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Be honest. Do you know what your non-marketing colleagues do all day?

Sure, you might have a general idea of what your co-workers in sales, finance, and HR do, at least categorically. But it seems that many of us — myself included — have those days, weeks, and months when we’re so bogged down in our own daily hustle, that we become a bit oblivious to what everyone else around us is working on. After all, that’s probably why the phrase, “put your blinders on” exists.

But while a colleague’s job might look different from our own, there’s actually quite a bit that we, as marketers, can learn from them. One of those things is channel strategy.

That’s why I recently sat down with my colleague, Adrianne Ober, a Channel Consultant here at HubSpot. After speaking with her about what she does every day — and about the most important knowledge she’s gained in this role — I’ve realized that there are a lot of channel strategy lessons that marketers can apply to their own work.

So, what did we learn? Read on to find out — or listen to our interview with Adrianne by pressing “play” below.

What Is Channel Strategy?

A channel strategy, according to TechTarget, “is a vendor’s plan for moving a product or a service through the chain of commerce to the end customer.”

In many environments, this kind of channel strategy takes the form of a reselling program — here at HubSpot, we work with Marketing Agency Partners who not only grow with HubSpot software but also, teach their clients how they, too, can be more successful with it.

That’s where channel consultants like Ober come in. “My role is a combination of an account manager and an implementation specialist,” Ober explains, but her day-to-day work encompasses much more than that. “Our focus is to work with our new Agency Partners, to onboard them to the program and support their reselling and delivery efforts.”

Reselling programs aren’t exactly uncommon, especially within tech companies, but what makes Ober’s job different is its true partnership nature. “We really do invest a ton more than other companies do in their partner programs,” she says, “to ensure they are getting the most out of it to help grow their businesses.”

What Can Marketers Learn From a Channel Consultant?

Building Your Own Channel Strategy

Not all marketers work for agencies, but many of us are responsible for positioning our respective products and services as solutions for our target audiences. For example, HubSpot’s Marketing Software provides automation solutions for marketers — what solutions does your organization offer?

In a way, channel strategy could be described as a formal approach to word-of-mouth marketing. How can you provide solutions to your customers that they, in turn, can share with and provide to their own networks? Ober challenges and encourages marketers to ask that question, find the best answer, and make it a reality.

There’s a “relationship-building aspect” of every marketer’s job, she explains, even for those who don’t work with customers directly. Chances are, you’re still responsible for crafting the messages and content that’s going to reach customers, and ultimately, that’s one way for brands to build a relationship with a target audience — by establishing themselves as a trustworthy, shareable resource for solving problems and meeting needs.

But where can marketers begin? “Product knowledge is … imperative,” Ober says. Start by becoming an expert in the solutions provided by your organization — not just the products and services you offer, but also, with the industry at-large. “We need to be comfortable with usage and training,” she explains, in order to establish that trust with both current and potential customers.

A Marketer’s Biggest Pain Points

The thing about HubSpot’s Agency Partner Program — one that even I’m guilty of forgetting — is that its channel consultants work with marketers, day in and day out. That means people in Ober’s position hear about the most common struggles faced by marketers every day and are tasked with proactively offering solutions.

So not only can marketers stand to benefit by implementing their own strategies — but speaking with people like Ober, it turns out, can help us to take a step back, examine our biggest pain points, and figure out how to efficiently tackle them.

“The biggest struggles I hear about are pricing, process, scaling, hiring, and time management,” she explains. In other words: growing pains. “In order for agencies to scale their businesses, they need to develop a repeatable process, which means they need to have a handle on time management for their team and make the right hires at the right time.”

Sound familiar? Maybe that’s why growth marketing is such a hot topic right now — no matter the size of the company they work for, it seems that these are pains experienced by a number of marketers. Those working in SMBs are often tasked with many of the responsibilities mentioned by Ober to help their employers grow. And those working for larger organizations, while not necessarily tasked with growing the business, are often tasked with building, executing, and growing new campaigns and initiatives.

That’s why it’s so important, Ober says, to make time for the learning process, no matter how “underwater” marketers tend to feel when they’re facing deadlines and other time-sensitive priorities.

“Our most successful partners make the time to build their process, invest in the education we provide for their team and take the time to price their services appropriately,” she says. “Marketers can and should make time to keep their finger on the pulse of the industry [they work in], connect with peers, and read up on trends.”

A Similar Skill Set

Finally, I asked Ober, “What else can marketers learn from a channel consultant?” To answer that, she pointed to many of the skills required of her job that overlap with those most crucial to a marketer’s success.

“This role requires us to confidently assess a marketing strategy as it relates to the overall goals,” she says, “whether it’s for a Partner Agency’s own marketing or one of their clients.”

And no matter what their industry, it seems that skill is highly valuable to all marketers — to be able to objectively measure their own strategies, and to figure out what is (not) working.

And “even more so,” Ober explains, is the shared, necessary ability of both marketers and channel consultants “to recommend the right tools and approach to go with the strategy.”

But doing that requires a high-level of communication skills, whether you’re making these recommendations to customers, your colleagues, or your boss. “We need to be able to [identify] not only where these gaps may be,” Ober points out, but also to align them with goals. Skilling up in those areas, she says, can ultimately help marketers accurately evaluate the feasibility of a situation, whether it’s marketing strategy or budget — or being able to predict how (and if) your brand will resonate with a given audience.

Looking Forward

With INBOUND on the horizon, Ober says she’s looking forward to discussing channel strategy and exchanging knowledge with industry professionals.

“I love seeing my Partners in person,” she shares. “I’m excited to talk with them about some products that were teased last year and are in beta now.”

But maybe even more than that, is how excited she is to hear about other marketers’ ideas.

“INBOUND is a place for peers to connect, and [we all] come away from the event with a ton of ideas,” she says, “and, as a result, a ton of motivation to dig in.”

Have you used channel strategy or consulting? Let us know in the comments.

Running your own business can be a great career choice for people living with long-term disability or health condition.

This may relate, in part, to the increased flexibility around working hours that self-employment brings. Working for oneself can also promote a sense of being a master of one’s destiny and not having to contend with misconceptions and discriminatory attitudes from others that are often encountered while job hunting.

For entrepreneurs of any background, business networking, be this receiving the support and advice of others, identifying collaborative opportunities, or expanding the customer base, remains an essential undertaking.

Unfortunately, as in almost every other walk of life, networking is not without barriers for disabled entrepreneurs. In this post, we’ll discuss why networking can be a challenge and best practice approaches to networking that disabled entrepreneurs can put in place to stay on top of both the competition and their own health.

Why can networking be a challenge for disabled entrepreneurs?

As Bill Sahlman, a professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School explained in the online course Entrepreneurship Essentials: “All great companies — even those with iconic entrepreneurs — had many other people who were involved and, without whom, the company might not have made it so big.”

Networking can be a challenge for disabled entrepreneurs for various reasons, ranging from needing to expend a great deal of time and effort performing in social scenarios when one’s energy is already compromised to facing unpredictable building access issues at venues.

At the same time, a legacy of the Covid-19 pandemic remains an increased openness within the mainstream business community to conducting meetings and events remotely – allowing disabled networkers to engage with new people from the comfort of home and extend well beyond the limits of their immediate geographic location.

So, within this new post-pandemic reality of hybrid online and in-person networking opportunities, what are some excellent networking tips? Below we’ll discuss them.

5 Networking Tips for Disabled Entrepreneurs

1. Research disability-entrepreneurship organizations that can help you.

As explained previously, entrepreneurship is a popular and well-trodden path for many people living with a disability. With this in mind, there are numerous organizations out there dedicated to providing support to disabled business owners.

One such organization is the American Association of People with Disabilities which provides entrepreneurial advice, scholarships, and internships to its members.

Disability:IN is another national body offering support and advice to disabled business owners. It offers an accreditation plan called Disability-Owned Business Enterprise (DOBE) certification, and it’s meant for businesses that are at least 51% owned, managed, and controlled by an individual with a disability.

Additionally, there are local and state-run resources available to disabled business owners, as well as those catering to specific groups such as veterans.

Thoroughly researching and identifying all such organizations should be part of the early-stage due diligence of any disabled entrepreneur, as this type of highly tailored resource is low-hanging fruit for disabled business owners looking to grow their network.

2. Be realistic about the impact of your disability.

Running your own business can be physically and mentally exhausting, regardless of whether someone has a disability or not.

As the meeting and greeting that accompanies in-person networking events can be particularly draining – it’s vital that disabled entrepreneurs set realistic goals around what they can manage and understand exactly how their disability might impact them in different situations.

Going to networking events can be a great way of meeting new business contacts, but if the price of attendance is having to spend the following day in bed, entrepreneurs must weigh these considerations carefully.

Diego Mariscal, who has cerebral palsy, is the founder and CEO of 2Gether-International – a community for disabled founders offering peer support and expert mentoring. “A lot of people will go to an in-person networking event and there’ll be this frenetic competition to see how many business cards everyone can collect,” remarks Mariscal.

“That just does a disservice to both yourself and the people you’re trying to meet because, realistically, you just can’t follow up with 20 different people in any kind of meaningful way,” he continues.

“Particularly for somebody living with an energy-limiting condition – a better approach would be to pick one or two people that are going to be in attendance that you want to connect with. Once you’ve met those people – just stop. Chill, relax, and decompress because it’s going to be much easier to follow up with two or three people and build meaningful relationships than trying to do that with twenty.”

3. Be confident enough to use your disability and personality as a positive differentiator.

People with disabilities can often feel self-conscious about standing out, particularly at public events common with in-person networking. Nonetheless, at events where everyone is competing for eyeballs and attention, standing out from the crowd is potentially no bad thing, especially if it is augmented by an engaging, self-confident introduction and a display of strong interpersonal skills.

Networkers with disabilities should not be ashamed of their impairments and seek to conceal them but instead explore ways in which their disability could be viewed by others as a positive differentiator.

Heather Lawver is the founder and CEO of Perfectly Pitched, which helps early-stage social entrepreneurs develop compelling pitch decks and advanced marketing strategies. She also lives with two rare genetic conditions that cause her to experience significant levels of pain throughout the day.

Recounting her experiences working in an incubator program in 2014, Lawver says, “It has to start with you as the entrepreneur and being comfortable enough with your disabilities and who you are to ask for accommodations.”

She continues, “When I was in the incubator program, I got it into my head that, if you were pitching, it had to be done standing up because, if you were sitting down, you weren’t commanding the room. This was a problem for me with my pain issues and someone from the program offered me a chair but, at the time, I didn’t feel comfortable accepting this accommodation because I didn’t want to stand out for the wrong reasons.”

She says doing so was a mistake, that she ended up in so much pain she couldn’t speak and had to force her way through the pitch. Looking back, she recounts that she should have spotted the opportunity that sitting down to pitch could be a differentiator in storytelling style.

“It’s all about being comfortable in who you are and working out how you can turn it into an advantage rather than a disadvantage,” she adds.

4. Fine-tune and personalize your communication strategy.

If you’ve concluded that in-person events pose too many obstacles and you might be better off with online networking – be sure to take the time to hone your online communications and make them stand out.

Platforms like LinkedIn provide a great system for growing your network of like-minded professionals, but it’s vital to ensure that your online communications are polished and personalized.

Business leaders receive multiple emails and social media introductions daily.

To make yours stand out, avoid spamming generic introductory message templates in the hope of gaining someone’s attention. Instead, focus on personalizing messages and honing in on how you think a business relationship might benefit both parties.

Take the time to read the person’s profile and background to identify where their expert knowledge lies. That way, you can demonstrate a genuine appreciation of their thought leadership and how it might relate to your particular area of business.

5. If your differences make you feel awkward about approaching people, practice makes perfect.

Whether online or in-person networking, one way to ease the nerves or any awkwardness about appearing different might be to practice introductions with friends, family, and colleagues before taking the plunge into higher-stakes official networking events.

This might be particularly useful if adaptive technologies, equipment, or other accommodations are used. For someone with hearing loss, this might be trying out Zoom calls with and without an interpreter.

Someone with mixed mobility needs, who may alternate between using a wheelchair and other walking supports, might consider experimenting with both and doing some trial runs to establish what feels most comfortable when interacting with others.

Over to You

Like most activities in business, effective networking is as much an art as it is a science.

To maximize opportunities, entrepreneurs with disabilities have to begin with an honest appraisal of their health condition.

Rather than just trying to slide into a preconceived profile of what a successful business networker looks like, embrace your uniqueness and diversity, as that will be the quickest shortcut to getting to grips with your strengths and weaknesses both in business and in life.

Growing followers on TikTok can seem like slow process. And if you’re putting in the hard work to create amazing content, it can feel extra frustrating.

To help speed things up, we’ve compiled a list of the best strategies to gain followers on TikTok — fast. Of course, nothing can replace good content, but there are a few tricks you can try to explode your engagement, visibility, and, most importantly, your follower count.

Let’s dive into the best tips and tricks to grow your TikTok.

1. Stop appealing to everyone.

When you try to appeal to everyone on TikTok, the opposite happens: you end up resonating with no one.

This may sound counterintuitive. After all, to get more followers, shouldn’t you appeal to more people? In reality, targeting a niche gives you a greater chance to be seen by a pool of engaged users.

For example, fashion is a popular category on TikTok. So much so, the hashtag #fashion has over 188 billion views on the platform. If you want to post fashion-related content, you might get lost in this competitive vertical. Instead, you could focus on a sub-niche like street style or mid-sized fashion, which has a fraction of the views but a more engaged audience.

The easiest way to niche down is by knowing your audience and what they want to see. Be specific. If you’re unsure, take a look at your competition. What do they do well? What videos get the most engagement? And, of course, use your buyer personas as a compass when brainstorming video ideas.

2. Post at the right time.

Sometimes, it’s not just what you post but when you post. This is especially true on TikTok.

A recent HubSpot Blogs survey of 300+ marketers identified the best and worst times to post on TikTok. Here are the results:

• The best time of day: 3-6 PM and 6-9 PM
• The best days of the week: Friday and Saturday
• The worst time of day: 6-9 AM and 9-12 AM
• The worst days of the week: Monday and Tuesday

Since TikTok is popular with the Gen Z crowd  — and they’re in school for a good part of the day — the morning and early afternoon “dead zone” makes sense.

When posting content on TikTok, stay clear of these slow hours, and try posting towards the end of the week or during the weekend.

3. Duet or Stitch top-performing videos.

TikTok offers a number of features to collaborate with others — which is key to getting more eyeballs on your content. Let’s talk about two features in particular: Duet and Stitch.

The Duet feature lets you play your video next to another user’s video. This is ideal if you want to add commentary or a funny reaction to the original video.

The Stitch feature enables you to play up to 5 seconds of someone else’s video as an intro to your own. 

The best way to leverage these features is by engaging with top-performing videos in your niche. You can do this by using the search bar and typing keywords relating to your brand. Then, once you’ve zeroed in on a video you like, tap the Stitch or Duet button and let your creativity fly.

But there’s more — you can also encourage others to Duet or Stitch your videos.

For example, Tesco, a British grocery chain, asks users to Duet the following video for a chance to become the new voice of their checkout machine:

The result? Tesco’s original video scored 22 million views and thousands of Duet submissions.

4. Participate in a challenge (or create your own).

Challenges are infamous on TikTok, and they have the power to explode your follower count. The trick is finding the right one for your brand. After all, some challenges fizzle out before they hit the ground, while others spread like wildfire.

Once you find a challenge you can work with, it’s important to put your own spin on it. That’s how you’ll really stand out.

You can also create your own challenge — just make sure it’s relatively simple to do. For example, Chipotle started the #LidFlip challenge, which encouraged users to flip the lid of their burrito bowl with style:

In the first six days, the challenge generated over 100,000 video responses. Even more impressive, it created a record-breaking sales day for Chipotle.

5. Jump on trending sounds and songs.

88% of TikTok users say sound is essential to the TikTok experience. Thanks to the algorithm, it’s also critical for driving more engagement.

TikTok has an extensive library of sounds — but you should prioritize the ones that get a lot of love from the community. This is because the TikTok algorithm tends to favor videos that leverage trending sounds. Plus, 67% of TikTok users prefer branded videos that feature popular or trending songs.

To get started, check out TikTok’s Creative Center which ranks the most popular sounds each day. You can also filter by region, which is helpful if your audience lives in a different location from you.

6. Cross-promote your TikTok.

Odds are, your audience is active on other social media besides TikTok. For this reason, it’s important to cross-promote your videos to other channels, such as Instagram or YouTube.

Remember that Instagram’s algorithm will not promote videos with a TikTok watermark, so you’ll need to upload the original video. YouTube, on the other hand, doesn’t have the same restriction.

It’s also worth noting that Reels cannot exceed 60 seconds, while TikTok videos can go for 10 minutes. So, you may need to trim your videos to adhere to Instagram’s time constraints.

Back to You

Ultimately, you’re only as good as the content you create. Although these tips can boost your visibility in the short run, it’s the quality of your content that influences people to hit “follow.” As a marketer, this means putting your audience at the heart of your strategy and creating content that speaks to them.

Looking for some new leadership podcasts to check out? We’ve got you covered.

From tips on how to be a better leader to interviews with top CEOs, these top leadership podcasts will help you develop your skills and knowledge.

Whether you’re a new or a seasoned leader, there’s something here for everyone.

1. CEO School

If you’re a leader who is also taking on entrepreneurship, you’ll enjoy this podcast.

Host and founder of a billion-dollar fintech company, Suneera Madhani, regularly brings on experts to discuss everything from scaling your business to creating a positive work culture. In her solo episodes, she shares advice based on her experience running her successful company.

Standout Episodes:

• How to Have Effective 1:1s with Your Team to Drive Results with Empathy
• Establishing a Culture that Drives Business Success
• A Billion-Dollar CEO’s #1 Fundraising Tip

2. HBR’s IdeaCast

If you struggle to find time to listen to podcasts, this bite-size one is a great option.

Each week, HBR’s IdeaCast tackles one facet of leadership in 30 minutes or less. With over 600 episodes, this longstanding podcast has covered just about everything you might want to know about being a better leader.

Standout Episodes:

• One Way to Fight the Great Resignation? Re-recruit Your Current Employees
• It’s Time to Fine-Tune Performance Management
• Fighting Bias and Inequality at the Team Level

3. Let’s Take This Offline: The Podcast for Everyday Leaders

In this podcast, host and former exec Kishshana Palmer looks to redefine what leadership looks like.

“Let’s Take This Offline” breaks down unpopular topics within the leadership space, such as doubt, vulnerability, and shame. Consider this a safe space for leaders who don’t feel like they have it all together and want reassurance that it’s OK.

Standout Episodes:

• Summer Well Series: Create Your Leadership Roadmap
• How Doubt Can Boost Your Leadership
• No Second Guessing, You Are Enough

4. How Leaders Lead

When you’re working on improving yourself as a leader, it’s vital to get advice from all angles. This podcast does just that.

“How Leaders Lead” is an interview-style podcast that gives you access to top leaders in business, sports, entertainment, and more. Its host, David Novak, is the co-founder and former chairman of a Fortune 500 company who knows what questions to ask and which insights leaders are looking for.

Standout Episodes:

• Embrace Big Changes with Curiosity
• Bill Harrison, JPMorgan Chase Former Chairman & CEO – Preparing the Next Leader
• Rob Manfred, MLB Commissioner – Finding Common Ground

5. Coaching with Leaders

Want to listen to a leadership podcast but don’t have a whole hour to dedicate to it? Then, this is the podcast for you.

With each episode averaging around 30 minutes, Coaching for Leaders is a short and sweet podcast on all things leadership, from giving feedback and managing difficult stakeholders to fostering inclusivity and improving communication.

Every episode is filled with tactical, actionable advice that you can use every day as a leader, making it a great listen for the morning when you’re getting ready for work.

Standout Episodes:

• How to Involve Stakeholders in Decisions
• How Top Leaders Influence Great Teamwork, with Scott Keller
• How to Lead and Retain High Performers

6. The Unburdened Leader

When we talk about leadership, we rarely dive into the toll it can take on your mental health. Rebecca ching, LMFT, is here to tackle it.

With a background in family therapy, Ching has built her career around helping leaders navigate through the complex emotions and events associated with this path.

In each episode, she leans on experts in various fields to discuss leadership through the lens of mental health.

Standout episodes:

• Leading Authentically After Hard Falls with Ref Rodriguez
• The Intersection of Leadership, Brand, and Inner Work
• Challenging the Fear of Rejection and Leading with Vulnerability

7. Coaching for Latina Leaders

While this podcast was designed with Latina leaders in mind, it’s a great listen for any leader.

What’s great about this pod is that it looks at leaders from a holistic perspective, helping them see how their personal lives impact their work lives.

That’s why you’ll see episodes focusing on journaling and meditation while others focus on leadership frameworks.

Standout episodes:

• Living and Leading with ADHD
• Lead at Work as Powerfully as You Lead at Home
• Arrival Fallacy: How to Enjoy the Journey Toward Your Next Big Success

8. Coaching Real Leaders

Backed by the Harvard Business Review, this podcast is led by leadership coach Muriel Wilkins and is geared toward high performers struggling to grow as leaders.

Every episode starts with one question and one leader’s challenge to frame the episode. In one hour or less, Wilkins uses her background in coaching to help her audience navigate everyday challenges.

Standout Episodes:

• How Do I Move from a Specialist to a General Leadership Role?
• How Can I Lead Authentically?
• Finding My Leadership Voice

9. Dare to Lead

In 2018, author Brene Brown wrote the New York Times Best Selling book Dare to Lead which serves as the basis for this Spotify Original podcast.

According to their blurb, this podcast features riveting conversations with “change-catalysts, culture-shifters, and as many troublemakers as possible.”

Standout Episodes:

• Leading with Purpose In the Digital Age
• Armored versus Daring Leadership
• Why Every Leader Needs to Worry About Toxic Culture

10. Self-Control and Cheese

Ever wish you could talk candidly with your peers about the challenges you’re going through at work? Consider this podcast that safe space.

Hosts Bridget and Sara, two young leaders working at fast-growing tech companies, talk about everything from securing that promotion to navigating difficult conversations with your direct report.

If you work in tech (or plan to), this is the podcast to hear about what it’s really like and how to move within this space.

Standout Episodes:

• It’s Not Job Hopping If The Company’s Toxic
• The Leadership Crash Course
• 30 Under 30s A Scam

So, if you’re looking to up your leadership game, or just want to learn more about the art of being a great leader, then check out some of these top podcasts on leadership.

To effectively lead a marketing team, it’s imperative you know your top goal.

Whether your goal is to increase revenue or improve your customer’s understanding of your products, starting with a clear objective will help you map out a strong strategy for 2023 and beyond.

But it can be difficult to identify the most important goals for your organization — which is why we surveyed 500+ marketing executives to find out the goals that matter most to them.

About half of marketing leaders say they will change their marketing goals in 2023. Here, we’ll take a look at the top five goals those marketing leaders plan to prioritize in the upcoming year. Plus, hear from experts at Uber, Dropbox, and ClickUp on how to achieve them.

Learn from industry leaders on how to take your team to the next level in 2023, plus take a look at data from 300+ marketing directors.

The Top 5 Goals of Marketing Leaders in 2023

1. Increasing revenue and sales.

22% of marketing leaders report ‘increasing revenue and sales’ as their top priority for 2023.

It should come as no surprise that increasing revenue is a top goal for many marketing leaders. At its core, a marketer’s job is to impact a business’ bottom line by attracting the right audiences and driving leads further down the pipeline for sales.

Gaurav Agarwal, Chief Growth Officer at ClickUp, told me increasing revenue and driving sales is a top priority for his team as we enter the new year.

He says, “As a fast-growing company with industry-leading NDR, adding in new revenue sustainably is our top priority. We are hyper-focused on building out different growth and sales capabilities to achieve that goal. As we embark on our 2023 planning, we do so with a renewed focus on efficiency and clear goals around our different self-serve and sales-assisted motions.”

Agarwal continues, “We are also doubling down on organic growth strategies and efforts to better monetize our user base and leads. It is our priority to take a full-funnel approach to build compounding revenue machines.”

To increase revenue, marketing leaders need to identify areas of their customer journey that can be further optimized. Additionally, like Agarwal and ClickUp, marketing leaders will want to focus on lead generation. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to effective lead generation. To improve your lead generation strategy, you might test out new landing page CTAs, try creating stronger offers, or re-focus your efforts on more powerful lead nurturing campaigns.

It’s also important to continually test new platforms — like TikTok, or podcasting — to reach new audiences.

Michelle Keene, Dropbox’s Sr. Director of Global Marketing, Document Workflows, told me that increasing revenue is a top goal of hers for 2023. As she puts it, “In 2023, a year that is expected to be dominated by economic uncertainty, the shift to profitable growth [rather than growth at all costs] will only be accelerated — moving from a nice idea to a requirement.”

To combat this challenge, Keene offers five key principles for marketing leaders to follow: 

1. Move from a revenue-only goal to a revenue and cost-of-acquisition goal.

2. Find technology solutions that enable CAC measurement at the program level.

3. Evolve your marketing attribution models.

4. Deeply understand your target audiences and their needs to deliver the right messages at the right time.

5. Encourage ongoing deployment of hypothesis-driven experiments and optimizations. 

She adds, “As a marketing leader, I am embracing this challenge, making efficient growth a top priority in 2023. While any mindset shift is challenging, the benefits far outweigh the change management costs. It can transform the way senior executives view marketing — not as an expense, but as an investment — which is really empowering and energizing for me.”

2. Improving sales and marketing alignment.

Ensuring your marketing team is strongly aligned with sales is a critical component of hitting and even exceeding revenue goals. In fact, organizations with tightly aligned sales and marketing teams are 6% more likely to exceed revenue goals.

Which is why ​​19% of marketing executives say improving sales alignment is a top goal of theirs for 2023.

To foster better alignment, consider asking your sales and marketing teams to create your buyer personas together. Sales teams have unique insights into prospects since they speak with them on a daily basis. By partnering with sales teams, you’re able to create a more comprehensive picture of your target persona — including specific challenges or pain points you might’ve missed in your marketing research.

You might also consider working with the sales team to get their input on any content gaps in the buyer’s journey. For instance, a sales rep might point out that you don’t have enough e-books or blog posts that speak to a specific challenge many of your customers have.

By working directly with the sales team, you can create a more seamless buyer experience and retain customers by ensuring you’re consistently creating the content they need to succeed.

3. Fostering relationships with your customers and increasing brand loyalty.

Out of the marketing executives who said they’re changing their goals in 2023, 19% report ‘fostering relationships with customers and increasing brand loyalty’ to be their new top priority.

Customer experience matters more than ever because your happiest customers become the strongest marketers for your brand. A satisfied customer will share their positive experiences online and with friends and family. And people are most likely to trust recommendations from people they know.

Plus, according to an RRD survey of 1,000 consumers, 40% of consumers make purchases based on word-of-mouth recommendations.

All of which is to say: How your customers feel about your brand matters greatly for your bottom line — so it’s vital you do everything you can to foster stronger relationships with them.

Jennifer Chou, Dropbox’s Senior Director of Integrated Marketing, believes having a strong understanding of your customers is a vital first step in building brand loyalty.

She told me, “Marketing is about storytelling and helping people envision how your solutions can help them achieve their goals. Having a better understanding of your customers and their needs is critical to creating that intangible connection that builds affinity, consideration, and, ultimately, loyalty.”

She continues, “Customers want to relate to companies in new ways and feel that connection that this company understands what I’m dealing with, and is building products for me. This is truly important for us as we think about 2023. Dropbox has so much more to offer with our newest products and features. We are enabling better workflows around our users’ content. This means we need to know their challenges and goals as well or even better than they do, so they can focus on the work that matters.”

(P.S. Are you already a Dropbox customer? If so, click here for 20% off eligible HubSpot products, or sign up for free.) 

To cultivate a strong relationship between your brand and its community, you’ll also want to make sure your marketing materials convey your brand’s values. People will feel more connected to your business if they believe that your company cares about issues that matter most to them.

As Daniel Godoy, Microsoft’s Global Head of Programmatic Evangelist puts it, “The best way to win trust is by putting upfront the values your brand cares about, and having transparent communication that highlights your purpose commitments. According to Microsoft Advertising Research, 85% of consumers only consider brands they trust. And 72% only support brands that are being authentic in their advertising.”

Additionally, try creating opportunities for your customers to interact with each other. For instance, you might create a Facebook group so your customers can engage with each other, share industry best practices, and get ideas or suggestions to help them work through their business challenges. HubSpot’s Social team created a Facebook group and have since leveraged the group to foster a stronger sense of community among its members.

Finally, you’ll want to make sure you create a strong online customer support experience. Among other best practices, consider investing in a CRM, offering omnichannel support via email, phone, online chat, or social media, and training your customer service reps to use customer interactions as opportunities to build brand loyalty.

4. Advertising your products or services.

19% of marketing executives want to focus on advertising their products and services effectively in 2023.

Advertising isn’t what it used to be. This isn’t the days of Mad Men’s Don Draper and creating quippy billboard slogans — at least, not entirely. Beyond the more classic channels like print, TV, radio, and direct mail, many brands now advertise almost exclusively on digital platforms.

Digital advertising is incredibly effective for reaching large audiences for a relatively low cost compared to more traditional methods, like TV. Many digital advertising platforms offer helpful tools for empowering marketers to create engaging ads and iterate quickly if something isn’t working.

Google’s responsive ads feature, for instance, tests various headlines and descriptions and ultimately displays the combination that performs best with an intended audience.

Social media is another powerful option for advertising in 2023. To create a strong social media advertising strategy, you’ll want to:

• Research your buyer personas and audience.
• Determine which social platforms you’ll market on most effectively.
• Establish your most important metrics and KPIs.
• Get to know your competition.
• Create unique and engaging content.
• Organize a schedule for your posts.

Take a look at this post to learn more about how to create a strong social advertising strategy.

5. Improving customers’ understanding of your products and services.

Finally, 19% of marketing executives hope to improve their customers’ understanding of their products or services in 2023.

This goal resonates with Michelle Lisowski, Director and Head of B2B Marketing for Uber for Business. She told me, “I see an incredible opportunity as a marketing leader to take a brand that consumers already know and love, and communicate it in a new way that is relevant to B2B audiences. Building this kind of strategy requires taking our buyers’ unique needs and wants into consideration. We have to help them see how Uber products and services can enhance everyday work experiences, whether it’s traveling for business or ordering afternoon coffee for delivery right to the office.”

Lisowski continues, “In many ways, our team acts like a B2B startup in a large, consumer-oriented company. We have the benefit of being able to plug into established marketing channel teams and expertise, but still need to build go-to-market motions that will resonate with our enterprise audience. Our main focus in 2023 will be combining data and direct customer feedback to help make our marketing even more effective. Ultimately, we want to generate trust and familiarity through one-to-one engagements that build lasting customer relationships.”

If your business is branching out into new markets, it’s vital you take the time to understand your new consumers so you can effectively show them how your product can solve for them. 

A full one-third of consumers prefer to learn about products by searching the internet, so to improve your customers’ understanding of your products or services, you’ll want to start with a strong SEO strategy. Creating product-relevant content can help your prospects get to know your products on a deeper level and help them succeed after they’ve purchased.

Additionally, a good SEO strategy can help you demonstrate what your product is to people who haven’t heard of your brand before. Let’s say you work for a video editing company. By writing content like “Why Video Marketing Matters” and “5 Ways to Create Higher-Quality Videos”, your audience will begin to understand that your company is in the video industry.

Once readers have found value in your content, they’ll explore your site further. This is where it’s vital to have knowledge-base articles to help interested prospects fully understand all the unique features your product offers.

Social media is another good contender for developing an understanding of your products or services. In fact, if you’re marketing to Gen Z or millennials, it’s imperative you use social media for product education, since social media is Gen Z’s favorite channel for learning about new products, and it’s millennials’ second favorite (right behind search engines).

While those are the top five goals shared by marketing leaders, I’d like to highlight an additional five for consideration. These include:

• Driving traffic to your website (17%)
• Increasing engagement (17%)
• Growing your community/following on social media (17%)
• Leveraging your CRM to its fullest potential (16%)
• Lead generation (15%)

Ultimately, determining your top goal for the new year will help you lead your team more effectively and stay focused on your north-star metrics as the year progresses. Plus, knowing your goal will help you plan accordingly — including where to allocate budget and resources, who you might need to hire, and areas for improvement in your current strategy.

Every marketer faces different challenges.

Maybe you’re struggling to keep up with the latest trends. Or perhaps your team is finding it difficult to pivot your marketing strategy due to major global events.

Today, marketing is so fast-paced that it can be difficult to identify which areas you’ll want to focus on to facilitate stronger growth in 2023 and beyond. Which is why we asked 500+ marketing executives to predict the top challenges they expect to face in 2023 — so you can plan your strategies accordingly.

Below, let’s explore the global issues marketing leaders believe they’ll struggle with in 2023, according to new HubSpot Blog data from 500+ marketing executives. Additionally, hear tips on how to combat these challenges from experts at Microsoft, ZoomInfo, and Sprout Social.

Coming Soon: Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader [Click Here to Add to Google Calendar]

1. Adopting a data-driven marketing strategy.

Why It’s a Challenge

14% of marketing leaders say adopting a data-driven marketing strategy will be a top challenge of theirs in 2023. And ZoomInfo’s Chief Marketing Officer, Bryan Law, sympathizes.

Law told me, “We’re all feeling the pressures of a possible recession and almost every company will face challenges with revenue growth and marketing spend in 2023. With potentially fewer dollars to put towards campaigns, adopting a data-driven marketing strategy will ensure that every effort is as impactful as possible.”

To adopt a data-driven marketing strategy, there are two big levers you’ll want to pull in 2023. Let’s take a look at those now.

What Can You Do?

Effectively Combine First and Third-Party Data

Microsoft’s Global Head of Programmatic Evangelist, Daniel Godoy, told me that it’s critical marketers keep first-party data in-mind if they’re aiming to expand their reach in 2023.

Godoy says, “Marketers feel the pressure to win the ads race in a wild WWW. During this race, it’s worth mentioning that consumer media behavior is changing, and advertising strategies, too. With the cookies deprecation coming (although it has been delayed by Google), it should be on our radar that at least 40% of browsers today don’t get signals.”

He adds, “Shaping your strategy by leveraging 1P or 3P trustable data becomes necessary to expand potential reach and start piloting your data strategy for the future.”

First-party data can ultimately help you ensure you’re reaching the right audiences with your ads and turning those audiences into high-quailty leads.

Develop Unique Messaging that Resonates with Your Prospects

To run a successful data-backed campaign, Law suggests first defining your audience. He told me marketing leaders need to take the time to collect custom attributes, not just basic descriptive information. Then, he advises leaders to create dynamic prospect lists through audience segmentation.

Once you’ve defined your audiences and properly segmented them, you’ll need to develop unique messaging that resonates with your prospects.

As Law puts it, “You’ll need to figure out how to convey your ability to alleviate their challenges in a unique way to penetrate the significant market noise. Practice consistency in your overall theme, and include contextual personalization when applicable.”

You’ll also want to use data to reach the right buyers at the right companies. For instance, Law told me it’s helpful to use technology to identify and engage at the contact or persona level, and automate workflows that allow you to reach people across channels. Finally, you’ll need to test, measure, and iterate.

Law advises, “Before you launch your campaigns, set up metrics to help understand their performance. Use the data to confirm that your messaging is reaching the right people at the right time through the right channels. Data should drive this process and its iterations — and it should fuel your entire marketing strategy if you want to see success in 2023.”

(P.S. — Are you already a ZoomInfo customer? If so, click here for 20% off HubSpot products, or sign up for free.)

Ultimately, preparing a powerful data-driven marketing strategy in 2023 will be essential for outperforming competitors — especially since data can help your team remain flexible and adaptive as trends or consumer preferences shift over time.

2. Keeping up with the latest trends.

Why It’s a Challenge

Staying up-to-date on marketing trends wasn’t just a challenge in 2022. 14% of marketers believe keeping up with the latest marketing trends will continue to be their biggest hurdle in 2023.

This makes sense. From branded audio content to augmented reality (AR) experiences, there’s plenty of trends we saw spike in 2022. As a marketer, it can be difficult to decipher which trends matter most to your business — and which ones you can avoid.

What Can You Do?

Reviewing up-to-date marketing reports like HubSpot’s 2022 State of Marketing Trends can help you stay informed on which marketing trends matter most to consumers. You can also subscribe to marketing podcasts or newsletters to learn more about what’s happening in the industry.

Alternatively, consider asking your consumers what trends matter to them. For instance, perhaps you create a social poll to ask consumers about their favorite TikTok reels — this information can help you better understand the topics that currently matter most to your audience.

Once you have a list of interesting marketing trends, you can try implementing them on a small scale to see how they perform for your business. Testing is critical here. You can read about the effectiveness of short-form video content all day long — but until you try it for your own brand, you can’t know for sure whether it actually matters to your audience.

3. Facing increased competition from other brands.

Why It’s a Challenge

Competition isn’t a new concept for businesses, but it’s a major concern for many marketers when they look ahead. As social media and the SERPs become increasingly saturated with branded content, many marketers struggle to create content that stands out.

In our HubSpot Blog survey, 13% of marketing leaders report increased competition from other brands as their biggest concern for 2023.

What Can You Do?

To combat this challenge, marketing leaders will want to conduct a competitive market analysis, which can help you implement stronger business strategies and identify potential opportunities to out-perform your competition.

Additionally, it’s a good idea to ask your team to flag any interesting tactics other businesses are leveraging. Your social team, for instance, can assess competitors’ social channels to identify any gaps in their current strategy. Alternatively, your blog team might highlight their personal favorite blogs, and share takeaways they can apply to their own content.

Hosting regular team brainstorms around new, innovative ideas can help you ensure your business is ahead-of-the-curve.

However, you don’t want to just follow along with your competitors’ strategies. It’s a good idea to test out new platforms to see what resonates with your intended audience, even if your competitors aren’t using those social channels.

4. Leveraging my CRM to its fullest potential.

Why It’s a Challenge

12% of marketers believe their biggest challenge in 2023 will be leveraging their CRM to its fullest potential.

A CRM can be an incredibly powerful and effective tool for marketing, sales, and service — but it can be intimidating and time-consuming if you don’t know how to use yours.

What Can You Do?

To make the most out of your CRM, take a look at our ultimate guide to using a CRM. You’ll also want to consider purchasing a CRM that enables you to integrate all your other tools in one place.

Additionally, HubSpot’s Product Manager Alexa Starks told me, “To leverage your CRM to its full potential, you’ll want to expand usage with a flagship use case. In other words — figure out a gap or pain point with your current process that is solved by an underutilized feature of the CRM. Then, evangelize how your CRM will address that problem and create more connectedness within the organization.”

Starks adds, “Rinse and repeat to show how implementing additional CRM tools can make the teams lives easier. Over time, this will increase adoption and eventually lead to a compounding effect, as a more connected process increases the ROI of your CRM purchase.”

If you’re instead struggling with how to structure your CRM, or which data is most critical, Starks suggests you get head of your data by figuring out the core questions you have of your data.

She says, “Imagine you have the answers to those questions. Now, think through what next-level questions you might have after you receive those initial answers. Taking time to map this out can help align the team around the ways your process may need to shift to ensure the necessary data is available and structured properly in the future.”

5. Having to pivot my marketing strategy due to major events (e.g. recession, pandemic, political turmoil).

Why It’s a Challenge

The past couple years have required businesses to demonstrate new levels of flexibility and adaptability.

The pandemic, for instance, greatly impacted users’ expectations and preferences when it comes to social media. Now, users’ spend more time watching videos online than they did pre-pandemic, and they crave more fun and authentic content than they used to.

Similarly, political turmoil and recent changes in the economy have required businesses to adjust their marketing strategies accordingly to ensure they’re continuing to meet the needs of their customers.

While it can feel risky to invest in new strategies or pivot as a response to major events, it’s oftentimes worse to stick to the status quo. As the world changes, your consumers’ behaviors and needs change in response, so it’s vital you keep up with global trends to understand what your consumers’ needs are on any given day.

Plus, your marketing could seem tone-deaf if you don’t pivot accordingly.

All of which is to say: It’s no surprise that 11% of marketing leaders believe pivoting their marketing strategies will continue to be a roadblock for them in 2023 and beyond.

What Can You Do?

Godoy is familiar with the challenge of pivoting your strategy appropriately. Fortunately, he has a solution.

He says, “The pandemic has brought changes in our lives and in our work schedules — and hybrid work opens possibilities to balance work and personal responsibilities at the same time. Before, we were determined to do certain tasks at certain hours … but in the world of today, we all live in the missing middle.”

He adds, “We’re paying too much attention to the upper and lower side of the funnel and ignoring what happens in the middle. The real journey reflects that human decisions do not happen in a linear way. Audiences exposed to brand and performance are 6X more likely to convert. By capturing signals of intent and mapping this data, you’ll get clarity on how the missing middle works for your brand.”

Understanding your prospects’ behavior and intent is a critical component of ensuring you can shift quickly if your marketing efforts aren’t working. This is also where agile marketing comes into play. Agile marketing helps you execute by working in short sprints, which helps marketers quickly shift their focus, adapt to customer needs, and change priorities.

Agile marketing can help your team become more adaptable when global events upend your previous plans and force your team to shift focus. And it can help teams rebound more quickly from potential revenue losses.

Consider, for instance, how Doordash reported an operating loss of $616 million in 2019 — and then grew to $2.89 billion in revenue in 2020. Their agile approach during the pandemic enabled them to respond to their consumers’ needs by delivering COVID test kits and launching the #OpenforDelivery campaign to support restaurants.

Essentially, Doordash pivoted quickly to support their customer needs, and dropped their pre-planned marketing approach to adopt a new, more timely one.

Finally, it’s critical you keep an eye on both marketing trends and global events to ensure you’re pivoting your strategy when necessary.

To ensure you’re up-to-date on the latest trends, you’ll want to monitor your social media channels to respond appropriately to customers. Additionally, consider leveraging social listening tools to keep up with trends happening in the industry.

Most marketers are goaled on two metrics: Traffic and leads.

Which is why it makes sense that 11% of marketing leaders expect that generating traffic and leads will remain their top challenge in 2023.

Even if marketers are doing well with these metrics, they’ll always want to improve them.

6. Generating traffic and leads.

Why It’s a Challenge

Google search features like featured snippets and images have made it increasingly difficult to get traffic to your site at all. In fact, 65% of Google searches now end without a click.

Social media is also becoming saturated with 24/7, around-the-clock content. As the creator economy booms, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for brands to create content that stands out.

Ultimately, marketing leaders are struggling to produce demand for their content. Plus, they’re unsure which platforms will prove best for their business — and how to promote their content effectively.

What Can You Do?

To combat the challenge of creating high-quality content that resonates with your audience, you’ll want to use effective tools to properly track the types of content that performs best with your audiences.

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

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

Additionally, you might test out influencer marketing to generate more traffic and leads. Micro-influencers, for instance, have high rates of engagement and are often seen as experts on certain niche topics — so finding a micro-influencer that aligns well with your brand can help you generate high-quality traffic and leads effectively.

7. Hiring top talent.

Why It’s a Challenge

11% of marketing leaders report hiring top talent as their top anticipated struggle of 2023. And Jamie Gilpin, Chief Marketing Officer at Sprout Social, agrees. She told me that hiring and cultivating top talent is a key focus at Sprout Social as they head into the new year.

Gilpin says, “As a discipline, marketing is ever evolving, which requires candidates with unique, more varied skill sets. Social media in particular is playing a larger and larger role in every brand’s marketing strategy and requires highly skilled professionals with in-depth knowledge of social media’s shifting landscape.”

She adds, “With new platforms, features, and more consumers preferring to interact with brands on social, marketing teams are tasked with hiring and developing talent across their marketing function who understands the total impact social media can have on your organization.”

What Can You Do?

To attract top talent, you’ll want to focus on your employer brand.

As Gilpin puts it, “To attract talent with unique skill sets, our company has worked incredibly hard to build a strong employer brand that clearly communicates our values and culture to current and prospective employees. One way we’ve been able to amplify that message is by leveraging the social influence of our own employees.”

She continues, “By going beyond our own social channels and by helping our employees become brand advocates on social, we’ve seen the visibility and authenticity of our content grow. Whether we’re announcing a new product, sharing a company culture initiative, or promoting a job opening, our employees have become our greatest asset in building the type of brand awareness that will help us continue to grow our team in 2023.”

Strengthening your employer brand is one of the most effective ways to attract top talent, and leveraging your employees’ unique perspectives will help you demonstrate more authenticity in your recruiting materials. In 2023, marketing leaders will also want to consider how they can turn their employees into brand advocates.

Interested in other top challenges, trends, and opportunities being discussed amongst marketing leaders? Take a look at Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader: Data from 300+ Marketing Directors on How to Take Your Team to the Next Level. Along with the data, you’ll hear from experts at Uber, LinkedIn, G2, SEMRush, and more.

Twitter has Spaces. Facebook has Live Audio Rooms. Clubhouse has…Clubhouse. Now, LinkedIn is grabbing a seat at the table with its own audio feature.

Let’s talk about what LinkedIn Audio Events is, how it works, and what it could mean for marketers.

LinkedIn first launched a beta version of Live Audio Events in January. Then, in June, expanded it to users with the “creator mode” on. Today, all users have access to it and the platform plans to eventually follow up with a video version.

Image Source

Here are a few key facts:

• Events must be at least 15 minutes long and can last for up to three hours.
• You must have 150 followers and/or connections to host an Audio Event and have a history of following LinkedIn’s community policies. However, any user can attend live audio events.
• Audio Events are not yet available to users in mainland China.

How to Launch Live Audio Events on LinkedIn

1. Head to the “Post” tab located on the navigation bar.

2. Tap on “Create an Event.”

3. Tap “Event Format.”

4. Select “LinkedIn Audio Event,” add the remaining details of the event, such as date and time, then click “Done.”

5. Share the event details with your audience.

How LinkedIn Live Audio Differs from Twitter Spaces and Clubhouse

For now, LinkedIn’s Live Audio Events are pretty similar to Twitter Spaces and Clubhouse. There’s not much differentiating them currently, but according to reports, it won’t stay that way for long.

According to a TechCrunch article, LinkedIn has been working on a paid ticketing feature for its interactive events since September. This could give LinkedIn an edge over other platforms, by allowing brands to create paid, exclusive events for their most engaged audiences.

Clubhouse has stated it’s exploring monetization opportunities for its creators. But, no concrete features have been announced.

From a brand perspective, LinkedIn is one of the better audio platforms to leverage, as it has valuable user data, such as job titles, ages, industry interests, and more. Conversely, users on Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces can remain anonymous, known only by their usernames.

For now, these social media platforms are all on even ground when it comes to audio capabilities. But that could change soon.

How Marketers Can Leverage LinkedIn Live Audio Events

When social media platforms compete with each other, it’s usually a win for brands. Why? As these platforms add new features to keep users engaged, brands have the ability to leverage new strategies without having to start from scratch on a new platform.

For example, when Clubhouse gained traction, a lot of brands opened an account and spent months trying to figure out the platform, its audience, and its features. However, when an established platform like Twitter or Instagram adds a new feature, adoption is much easier and usually happens much faster.

With this in mind, brands that are currently finding success on LinkedIn can use live audio events as an extension of their current strategy. With this new feature, they can:

• Discover what topics are most interesting to their audiences.
• Reach new users.
• Gain real-time insights based on conversations.
• Build a strong community.

Although LinkedIn’s live audio events feature is new, there is a lot of room to play with – even at this early stage.

Many marketers have flirted with the idea of trying TikTok, but certain misconceptions have stood in the way.

For instance, isn’t it just a platform for teens? Specifically, teens who lip-sync?

To help curb the confusion, we’ve rounded up a list of common TikTok myths to help you decide whether it deserves a spot on your marking roster. Let’s dive in.

Myth 1: TikTok’s audience is too young.

Brands mistakenly assume that TikTok is just for teens and young adults. Although it initially exploded in popularity with the Gen Z crowd, TikTok is quickly “growing up.” In fact, 36% of TikTok users in 2021 were between 35 and 54 years old, a 10% increase from the year before.

On top of that, 50% of Millennials report visiting TikTok in the last three months, along with 38% of Gen X-ers, according to HubSpot’s 2022 Consumers Trends Report. We predict these numbers will continue to rise as TikTok cements itself as a mainstream social platform.

Myth 2: TikTok is just for lip-synching and dancing.

While these types of videos certainly exist on TikTok, it’s only the tip of the iceberg. As its audience has grown more diverse, so too has its content.

Nowadays, you can find videos that hit almost any niche. For example, some of the most popular TikTok categories include cooking recipes, beauty tutorials, fitness routines, life hacks, and even pet videos. This also means TikTok can work for a variety of brands across different industries.

For example, Ryanair, a European airline, is a fan favorite on TikTok with almost two million TikTok followers. DuoLingo, a language learning app, is another favorite with over four million followers. Then there’s Red Bull, a popular energy drink, with almost 7 million followers. These are wildly different brands, from different industries, that have built a healthy audience on TikTok.

Curious which brands are winning on TikTok? Check out this helpful guide to get inspired.

Myth 3: If your brand is “serious,” TikTok isn’t for you.

TikTok has a reputation for being quirky — but if your brand is on the serious side, don’t let this scare you away. Instead, try approaching your brand from a different angle.

For example, take a look at Planet Money, an NPR-backed podcast that covers complex topics about the economy. Not the most entertaining topic in the world, right? Yet, it’s raked up almost 750,000 followers.

From gentrification to mortgages, no topic is too serious for Planet Money to tackle with a humorous spin. Need convincing? Take a look at the following video that asks, “Is free shipping really free?”

If you feel your brand is too “serious” for TikTok, take a note from Planet Money and approach your brand — and the content you create — from a different lens. At the end of the day, it’s about sharing value and delivering it in an engaging way — and that’s a goal almost any brand can attain.

Myth 4: You need a lot of followers to go viral.

On TikTok, anyone can go viral. Even accounts with a handful of followers can spark millions of views on a great video.

Its viral nature is a direct result of its algorithm. How does it work? The algorithm pinpoints users that may enjoy your content based on their previous watch history, hashtag searches, and current location. Then, it will push your video to their feed. If enough people engage with it, the algorithm will share it to even more people. Next thing you know, you have a viral hit.

Here’s an example: suppose you post a video of yourself hiking a mountain. The algorithm shows your video to users who live nearby, as well as those who recently searched for hiking trails on the platform. It notices a lot of people “liking” and commenting on the video, so it shares it to more users.

Long story short, if you’re worried you won’t get any traction on TikTok, it’s helpful to remember that the algorithm is on your side, enabling you to reach more people outside of your immediate followers.

Myth 5: Because TikTok videos are shorter, users are less engaged.

TikTok is known for its short, bite-sized content. However, this creates an illusion that users don’t spend much time on the platform.

Fortunately, this couldn’t be farther from the truth. In fact, TikTok has an average user session of 10.85 minutes, far exceeding any other social media platform. On top of that, users in the U.S. open the TikTok app 8 times a day on average.

Myth 6: TikTok is a fad.

Will TikTok meet the same fate as Myspace and Tumblr? While it’s too early to call, I’d argue that it doesn’t really matter.

For one, short-form video is dominating the social media landscape. If TikTok meets its demise, consumers will still crave this content. The audience may jump to a new platform, or migrate to an existing one. Either way, you still need to know how to create engaging, snackable content — and TikTok is the leading platform to hone this skill.

Second, if you build your brand correctly, no rise or fall of a single platform will topple it. If you build a strong community around your brand, it will become unshakeable. But in order to do this, you need to go where your audience is — and, for right now, that might be TikTok.

Back To You

Let’s end with one final myth: it’s too late to join TikTok.

This is untrue, especially if your audience is active there. Further, its high engagement rates, stellar growth potential, and powerful algorithm can take your digital marketing to the next level. That said, time is of the essence. Brands that establish a presence on TikTok now can stay ahead of the curve.

Artificial intelligence is continuing to make an impact on the business world. In fact, McKinsey predicts that up to $2.6 trillion in value will be unlocked by AI in marketing and sales alone.

But, if you’re less tech-savvy, you might be intimidated by terms like “artificial intelligence,” “machine learning,” and “algorithms.” You probably also hear about these technologies and think to yourself, “My business definitely can’t afford that.”

This makes sense. As a good marketer, you should be skeptical about high-priced tech. After all, sometimes it’s hard to tell how a tool works and if it’s actually worth your money. Additionally, if you’re less familiar with AI, it might seem like it’s only necessary for industry-leading behemoths.

There are so many misconceptions about AI in marketing that my colleagues and I launched the Marketing AI Institute. At the organization, we aim to make AI approachable and actionable for marketers. To date, we’ve vetted dozens of AI solutions and have monitored more than 1,500 sales and marketing AI companies with combined funding north of $6.2 billion.

As the Institute’s director, I’ve advised small and medium-sized companies on AI implementations. We’ve also piloted several AI tools in our own marketing operations at the Marketing AI Institute – often for no or extremely low cost.

While you might think that AI is totally out of your budget, there’s actually a chance your business is already using a software or app that relies on this technology to do its job.

Let’s get into the three-step process for implementing AI on a budget, as well as examples of affordable tools that can help you.

Table of Contents

How to Implement AI on a Budget [3 Steps]

Affordable Marketing Automation Software

Familiarizing Yourself With AI

How to Implement AI on a Budget [3 Steps]

1. Determine where AI tools could help you eliminate costs.

At some point, you’ll need to spend money to implement AI. But, how you structure an AI pilot project can help you defray some of the costs.

Although AI, when done right, can increase revenue and reduce costs, you’ll still want to start with a cost-reduction pilot before a revenue-increasing experiment.

A cost-reduction pilot aims to improve (or streamline) processes you already have in place. A revenue-generating pilot, on the other hand, might require new processes — which could ultimately cost more time and money.

In order to kickstart your cost-reduction pilot, you need to first identify time-intensive or repetitive tasks that hold you — or your team — back from high-quality projects in your organization. 

Start by making a list of your recurring responsibilities. Track everything you do every week or month, and list the amount of time you spend on each activity. Chances are, there are a ton of tasks that take way too much time each month. It’s likely they’re also pretty data-driven, too.

Next, explore vendors who have created more intelligent ways to do the tasks that are blocking your team.

For example, you might discover that tagging images on your website takes up too much time. AI software can probably free you up from doing that task. Or, you might spend hours each week managing paid advertising. AI can also help there, too.

In fact, there are dozens of ways you can apply AI to immediately free up team time and resources. And, depending on the cost reductions, these pilots may pay for themselves.

2. Research tools that work out of the box.

A handful of small to medium-sized businesses might worry about blowing their budgets when they hear the words, “artificial intelligence” because — at the moment — many AI solutions are built for corporate enterprise.

The truth is, many AI tools need access to quality data at scale to produce results. Enterprises are often the only source of this data. But this doesn’t mean you need to count out AI as a marketer for a smaller business.

In fact, a number of AI tools are affordable, work out of the box, and cut time on basic marketing tasks.

Additionally, you might not know it, but you might already be using popular office tools that are powered by AI.

3. Ask these questions before investing in an AI product.

There are some vendors out there that claim to be AI but aren’t. If you don’t understand what to look for, you could waste time and money on lackluster solutions.

That’s why we encourage every marketer to establish a baseline knowledge of AI. (Our beginner’s guide will cut down your learning curve.)

Aside from familiarizing yourself with the technology, you also need to ask smart questions of AI vendors about the tools they sell.

Start with questions like:

• How does ____ use AI today?
• What AI capabilities are on the product roadmap?
• What type of data do I need for the solution to work?
• Is there any type of minimum size dataset I need to use the solution? (i.e. a certain number of emails sent, visitors to the site, etc.)
• What kinds of in-house capabilities do I need to use and maintain the solution?: Can anyone use it? Do I need dedicated data scientists, machine learning experts?
• My top use cases for AI are A, B, C, etc. Can ___ help?

Curiosity may have killed the cat. But it also saves marketers tons of money when buying new technology. So, don’t be afraid to ask questions and do deep research on each product you’re considering before you invest.

Affordable Marketing Automation Software

Here are a few examples of popular and affordable AI-powered tools:

1. Grammarly

Price: Free; Premium plans to start at $11.66/mo for an annual commitment.

Grammarly is an intuitive copy-editing tool that uses machine learning to recognize and highlight spelling, grammar, and other phrasing errors on different platforms including Google Docs, email, and social media sites.

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For an individual user, Grammarly allows you to track your writing performance and get edit suggestions based on your level of writing experience. The software will also send you emails that show you areas where you are excelling and where you need to improve.

Recently, Grammarly also added a feature where it could recognize and sense the emotional tone of your emails. For example, if you’re writing an email with “Thank you” in it, Grammarly will note that your message sounds “appreciative,” or “optimistic.”

Pro Tip

Grammarly is also available for teams. With the team version, you can unlock customizable editing features that allow the software to make suggestions with your company’s writing styles and branded words in mind.

To learn more about Grammarly and other productivity tools, check out this blog post.

2. Frase.io

Price: Trial available; Plans start at $24.99 per month.

Frase.io is an AI-powered research assistant and question answering bot that uses and analyzes search data on your site. The software can also help you optimize articles and other content for SEO by reading the text, comparing it with similar online content, and offering search and keyword-based suggestions.

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Aside from the SEO features, Frase.io also provides a bot feature. When a visitor is searching your site and would like to find something, they can simply type a question into the message box on your web page and receive an answer from a bot.

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The bot uses machine learning to recognize the phrases given and match the words with content or pages related to those words. For example, if someone says, “I’m looking for a blog post on Instagram Stories,” the bot would reply with a link to one or more blog posts about Instagram Stories.

One company that benefited from this product was Embryo Digital, a small UK-based agency that used Frase.io to conservatively save 180 hours per month on research.

Pro Tip

Battling writer’s block? Frase.io can help with that. It offers a number of tools that create content automatically — such as its Blog Introduction Tool, which automatically generates a 100-word introduction for your blog title.

3. Google Analytics

Price: Free

By now, you’ve probably heard of or already use Google Analytics.

The leading analytics platform’s machine learning capabilities will answer questions about your website data.

Although Google Analytics is the leading analytics tool of marketers and already has many AI tools that work upon launching it, it will take marketers time to set up their GA dashboards so that data is understandable and organized for full teams.

To learn more about this platform and how to get started on it, check out this ultimate guide.

Pro Tip

On top of giving you detailed insights on how your website is doing, GA also integrates with all of Google’s marketing products — including Google Ads, Search Console, and Data Studio.

4. Ahrefs

Price: $99-$999/month depending on your number of users and features.

Ahrefs uses data from Google and other search engines to show you where your web pages rank for certain keywords. It also allows you to query words or phrases to see how common people are looking them up on search engines.

This type of tool can quickly help you identify topics that you might want to blog about or see if your blog post or website is actually showing up on Google searches when people make queries related to your industry.

To give you more of an idea of how the software works, here’s a demo that walks you through how to do keyword research with Ahrefs:

If you’d like to better your keyword research strategies, but can’t afford something as intuitive as Ahrefs, you can also check out these tools which similarly leverage AI algorithms to help marketers identify search opportunities.

Pro Tip

Use Ahrefs’ Content Explorer tool to uncover content that generates a lot of social shares. And, if a specific social media platform is important to you — such as Twitter, for example — you can filter shares on that specific site. In addition, you can analyze any page’s social shares over time.

5. HubSpot

Price: Free CRM; Plans start at $50 per month and vary based on team size and tier subscribed to.

HubSpot incorporates AI in a number of ways. Here are just a few:

• SEO: HubSpot’s COS and CMS use algorithms to scour your posts for search optimization suggestions before you post.
• Emails and Workflows: When a customer does something such as engage with an email or landing page, this will trigger a canned email to be sent to them with their name and other personalizations in it.
• Social Media: HubSpot’s social media platform allows you to autogenerate post caption copy using machine learning. This technology recognizes sentences that you might regularly tweet or meta descriptions in a link you’re sharing, then crafts a caption that you can then edit or tweak.
• Deduplication features: If you upload a new list into a HubSpot CRM, or a pre-existing contact subscribes to your marketing newsletter, HubSpot will search the CRM to find matching contacts and prevent any duplicates from being added.

Pro Tip

For maximum engagement, schedule your emails at the most optimal time for your audience. For instance, if your email open rate plummets on the weekends, schedule them for a weekday.

6. Buffer

Price: Plans start at $6/month per channel and vary depending on your team size and number of channels.

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If you’re a social media marketer, AI tools can take your work to the next level in a fraction of the time.

Buffer is a social media management software offering a range of tools to publish, track, and measure your social media content. For instance, you can maximize engagement by scheduling posts at the most optimal time of day, when your audience is most active.

Pro Tip

For many social media marketers, creating a steady stream of amazing content is challenging. With Buffer’s Calendar tool, you can schedule content months ahead, identify any content gaps, and hone in on certain holidays.

7. Mailchimp

Price: $11-$299/month, depending on how many contacts you have.

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Mailchimp is a popular email marketing software that lets you create campaigns and build automated workflows. Depending on your plan, you can also access advanced audience insights and a library of email templates.

Pro Tip

Using Mailchimp’s Customer Journey Builder, you can automate marketing workflows for your contacts. From simple to highly complex, these journey maps can contain multiple starting points, branches, and unique actions — guaranteeing each of your contacts has a personalized experience.

Familiarizing Yourself With AI

Artificial intelligence can sound like an intimidating or expensive technology. But, the truth is, it’s getting more and more prominent in our world and workplaces today.

Ultimately, the best strategy for vetting AI products, tools, and opportunities that may come your way in the future is to research credible sources and ask the right questions about the software you’re considering.

If you’re looking to take the next step with technology implementation, check out HubSpot Academy’s latest course, “Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Marketing.” The course gives an introduction to AI and machine learning while also walking you through how to implement it in your company’s marketing department.

Still in the initial research phase, but want to learn how AI could impact marketing in the next year? Discover four predictions from marketing AI experts in this blog post.

On any given day, most of our email inboxes are flooded with a barrage of automated email newsletters that do little else besides giving us another task to do on our commutes to work — namely, marking them all as unread without reading or unsubscribing altogether.

It may not seem like a good idea to add to all the noise. However, according to Constant Contact, the average ROI for email marketing is $42 for every $1 spent. Needless to say, email is an important component of a marketing strategy, and its success relies largely on how well you craft your email campaigns.

In this post, we’ll explore:

• What is an email marketing campaign?
• Effective Email Marketing Campaigns
• Best Email Marketing Campaign Examples
• How to Execute an Email Marketing Campaign

Let’s get started.

Email campaigns are an important part of inbound marketing, an ongoing process and philosophy coined by HubSpot where marketers meet buyers in whatever stage of the journey they’re in.

Inbound marketing acknowledges that not everyone is ready to buy from you at this exact moment. That’s why email is such an important channel.

Through email, you’re able to stay top-of-mind by providing communication to their personal inbox, and you can do it at scale with marketing automation software. It’s important that an email campaign’s recipients have opted in to receive this content and that each piece offers something valuable.

Effective Email Marketing Campaigns

An email marketing campaign is as effective as its ultimate goal. Here are some examples of different purposes your email campaign may set out to accomplish:

1. Traffic Generation Email Marketing Campaigns

One of the biggest benefits of email marketing? Getting click-throughs to pages on your website. Not only does this boost your referral traffic, but it also drives visitors who’ve already shown an interest in your business, making it more likely that they’ll act once they get to your site.

Overall, email is an effective promotion channel for the high-value content you create on your website. It can help you drive qualified traffic to your product pages, blog posts, and web pages, consequently boosting conversions.

2. Awareness Email Marketing Campaigns

Not everyone who opts into your email list is ready to make a purchasing decision. You can use email marketing to stay top of mind while providing the educational content that is most relevant to them.

Indeed, brand awareness email campaigns help you solve for your readers and also establish yourself as a leader in your industry. If subscribers hear more from you than they do from your competitors, they’re more likely to rely on you when they need more information on a topic — or when they need a certain product.

3. Lead Nurturing Email Marketing Campaigns

As you stay top of mind, you may also consider ways to identify the leads with the highest purchase intent and provide conversion-focused content that “nurtures” them toward a sale (or at least toward becoming sales-ready).

In these emails, you can be more up-front about wanting recipients to buy. You can include shopping-centric calls-to-action, such as “Shop now,” “Buy now,” and “Add to cart.” However, it’s essential for recipients to have shown strong purchase intent. Adding items to their cart or having a purchase history are both strong indicators.

(Tip: You can find out behavioral and purchasing data using your ecommerce tool, CRM, or CMS.)

If you target these emails to casual visitors or first-time subscribers, you may be rushing them and inadvertently discouraging them from buying from you.

4. Revenue Generation Email Marketing Campaigns

You can create email marketing campaigns for your existing customers to promote upsell and cross-sell opportunities. You can also create campaigns to capture a sales conversion from leads who are close to a purchasing decision.

One example might be creating “abandon cart” campaigns for recovering lost sales conversions; or, like in the example above, promoting a flash sale to get users to upgrade. These types of campaigns are best reserved for subscribers at the bottom of the conversion funnel. In other words, they have shown unquestionable purchase intent by either visiting a checkout page or booking a call with your sales team.

Effective email marketing campaigns need to be cleverly written to attract attention in busy inboxes, but the options are endless. Check out these 10 email marketing tips in 60 seconds:

Now that you know the most effective campaigns you can create, grab some inspiration from the masterful email marketing campaigns below.

Best Email Marketing Campaign Examples

If you’re reading this, you probably have an email address (or two, or three …). In fact, you’ve probably been sending and receiving emails for years, and you’ve definitely received some questionable deliveries in your inbox.

Whether they were unexpected, uninformative, or had a subject line tHaT wAs fOrmAtTeD liKe tHiS, we bet you didn’t hesitate to direct them towards the trash, right?

While email has managed to stand the test of time, many marketers have failed to update their strategies since its inception. So to ensure you’re sending modern emails that warrant some of your recipients’ precious time and attention, we’ve compiled a list of effective email examples to inspire your next campaign.

1. ModCloth

Marketing Campaign: Email Preferences

Great companies are always evolving, and your customers expect to experience change. What they don’t expect (because too many companies haven’t lived up to this end of the bargain) is to be told about those changes.

That said, this email from ModCloth serves as a refreshing change of pace. If you’re going to change the way you communicate with a lead or customer, give them clear, fair warning so, if they aren’t on board, they can make the necessary adjustments to keep their inbox clean.

Why It Works

It sets expectations for communication moving forward so that the buyer persona can choose what’s best for them.

2. Netflix

Marketing Campaign: Engagement

More than half of US households subscribe to multiple streaming channels. With several platforms vying for our attention, brands like Netflix have gotten more targeted with its emails.

This email from Netflix provides a curated list of new shows the customer may be interested in based on their watch history. It’s skimmable with plenty of visuals supporting the new releases and provides a CTA that prompts you to watch the trailer.

Why It Works

The CTAs in this email entice the user to stop what they’re doing and head over to Netflix to check out the new content.

3. Lita Lewis Fitness

Marketing Campaign: Update

Have a new product or project in the works? It’s a good idea to let your subscribers know prior to the launch, especially if you’ve been away for a while.

Fitness expert and trainer Lita Lewis did just that in the email below reconnecting with her subscribers and informing them about her upcoming app.

Why It Works

This email is personable and reads like you’re catching up with an old friend. Additionally, the “join now” CTA makes it easy for readers to sign up for the app and other updates.

4. Tory Burch

Marketing Campaign: Promotion

Did you see that? Did you see it move? Pretty cool, right? This small bit of animation helps to separate this email from Tory Burch from all of the immobile emails in their recipient’s inboxes. They also leverage exclusivity by framing the promotion as a “private” sale. Oftentimes, this type of positioning makes the recipient feel like they’re specially chosen, which encourages them to take advantage of the special opportunity they’ve been presented with.

Why It Works

Emails can get static, boring, and impersonal. This email subverts those expectations without going overboard.

5. RunKeeper

Marketing Campaign: Re-Engagement Campaign

RunKeeper makes an effort to reengage lost users with this friendly, informational email. By highlighting their app’s most recent changes and benefits, the copy works to entice recipients to give the app another chance. It also discusses benefits that the recipient may not know about since the last time they used the service.

Why It Works

Small inclusions like the “Hi friend” greeting and the “You rock” closing makes the content feel welcoming and less aggressive.

6. Litmus

Marketing Campaign: Promotion

Here’s another great example of animation being used to create a more interesting email marketing design. Unlike static text, the swipe motion used to provide recipients with a look “under the hood” of their email tool is eye-catching and encourages you to take a deeper dive into the rest of the content. Not to mention the header does an excellent job of explicitly stating what this email is about.

Why It Works

The animation is subtle, and it’s executed in a way that serves to enhance the email’s body copy. Even better, it works well with the design of the email, creating a matching but contrasting focal point before the reader dives into the rest of the copy below.

7. Loft

Marketing Campaign: Email Preferences

This email from Loft aims to demonstrate their understanding of your crazy, mixed-value inbox. In an effort to provide you with emails that you actually want to open, Loft asks that their recipients update their preferences to help them deliver a more personalized experience. This customer-focused email is super effective in making the recipient feel like their likes, dislikes, and opinions actually matter.

Why It Works

It centers the recipient’s needs with the slogan “Happy Inbox, Happy Life.” Paired with a low-friction CTA, the copy is simple and effective.

8. UncommonGoods

Marketing Campaign: Promotion

You’ve heard it a million times (and a few thousand of those times may have been from us): You should create a sense of urgency with your calls-to-action. That’s what makes a lead take action, right? Well, this email from UncommonGoods succeeds in creating a sense of urgency by focusing on the value of acting now.

Why It Works

Instead of saying, “Order your Mother’s Day gift NOW before Preferred Shipping ends!”, this email asks, “Don’t you think Mom would’ve liked a faster delivery?” Why yes, she would. Thank you for reminding me before it’s too late — I don’t want to be in the dog house because my gift arrived after Mother’s Day.

9. JetBlue