags affects SEO, and how your readers are comprehending information.

A good test I like to use is sending posts to a close family member who doesn’t know much about blogging or marketing. Using outsider feedback and asking if they can comprehend my writing before I publish helps me format posts so they’re understandable.

Because using headers can help with readability for your users as well as crawlability for search engines, there’s no reason not to use them when creating pages and posts. You may even see jumps in search engine rankings, traffic, and time on page.

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

Ask any professional athlete or business executive how they became successful, and they’ll tell you they mastered a process. By figuring out which of their habits led to success and which didn’t, they improved their efficiency, effectiveness, and productivity at work.

But implementing a process into a business, department, or even a team is a completely different animal than honing your own personal process. With so many moving parts, how do you track each aspect of your business’ process and how do you refine it?

Data flow diagrams provide a straightforward, efficient way for organizations to understand, perfect, and implement new processes or systems. They’re visual representations of your process or system, so they make it easy to understand and prune.

Before we dive into how data flow diagrams can help refine any of your business’ systems or processes, let’s go over what it exactly is.

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DFDs became popular in the 1970s and have maintained their widespread use by being easy to understand. Visually displaying how a process or system works can hold people’s attention and explain complex concepts better than blocks of text can, so DFDs are able to help almost anyone grasp a system’s or process’ logic and functions.

There are two types of DFDs — logical and physical. Logical diagrams display the theoretical process of moving information through a system, like where the data comes from, where it goes, how it changes, and where it ends up.

Physical diagrams show you the practical process of moving information through a system, like how your system’s specific software, hardware, files, employees, and customers influences its flow of information.

You can either use logical or physical diagrams to describe the same flow of information or you can use them in conjunction to understand a process or system on a more granular level. But, before you can use a DFD to understand your system or process’ flow of information, you need to know the standard notations or symbols used to describe it.

Data Flow Diagram Symbols

Data Flow Diagram symbols are standardized notations, like rectangles, circles, arrows, and short-text labels, that describe a system or process’ data flow direction, data inputs, data outputs, data storage points, and its various sub-processes.

There are four common methods of notation used in DFDs: Yourdon & De Marco, Gene & Sarson, SSADM and Unified. All use the same labels and similar shapes to represent the four main elements of a DFD — external entity, process, data store, and data flow.

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External Entity

An external entity, which are also known as terminators, sources, sinks, or actors, are an outside system or process that sends or receives data to and from the diagrammed system. They’re either the sources or destinations of information, so they’re usually placed on the diagram’s edges. External entity symbols are similar across models except for Unified, which uses a stick-figure drawing instead of a rectangle, circle, or square.

Process

Process is a procedure that manipulates the data and its flow by taking incoming data, changing it, and producing an output with it. A process can do this by performing computations and using logic to sort the data, or change its flow of direction. Processes usually start from the top left of the DFD and finish on the bottom right of the diagram.

Data Store

Data stores hold information for later use, like a file of documents that’s waiting to be processed. Data inputs flow through a process and then through a data store while data outputs flow out of a data store and then through a process.

Data Flow

Data flow is the path the system’s information takes from external entities through processes and data stores. With arrows and succinct labels, the DFD can show you the direction of the data flow.

Before you start mapping out data flow diagrams you need to follow four best practices to create a valid DFD.

1. Each process should have at least one input and one output.

2. Each data store should have at least one data flow in and data flow out.

3. A system’s stored data must go through a process.

4. All processes in a DFD must link to another process or data store.

Levels of Data Flow Diagrams

DFDs can range from simple overviews to complex, granular representations of a system or process with multiple levels, starting with level 0. The most common and intuitive DFDs are level 0 DFDs, also called context diagrams. They’re digestible, high-level overviews of the flow of information through a system or process, so almost anyone can understand it.

Level 0: Context Diagram

This DFD level focuses on high-level system processes or functions and the data sources that flow to or from them. Level 0 diagrams are designed to be simple, straightforward overviews of a process or system.

Level 1: Process Decomposition

While level 1 DFDs are still broad overviews of a system or process, they’re also more detailed — they break down the system’s single process node into subprocesses.

Level 2: Deeper Dives

The next level of DFDs dive even deeper into detail by breaking down each level 1 process into granular subprocesses.

Level3: Increasing Complexity

Level 3 and higher-numbered DFDs are uncommon. This is largely due to the amount of detail required, which defeats its original purpose of being easy to understand.

Data Flow Diagram Examples

Professionals in various industries, like software engineering, IT, ecommerce, and product management & design, can use DFDs to better understand, refine, or implement a new system or process.

But what does a data flow diagram look like in practice — and how does it help your business? Here are three examples to help contextualize DFD impact.

1. Level 0 DFD

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This Level 0 DFD provides a contextual map of a securities trading platform. Data flows in one direction from the customer service assistant and the broker to the platform, and in two directions from customers to the platform and back again.

2. Level 1 DFD

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This Level 1 DFD breaks down the customer process in more detail, expanding it to include account creation, cash withdrawals, and eventual securities transactions.

3. Level 2 DFD

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This Level 2 DFD decomposes the “Place Order” process to contextualize the steps required to place an order — either by a customer or by a broker. It even accounts for a third-party stock exchange center where transaction details are forwarded after an order is placed.

1. Select a system or process.

Begin by selecting a specific system or process you want to analyze. While any system or process can be turned into a DFD, the larger the process the more complicated the diagram and the more difficult it will be to contextualize. Wherever possible, start with a small function or process you’re looking to improve.

2. Categorize related business activities.

Next, categorize all activities related to this process into external entities, data flows, processes, and data stores.

Consider a restaurant food ordering system. Customers are external entities, the food ordering system is a process, and the interaction between customers and the system (which goes in both directions) is the flow. 

Also worth noting? The ordering system doubles as a data store, so for an SSADA model, this means drawing it as a rectangle with rounded corners with two horizontal lines inside to represent its dual function.

3. Draw a Context DFD.

Now it’s time to start drawing. DFDs can be created by hand, using free templates available online, or via browser extensions.

Begin with a simple, Level 0 DFD: Start with your process or system, then map all basic connections and flows.

4. Check your work.

Before diving into more complex DFDs, check the work you’ve already done to make sure it’s accurate and complete. If you’ve missed (or added) a process, entity, or flow, your next-level DFDs may not make sense and you may be forced to start over.

5. Create child diagrams.

For each process or system described in your Level 0 DFD, create a new child diagram with its own entities and flows. Eventually, you can use these child diagrams to connect processes together. 

6. Expand processes into Level 1 DFDs.

Using your child diagrams, you should map more in-depth connections between each process. In the case of our restaurant example, this could mean digging deeper into the food ordering system and its connection to suppliers, managers, customers, and kitchen staff.

7. Repeat as needed.

Each process — no matter how large or small — can be reimagined as a Level 0 context diagram and the cycle can begin again. Repeat these steps as needed to create as many DFDs as required, or break processes down further to develop Level 2, 3, etc. DFDs.

Perfecting Your Process

While there’s no such thing as a “perfect” data flow diagram, continued practice can help streamline the process and offer critical insight into what’s working, what isn’t and where your business can make improvements that offer the biggest impact.

Your best bet? Remember the rule: Keep it simple. Start with context, build out connected processes, and repeat as needed to map key connections, flows, and entities across your organization.

“He once ran a marathon because it was on his way. Sharks have a week dedicated to him. Mosquitoes refuse to bite him purely out of respect.”

Have you heard of him before? Yes, he’s “The Most Interesting Man in the World”— a fictional character that drinks Dos Equis beer and stars in the company’s viral commercials.

The commercials — which make me laugh every time — are part advertisement, part comedy skit and have a similar theme so fans always know when they’re watching a Dos Equis advertisement.

The company targets its audience of sophisticated beer drinkers in an engaging, creative, and humorous way through TV, social media, and YouTube. The unique campaign created fans around the world that helped spread it across multiple platforms, so much so that people even dress up as the commercial’s main character for Halloween. 

Dos Equis may not have been 100% sure that their campaign would take off the way it did, but they had a good idea about its potential popularity. 

Similarly, there is no guaranteed way to ensure your content goes viral, but there are certain steps you can take to give your marketing campaign the best chance at success.

Many marketers hope for a campaign to go viral — meaning it’s recognized, widely-accepted, and influential. But there’s no guaranteed formula. However, if you think about some of your favorite viral marketing campaigns, you’ll notice some common features. Marketers wanting to reach a bigger audience should keep these attributes in mind when creating their next campaign:

1. It appeals to a target audience.

A successful viral marketing campaign considers the target audience. For any campaign to go viral, it needs to resonate with the audience and make them feel so strongly about your content that they decide to share it with their family, friends, and followers.

Determine who your target audience is in the earliest stages of your campaign creation. To achieve this, ask questions such as: Who do I want to connect with? What content would they feel passionate about? What are their hopes, dreams, and values? Why would they care about my campaign? What will can I do to make them want to share my content with their social network?

2. It has a strong visual strategy.

Viral marketing campaigns require a visual strategy — this guides potential customers to understand your brand through the use of images.

A campaign should tell a story and that story is best told using visual elements that resonate with your audience. Your visual strategy needs to be compatible with your brand and target audience — it should be interesting, informative, and contain some element of intrigue, such as humor or hope.

3. It’s highly creative.

Think about your favorite viral marketing campaign. What sets it apart from others?

Marketing campaigns don’t go viral unless they have a unique, interesting, and innovative idea behind them — your campaign needs to be something new and attention-grabbing.

4. It has emotional appeal. 

Have you seen the Dove Real Beauty Sketches campaign? It makes you feel frustrated, insecure, strong, and confident in just a few minutes.

Each commercial shows a person sitting behind a curtain describing their appearance while an artist — who cannot see them — draws their portrait. After the individual is done describing his or her features and the portrait is complete, the curtain is removed. The artist then draws a second portrait of the individual based off what they actually see.

After the second portrait is finished, the artist places the two drawings next to each other. As you can probably imagine, the portrait derived from the individual’s self-description is less attractive than what the artist draws in the second portrait.

In fact, in each video throughout the campaign, the portrait that the artist creates is a much brighter and more realistic depiction of the individual. This is a message about self-esteem and the beauty within all of us.

The campaign went viral because of its relatability and emotional appeal. You need to make your audience feel something — otherwise, why would they want to share your content?

5. It’s easy to share and promote.

Thanks to the internet and social media, sharing and promoting your content with the rest of the world is pretty simple. You don’t need huge sums of money to produce successful photo or video content that can be consumed by the greater population. 

For something to actually go viral, it needs to be shared over and over again. This means you and your company need to share the content first in as many places — and in as many ways — as possible. Then, you need to make it easy for your audience to share it as well.

Enable sharing, embedding, and downloading capabilities on all of your content so your viewers can tag their parents on Facebook, message their best friends on Instagram, or download your video so they can easily turn your content into a memorable GIF. Create calls-to-action or elements that encourage people to send it to their friends. 

Think about asking a celebrity to promote your content if an influencer would fit with your overall message and add value to your campaign. For example, viewers may find your insurance commercial more entertaining and share-worthy if Peyton Manning or Brad Paisley are singing.

6. It’s published at the right time.

You should also consider the date and time that you share your content. Marketers use major holidays — such as Christmas — as well as major events, like the presidential race and the Super Bowl, to their advantage.

More people are scrolling through their social media feeds, watching TV, and keeping up with current events during these times which causes marketers to spend more money on their campaigns. 

Similarly, anyone who uses a platform like Instagram knows what I’m talking about when I say the date and time of your posts matter.

For example, if you post on a Saturday at 8 p.m., most people are out at dinner, seeing a movie, or just hanging out with friends — meaning they are most likely not browsing their newsfeed … at least not as much as they do on Tuesdays. 

After all of this sharing and promoting, you need to wait and see whether or not people latch onto your content. If so, you could have created a viral campaign. If not, you may have to try again.

Read this blog to learn about the reasons why some older campaigns stand the test of time.

The Advantages of Viral Marketing Campaigns

Creating a viral marketing campaign isn’t an easy or predictable achievement. But if your campaign does go viral, it can mean thousands or even millions of new people being introduced to your brand and buying your products — money in the bank!

For example, the Dollar Shave Club’s campaign video went viral, which made them a household name. They were then acquired by Unilever for $1 billion — not bad.

Here are a few more advantages of producing viral content:

1. They can build your brand.

When a marketing campaign goes viral, your audience automatically learns about your company, products, services, and brand. This includes people who may not have ever heard about your company otherwise. This is how some small companies make their “big break” and how large companies stay relevant.

2. They don’t require a large budget.

Some of the most successful viral content is created on a low budget. These days, individuals and companies of any size can film high-quality video and take professional-looking photos all on an iPhone.

Many content creators, or people who simply upload a random video, have found themselves become famous almost overnight. It’s not about the resources and budget — it’s all about what catches the attention of the internet. Marketers don’t always need a large-scale production with a celebrity to make their campaign funny, surprising, relatable, or informational. 

Fun fact:Jonathan Goldsmith, the man behind the “Most Interesting Man in the World” commercials, had only done a few gigs prior getting his big break when the campaign went viral. 

3. They get your brand in front of a new (and larger) audience.

Campaigns are considered “viral” when they have a large reach. Companies may experience an increase in sales, greater engagement on social media, and a boost in conversation about their brand and products.

This is exactly what happened for Smart Water when they brought Jennifer Aniston on board for their campaign in 2012. The video has over 6 million views on YouTube, and their humorous campaigns have done so well with the public that Aniston was featured in them through 2017.

3 of the Most Famous Viral Campaigns

Now that we have reviewed the features of successful viral campaigns and how to launch one yourself, let’s dive into some of the most popular viral campaigns ever created.

Old Spice: “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like”

Old Spice found that women are the ones to purchase men’s personal hygiene products, so they created an ad that spoke directly to this audience.

The “Old Spice Man” talks directly to the audience in a bold, confident, and humorous way. He tells women that anything is possible when your man uses Old Spice — all while he sails the ocean shirtless, turns sports tickets into diamonds, and rides a white horse on the beach.

This campaign went viral because … well … humor works. It was so successful that it even increased sales for the brand. The commercial has received over 55 million views on YouTube, won an Emmy for Outstanding Commercial at the Creative Arts Primetime Emmy Awards, and won the Film Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival.

ALS: “Ice Bucket Challenge”

The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge began four years ago and was created to raise awareness for the debilitating disease. For the challenge, you had to pour ice cold water over your entire body and then nominate a friend to do the same. This became a movement that raised $115 million in the summer of 2014 alone. Because … who doesn’t want to watch a family member or friend pour freezing cold water on their head?

Celebrities from around the world started participating, challenging their famous friends, donating, and raising awareness. There was an Ice Bucket Challenge hashtag that gained popularity allowing for the videos to spread easily over multiple social media channels.

Most importantly — the challenge is fun and makes participants feel like a part of a bigger movement, which is why it remains relevant years later.

Always “#LikeAGirl”

This video became a major hit because it directly addressed how phrases that are so commonly used can be detrimental to someone’s self image and confidence. In the video, various men, women, and young boys are asked to “run like a girl” or “fight like a girl”. Then young girls are asked to do the same, with a very different approach: They show strength and confidence in their movements. 

It made viewers recognize how quickly we use female-oriented phrases as insults, and that doing something #LikeAGirl should be seen as inspiring and brave. 

The original TV commercial that came out in 2014 has over 65-million views on Youtube, and the hashtag — #LikeAGirl — remains popular today.

For more great examples of viral video marketing campaigns, check out this blog.

Conclusion

There is no roadmap for making your content “go viral.” You can review what has been successful in the past and try to emulate this, but ultimately, it’s about creating great content that connects with your audience and makes them want to share it. Do this, and you just might find that your brand is the one everyone is talking about.