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

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

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

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

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

3 Reasons Why the Growth Formula Is Broken

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

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

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

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

Two Paths for AI to Drive Growth: Acceleration and Transformation

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

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

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

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

How AI Is Accelerating and Transforming Marketing

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

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

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

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

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

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

How AI Is Accelerating and Transforming Sales

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

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

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

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

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

How AI Is Accelerating and Transforming Service

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

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

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

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

How AI and Humans Can Work Together To Drive Growth

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let’s dive right in.

Table of Contents

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

What is a PPC budget?

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

A few terms you’ll run into here:

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

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

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

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

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What is the PPC budget formula?

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

Where:

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

Example Calculation

Let’s say:

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

Now, let’s implement the formula:

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

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

How to Calculate Your PPC Budget

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

1. Understand your target CAC.

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

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

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

2. Calculate daily budget.

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

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

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

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

3. Calculate weekly budget.

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

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

4. Calculate monthly budget.

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

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

Here’s a breakdown for all three calculations:

Daily Budget:

Avg CPC x 5

Daily budget x 5 = weekly budget

Weekly budget x 4 weeks = monthly budget

Example:

Avg CPC is $10

$10 x 5 = $50

$50 x 5 = $250

$250 x 4 = $1,000

$1,000 is the monthly ad budget

How to Manage Your PPC Budget

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

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Here’s how proper PPC budget management should look:

Establish a test budget to understand key metrics.

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

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

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

Determine the optimal budget.

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

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

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

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

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

Nemeroff explains with an example.

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

Run ads for a week to determine CPC.

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

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

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

Use Google Smart Bidding.

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

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Here’s how it works:

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

Use a layered budget strategy.

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

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

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

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

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

Refine your audience through micro-targeting.

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

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

To implement micro-targeting, define your audience first:

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

Then move to advanced features, such as:

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

Break down your budget by keyword performance.

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

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

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

Regularly review quality scores to gauge keyword effectiveness.

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

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

Here’s a simple breakdown to make it clearer:

Keyword vs. search term:

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

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

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

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5 PPC Budgeting Tips from Pros

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

1. Regular performance reviews and reallocation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. Reverse engineer from CPA.

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

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

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

Watch the full video:

3. Don’t overspend or underspend.

Overspending can quickly deplete your budget and waste resources.

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

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

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

Use this formula:

Total Revenue / Total Cost = ROAS.

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

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

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

4. Leverage ad scheduling to cut waste.

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

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

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

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5. Micro-budget testing for new platforms.

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

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

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

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

Key Takeaways from PPC Experts

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

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

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

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

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

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

Table of Contents

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

Why use AI tools for B2B marketing?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. HubSpot

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

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

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

HubSpot Features

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

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

HubSpot AI Features

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

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

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

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

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

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

HubSpot Limitations

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

Pricing

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

See the full pricing breakdown.

G2 Reviews & Ratings

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

Best For

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

2. WriterZen

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

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

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

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

WriterZen Features

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

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

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

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

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

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

WriterZen AI Features

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

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

WriterZen Limitations

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

Pricing

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

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

G2 Reviews & Ratings

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

Best For

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

3. ChatGPT

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

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

ChatGPT Features

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

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

ChatGPT AI Features

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ChatGPT Limitations

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

Pricing

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

G2 Reviews & Ratings

ChatGPT is rated 4.7/5 with over 580 reviews.

Best For

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

4. Loom

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

Loom Features

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

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

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

Loom AI Features

Loom uses quite a bit of AI.

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

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

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

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

Loom Limitations

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

As mentioned, the video editor could be better.

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

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

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

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

Pricing

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

G2 Reviews & Ratings

Loom is rated 4.7/5 with over 2000 reviews.

Best For

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

5. Fireflies AI

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

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

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Fireflies AI Features

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

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

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

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

AI Features Within Fireflies AI

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

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

Fireflies Limitations

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

Pricing

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

G2 Reviews & Ratings

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

Best For

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

6. Microsoft Clarity

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

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

Microsoft Clarity Features

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

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

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

Microsoft Clarity AI Features

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

Microsoft Clarity Limitations

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

Pricing

Clarity is free to use forever.

G2 Reviews & Ratings

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

Best For

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

7. ClickUp

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

Project management tools are a must for me.

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

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

ClickUp Features

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

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

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

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

ClickUp AI Features

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

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

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

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

ClickUp Limitations

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

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

Pricing

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

G2 Reviews & Ratings

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

Best For

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

8. LinkedIn

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

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

LinkedIn Features

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

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

LinkedIn AI Features

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

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

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

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

LinkedIn Limitations

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

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

Pricing

A premium subscription starts at $39.99 per month.

G2 Reviews & Ratings

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

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

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

Best For

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

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

9. Slack

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

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Slack Features

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

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

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

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

Slack AI Features

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

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

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

Slack Limitations

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

Pricing

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

G2 Reviews & Ratings

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

Best For

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

10. Motion

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

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Motion Features

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

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

Motion AI Features

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

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

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

Motion Limitations

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

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

Pricing

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

G2 Reviews & Ratings

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

Best For

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

Don’t Sleep on AI Tools for B2B Marketing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In this article:

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

The Importance of Creating an SEO Budget

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

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

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

Or worse, tactics that put your business at risk.

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

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

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

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

You can prioritize the tactics with the most impact.

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

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

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

It keeps you on track to meet your goals.

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

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

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

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

It helps you track ROI.

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

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

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

How to Create an SEO Budget

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

1. Conduct an SEO audit.

The first step is to conduct an SEO audit.

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

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

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

2. Research the competition.

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

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

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

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

3. Set SEO goals based on business strategy.

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

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

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

4. Determine how much work needs to be outsourced.

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

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

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

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

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

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

5. Allocate based on the highest impact.

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

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

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

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

6. Track KPIs.

Tracking your performance can help you refine your spending.

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

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

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

7. Leave room for unexpected costs.

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

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

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

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

4 Costs to Consider When Creating an SEO Budget

1. Tools

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

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

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

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

2. Services

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

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

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

3. Maintenance

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

4. Content creation

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

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

Getting the Most Out of Your SEO Budget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Table of Contents

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

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

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

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

Why is visual storytelling important?

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

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

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

Elements of Visual Storytelling

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

Visuals

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Story

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

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

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

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

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

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

Emotions

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

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

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

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

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

Authenticity

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

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

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

Purpose

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

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

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

What’s the purpose of your story?

How to Use Visual Storytelling for Marketing

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

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

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

Visual Storytelling Examples

1. Dawn Dish Soap – “The Big Picture”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. Airbnb

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

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

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

4. Gemini

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

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

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

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

5. Amazon – “Saving Sawyer”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

6. Purina Service Dog Salute

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

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

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

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

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

7. Gibson – “The Process”

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

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

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

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

8. Nike – What Are You Working On?

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

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

9. Subaru – Subaru Loves Learning

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

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

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

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

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

10. McDonald’s Anime Commercial

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

B2B social media marketing often gets a bad rap.

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

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

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

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

Table of Contents

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

What is B2B social media marketing?

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

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

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

Pretty straightforward, right?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

B2B Social Media Marketing Strategy Best Practices

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

1. Shape your strategy around SMART goals.

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

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

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

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

Thinking this through with the SMART methodology, this becomes:

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

Putting that all together makes our SMART goal:

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

See the difference?

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

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

2. Take inspiration from your competitors.

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

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

All of this insight helps you better understand what you’re up against and how you may need to adjust your strategy.

You also want to “Find a white space,” as HubSpot Senior Social Media Manager Emily Kearns advises.

“The B2B landscape is relatively straightforward, similar, and dull. Deep dive into your competitors, see how they’re executing on social, and try to determine a unique area where you can add value and stand out.”

If your competitor isn’t responding to trending news, then maybe your brand can lead the way. If they find success sharing videos with actionable advice, how can you incorporate a similar style and improve upon it?

Look for opportunities to emulate things that are doing well and differentiate yourself.

3. Establish a unique brand and voice.

You also need to develop a consistent voice on social media. Not only does this make your feed look more organized, cohesive, and professional, but it also allows visitors to recognize your content even out of context.

For example, you can spot a Canva post from a mile away with its consistent fonts and colors.

Ask yourself:

• What makes your business different?
• How will its content look and feel?
• What would make someone be able to recognize it even if it wasn’t on your platform?
• What emotions and words do people associate with you?

The answers to these questions will form the foundation of your voice. If you want more tips for building your brand voice from the ground up, here is a helpful slideshow to get you started.

Pro tip: LinkedIn found that 64% of executives prefer “a more human, less formal tone of voice” over “an even-toned, intellectual voice.” So, keep it natural and conversational.

“Think of your brand as a person, a friend to your audience,” details HubSpot Senior Brand Social Team Lead Chi Thukral.

“What would they sound like, what would they be interested in talking about, how would they be at work, what would their FYP look like? This all will humanize your content. B2B doesn’t have to be serious and dry.”

While you want your social media voice to be consistent with your greater brand and company culture, you’re still talking to fellow human beings. Post accordingly.

4. Post on a consistent schedule.

Along with your voice and visual brand, aim to be consistent with your posting schedule.

Having a set time to post content gives you a deadline to follow and gives your audience a specific time to anticipate hearing from you.

Create a content calendar for as far into the future as you can. I recommend mapping out at least two weeks and having your content ready a week before publishing, so you aren’t left scrambling at the last minute.

HubSpot has a social media calendar template to help you get started.

Pro tip: Another way to maintain consistency is to schedule posts ahead of time using a social media tool.

HubSpot’s social media management software allows you to run all your social media from one central location, including scheduling to Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), and LinkedIn.

5. Focus on original, thought leadership content.

Looking at the success of all the meme accounts on social media, you may think curating content from other sources is a quick ticket to success — but this approach is short-sighted.

You may get a like or share today, but why should anyone follow you over the original source long-term? Sharing third-party content showcases the talent, unique value, or expertise of its original creator, not you.

So, rather than just curating content from others, aim to share high-quality, original content on a regular basis. Your audience will be more inclined to share original content, in turn exposing your name and knowledge to new audiences.

But what kind of original content should you post?

Consider your audience’s interests, questions, and goals, and create content that addresses them with your unique perspective. Provide answers and points of view only your organization can; insights from your team’s experience.

The possibilities are endless, but if you’re having trouble coming up with ideas, you’re not alone. Creating engaging content is the #1 challenge marketers expect with social media in the next year, but it doesn’t have to be.

We’ll get into specifics in the next section, but you can also head to The Ultimate Guide to Content Creation for some inspiration.

6. Diversify your content mediums.

There’s a reason we social media marketers get excited when platforms launch new features. They’re new mediums to play, get creative with, and maybe strike a chord with our audiences.

Instagram Stories, Facebook polls, TikTok Slideshows, and LinkedIn documents are all examples of multimedia formats that added new ways to engage with audiences on their platforms and diversified content mixes.

But why does this matter? Think of it this way — If you scrolled through Instagram and only saw photos, you’d probably get bored pretty quickly. Or if you only created the same format everyone else was, you’d likely get lost in the crowd.

Part of the reason Instagram keeps people hooked is because of its variety. In a 10-second scroll, you might come across a meme, a Reel, a Story, an image with a poll, a carousel, or a live video. There’s a potpourri of options to keep people interested and interacting.

This is something you should emulate on your brand’s specific page.

Different people enjoy consuming information in different ways, so if you only create one type, you may be ignored by many in your target audience.

Plus, not every topic lends itself to every format. For example, a software tutorial is likely best suited for a video rather than a series of photos. So, let your subject matter guide you as well.

Office space provider Regus uses a healthy mix of different mediums across its social media profiles. On Instagram, you’ll find short-form videos, Stories, single photos, carousels, and even graphics to diversify its feed and highlight offers in different ways:

And their LinkedIn follows suit with videos, slideshows, and graphics:

Pro tip: Repurpose your existing content for different mediums with artificial intelligence (AI). Repurposing is one of smartest ways to get the most out of the work you’ve already done and it doesn’t have to be time consuming, thanks to AI.

Share a blog article with ChatGPT and it can quickly spin up drafts for social media posts or captions. It can even create video scripts or even images and graphics.

There are also an increasing number of AI tools being explicitly built with content repurposing in mind like HubSpot’s Content Remix.

With Content Remix, Professional and Enterprise-level users of Content Hub can repurpose existing content into new formats.

This can be materials you have hosted on HubSpot (i.e. images, social posts, text messages, ads, and blog posts) or new content you upload to the tool.

7. Use AI — but sparingly.

Speaking of AI, it can dramatically help you save time in B2B social media marketing in a number of ways. It can help you:

• Generate images
• Create videos
• Respond to social media engagement (via tools like ManyChat)
• Conduct platform, competitor, and audience research
• Brainstorm post ideas
• Write posts and captions (with HubSpot’s Free AI Content Generator)
• And much more.

As tempting as it can be, however, use AI strategically in your B2B social media activity as it does have its shortcomings.

For instance, when it comes to writing, the convenience and speed also comes with concerns of plagiarism, privacy, and even bias. In fact, our research found that 96% of the time, the content AI creates isn’t ready to use as-is. So, by all means, use it to get you started, but be prepared to edit.

Take what the tool gives you and shape it into your final product with your brand’s specific voice, personality, and original thought.

As for social media engagement, modern audiences can usually spot automation, like this message from Lyft, from a mile away.

Messages like this can come off as cold and inauthentic, especially on social media platforms where the goal is connection. So, keep your activity as organic and human-to-human as possible, whenever possible.

Learn more about how AI to in your B2B marketing.

8. Lean into the right platforms.

There are dozens of social media platforms, but that doesn’t mean you have to be on all of them.

Kearns explained, “You don’t need to do everything on all social channels. Start small and focused and put resources behind one platform to understand how your audience engages with that content.”

According to our research, the top five channels for B2B marketers are Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, and X.

She continued, “Get to know your audience: It’s critical to research to understand where they’re spending their time online, what their interests are, and what they’re looking for in social. This should be the foundation of your content strategy and channel strategy.”

B2B Social Media Marketing Tactics That Work for Any Industry

With your strategy set, let’s dive into specific tactics.

9. Share data and facts.

Data is not just interesting, it’s hard to argue with. It adds an air of credibility to any message and can grab attention. That’s a formula for great B2B social media content if you ask me.

With this in mind, look into your analytics or, if you have the means, conduct original research. Pull the most compelling data or number-based facts related to what you do and share it with your audience in an eye-catching video or graphic.

What kind of data should you share?

Look for surprising trends and insights — ones that go against popular belief. This kind of information stops someone as they’re scrolling, makes them want to hit share, and even sparks a conversation.

Take this example featuring HubSpot’s State of Sales:

You can also share data to help your audience improve their work or make better decisions. Reddit for Business, for example, regularly shares user preference data to help businesses and advertisers deliver more effective content on its platform:

It also cleverly uses data to help “sell” its offering.

10. Give inspiration.

I’m not talking about the cliche, anonymous inspirational quotes we all see on Facebook from time to time, but professional inspiration.

Think quotes or keynotes from well-respected thought leaders in your space or individuals who have overcome relatable challenges.

Content like this resonates with your audience on a deeper level and gives them something to not only aspire to, but want to follow for more.

I’m a huge fan of how Shopify combines this strategy with social proof; sharing inspirational stories from its successful customers.

Speaking of which …

11. Showcase your customers.

People connect with other people, so even if you’re a B2B brand, it’s smart to incorporate human stories and relatable personalities into your social media content.

Have some really happy customers or fans of your products? Post about them on social media like Slack does on its LinkedIn company page:

These features act as social proof of your claims and help audiences better envision themselves as potential customers.

Plus, according to Gartner, 86% of businesses consider verified reviews critical in their purchase decisions, so having a real-life customer speak to your value can do wonders for sales.

Pro tip: Don’t be afraid to lean into user-generated content. When your fans or customers love your brand, they’ll often be happy to share their experiences and thoughts on social media.

Create a branded hashtag and encourage them to use it. Then you can then reshare this content to your own social media

12. Highlight your employees.

You can also introduce your social media followers to your employees. Spotlighting your team lets audiences to put faces to the company and humanize the brand.

This is important for small and large companies alike, because whether you’re selling computers or offer commercial cleaning services, customers like to know who their money is going to and also who will be there if they run into issues.

Google and Pinterest both do a wonderful job of this:

Additionally, highlighting your employees allows for employer branding—or the reputation your company has as a place to work. This can help attract talent and make you more likable to customers overall.

Showcasing your staff may also increase your reach and engagement. For instance, instead of just posting a photo of your new product, you might also post a photo of the 20 people who designed it.

This would likely get shared by those 20 people and seen by their networks if tagged.

At HubSpot, we’re no strangers to highlighting our employees on social media. In this example, we highlighted HubSpot employees who would be acting as “correspondents” for INBOUND this year.

By doing this, we get to acknowledge and show appreciation for some of our team members while also giving our audience real-life individuals to connect with at the event.

13. Partner with relevant brands and influencers.

According to Matter Communication, 69% of consumers trust messages from influencers, friends, and family over brands themselves. In other words, you need others to vouch for you.

Explore which influencers, creators, or other businesses your buyers engage with. Collaborating with them can boost your reach and the trust others have in you.

Figma regularly collaborates with influencers and real-life users of its software for engaging social media content:

Learn more about your options for influencer marketing.

14. Use relevant humor.

According to a recent study by HubSpot research, 97% of marketers plan to continue or increase their investment in funny content on social media in the next year. And why not?

They also reported that humorous content delivers more ROI than any other type.

Humor grabs attention, is memorable, encourages sharing, and makes you likable overall. So, look for ways to incorporate it naturally into your social media content like Sprout Social.

Shopify also does a great job on its Instagram profile:

Pro tip: Keep the humor you incorporate on brand and fit for your audience. As you can see in the Shopify example, they use some profanity, albeit censored. For their brand and audience, this makes sense, but it doesn’t work for everyone.

Humor is subjective. There’s always a chance your joke won’t land everyone, but the last thing you want to do is offend a potential customer. So, know your audience.

15. Start and engage in conversation.

Social media was created to help people make connections with other people. Even though brands have entered and occupied the space for a while now, that sentiment hasn’t changed.

Your brand won‘t be able to connect with your audience if all you’re doing is pushing your product at them. You need to fit in naturally and offer real value.

The key to staying relevant on social is to start and engage in the conversations your target audience is interested in having.

One of the easiest ways to do this is by asking questions. For instance, on LinkedIn, Shopify started with a poll.

This was a smart approach for several reasons:

• It took advantage of a fun, interactive medium to stand out in feeds
• It encourages conversation in the comments
• It also gathered original data in the process

You can also prompt questions or discussions in your photo or video captions or in texted-based posts like this tweet from HubSpot.

Image Source

While this particular topic isn’t necessarily related to HubSpot’s product or industry, it is related to business and digital marketing and is a discussion its potential customers are interested in.

This shows we understand our audience and what’s on their minds and are also up to date on what’s going on in the world.

16. Experiment and refine.

Clearly, there is no shortage of best practices for social media, but the truth is that every audience is different, so you’ll want to run experiments to figure out what works best for your brand.

HubSpot’s Kearns shared, “Social is the one channel where you have an opportunity to experiment and get audience feedback on a daily basis. Try new things, iterate, and optimize! Take learnings from your audience and apply them to future content.”

There are endless experiments you can conduct on your channels. Here are some ideas to inspire you:

• Use questions and statistics in your copy to see which pulls your audience in more.
• Test different link positions to determine if it makes users more likely to click.
• Add emojis to see if it increases interactions.
• Run ads to a video and a still image on the same topic to see which performs better.
• Segment a different part of your audience to test how they react to an ad.
• Test different hashtags to see if it affects impressions.
• Spend more time replying to posts to determine if it increases your follower count.

Experimenting with your content is how you figure out your own best practices, which will always be more personalized than industry standards.

Put the spark back in B2B social media.

With the tips and strategies we outlined, B2B social media marketing doesn’t have to be boring, stoic, or forgettable. The key is simply to know your audience and their goals and let their preferences guide you.

The more you listen to their feedback and take lead from their behaviors, the better equipped you will be to craft a social media strategy that drives real bottomline results.

Welcome to Creator Columns, where we bring expert HubSpot Creator voices to the Blogs that inspire and help you grow better.

When I lived in Argentina, I didn’t miss out on seeing any of the movies I wanted to see in the theaters. All the shows I wanted to see were playing to packed audiences in Buenos Aires in English with Spanish subtitles.

Here in the U.S., my Spanish-speaking husband and I recently went to see a new movie at the theater.

We were able to go because this specific theater had designated showings of the movie with the original English audio, along with Spanish subtitles.

As an inclusive marketing strategist and consultant and founder of Thompson Media Group, I often remind my clients that some people may have different aspects of their identity. But their dreams, desires, fears, and frustrations aren’t any different from the people they’ve grown accustomed to serving.

People with disabilities still like pizza. People with larger body sizes still like to wear cute clothes. And people who speak other languages still need tools and support to grow their businesses.

The entertainment industry has long leaned into the reality that people who speak other languages still want to watch the latest Marvel movie, Bridgerton season, or House of the Dragon episode at the same time as other people around the world.

As such, they bake global audience needs into the budget and development timelines so they can watch the content in their local language.

An increasing number of smart brands are embracing the idea that engaging their ideal customers who speak other languages is an effective way to attract and convert more customers.

If you need guidance on how to build a global marketing strategy, check out this Global Marketing Playbook from HubSpot.

How to Engage Consumers That Don’t Speak Your Brand’s Primary Language

A common misconception about engaging consumers who speak different languages is that all you have to do is translate your existing content.

However, the journeys consumers take to choose which brand to buy from are often more complex than it is for a typical media consumer. There are other factors to consider.

Federico Gagliardone is the co-founder of Mecenas, a media company that works to connect brands with Spanish speakers in the U.S. He told me that a common misconception brands have about engaging Spanish speakers is that all they have to do is translate the content.

Have a listen to this full conversation with Federico on how to effectively reach Spanish speakers in the U.S., including the role of Spanglish on this episode of the Inclusion & Marketing podcast.

Here are key elements to include in an effective multilingual content strategy, beyond translation and localization, that attracts and converts more customers for your brand.

1. Customer Intimacy

In marketing, one-size-fits-all approaches aren’t really effective. I am constantly reminding my clients that business is about belonging. Consumers will feel like they belong with you whenever you demonstrate that you see them, understand them, and have created products, content, and experiences with them in mind.

Taking content that was designed for one market, then plopping it in front of another market rarely yields the stellar results you desire.

Selim Dahmani is a Senior Growth Manager at HubSpot who focuses on the French-speaking market. He told me, “In my experience, native blog posts created with a regional SEO approach bring 4x more traffic on average than localized blog posts.”

This short video clip gives a specific example as to why a simple localization approach didn’t yield stellar results.:

Do this: Start with the customer you want to serve. Let insights about them guide your strategy. Spend time discovering what their dreams, desires, fears, and frustrations are. Uncover common questions they have, versus the ones you may be accustomed to getting in other markets.

Avoid focusing your efforts on figuring out what you need to do to “make it work” with what you already have for people who speak other languages, either in the same or different markets.

Then create inclusive and authentic content that speaks to the audience you want to reach in a manner and format that fits their preferences.

You can hear my full discussion with Selim on this episode of the Inclusion & Marketing podcast, which also has lots of other great in-the-trenches insights about developing and executing a multilingual content strategy.

2. Customer Journeys

Don’t assume that the journey customers take as part of your multilingual content strategy will be the same as it is in the primary language your brand operates in.

What you find about consumers during the customer intimacy phase may lead you to create a different journey.

For instance, while people in one market may be keen to sign up to get a lead magnet to take the next step forward with you, consumers in another market may have a strong preference to sign up for a call with you.

Build your funnel based on the needs and preferences of the people you want to serve, rather than just duplicating what has worked for people in other markets in the past.

Another consideration is that you may find that you need different assets, and possibly in a different order, in your overarching funnel.

Do this: Focus your energy on creating a minimum viable funnel with the content you need to attract and convert consumers first. During the customer intimacy phase, you’ll likely identify relevant keywords your ideal consumer is searching for in their preferred language.

A smart way to get started with that initial funnel is to create content based on those keywords, with the call to action to take the next step forward. This will help you communicate in a way that is most aligned with your consumers’ preferences in that market.

With a baseline funnel in place, you can start to expand outward to create more content and resources that help your desired audience convert.

3. Friction-free Customer Experiences

When it comes to developing your multilingual content strategy, it’s important to think about the customer experience you will deliver to the people you want to serve.

Friction harms conversions. And too often, brands deliver friction-filled experiences to people who have identities that are different from the ones they traditionally serve.

For instance, when one of my clients was trying to reach Spanish speakers in the U.S. I advised them to create separate social media accounts for English and Spanish speakers to deliver a better experience for all.

That way consumers wouldn’t click through an ad in Spanish and land on an English-speaking social media account. Multiple languages on one account are confusing and cause unnecessary friction for consumers.

Samsung features separate social media accounts for the different countries it operates in. There’s a main Samsung page, as well as pages for various local markets including Samsung Espana, Ecuador, and Egypt.

Another point of consideration in your multilingual content strategy is creating useful entry points to find your content.

For instance, in this video, a Spanish-speaking consumer typed a brand’s name into Google, and clicked through to the brand’s website (a landing page) from there. He landed on the brand’s English-speaking version of the page, and there weren’t any links that enabled him to translate the content. Friction.

When he went to the same brand’s homepage directly, the website automatically changed the content to the Spanish-language version of the website, which provided much less friction. However, that approach doesn’t come without its challenges either.

For instance, say a Spanish-speaking consumer uses a shared computer where the settings aren’t in Spanish. The automatic change of language wouldn’t happen, so it’s important to provide options in the navigation for consumers to easily choose their preferred language.

Do this: Conduct user testing for the customer experiences you’re designing with people in the markets who speak the language you want to start operating in. That testing will highlight any friction in the customer experience you’re planning.

You can use that feedback to ensure you develop and organize your content. This is a crucial step to make sure that your content meets the needs of the people you want to serve, in a manner that delivers as little friction as possible for them.

It’s Time to Activate a Multilingual Content Strategy for Your Brand

You can attract and convert more of your ideal customers. You just have to start engaging them with a well-thought-out content strategy in their preferred language.

Don’t make the common mistake of trying to convert customers who speak other languages with the least effort possible. Instead, focus your resources on developing a deeper degree of intimacy with the community you want to reach.

Then, use that insight to develop a thoughtful customer journey and friction-free customer experience to win their attention and earn their loyalty.

AI is better at guessing at scale than humans — but how do you integrate it into your growth marketing plan while maintaining a personal touch?

As businesses grow, marketing teams often find themselves caught in a balancing act: scaling their efforts to reach more customers, while still trying to maintain the campaign personalization strategies that drove customer engagement and interest in the first place.

As Kieran and I discuss in a recent episode of Marketing Against the Grain, however, the larger the audience, the harder it becomes to consistently deliver targeted interactions. This often results in generic messaging, missed market opportunities, and diminishing conversions.

So what can companies do to ensure their marketing strategy stays relevant and impactful as they scale?

We believe the solution lies in AI personalization tactics, which enable businesses to analyze and interpret vast amounts of customer interactions across large datasets. AI personalization can lead to higher user engagement, smarter segmentation, and increased campaign efficiency.

How to Use AI Personalization Tactics to Scale Marketing Growth

Here are our top three recommendations about how to use AI personalization to scale marketing growth — plus tips and resources for getting started today.

1. Build Detailed Ideal Customer Profiles

A key way AI personalization tools help marketers scale is by creating incredibly detailed Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs).

For example, tools like Scout AI and Humantic AI combine internal data, like customer behaviors and preferences, with external data sources like Google search, LinkedIn contacts, and paid ad performance — and then use those insights to generate a detailed ICP tailored to your business needs.

From there, you can build your own proprietary contact database filled with leads that align with this profile.

Once your ICP and contact database are in place, these personalization tools take things a step further by crafting targeted outreach strategies, including dynamic content suggestions, paid ads, and email campaigns that align directly with your ideal customers.

As a result, marketing and sales teams can concentrate on the most relevant, high-value prospects, making demand generation more efficient and scalable.

2. Tailor Content and Messaging With Real-Time Data

A second way AI personalization tools support marketing scalability is by processing real-time user data — browsing behavior, previous purchases, location — and adjusting marketing content and messaging based on these insights for individual customers.

“AI has elevated us from segment personalization to one-to-one personalization,” Kieran explains.

For example, tools like ChatSpot AI, 6Sense, and Clay integrate with CRM platforms like HubSpot, allowing marketing teams to analyze real-time customer data and then refine the angle of their campaign pitch, email messages, or creative assets. This dynamic approach ensures that every interaction is timely and relevant to the customer’s current needs.

As Kieran puts it, “We are transitioning from the traffic acquisition era to the attention acquisition era.” This shift makes tailored content and messaging all the more critical for quickly capturing customer loyalty — and differentiating your business from the competition.

3. Accelerate and Amplify Creative Content

A third way that AI supercharges marketing growth is by identifying what creative content works well, automating its creation and templatization, and accelerating iterations and testing.

For example, AI tools can ingest keyword data and analyze the content that currently ranks for those keywords. It then breaks down why that content is performing well and offers recommendations on how to replicate and improve upon it.

From there, artificial intelligence allows marketing teams to rapidly test these creative templates at scale, with AI re-ingesting both internal and external data to continuously refine its recommendations.

Many AI tools also have built-in analytics. This helps you identify what’s performing best over time and find fresh ideas to ensure your creative strategy is in sync with what resonates with your audience.

To watch the full episode about how to use AI to scale your marketing efforts, check out the full episode of Marketing Against the Grain below:

This blog series is in partnership with Marketing Against the Grain, the video podcast. It digs deeper into ideas shared by marketing leaders Kipp Bodnar (HubSpot’s CMO) and Kieran Flanagan (SVP, Marketing at HubSpot) as they unpack growth strategies and learn from standout founders and peers.

This is the guide for you if you’re creating a request for a proposal (RFP) for the first time or if you want to improve your RFP process.

In this article, I’m diving into the specifics of what an RFP is, why you might need one, when to issue an RFP, and how to create your very first RFP today.

I’ve reached out to senior sales professionals, marketing leaders, and CEOs who are already using the RFP process. Want to learn from the best? Take note of their top tips for getting the most out of RFPs.

What exactly is an RFP?

Keep in mind that an RFP shouldn’t be confused with an RFQ. The RFP may also be used differently depending on the department.

Let’s first dig into the definition of an RFP.

When your company has a new (often large) project or one that’s more complex and requires a bit of outsourcing, an RFP can help you get the job done right the first time.

The RFP doc allows you to quickly uncover potential vendors’ strengths and weaknesses in relation to your project without having to spend too much time hunting for them yourself.

RFPs can also give you a sneak peek into different strategies you may not have considered since each vendor will include their own unique action plan along with their bid.

And you’ll have this information before you ever have to commit to the vendor.

RFP vs. RFQ

An RFQ is a Request for Quotation, which differs slightly from an RFP.

The RFQ is just the quote. Companies solicit multiple price quotes from various vendors to compare services based on price alone. An RFQ does not detail anything other than price.

RFP includes a price quote along with several other specifics. While you’re still receiving a quote in an RFP, you’re also getting information on the timeline of completion, deliverable schedule, and the list of services provided as well.

You can go straight to the RFP phase if you want to, but some companies will submit the RFQ and then the RFP.

Maurice Harary is CEO and co-founder of The Bid Lab, a company that responds to RFP and grant responses for businesses and non-profit organizations. Harary recommends that companies are better off sending an RFQ before the RFP.

Harary says, “Never skip out on issuing an RFQ before you issue an RFP. Learn what makes a vendor qualified for the job before you issue that industry cattle call.”

Once you’ve issued, reviewed, and assessed responses from an RFQ, Harary says that teams should have a realistic idea of the requirements necessary to implement the desired solution. You can then tweak your RFP according to industry feedback before you post the official version of your request.

“When you do finally publish your RFP, you will have learned exactly which elements of the solution you need to stress to potential respondents up front —and, conversely, you‘ll know to be clear about what won’t work for your organization,” Harary notes.

From there, the resulting responses will be more relevant and tailored according to the guidelines you established in the RFP and RFQ. And, Harary says, “Since you issued that RFQ, you’ll probably also have a better rate of responses to boot.”

What is an RFP in marketing?

In Marketing, an RFP is often used to outsource marketing activities.

If you work at a small startup, you might create an RFP to find a full-service communications and marketing firm to create an integrated marketing plan for your business. A successful marketing RFP would outline that you’re looking for a firm to help you “increase SEO presence” or “attract social media followers,” etc.

What is an RFP in sales?

In sales, an RFP is often created when a business is looking to purchase a product or service to suit its needs. For instance, if an enterprise company is looking for new CRM software, the business might release an RFP that outlines what it’s looking for and what it hopes to achieve with the new CRM software.

RFPs can play a critical role in the enterprise sales cycle. Enterprise companies that issue RFPs often look for businesses that can provide them with IT support, security, onboarding and training, and other services.

Why issue a request for proposal?

Let’s briefly compare these two scenarios:

• Option #1: Spend time finding the perfect vendor on your own.
• Option #2: Use an RFP to get potential vendors to come to you.

If you choose the first route, you’ll probably use your coworkers, friends, and networking groups to solicit possible job referrals.

Or, you might search Google to check out the top vendors in your area.

After you review the website of a possible candidate for the job, you’ll craft the perfect message to reach out and learn if they can even help.

Then, you’ll have to explain the specifics of your project, and you may or may not ask them to submit a proposal before choosing them for your project.

It’s not a complicated process, but you’d have to repeat it for every promising referral or vendor you come across.

Imagine how long that’s going to take!

Now, what if these potential contractors already knew your project details and they came back with their best plan of action and a formal bid for you to review?

Instead of having to explain your needs each time, you would simply outline it once and send it out to the masses.

And to save you even more time, it would be up to potential contractors — not you — to reach out.

RFP Benefits

While creating an RFP will require time up front, it’s certainly worth doing the legwork. Benefits of creating an RFP include:

• Saving you time. As explained in the scenarios above, an RFP saves you tons of time when doing vendor outreach. Instead, you can create one RFP document, publish it, and have the vendors come to you.
• Expanding your network. When doing the outreach yourself, you’re most likely to stay within your own network, relying on referrals. While referrals are great, publishing an RFP online allows you to reach a much larger swath of vendors.
• Offering vetted solutions. The RFP route also gives you a sneak peek into each vendor’s real plan of action, not the one they talk you into over the phone or in person. Since potential candidates have to submit a formal bid, they’ll need to spend time outlining the solution and really working through the problem at hand.

With RFPs you have an easy way to weed out vendors and cut through the stack of options fairly quickly.

But, to get to this point, you have to avoid one major pitfall: timing.

When to Issue an RFP

You will issue an RFP when your company needs a product or service from an external vendor.

It’s ideal for you to issue the RFP in good time before you’re desperate to complete the work. While the RFP process is simple, you must take your time in the early phases (research and scope) to get the best out of it — more on this in the section below.

Outside of your research, account for respondent time and onboarding your new service provider or product.

For respondent time, according to Loopio, the majority of respondents will reply within ten days, but 29% of respondents will take eleven days or more. If you want to catch the majority of respondents, you might want to wait for two weeks before making your shortlist.

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RFP Use Cases

If you’re still unsure if the RFP process is right for you, let’s look at some use cases of when you might submit an RFP.

Technology Procurement

You might be ready to expand your tech stack; perhaps you want one piece of technology to solve multiple problems.

However, researching the technology available is going to be incredibly time-consuming, and you might be left unsure about whether or not the tech you’re researching does what you want it to.

An RFP will bring technology providers to you, and they’ll respond only when their tech can help you.

Marketing and Advertising Services

Marketing and advertising services are often sourced through the RFP process. There are endless agencies that can support you. The RFP gathers information that allows you to compare them against a range of suppliers quickly and easily.

You can request proposals for a range of services, including but not limited to branding, advertising campaigns, social media strategy, or web design services.

Event Management

If you’re hosting a large conference, trade shows, or corporate events, you might prefer to outsource the management to a vendor. It’s not uncommon for companies to issue RFPs to event management firms or venues.

Truly, you can use the RFP process for anything! Now, I’ll explain how the process works.

The RFP Process Explained

Before potential bidders can submit their proposals, the company must draft an RFP requesting the work. The RFP gives potential contractors everything your company is looking for so they can respond.

Once your RFP is sent out, contractors or vendors will find it. Vendors interested in pitching for work via RFPs are always on the lookout for the right opportunities.

The process is generally quite competitive, and companies wishing to close larger accounts via RFP must have a team prepared for the response process. It’s a sophisticated process that requires efficiency.

In your RFP, you can ask for anything you like, but generally, you’d at least ask for

• An action plan to solve your issue
• A timeline of what you can expect
• Any necessary background information
• How much entire project will cost

Next, I’ll break down the process of creating the perfect RFP.

5 RFP Stages to Get the Best Bids

1. Assess what you need.

Before you draft an RFP, you’ll need to do a bit of preparation to figure out what you need and what you’d like to accomplish. You will likely need to speak with your internal team about expectations.

You may also want to conduct competitor and industry research to evaluate your position. This research may help you see things differently and expand on your RFP requirements.

Ultimately, you want to treat the RFP as the most comprehensive brief. Any upfront research will help you.

This process will help you define your goals and project scope. You may also discover potential roadblocks you can resolve before your new service provider is onboarded.

Top tip: Be very detailed about what you want. Remember the differences between the RFQ and RFP. The RFP is more thorough and asks a lot from vendors. According to Loopio, it takes the majority of respondents 30 hours to complete an RFP. Let this give you a gauge of how much you can ask for.

2. List any technical specifications.

Including technical specifications up front in your RFP allows vendors to determine whether or not they can provide what you need.

This also protects your business because if a vendor agrees that they can meet your specifications initially but fails to deliver once they’ve taken on the project, you can hold them accountable to the specifications listed in the RFP.

3. Distribute the RFP.

Once the RFP is written, it’s time to send it out. There are many ways to distribute an RFP.

You can:

• Publish it on your website and create a specific landing page.
• Leverage any industry-related professional groups you’re a member of and advertise it there.
• Utilize your local chamber of commerce, which is also an excellent place to advertise your RFP if you’d prefer to work with a local vendor.
• Use online RFP portals.

Early in the RFP process, bidders may request adjustments based on their industry experience. At this point, you can either review their feedback and create a new RFP to accommodate the changes, or you can leave the original as is and consider it while considering the other submitted bids.

It’s worth noting that aforementioned expert Maurice Harary warns, “If you‘re receiving a deluge of questions from vendors, or you’re seeing huge differences in cost estimates from vendor to vendor, then your RFP wasn’t well-understood.”

4. Evaluate your offers.

Once you receive all the proposals, it will be almost effortless to compare each and determine which vendor best fits your company.

Out of the stack of bidders, you’ll want to narrow this down to a handful of your top three, five, or 10 favorites to consider, depending on how many you receive or are interested in. From here, you’ll want to spend time vetting potential vendors further to determine who’s really the ideal fit for the job.

Top Tip: Don’t rush to choose a vendor. Respondents will reply in their own time, with some taking more time than others. Though the early respondents may not be the best, it’s fair to say an early reply may be an indicator of efficiency, which might be important to you.

5. Select the best vendor for the job.

Some companies may request one more best and final offer from their top vendors after they’ve started this negotiation process to ensure they’re getting the right person or company for the job and at the right price.

While this may sound like an extra step, it could save you money, time, and headaches down the road.

But this also leads us to a big question: Is all of this really necessary?

How to Write an RFP

Here’s the basic structure of an RFP and what to include in yours:

1. Project Overview

Before you go into the company specifics, you should give a brief introduction to the project itself so vendors know right away if it’s something worth bidding on.

Don’t get too carried away in the overview. There are dedicated places for elaboration, such as the ‘goals’ or ‘project scope’ section. For now, your overview should be concise.

Max DesMarais, Director of Strategy at Vital Design, receives dozens of RFPs each month. He recommends “an overview section with bulleted or key-listed information about timelines, budgets, response format, and scope.”

2. Company Background

This shouldn’t be a long history of your company. Rather, it should give contractors context.

You want to focus on the most relevant details. For example, the sector your company operates in, the company’s core values, the types of clients or customers you serve.

3. Project Goals

Ideally, you will be able to clearly identify what you want to accomplish with this project and what a successful project looks like for you.

This information will help vendors understand your needs exactly and help them determine if they’re a good fit to work with you. Clearly identifying your needs will also help vendors with costs.

Sometimes, those writing the RFP don’t know the solution in its entirety. Perhaps it’s a technical solution. You should exhaust your company’s internal knowledge first; speak to your peers and see what you can pull together.

In circumstances where there are gaps, Alex Wilson, marketing director at pixelframe Design, has a great tip.

“If you don’t know the specific solution required, describe the problem that needs solving,” Wilson says.

According to Wilson, a frequent challenge in responding to RFPs is having to determine what the client really needs versus what they’re asking for.

“If you skip the research phase of crafting your RFP, you may be asking for services that don‘t properly solve your issue, and if you haven’t properly outlined the problem, the agency won’t be able to help guide you,” says Wilson.

This is excellent advice from Wilson because it allows you to be descriptive of what you want without the need to lay it out exactly.

4. Project Scope

The details of the project are essential in an RFP. Spend time detailing your project scope so there are no surprises later on. Remember, you’re looking to provide an RFP that will take ten hours to complete. It needs to be detailed.

The project scope wants to be as detailed as it needs to be but concise.

Dan Christensen, owner, CEO, and founder at DJC Law, has some great advice when it comes to streamlining the RFP process without sacrificing detail.

He says, “Be as clear and detailed as possible in the requirements while also keeping it focused. Outline exactly what you need, why you need it, and the criteria that will be used to evaluate responses.”

According to Christensen, RFPs are often vague, leaving respondents to make assumptions and requiring lengthy and unfocused responses.

“A tightly defined and well-structured RFP allows respondents to provide the right information efficiently. I recommend dividing requirements into must-haves versus nice-to-haves, being very specific on timelines, deliverables, performance metrics, and providing respondents with any templates or formats you want responses in,” Christensen says.

5. Target Deliverable Schedule

Even if your deadlines aren’t super tight, you should still have a target deliverable schedule in mind. This needs to be included in your RFP so potential vendors can properly gauge if they have the resources and bandwidth to complete the job on time.

When you set your deliverable schedule, you must consider the RFP process.

Jakub Kozlowski, Sales Manager at People for Pools, says, “Establishing a clear timeline, allowing for questions and clarifications, and providing structured evaluation criteria can streamline the process and ensure a more efficient review of the proposals.”

I like how Kozlowski has specified “allowing for questions and clarifications.” In my experience, there is always a problem to solve, and Kozlowski reminds us to consider the things that we might not expect or account for.

6. Possible Roadblocks

Don’t hide your existing or potential issues under the proverbial rug if you want them to disappear.

A successful RFP is explicitly clear about any technical issues or possible roadblocks, such as: Are you dealing with custom coding or an outdated platform? Does your team have limited resources?

By explaining this upfront, potential vendors will know exactly what they’re getting into.

You’ll also naturally weed out contractors who can’t handle the task due to those constraints.

But you’ll also connect with companies that know how to work around these common issues with skill and finesse.

Remember, it’s far better to find this out now than after you’ve accepted the bid and started work.

7. Budget Constraints

It’s important to be upfront with your budget. This looks better for potential vendors because they know they’re not wasting time responding.

Alex Wilson of pixelframe Design warns that not including a budget could result in your RFP being skipped altogether. Wilson says, “Include a budget. A range is fine, but not including a price at all makes your RFP much more likely to be skipped.”

It’s not just about setting the budget but being upfront with the scope in the steps above so the respondents can see what’s involved and how to price. A thorough RFP will help with budgeting and prevent surprises later.

Reyansh Mestry, Head of Marketing at TopSource Worldwide, says, “By prioritizing deliverables and outcomes in our project proposals, we’ve ensured that vendors concentrate on what really matters — achieving our desired results. This focus has helped us avoid unnecessary complexity and kept the project aligned with our strategic goals.

Vendors who understand the importance of outcomes are more likely to propose solutions that are tailored to our specific needs, leading to greater efficiency and effectiveness in project execution. The clarity provided by this approach has also reduced misunderstandings and scope creep, allowing us to stay within budget and timeline constraints.”

The more information upfront, the more likely your vendor can provide you with a price that a) meets your budget and b) meets the price with the full scope.

8. What You’re Looking For in Potential Vendors

Another way to reduce or eliminate surprises is to explain exactly what you’re looking for in potential contractors.

All you have to do is outline what matters most to your project (i.e., time, solution, budget, etc.) and show how you’ll evaluate their proposals.

Brett Ungashick, CEO and CHRO of OutSail, has some advice on crafting your questions to vendors in a way that allows them space to demonstrate their USPs.

Ungashick uses RFP for software selection as an example. He says, “We avoid generic feature-based queries because most platforms have similar capabilities, which can result in nearly identical responses.”

“Instead, we ask about areas where there can be meaningful variation, such as cost structures, service models, innovation cycles, and product architecture. This approach not only streamlines the evaluation process by cutting down on redundant information but also draws out richer, more revealing responses that showcase each vendor’s unique strengths and approaches.”

Sample Responses to RFPs

If you‘ve issued an RFP and are collecting responses, you might be wondering what you should look for in effective RFP responses. Here, let’s look at a few examples of impressive RFP sample responses.

Example One: General RFP Response for Web Design Services

Dear [author of RFP]:

Regarding your request for proposal (RFP), [our company] is thrilled about the opportunity to provide you web design services. Having worked with [brief list of past clients], we believe a partnership with [company you’re writing to] would have a tremendous impact on your customer satisfaction and bottom line.

As one of [client‘s industry] leading providers of [client’s main service], you know just how critical this time of year can be for your customers. On average, the cost to deliver is $[xxxx.xx], and [client name] is committed to “[client’s mission statement].”

As these challenges become more common, it is increasingly important to provide customers with a powerful, SEO-optimized website to attract new leads. With this in mind, [our company] intends to help [client’s name]:

• Create a sleek, impressive website that is clean, user-friendly and mobile responsive to work on all devices, so web viewers have a strong first impression of your brand regardless of the device they use to find you.

• Help you strengthen brand identity through a new logo and a new, cohesive color palette.

• Ensure each of your web pages are SEO-optimized to rank quickly, which will attract new customers to your website and demonstrate your leadership in the industry.

As stated in the executive summary, [our company] intends to help [client‘s name] [brief allusion to client benefits outlined in executive summary]. To do this, our team has outlined a proposed set of deliverables, an order of operations, division of labor, and expected dates of completion to ensure the partnership between [your company] and [client’s name] is successful.

[Your company] can‘t wait to work with you to help [client’s name] in addressing [client’s challenges described in Executive Summary]. To recap, please see below a brief overview of the services included in this partnership.

This sample response clearly and succinctly explains how the vendor‘s service will solve the buyer’s critical pain points when it comes to creating a strong website.

By outlining the key benefits, you‘re showing the client how you’ll put them first and focus on their needs to get the job done.

Free and Editable RFP Template

Download a free, editable RFP template.

To use this template, simply download it here or fill out the form below.

You can remove sections or pieces of information that don’t pertain to your project and add whatever else you need for your RFPs.

You can also use this tried-and-tested proposal formula to ensure your RFP is professional and polished, too.

Proposal Software Tools to Help You Manage RFPs

For those responding to RFPs, there are amazing tools that help you manage and create professional-looking proposals in less time.

Below are five tools to improve your RFP response.

1. Responsive

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Responsive solves the problem of responding to RFPs, from project management to collaboration to integrating with other software.

Their solution includes reporting dashboards, auto-response features, and automated generation of proactive proposals from within your CRM.

Responsive also includes an intelligent answer library that turns previous RFP responses into on-demand intelligence that empowers revenue teams with enterprise content at their fingertips wherever they work.

And what’s better? Responsive has an integration with HubSpot that will automatically sync your RFP with your portal, making it easy to share information with your team.

2. PandaDoc

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To create customized RFPs with your own branding, consider using the proposal software PandaDoc.

Here, you can set up your first RFP within minutes and even collaborate with team members using real-time updates in the document itself.

3. Nusii

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Similar to other proposal software on the market, Nusii uses a drag-and-drop editor that makes building RFPs a breeze — especially for beginners.

Thanks to its clean, modern, simple design, it’s also really easy to figure out.

One of Nusii’s most helpful features is its ability to rework existing RFPs, which can save you time. You can copy the content from an RFP you like and edit the information to fit your new request.

4. Loopio

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How do you plan on organizing all the responses to your RFPs?

One standout feature withLoopiois its RFP response library, which gives you instant access to all your answers from previous RFPs. This saves you the hassle of digging around to find what you need in a crowded inbox.

Their magic feature will even help you auto-populate a response if it appears similar to one you’ve already done.

Plus, you can manage your entire RFP process — including sending automated responses — and collaborate with your team all in one place with their intuitive dashboard.

And if proposal tools are out of the budget right now, or if you’d like to try your hand at creating your own first, use one of these templates as a starting point.

5. Proposify

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Proposify makes creating proposals effortless. You can create proposal templates to reuse content and pages for future proposals; a great feature for pages and content that won’t change is your company overview, for example.

Proposify will alert you when your proposal has been viewed and allow recipients to sign digitally. It also offers analytics so you can see which pages are viewed and for how long. This data can be used to optimize your proposal template for maximum engagement.

Create an RFP With Ease

Now that you have a better idea of what an RFP is and how to create your first one, you’re ready to get started.

I recommend first sitting down with your team to narrow down your project’s specifics, goals, and scope of work. Then, determine when the project needs to be completed and your budget before moving on to the drafting phase.

With this intel, you’ll be ready to plug everything into our template.

Follow these steps, and you’ll have an RFP template you can quickly update. Your next project will be a success that much faster.

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

A few weeks ago, a colleague asked: “What does a good marketer really ‘look’ like?”

(Obviously, we’re not talking about appearance here, folks.)

After initially responding to myself internally with the thought of, “That’s easy, I can answer that,” I stopped. 

Of course, I could answer it, but that is a terrific question.

How often do we think about this? Not so much, I’d suspect.

What Makes a Good Marketer?

Our industry moves quickly. 

The skills required when I entered the field a dozen years ago have been lapped by the next generation of thinkers, doers, and innovators.

But the foundational principles remain the same.

Marketing mastery is a journey—one that demands agility, learning, and strategy.

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer, so I asked LinkedIn what my peers think a good marketer looks like.

Here are some of their responses:

“Someone who is constantly learning.”
– Emily Amos | CEO, Uplift Content, Inc.

 

“In my view, a good marketer is someone who understands people—what they need and how they want to be served. A good marketer is curious, growth-minded, and humble.”
–Kelly Furia | CMO, DLL Finance Group

 

“In general, I think you have “good” marketers who are able to get attention or drive sales using any tool they can, and “good” marketers who are thoughtful about applying the right solution to the right problem but may never have a huge win.

These two are not always the same because you can do the “right” thing and fail or the “wrong” thing and be wildly successful. Tough question.”
– Jeff Gibbard | Co-Founder, Super Productive

 

“When I think about good marketers, I see clear ideas and the ability to build and execute a plan. However, the great ones are leading change through impact.

However, the great ones are leading change through impact. They are bold, relentlessly curious, constructively challenging, and always building the grit muscle. Most importantly, they have big ears and listen to everyone constantly…customers, competition, culture, employees, and their instinct and leverage data to ground their insights. 

Great marketers lead movements that transcend the products or services they sell. When you talk to great marketers, most will tell you that becoming great takes time, courage, humility, and lots and lots of lessons learned through the journey of experience.”
– Rose Hamilton | Founder, Compass Rose Ventures

 

“A good marketer can’t just be good at marketing; they need to understand the tech and data analysis.”
– H. Parker Smith, III | Product Owner, Senior Specialist, Vanguard

 

“Being newer to the field (~3 years), I’ve found that my adaptability keeps me going. On top of that, I’ve been fortunate to work with such smart and stellar people who fuel that trait!”
– John Rossi | Digital Strategist, M Booth

These opinions only represent a small sliver of experiences from marketing pros. 

But everything they shared is true.

Good marketers must be:

• Curious
• Adaptable
• Technically-Sound
• Analytically-Inclined
• Creative
• Personable
• Relationship-Focused
• Unafraid

That’s a lot of different traits required for one profession. And that’s not even counting the tools, slang, and marketing basics we’re all presumed to know!

A marketer’s job is difficult and multi-faceted. So we wanted to make it just a little easier.

Introducing The 2024 Marketing Mastery Workbook

NetLine, in collaboration with Heinz Marketing, is proud to bring you the 2024 Marketing Mastery Workbook. 

This workbook equips marketers with the tools to master the B2B landscape.

Seasoned or new, this workbook helps you refine strategies, target audiences, and improve campaigns at every stage of the buyer’s journey.

What’s Inside?

The 2024 Marketing Mastery Workbook breaks down essential marketing practices into four distinct yet interconnected sections. 

Each chapter delves into critical aspects of B2B marketing, providing both theoretical frameworks and actionable exercises.

Here’s what you’ll find in each chapter:

• Chapter 1:
  • Learn how to effectively identify and target your most valuable audiences using data-driven insights and strategic segmentation techniques.

CHAPTER 1 | Discover Your Buyers Uncover new audiences and connect with those ready to purchase.
Learn how to: Define your best audiences with unique segmentation criteria Identify decision-makers and members of a buying committee Understand their goals, motivations, and reasons to buy	Templates in this chapter: Audience Segmentation Framework Buyer Persona Framework

• Chapter 2:  
  • Gain a deep understanding of the buyer’s journey and learn how to create content that supports buyers through each stage.

CHAPTER 2 | Explore Your Buyer’s Journey Gain clarity into your target accounts, their buying committees, and the individuals within them.
Learn how to: Define the stages of the buyer’s journey Decode different types of buying intent and signals Align personas and audience needs with each decision-making stage	Templates in this chapter: Buyer’s Journey Framework Intent Signals Framework Buyer Engagement Framework

• Chapter 3:  
  • Learn how to develop personalized content that engages buyers and drives them toward a purchase decision.

CHAPTER 3 | Create the Content Your Audiences Crave Create irresistible, personalized content that resonates at every stage of the buyer’s journey.
Learn how to: Develop high-impact content for each persona and buying stage Build a detailed messaging framework Amplify your content with a robust promotion plan	Templates in this chapter: Content by Persona and Buying Stage Framework Messaging Framework Content Strategy Framework Content Outline Framework Content Promotion Strategy Framework

• Chapter 4:  
  • Discover how to create integrated marketing campaigns that maintain consistent messaging across multiple channels, ensuring buyers remain engaged throughout their journey.

CHAPTER 4 | Ignite Engagement with Full-Funnel Integrated Campaigns Engage and convert your audiences across multiple channels and experiences.
Learn how to: Plan and launch an integrated campaign Tailor your strategies for each stage of the buyer’s journey Coordinate channels, programs, and tactics with detailed templates	Templates in this chapter: Inbound Campaign Framework Outbound Campaign Framework Campaign Strategy Brief  Campaign Tactics Briefs Campaign Timeline Framework

All told, this comprehensive guide espouses the foundations of what good marketing is. While it covers modern practices, much of what can be found in this asset is timeless.

In 130 pages, this workbook not only presents, defines, and demonstrates, but it also presents opportunities to challenge yourself.

Packed with frameworks, templates, and exercises, this workbook lets you apply what you learn—immediately or at your own pace.

Why we created this workbook

The impetus for creating this workbook centers on the reality that B2B marketing has recently felt a bit… chaotic. 

“So much of the world today is about chasing trends and tools, chasing our tails,” said Josh Baez, NetLine’s Sr. Manager, Demand Generation Marketing. 

As the primary driver of this project, Josh found himself trying to make sense of the current B2B marketing landscape. He’s certainly not alone.

“There are so many new tools,” he said. “There’s AI this and digital transformation that, and I think a lot of us are feeling pretty overwhelmed and a little jaded by everything that’s coming to market.”

When we find yourself stuck in life, going back to basics is crucial. In this case, refamiliarizing yourself with the principles that make good marketing good is really important. 

We created this workbook as much for ourselves as we did for our peers. 

“This workbook really is meant to be this companion asset to any kind of marketer, whether you’re a seasoned pro, just starting out—or maybe you’re somewhere in the middle. I think it’s always good to have reinforcement of your foundations and re-familiarize yourself with the tools and strategies to get back to basics.”

“Many of these templates and frameworks are ones I use,” Josh shared. He emphasized just how beneficial they’ve been in his career and how useful they’ve been for clients, partners, and colleagues.

How actionable is this workbook?

98% of it. It’s true, we measured it; using science.

This workbook is meant to be something you can pick up, read a few pages, and immediately know what you want to do next. We want you to be able to understand how to do XYZ and have the tools and frameworks to get work done.

“That’s something we strived for—having applicable, real-world use cases and frameworks,” Josh said. “There’s nothing worse than being promised to learn something, filling out a form, reading the content, and then feeling like you didn’t learn anything.

With AI impacting everything, everyone can move faster. But by moving faster, we’re also at risk for forgetting what makes content different and special for our readers.

Just because we can create 10 blog posts in 10 minutes doesn’t mean we should.

What are the benefits of using this workbook?

The workbook gives marketers the tools to identify and target buyers, build integrated full-funnel campaigns, and deliver timely, relevant messages.

Beyond that, here are four specific takeaways from this workbook.

• Actionable Exercises and Templates: The workbook is filled with exercises that guide you in applying the concepts you learn. These templates help you better understand your audience, create compelling content, and design impactful campaigns.

• Holistic Approach to B2B Marketing: From targeting to content creation to campaign execution, the workbook offers a holistic framework that can be adapted to any business.
  
  
• Strategic Guidance: More than just a how-to guide, the workbook provides strategic insights that encourage marketers to think critically about their efforts and adjust for maximum effectiveness.
  

• Collaborative Opportunity: The workbook encourages marketers to involve their teams, providing a collaborative environment that leverages diverse strengths and insights.

 

3 examples from The 2024 Marketing Mastery Workbook

The most valuable elements of this workbook are the exercises, templates, and frameworks. 

Here are three examples of what you’ll find inside:

• Targeting Matrix Framework

Define your ideal target audience and segment them by account fit, industry, company size, geography, and buyer behaviors. Use this information to build custom audience segments that maximize your campaign efficiency.

 

• Buyer’s Journey Framework

Place yourself in the buyer’s shoes and define their goals, challenges, and needs at each stage of the buyer’s journey. This helps create tailored content that aligns with their journey.

 

• Persona Development

Build a detailed buyer persona that includes not only job titles and responsibilities but also motivations, pain points, and content preferences. Use this persona to guide your marketing efforts and ensure you’re speaking directly to your target audience.

Get your copy of the 2024 Marketing Mastery Workbook

The best marketers understand that true creativity thrives within the boundaries of knowing their audience. 

Recognizing your buyers—whether broad or niche—gives clarity and direction. Know your sandbox, and you’ll experiment, innovate, and craft interactions that resonate. 

The 2024 Marketing Mastery Workbook is designed to help you do just that—equipping you with the tools to confidently navigate your market, create authentic connections, and ultimately, drive results. It’s not just about reaching your audience; it’s about truly engaging them. 

Get your copy of The 2024 Marketing Mastery Workbook today and start mastering the art of intentional B2B marketing.