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If you work in tech, media, or even marketing, you’ve likely heard a lot of buzz around Web 3.

And, when filtering through all the noise about future versions of the internet, you might find it hard to differentiate all of the predictions from myths and reality. And, more importantly, if you’re likely asking questions like, “How could Web 3 impact my business?”, “Will I fall behind if I don’t get in on Web 3 now?”, and “Is Web 3 just built on hype?”

“When you’re listening to the news, or you’re on Twitter, and people are talking about NFTs and Web 3, it seems really abstract and futuristic and stupid. It’s really easy to naysay all of it. I get that,” says Kipp Bodnar, HubSpot CMO. “A lot of it is going to be crap. And a lot of it’s going to fall away.”

But, Bodnar adds, “In the last version of the internet, your whole job was to make a product or value proposition 10 times better than it was before. In the next generation, the internet, it’s making something somebody thought was impossible possible.”

“And if you can’t pull that magic trick out as a business over the next 10, 20, or 30 years, you’re not going to exist. Because that is the game that’s going to change. Don’t think about the technology, think about the changing customer experience and that move from impossible to possible,” Bodnar says.

In this post, we’ll dive into the questions businesses are starting to ask about Web 3 and how it could impact the changing landscape.

To hear more about Web 3 from our very own CMO Kipp Bodnar, and our SVP of Marketing, Kieran Flanagan, you can also check out this episode of their podcast, Marketing Against the Grain (plus other episodes and interviews coming soon). 

Editor’s Note: This post goes more into detail on the impacts of Web 3. For a foundational post explaining what Web 3 is, check out our first piece on Web 3 here.

A Brief History of the Internet

When explaining the possible impacts of Web 3, it’s helpful to go back and look at how the previous evolutions of the internet impacted consumers and businesses. The graph below highlights just a few high-level characteristics of Web1, Web2, and Web 3 without getting overly technical.

Web 1 (1983 to Early 2000s)	Web 2 (Early 2000s to Today)	Web 3 (The Next Internet Evolution)
Low-Speed Enabled basic messaging, email, search queries, and PC-based web surfing.	High-Speed Offers advanced messaging/communication, video calling, streaming, social media, and early AR/VR.	Highest Speed Decentralized on the blockchain. Could Enable extended reality, user-built platforms, coin/token incentives, and other experiences.

When the internet launched, it was essentially decentralized and many companies that focused on internet services had a slight leg up as many tech firms began to invest in it and learn what it could do. Today, the internet has become drastically centralized with companies like Google and Meta owning many of the platforms we visit each day.

Because consumers want growing control over their experience and are more hyper-connected to technology than ever, some describe Web 3 as “giving the internet back to the people”, as blockchain-built web experiences are often decentralized.

The image below shows how Web 3 infrastructure could compare to that of our current internet. While business owners and marketers that aren’t goaled around Web 3 investments don’t necessarily need to know all the technical lingo in the images below, this graphic essentially shows a more streamlined, centralized path from user to internet access while Web 3 will host a more complex, decentralized path that leverages blockchain technology.

Source: Coinbase

While we won’t go too deep into the technology behind Web 3, you can find some great resources on the technical side of things with online courses – like this one from Coursera or this content from Reforge.

At this point, it’s still a bit too early to know how many of the predictions we’re seeing will come to light. And, if they do become a reality, they’ll likely require a learning curve and a long adoption lifecycle. Because of this, the move from Web 2 to Web 3 might be much slower and more gradual than some would expect.

But, even though we likely won’t see the entire internet change in one day, week, or year, we’ll still watch some Web 3 concepts, companies, and technology grow in the coming years — which could enable us to adopt it at a quicker pace.

Ultimately, you don’t need to ditch your current business plan to focus on major Web 3 investments just yet. But, there are concepts, consumer behaviors, and tech you might want to keep on your radar so your company can adapt if and when a wide-scale evolution happens.

Web 3 Concepts & Audience Shifts You Could See Soon

Full Web 3 implementation is far off, and we know a lot of SMB marketers don’t have any interest, technical bandwidth, or budget to dive into Web 3 complexities yet. And, that’s okay.

But, if you put overwhelming technical lingo and wild predictions aside, the way consumers have optimistically buzzed-about Web 3’s potential shows just how much they’re ready to see the internet, businesses, and society evolve. And, even if your business plans to stay in the Web 2 world for the foreseeable future, you should still make note of how these shifts and growing web technology could impact your business.

Here are a few business shifts we’ll see soon, in part because of Web 3 development.

1. Consumers will want more say in the online products and platforms they use.

Right now, the platforms we use daily, like Google and Facebook are centralized. When you log on to a platform like Facebook, you’re exchanging web data with its Meta servers.

This means that Meta and its biggest stakeholders ultimately determine how Facebook works, user rules, how it uses your data, and how the UX changes over time. And, if Meta were to pull the plug on Facebook servers, it would disable usage for everyone.

Because of this, just a few key tech companies and big-name investment firms have a solid hold over many of the things we do and see online. And, in certain areas – as with data usage, social media feeds, search engines, or web experience – many users wish they had more say.

But, what if users were treated more like shareholders and could give input on how a platform worked, used their data, or built experiences for them? In a decentralized Web 3 world, some believe this could be possible.

For example, some platforms, like metaverses will allow you to trade crypto, NFTs, non-crypto currency, or other items of value for a plot of land (or a stake in the platform). While large brands and investment firms would still likely own a majority stake in their platforms and serve as decision-makers for terms of use, users could at least personalize their experiences a bit more, or have more control over how the platform works for them.

While not all businesses will lean into decentralized platforms, those who do could put some key developments of their online products into the hands of loyal users or customers.

Giving users the ability to play a role in the evolution of platforms they use not only allows them to feel linked to a brand through a sense of ownership and trust, but it also allows you as a business owner to benefit from the ROI of user experience improvements the users themselves are making.

How Businesses Can Respond

Even if you aren’t ready for Web 3 investments, or never plan to invest in it at all, you can still take steps to make your audiences or customers feel like they have an impact on your business’s evolution. Here are a few smaller-scale ideas.

• Introducing Product Developers to Customers: Oftentimes, sales and service are the only ones who talk to customers. But, product developers can learn a lot from meeting with a few loyal customers, listening to feedback, and learning about their pain points. In turn, the customer feels like their actionable and constructive feedback has been heard.
• Customer Feedback Research: If your product development team prefers to look at more quantitative data, consider running a survey about your product and returning that feedback to marketing, sales, service, and product teams.
• Report on Your Progress: After customers or prospects give you feedback, create a marketing plan highlighting the improvements you’ve made around your product after receiving feedback. This will show customers and prospects that you are acting on their needs and that they have a voice when they’d like to request changing something.
• Customizable Features: Customization might not make your customers feel like stakeholders, but it does have similar benefits. When users can customize how online products look, feel, and work around their preferences and goals, they might feel more attachment to your product than one that allows no customization. Ask yourself, “Are there ways I can better help my customers make their own great experience with my offerings?”

Internet Users Will be Motivated by Incentives

While incentivization has been around for quite some time, blockchain technology will make it easier for brands to track and incentivize usership and community engagement in Web 3.

Imagine going on a website and being paid to spend time there, or logging into an app and receiving points that you can trade for something of value later – like cryptocurrency or even NFTs. These are the types of tactics that brands could potentially leverage to gain solid growth.

“When you think about the difference between the last generation, the internet and the next generation the internet – understand that it is a massive change in incentives and the ability to incentivize,” says Bodnar.

Kieran Flanagan, HubSpot SVP of Marketing also explains, “In Web 2, for [gaining] leads and things like that, we had a cost per acquisition and freemium. You make the product free, so your cost per acquisition goes down.”

“In Web 3, I think your incentives drastically change that, again, because you have a flywheel effect through your incentives. I don’t know how it changes. … But I do think how you think about acquiring customers and the cost to doing that is greatly changed when you’re using these different incentives or tokens to build your business,” Flanagan adds.

Meanwhile, Bodnar added that incentivization will become more of an economic proposition in Web 3.

“While the cost of the old way of doing [acquisitions] is getting so high that you can take more risks to do the new way (because the old way is becoming untenable). And then, can I take that same amount of money, incentivize my community to drive referrals, and be advocates to spread word of mouth to drive the brand? And can I factor in customer acquisition cost on top of that?” Bodnar says.  

“We’re not going to give up customer acquisition cost,” Bodnar explains. “What we’re saying is, community acquisition cost is going to be the precursor. We’re going to figure out the economics of acquiring people through communities, and that customer acquisition cost is going to be basically an output metric of how effective our community strategy is.”

One example of a startup that’s already using digital incentivization (and is currently used by Flanagan) is STEPN, an app that rewards you in NFTs as you make running accomplishments with the app turned on.

“STEPN is a Web 3 lifestyle app with Social-Fi and Game-Fi elements. Users equipped with NFT Sneakers – walk, jog or run outdoors to earn GST, which can be used to level up and mint new Sneakers,” notes the website, adding that players can “choose to lease or sell their NFT Sneakers on the in-app Marketplace; users’ GST earnings are stored in the in-app Wallet, which has a built-in Swap function.”

While people are earning NFTs by running with the app on, STEPN benefits from data collection agreed upon when first using the app, transaction fees from buying and selling NFT products, and fees consumers pay to lease NFT sneakers.

To learn more about STEPN, check out this demo which STEPN features on its official website.

Ultimately, the business model is simple: Users pay to buy a product to join the app, they are treated to coinage or NFTs for spending time on the app, and the business makes money from the trades, transactions, and purchases made in the app once the user loyalty model has brought them in.

Embracing Incentivization Ahead of Web 3

Want to leverage incentivization without building a Web 3 experience? There are plenty of ways to do this.

One example of a Web2 incentivization is our HubFans platform. With the platform, HubSpot customers and partners can assist HubSpot in some way by completing “Challenges” for rewards and digital badges.

HubFans challenges that help HubSpot, could include a mix of small and larger asks, like promoting our brand, filling our feedback surveys, or meeting with teams looking to chat with customers. As you complete more challenges, you move into higher tiers of HubFans status and can start to access rewards like event invitations, networking sessions, and potentially an invite to join the HubFans council.

While HubFans doesn’t involve Web 3, it is a great example of a digital incentive-based opportunity that can both help a brand gain insights from its partners and customers on various initiatives, build a strong fan-based community, and – most importantly – reward great customers and partners for their loyalty to the brand.

Crypto, NFT, and Blockchain Tech Will Gain More Interest

While you shouldn’t just change your whole business model or payment features to accommodate crypto, the growing interest in this currency is worth keeping on your radar if your business appeals to audiences that have invested in digital coinage.

As interest in cryptocurrency and blockchain-based transactions grows, many brands – including B2B companies have embraced crypto-based payment features on their websites or platforms for quite some time – and not just for NFT purchases. Among them are Overstock.com, Home Depot, Starbucks, and Whole Foods. Additionally, payment platforms – such as PayPal – have adapted to accept crypto-based payments.

If you think it makes sense for your brand to start accepting cryptocurrency pay, it couldn’t hurt to start looking at credible companies that offer website plugins for this, as well as platforms that can help you manage and monitor your company’s cryptocurrency. You’ll also need to read up on any laws and regulations your company or state might have about crypto usage and taxation for businesses.

If you live in the United States, you can find a list of state-based legislation for the United States here. However, you should also keep in mind that regulations might vary when doing transactions with customers in countries outside of the U.S.

Consumers Will Crave Experiences, Not Just Content

Over the past five years or so, experiential marketing and product experiences have gained steam. And when the COVID-19 pandemic kept any of us on lockdown, millions turned to remote experiential content with VR and AR platforms.

In the marketing and sales realm, brands like Walmart and BestBuy are already identifying ways that they can sell products through VR stores (complete with sales reps who are also logged in to a VR metaverse.

Meanwhile, companies like Mercedes already leverage AR with virtual assistant platforms. Through platforms like these, customers can scan an element of their vehicle or product and have its functionality explained to them. They can also ask questions about any problems or faults in its operation. Combined with an AI chatbot, the AR element of the assistant makes it much more user-friendly.

Source: PTC

With the connectivity, speed, and advancements of Web 3, interest, and engagement in virtual experiential content could only grow.

How to Prepare for a More Experiential Internet

While most businesses can’t affordably build VR or AR experiences or even physical experiential events just yet, there might be more accessible opportunities to advertise, build communities, talk to your customers, or even offer services in a more experiential environment that arise for you as technology develops.

For example, brands can already work with businesses like Snap, tech agencies, or software companies to have AR/VR experiences created for them.

To learn more about experiential or VR marketing specifically, check out this post and this post, respectively.

Customers Could Yearn For Community Belonging

With Web 1, we still focused on building communities through word of mouth within the limits of the internet. In Web 2, we discovered the impact of community building on major social media platforms like Facebook, Reddit, Discord, and Twitter.

Now, many community managers and company leaders are just waiting with bated breath to see how they’ll be able to invest in community building in Web 3.

“The convergence of brand and community is going to be one of the biggest trends in marketing over the next decade,” says Bodnar.

“The reason communities are becoming more important is because going through intermediaries to reach people directly like Google and Facebook is getting way more expensive,” Bodnar explains.

Additionally, with Web 3’s blockchain-based incentivization opportunities, “you can now properly incentivize your community members to share in the success of your business with you in a way that you couldn’t before – through the use of tokens, NFTs, and a whole host of things.”

Building Communities (Even in Web 2)

While you don’t necessarily have to be a Web 3 expert, coder, or developer to win over audiences in the new era, building out an active and effective web community could be a key priority for your brand in the coming years.

If you have a base following and even a few channels now, you can already get started in using tactics like these to build an engaged online community and network that you could carry over into the Web 3 era.

Here are a few quick ways to start developing a sense of community.

• Meet your targets where they are: Are your audiences, customers, or targets spending time on one social media channel or platform over another? Focus on growing your community and building engagement there first.
• Create great content: “The core object of most communities is content. It’s some type of story, some type of exchange of ideas. If you’re going to build a remarkable brand through community, you first have to have remarkable content and remarkable stories.  In your community,” says Bodnar.  
• Don’t be afraid of long-term bets: Communities don’t just appear overnight and take time and energy to build out. “I think these bets are long-term. They’re not for the next six months. They’re for the next 12, 24, 36 months,” Bodnar advises.

Want to learn more about community marketing or building a community that can boost business? Check out this guide.

When to Start Thinking About Web 3

Many tech lovers will often tell you, “the Web 3 era is coming, whether we’re ready or not.”

And while a new iteration of the internet is coming, evolutions take years or even decades before a new era is clear.

Like any new technology, this rollout will be fast for businesses that love to embrace the latest trends, but will happen over a longer period for others.

Do you have incredibly tech-savvy customers that are interested in crypto and blockchain tech? Or, do your offerings already include user-built platforms, token incentivization, blockchain services, metaverse offerings, tech security, or something that’s strongly associated with Web 3? if not, you don’t necessarily need to transform your whole business plan or take other big bets on future predictions.

But, if so, you can check out publications like Trends.co to learn more about how to leverage these technologies to boost your audience’s experience.

In any era, the best thing you can do is think about your customer or target buyer and their experience and identify what you need to do to meet them where they are.

Ultimately, when you’re responding to your customer and creating experiences for them that competitors can’t – you’ll still be ahead of the curve.

To learn more about all the latest emerging trends and how they’ll impact marketing as well as the bigger business, check out Marketing Against the Grain, HubSpot’s newest podcast hosted by Kipp Bodnar and Kieran Flanagan.

Want to learn even more about how your business or team can embrace Web 3. or even get business ideas related to emerging trends like these? Subscribe to Trends.co, a weekly trends update for business professionals with all the info you need to know about leveraging trends in today’s landscape. 

We’ll explain what codecs are, why you need them, and how they make streaming high quality content possible.

What is a codec?

A codec is a term used to describe a computer program that can encode and decode data. Their main purpose is to compress data, particularly media. Without them, audio and video files would be too large to transfer over the internet.

A combination of “encoder” and “decoder,” a codec is used to encode data into a format that can be stored or transmitted and viewed later with its corresponding decoder. Essentially you won’t be able to play audio or video files unless they are paired with their corresponding decoder.

What is a video codec?

A video codec compresses and decompresses digital video files. The software takes large video files and compresses them so they take up less space on your computer or device. A popular video codec is MPEG, which was established by the Moving Picture Experts Group. The MPEG suite of codecs is a popular choice due to its high quality video display with relatively low data rates.

Other Common Types of Codecs

1. MP3

Most of us are familiar with MP3s. This popular audio codec changed the music industry, allowing people to listen to and share music online, store it on their phones, and computers. 

2. WAV

Created by IBM and Microsoft, Waveform (WAV) is an uncompressed audio format. Unlike MP3s it’s not meant for sharing audio files online since it takes up too much space. Instead WAV is best used in areas that need higher quality audio like radio, television, and editing music.

3. HEVC

High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) is a popular compressed video format. In fact, many phones and smart TVs already have built-in hardware to support HEVC playback. Since it doesn’t require much bandwidth, HEVC has become the go-to format for streaming. The H.264 codec is used by Vimeo and YouTube.

Lossy vs. Lossless Compression

An important distinction between codecs is whether they use lossless or lossy compression. With lossy compression, some of the visual data is left out in order to reduce the size of the video or audio data. This loss is typically minor and worth the tradeoff for the smaller size.

Media files using lossy compression are very common; an MP3 is a great example of lossy compression as they can be compressed at a number of different bitrates depending on your desired file size.

Lossless compression reduces file size by identifying redundant patterns in video or audio, which ensures no data is lost. Lossless files maintain the bit rate of the original data stream creating a large, high quality file. A WAV file is an example of a lossless audio file. Use lossless video when quality matters above all else, like a final copy of a video piece you’ve created for broadcast purposes.

Why do marketers need codecs?

Working with video is becoming a must-have skill rather than nice-to-have for marketers. While you won’t necessarily have to shoot the video content, you’ll most certainly need to share and store it.

When getting started with online video you might consider using an inexpensive camera, doing some minor edits, and posting the video on your blog or social media. As quality and production value have become more important, it is critical to understand codecs.

You’ll need to ensure you’re using the proper format to compress and share video marketing content. However, the amount of codec options can be overwhelming if you’re just getting familiar. Luckily there are codec packs, which come with a variety of codecs, that allow you to simply download the pack and go.

Image Source

• K-Lite: K-Lite comes in either Basic, Standard, Full, or Mega versions. This bundle is a good choice for newbies since the Basic tier covers most video and audio formats.
• Media Player: This pack supports most video and audio formats, plus offers installation options for both novices and those who need more advanced options. It supports standard definition up to 4K.
• Wonderfox HD Video Converter Factory Pro: While this isn’t a codec pack, it’s an excellent option for most of your audio and video needs. This tool can be used for video editing in addition to converting video formats.

Why Codecs Matter

While online video is fun to watch and an important part of your inbound marketing content strategy, it does require some technical knowledge to execute well. Codecs are involved in many stages of video production and distribution, working behind the scenes to provide a better visual experience for your audience.

This article was originallypublished in February 2011 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Creating and conducting webinars is one of the best ways to engage with potential customers in an increasingly remote world.

Since the rise of remote work, people rely on technology for education and social interaction more than ever. This means more Zoom meetings instead of in-person meetings, more walks to a home office instead of commutes to a high-rise, and more webinars instead of live events.

The B2B webinar platform BrightTalk reported a 76% increase in video, webinar, and virtual events uploaded to their platform from March to June 2020. From April 2019 to April 2020, ON24 saw a 167% increase in monthly usage of its webinar platform. If there was ever a time to create a webinar, it’s now.

Are webinars dead?

In a word: no. While webinars may seem outdated, they have proven to be invaluable during social distancing. Most companies are moving toward a telecommuting model, and the trend shows no sign of slowing down. The new “working from home economy” guarantees that webinars remain a cornerstone of companies’ marketing and sales strategies.

Because companies are turning to webinars to replace their live events, the market is experiencing an over-saturation. As a result, it’s even more challenging to make your virtual event stand out from the pack. Luckily, HubSpot and GoToWebinar teamed up to bring you the ultimate webinar planning kit that can help you create a compelling, effective webinar that will engage potential customers and drive lead generation.

1. Brainstorm webinar ideas.

Before you can start making your webinar, you’ll have to decide on the topic.

The topic you choose should answer questions that your audience typically asks and preferably be highly specific. For example, if you’re hosting a webinar on email marketing, you can choose to focus on subject lines in particular.

Overall, your webinar should provide value to your audience. Think about your company as a whole and your unique value proposition. What topics do you have expertise in and can provide value on? Consider choosing an educational topic, as this content performs well.

Align the topic with the goal of your sales team. A successful webinar hinges on sales and marketing alignment. If the marketing team creates content that isn’t helping their sales conversations, it won’t successfully drive high-quality leads to sales.

Luckily, you have experts at your disposal who can come up with content ideas that will complement and aid the sales conversation: the representatives themselves.

Ask your sales team what they might want a webinar’s focus to be. Get the representatives’ buy-in for a webinar before you plan it. Set up a meeting to discover new content ideas and find out what pain points they need to help solve. This will go a long way toward ensuring the sales’ follow-up with registrants is seamless once the webinar is over.

2. Choose a webinar format.

When considering how to structure your webinar, you have countless options. The four most common types are panel discussions, Q&A, single-speaker presentations, and interviews.

Panel Discussions

For panel discussions, you can invite industry experts to discuss a niche, current topic within your industry. They encourage roundtable conversations, focus on building a dialog around the topic, and offer various viewpoints. The experts’ differing perspectives can expand your attendees’ understanding of the topic in ways that wouldn’t be possible with one speaker’s input.

Because panelists will be speaking to each other rather than directly to the audience, panel discussions may encourage speakers who are camera shy to participate in your webinar.

When you organize a panel discussion webinar, it’s important to choose the best moderator for your topic. Your moderator is responsible for establishing the rules of the discussion, keeping track of time, and keeping the panel on topic.

Choosing the most engaging panelists to present your topic is also important. Panelists must be able to volunteer key points and concrete examples during discussions. Your panel needs to represent the demographic of your audience and offer different perspectives to encourage interesting discussion. At least one of your panelists should be an authority on the webinar topic who can establish credibility with the audience.

Q&As

For Q&As, you only need your team’s product experts to answer your customers’ questions. Q&A webinars allow attendees to participate in the webinar, help you to learn more about the attendees’ needs, and enable your team to showcase your knowledge about the topic.

Live Q&As can be unpredictable. Your attendees may be hesitant to ask questions or may ask questions your team is not prepared to answer, so it may be helpful to develop a list of potential questions. Rock Content recommends making a list of doubts and curiosities that your audience may have and using it as a guide for the Q&A.

Single-speaker Presentations

Single-speaker presentations involve one presenter delivering the webinar and answering attendees’ questions. We recommend holding a single-speaker presentation if you plan to have a small audience for your webinar.

Interviews

Interviews are also a great choice. You can either interview an industry expert or a current customer about their experience with your company. Interviewing someone who has a large following may encourage people to sign up for your webinar and help you reach a new audience.

Before your webinar, prepare a strong portfolio of interview questions to keep the conversation flowing and ensure that your interview runs smoothly.

3. Pick a webinar tool.

There are many webinar hosting platforms you can use to create your webinar. Popular platforms include ClickMeeting, GoToWebinar, and Zoom.

When you’re researching a tool to use, consider your objectives. For example, how many people do you think will attend? Do you need a tool that could allow over 1,000 attendees? How much does it cost? How easy is it to use? You should look into these questions when deciding what webinar tool to use.

Additionally, you’ll want to make sure the tool can handle the type of webinar you want to host — can it handle video chatting for panels or Q&A webinars? The right tool for you will depend on the overall objectives of your event.

4. Assign roles to your team members.

After choosing the platform, assign roles in your team. Typically, you’d need to choose four people:

The organizer handles all facets of planning, from ideation to content creation. They are usually the primary contact in the webinar platform.

The presenter is the subject matter expert, either on your team or in the industry, who will present on the topic you’ve chosen.

The moderator is required for panel discussions but not for single-speaker presentations. This person will help stimulate conversation among panel participants. You can also assign a moderator if you expect to receive a lot of questions from attendees.

Assistants are the team members at hand in case of emergencies. For example, if there’s no sound, an assistant can step in to resolve this problem. Like moderators, assistants can also manage the chat box during the event.

5. Produce the content.

Once you find a tool and know the topic you want to present, it’s time to create the content, depending on the type of webinar you want to host. For example, will it be a PowerPoint and talking head presentation? Or perhaps you want to do a live panel Q&A? Either way, you’ll have to produce the content and prepare for the big day.

For example, if you’re creating a PowerPoint, you’ll need to create your slide deck. Make sure that the slides emphasize your points, but don’t include a script. These slides should be visually appealing and include interesting graphics, such as images or GIFs.

If you’re hosting a discussion-style webinar, plan out your speakers, gather audience questions, and prepare any other questions you might have so you can prioritize your time during the webinar.

6. Choose the best time for the webinar.

To select a time and date for your webinar, you’ll want to consider where your audience lives. Use tools like Google Analytics to see where people are so that you can choose a convenient day and time zone.

ON24 reports that Wednesdays and Thursdays are the best days to host webinars, with 11 a.m. being the best time. Another popular time is 10 a.m.. Both are great for a wide range of time zones and should avoid most commute times or work hours. Typically, these times prevent conflicts for the greatest number of people.

However, if your audience is solely in the United States, you won’t need to worry about global time zones. Instead, you can focus on planning a time when most people aren’t commuting. For example, early afternoon or after work hours are generally good times.

7. Create a contingency plan for your webinar presentation.

When hosting a live webinar, it’s crucial to have a contingency plan. Setting up a backup internet connection, prerecording content, and printing out a copy of your presentation can save your webinar in case of outages, interruptions, or other unforeseen circumstances.

If you lose your internet connection while hosting a webinar, a wired internet connection or wireless hotspot can be used as a backup.

Prerecording content for your webinar ensures that your attendees have something to watch while you troubleshoot technical issues that may arise.

You may not be able to view your notes on screen while presenting your webinar, so you should consider printing out a hard copy of your slides and notes. That allows you to continue presenting if your computer screen freezes or you lose your video connection.

Additionally, emailing your attendees a printout of your slides before the webinar can help them stay engaged if they have technical issues while viewing the presentation.

8. Practice your webinar before the event.

Practice is essential for a successful webinar, and it can help you get acquainted with the platform if you’ve never used it before.

We highly encourage creating a fake event on your webinar platform. Publish it, send a link to another one of your team members, and practice as if you were presenting a real webinar. Your team member would watch it as an attendee and should tell you what the presentation looks like on the other end.

9. Promote your webinar.

Now that you’ve done the backend work, it’s time to ensure you have people who want to attend.

To promote your webinar, you can create a landing page where people can sign up and then distribute and promote that link in several ways.

For example, consider running ads through social media and search engines. Additionally, you’ll want to use free promotion tactics — you can post on your accounts and website, and send an email to your subscribers. It’s important to use your follower base to get people interested.

Reminder emails are also helpful. Consider sending “Don’t Miss Out” or “Seats Are Filling Up” emails as the day gets closer.

When people do sign up, you’ll want to remind them leading up to the day of the webinar. You should send them the webinar link about an hour before, so it’s top of mind, and they don’t have to go looking for the link in their registration email.

10. Follow up with your audience.

Webinars are a great sales opportunity, and you don’t want people to leave your webinar and never think of you again.

That’s why you’ll want to send them a thank you email and gather feedback from attendees so you can plan better webinars in the future.

Remember that attendees generally like to have a recording. If you send them a link to the recording afterward, they don’t have to take vigorous notes during the webinar. This also means you can send it to registrants who weren’t able to attend.

Once you’ve come up with relevant content topics for your webinar and set up the event, it’s time to get that webinar in front of as many eyes as possible.

With webinars, it’s not just about generating initial excitement. You have to build excitement and encourage engagement once the webinar goes live.

1. Set up a landing page that is optimized for search engines.

The first step in your webinar promotion strategy is to create an optimized landing page that can organically jumpstart registrations.

According to Karthik Shetty, a field and performance marketing specialist, you have only seven seconds to convert a prospect who has visited your landing page, so you must strategically structure the landing page for your webinar.

Your landing page should have a target keyword in the title, a sign-up form, and optimized copy. Ideally, the form should integrate with your other marketing and sales tools, automatically turning registrants into contacts or prospects.

2. Promote your webinar to current subscribers and contacts via email.

Now that you have a landing page to direct users to, it’s time to target your first attendees: people who already know about your company and customers who have previously engaged with you.

After sending a personalized email to your contacts, take the following steps:

• Create automated email reminders that will be sent to prospects who have been invited but not yet registered.
• Create manual email templates reps can send in their one-on-one communication with prospects.
• Set up an automated email to notify reps when one of their prospects has registered for your webinar. This will help them engage and close those prospects down the road.

3. Promote your webinar via LinkedIn and other social media platforms.

LinkedIn is an excellent platform to promote webinars. They’re usually created for other businesses, and LinkedIn is the ultimate B2B marketing platform.

LinkedIn now has an option for virtual events, which allows you to add the webinar access link. Registrants can also jumpstart discussions on the event page, giving you potential topics to address during the presentation or Q&A.

You can also advertise the webinar through display ads on Google, Instagram, and Facebook, though we encourage keeping the bulk of your investment on LinkedIn.

4. Send reminder emails to registrants.

Even though you’ve gotten registrants, that doesn’t mean they’ll show up. After all, if you promote a webinar one to two weeks in advance, some of your registrants are likely to forget when the live date comes around.

Remember to send out reminder emails the day before and the day of the live event to ensure a high live attendance rate.

Adding an “add to calendar” button to your emails will encourage registrants to block out time in their busy calendar, making them more likely to attend.

5. Offer a certificate of completion, professional development hours, or continuing education credits.

An easy way to entice registrations is to offer something in return. Certificates of completion, PDHs, and CEUs are credentials attendees will want to receive after the webinar. This also entices people to stay until the end.

Services like Certifier can be used to create certificates of completion for your webinar attendees. They can be offered to virtually any professional. Industries such as engineering, architecture, software engineering, and marketing require professionals to continue their training after starting their careers.

6. Consider co-marketing the webinar.

Try your hand at co-marketing. One of the best ways to get new expertise, generate interest for a piece of content, and expand the reach of a campaign is to run a co-marketed webinar.

Instead of running a webinar with speakers internally, try working with another company that’s going after a similar buyer persona and can bring their expertise into the conversation. Doing so creates more interesting content and gives you the opportunity to get your webinar in front of another company’s established audience.

7. Survey participants after the webinar.

The only way to get better is to know how you can improve. By sending an after-event survey, you can refine your next webinar. Hosting a better event can help you confidently market it to prospects.

You can schedule a survey in Zoom that will appear to attendees at the end of the webinar. This survey can include a link to the next webinar you’re hosting, driving registrations for that event.

8. Deliver necessary information to sales.

A considerable part of the pre-webinar and post-webinar process is ensuring the right information gets delivered to sales. That’s why GoToWebinar and HubSpot recommend creating one webinar hub that’s easily accessible by sales with the following information:

• On-demand recordings of all webinars.
• A calendar with past and future webinars.
• Documentation that details the webinar’s goals, title, target persona, funnel stage, key points, speakers, and logistics.
• Promotional and follow-up emails.
• Collection of graphic and text CTAs sales reps can drop into their communications.
• Mechanism to collect suggestions from sales reps for new topic suggestions and general feedback.

However, once the webinar has concluded, it’s time to ensure the sales reps are ready to close those leads. Send a follow-up email to your representatives and include the following information:

• Leads who registered
• Leads who attended
• Leads who registered but didn’t attend
• Leads who never registered
• New SQL leads from post-webinar lead scores
• Any other relevant webinar data
• Send email templates sales can use to send to leads based on their webinar behavior. Include other relevant content they can use to continue to nurture leads in the coming weeks.

Putting the extra effort in will go a long way toward ensuring the webinar is a success from both a sales and marketing standpoint.

Webinar Examples

1. Western Forestry Conservation Association’s “Benefits and Drawbacks of Hot Planting, Summer Planting, and Fall Planting” Panel Discussion

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In the Western Forestry Conservation Association’s “Benefits and Drawbacks of Hot Planting, Summer Planting, and Fall Planting” webinar, a tribal nursery specialist moderates a panel discussion among fellow nursery specialists. The panelists discuss the effects of hot planting, summer planting, and fall planting on nurseries and reforestation efforts.

Each panelist is given an equal amount of time to present their research and views on the discussion topic. This webinar handles a large audience well by enabling a setting that automatically mutes attendees’ microphones and turns off their cameras to limit distractions and interruptions. While the panelists give their presentations, the moderator answers the attendees’ questions via chat.

2. ActualTech Media’s “Mitigating Ransomware in 2021” Live Q&A Webinar

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In ActualTech Media’s “Mitigating Ransomware in 2021” webinar, David M. Davis of ActualTech Media moderates a live Q&A with Roger Grimes, a security expert and data-driven defense evangelist from KnowBe4. The webinar focuses on the latest ransomware threats, the signs of a ransomware infection, and the best ways to prevent the spread of ransomware.

ActualTech Media designed a landing page where registrants could submit their questions in preparation for the webinar. Attendees were also encouraged to ask questions during the webinar.

It provided value to the attendees after the webinar concluded by offering them a handout and links to free ransomware mitigation tools.

3. Vanessa Van Edwards’ “2022 Goal Setting” webinar

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In her “2022 Goal Setting” webinar, behavioral investigator and author Vanessa Van Edwards breaks down the science of goal setting and offers tips for setting and achieving goals in the new year.

At the end of the webinar, Van Edwards encourages attendees to enroll in a monthly workshop that expands on the webinar’s topics, allows attendees to practice the concepts, and includes a live Q&A session.

Useful Webinar Creation Tips

Not sure how to set your webinar apart from the rest? No worries.

Single-speaker presentations are admittedly overdone. In a time when webinars are commonplace, it’s even more important to use different tactics to engage your viewers.

Think about ways to mix up how the information in your webinar is presented. Here are some tips:

Try a discussion-style webinar.

We’ve found unscripted, discussion-style webinars effectively engage our audience. In many of our live events, we’ve foregone the slides completely and instead brought two speakers together and had a host ask live questions on air. It’s effective for encouraging Twitter participation via a hashtag and keeping the content conversational but informative.

Answer your customers’ questions throughout the event.

Try building a webinar around your prospects’ questions. Send a call for questions to be answered live on-air. This will help build engagement and excitement for what’s to come. Hopefully, the people asking questions will be more likely to show up on the day of the webinar.

Engage prospects beforehand by adding interactive features to the webinar sign-up page.

You can also use a landing page like this that includes a voting feature for people to upvote their top questions. This will also help you prioritize the material your audience is most interested in.

Webinar Statistics

According to ON24, 68% of marketers say webinars are one of the best ways to tie marketing activity to revenue. Webinars can also help generate quality leads. Why?

Webinar Engagement Statistics

According to GoToWebinar, the average webinar attendee viewing time is 57 minutes. However, the attention spans of webinar attendees differ depending on the webinar’s length and topic. For example, attendees view marketing webinars for 52 minutes and training webinars for 61 minutes on average.

They work across the entire customer journey.

From thought-leadership panel discussions to weekly live demos, webinars are a dynamic and effective way to move prospects down the funnel from awareness to closed deals and beyond.

Webinar Lead Generation Statistics

Webinars come with a ton of information about your prospects you can use to identify high-quality, sales-ready leads. With each webinar registrant, you can collect lead and engagement data that your sales team can use to initiate personalized outreach.

Webinar Consumption Statistics

Twenty-seven percent of consumers watch a webinar that teaches them more about a passion or a hobby, while 24% reported watching webinars for the entertainment value. Eighteen percent of consumers watch webinars to further their knowledge about their profession. Nearly a quarter reported watching webinars for all of the above.

Webinar Thought Leadership Statistics

Thirty percent of consumers report feeling more engaged when a webinar teaches them something new. And when it’s about your product, it’s safe to assume that they’re highly interested in converting.

Webinar Lead Conversion Statistics

According to ON24, a good registrant-to-attendee conversion rate falls between 35% and 45%. ON24 reported a 61% increase in registrant-to-attendee conversion in April 2020. In 2019, it was 55%. For events with over 100 attendees, the average conversion rate was 53% in 2020, up from 43% in 2019.

Featured Resource: Free Webinar Planning Kit

Download Now

We know planning and promoting a webinar can be difficult if you’ve never done it before. So we’ve compiled a guide, template, and checklist for you to get your webinar off the ground — whether it’s your first or 40th. Click here to download the kit for free.

It’s All About Alignment

Webinars are seeing a timely resurgence. They’re not just an effective marketing tool. They’re also effective sales tools — but only if your sales team has the information, content, and tools to use them to move prospects down the funnel and close deals.

Creating the kind of alignment you need to make this all a success isn’t easy. So HubSpot and GotoWebinar made this ultimate guide for creating a successful webinar and included a checklist to guide you through pre-, ongoing, and post-webinar communications.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in February 2018 and was updated in January 2021 for comprehensiveness.

The average time a person spends on a web page is 54 seconds. That’s not a lot of time, but you may be able to entice them to stay with an exit intent popup.

The longer they stay on your website, the better chances are that they’ll convert. If they miss the other calls to action on your site, an exit popup can capture some of your site visitors. Then they might keep reading, subscribe to your email newsletter, or even make a purchase.

The cost of attracting new leads is growing. In fact, more than 60% of marketers say that their customer acquisition cost has gone up in the last three years.

With the right timing and message, exit intent popups are a cost-effective lead generation tool. They can help you:

• Keep visitors on your site for longer periods
• Increase conversions
• Decrease cart abandonment rates
• Grow your email subscriber list

In other words, exit intent pop-ups know when one of your visitors is about to close their browser window. They serve a visitor a valuable offer or message that’s designed to keep them on the page and hopefully convert.

How do exit intent pop-ups work?

Imagine a visitor is on your ecommerce site browsing your product line. They then decide they want to exit the web page they’re on and they move their cursor off of your website page. But a pop-up appears with an offer like a coupon code or free trial that entices them to stay on the page. They click your CTA and convert instead of leaving your site.

What about exit intent pop-ups on mobile sites?

Over half of website traffic happens on mobile devices. However, there isn’t a reliable way to track exit intention on mobile. But if exit intent pop-ups work by tracking cursor movements, then how does this strategy work on mobile devices?

The triggers that popup tools use to gauge exit intent on mobile vary. If a user is viewing your site from a mobile device, a popup could trigger when they:

• Press the back button
• Scroll a percentage of a page
• Scroll up instead of down
• Switch between tabs in a browser
• Stay on a page for a set amount of time
• Leave a page idle
• Trigger a JavaScript element

In 2016 there was a lot of buzz around Google’s approach to interstitials like popups. The update said that intrusive interstitials would impact page experience scores on mobile.

With the February 2022 Google update, interstitials will also be part of the desktop experience evaluation. This means that creating a great user experience for your exit intent popup is essential.

It’s best practice to create separate exit intent popups for desktop and mobile devices. This way you can create the best experience for your audience no matter how they choose to browse.

Why would you use an exit intent popup?

Exit intent popups work by providing your website visitors with immediate and easy-to-understand value.

The right exit intent popup can help you keep visitors on your site for longer periods of time. When they’re used and shared on the right web pages at the right time, exit intent popups are also an effective strategy for increasing revenue.

An important note: Try to use exit intent popups only when people haven’t already taken action. A popup that triggers at the wrong time can feel irritating and impersonal to your audience.

Creating a Great Exit Intent Popup

Not everyone is a fan of popups. But a great exit intent popup can be like a jump scare in a horror movie. When they’re used thoughtfully, they can have a powerful impact.

If a site has too many popups or they’re poorly designed, that special offer can get annoying fast.

Let’s talk about what makes an exit intent popup great.

Copy

An exit intent popup should communicate a bold and simple message. So, craft a powerful headline and make your description short and easy to read.

Think about how your popup can solve a problem or offer a useful solution to your visitors.

CTA

Make your call-to-action clear and simple to understand. Motivational words and phrases are key. Your offer should also be unique and align with your brand.

Choose the Right Image

The right exit-intent image should relate to your offer. It should also connect with your target audience. The best images are attention-grabbing, but not so loud that they distract from your offer.

Design

Your popup should be clear, easy to scan, and look great on mobile devices. It should also match the design and vibe of your website.

You’ll also want to think about the user experience. Some users are fine with a popup that fills an entire window. But others might find this overwhelming and prefer a smaller popup to the side or on the bottom of the screen.

Testing

Running A/B tests can help you improve your popup placement and messaging. For example, using exit intent popups to segment your email list is a good idea, but it can take time to get it right.

You may need to do several tests to make sure your popups are targeting prospects and customers at the right moments in the buyer journey.

How to Make an Exit Intent Popup

The easiest way to add popups on your web pages is with an exit intent software tool.

Let’s take a look at the features and benefits you can get from one of these tools by looking at an example.

Exit Intent Popup Software: HubSpot Exit Intent Forms

Price: Free forever, $45/mo (Starter), $800/mo (Professional), $3,200/mo (Enterprise)

HubSpot’s Popup Forms can display when site visitors appear to be leaving.

After showing your custom exit intent form, you can display a thank you message or send automated emails to your new contacts. You can also choose to target specific contacts based on data about their past visits and behavior with your popup forms.

Adding an exit intent form with HubSpot is simple and quick. This tool also allows you to customize your message, theme, and pop-up timing.

Other tools on the market to help with exit intent pop-ups include Optinmonster, Sleeknote, and Informizely.

Creating popups is like writing headlines. They both look simple but are hard to do well. In the next section, we’ll review some of the best exit intent pop-up examples.

Best Exit Intent Popup Examples for Driving Lead Generation

Over 77% of marketers in 2021 saw an increase in email engagement. But you can’t engage customers with email unless you have a robust subscriber list.

Here are some of the best exit intent pop-up examples for lead generation to inspire and guide your exit intent pop-up creation.

Email or Newsletter Subscription Exit Intent Popup Examples

1. Push Living

Why this example works: The text on this popup tells you who this newsletter is for and what you’ll get when you subscribe in a way that’s easy to understand. The subscribe button is big and bold, making the action they want you to take clear.

2. Omsom

Why this popup works: This example is well-timed, on-brand, and eye-catching. It clearly states the value you can get out of their email marketing — great food, culture, and exclusives from their founder.

Resource Offer Exit Intent Popup Examples

3. ActiveCampaign

Why popups like this work: This example offers six free email templates.

ActiveCampaign is offering value with helpful information for its target audience. The company is also positioning itself as a thought leader in the industry.

4. Tim Ferriss

Why examples like this work: This popup includes a powerful headline and a simple download offer. The image highlights Tim Ferriss, a well-known influencer. It teases that he will share some of the questions that have made him successful.

Exit Popup Examples With a Course or Lesson

5. General Assembly

Why this popup works: General Assembly uses a smart headline to pull you into this popup form. There are only three things to fill out, and they’ve limited your choices so you can complete the form fast.

The checkboxes for the topics at the bottom of the popup also highlight what General Assembly offers in case you didn’t get this from scanning the website.

Exit Intent Popup Examples for Segmenting Your Email List

Personalization is the top way marketers improve their email results. There is a lot you can do to segment your current subscribers. But why wait to personalize when you can segment from day one?

These exit intent popup examples give you a chance to segment leads when they subscribe. This makes it easier for you to give them the email content they’ll love from the very beginning.

Exit Popup Examples of Yes/No Forms

6. Coursera

Why this exit popup works: This bottom-of-screen popup uses your exit to signal a quick request. Coursera wants your help to learn how you heard about it. The writing is direct, quickly covering how long the survey will take and what it will ask.

Exit Intent Popups to Collect Feedback

7. Everlane

Why this example works: This form offers a discount to attract subscribers. The addition of a simple form also helps them send you emails with the products you’re most likely to shop for.

8. thredUp

Why popups like this work: As you navigate this site there are many popups that aid in the buying process. Before you leave, they continue to personalize the website experience with a signup offer. The form is a simple way to save the information you’ve already shared.

Instead of intruding, this example feels like a natural part of the shopping process. It’s also a way to make it easier to shop with them in the future.

9. HEYMAEVE

Why examples like this work: This form includes terms that fashion-savvy readers use. This helps HEYMAEVE give subscribers the looks they crave and also shows you the range of jewelry they offer.

These are the types of customer experiences that leave a good impression on leads, even if they don’t make a purchase. You’re offering them a personal experience. This may lead them to come back in the future or promote your business in their networks by word-of-mouth.

Customized Offer Exit Popup Examples

10. GQ

Why this popup works: GQ uses the path you follow through their website to serve a custom offer based on what you seem most interested in. For example, clicking on Recommended and scanning the trends pulled up this GQ Daily form.

The colors on the form highlight the choice they want you to choose.

11. Patagonia

Why examples like this work: This exit example doesn’t segment users. But it improves the user experience by offering quick insights on sustainable clothing. Then they direct potential customers to a new and valuable resource.

The text also reassures you that you can keep shopping in their online store when you come back to the main site.

Contest Exit Popup Example

12. JewelScent

Why this example works: JewelScent offers a contest that feels bright and fun because of the colors in the example. The directions are simple and to the point. It gives new customers a short game they weren’t expecting.

13. West Elm

Why popups like this work: This contest offer from West Elm makes your rest and relaxation the focus. It’s also time-specific, offering a way to soothe tired moms just a few weeks before Mother’s Day.

Exit Intent Popup Offer to Chat

14. M.M.LaFleur

Why examples like this work: This chat example offers you hints about how their stylists can help you find the right size and style for you. With this popup, they are anticipating a common barrier to buying online and showing you how to solve it.

Exit Popup Examples for Closing Sales

You’re spending time and resources driving traffic to your site. But the average online shopping cart abandonment rate is 69.82%.

It can be tough to accept that most of your visitors get so close to making a purchase and then take off just before they cross the finish line.

These exit popups are prime examples of how to keep an attracted buyer on your site until they convert.

Cart Abandonment Exit Intent Popup Example

15. Rothy’s

Why this popup works: This cart abandonment exit popup is effective because it shows on the page the moment someone who has an item in their cart moves their mouse away from the site.

Not only does it remind visitors that they are leaving items in their shopping cart, but it offers an immediate discount and gives shoppers a chance to subscribe to the content they most want to see.

This is powerful because it shows you that the company values your opinions and feedback.

Discount on Purchase Exit Intent Popup Example

16. Elaluz

Why examples like this work: If you go to leave the Elaluz landing page an offer appears on the screen with a 15% off discount.

The coupon code influences purchase behavior. This example also requires an email address. This means that anyone who wants the code will share their email, whether they use the code that day or not.

17. Mochi Kids

Why this exit popup works: This bold design uses fun typography, colors, and graphics to get your attention. With this example Mochi Kids isn’t just offering a discount, it’s showing you the kind of world their products can create for your kids.

18. The Sill

Why this popup example works: The image of healthy plants and the offer to “get the dirt” make sure that this example aligns with The Sill’s brand and products. It also offers an attractive discount.

19. CURLS

Why exit popups like this work: In addition to effective timing, this popup is located in an ideal spot — the center of the page, where a visitor on the page naturally has to move their cursor. The term “CURLista” in this example tells you that when you sign up you’ll be joining a community that cares about hair as much as you do.

20. Skullcandy

Why this popup works: It’s unique because it offers a surprise contest entry. Visitors know they’ll get 20% off if they subscribe, but they don’t know whether they’ll also win a special bicycle, which is exciting and enticing.

21. Nguyen Coffee Supply

Why this popup works: This example doesn’t offer a discount in exchange for an email address. Instead, they make it clear that they want to offer you a discount before you leave their site. Then, they need your email address to give you the discount code.

This approach makes this example feel like it’s more about your needs than joining a mailing list.

Exclusive Offer Exit Intent Popup Example

22. Madewell

Why this example works: This example includes smart illustrations and eye-catching design. These additions make this form feel easy to read and fill out instead of overwhelming. The left column outlines the benefits of signing up, while also teasing the potential for more.

23. Mimochai

Why popups like this work: Design details like the heart on the envelope make this example feel like a welcome surprise. The design stands out on the page but doesn’t feel intrusive.

Product Demo Exit Intent Popup Examples

24. Zendesk

Why popups like this work: This example doesn’t waste any time. Instead, it covers everything their product offers in a quick snapshot to entice product demos. The headline tells you what you can do, then the supporting text tells you what problem their product solves.

The image shows the Zendesk dashboard. This makes it easy for a user to compare their dashboard to what they’re already using. All a prospect needs to do is click the button at the bottom to schedule a demo.

Popup Examples That Add Urgency

25. Flamingo

Why this popup works: This example does a great job of covering what you’ll need to know if you want to attend this valuable event. Besides making the deadline clear, the text and design show you exactly what you’ll save if you act quickly.

26. Codeacademy

Why this popup example works: This example uses different text sizes to emphasize what’s most important for you to read. It starts with a deadline, then tells you what you’ll get if you act soon. Next, it offers instructions so you don’t have any blockers that could stop you from signing up after you click the bright yellow button.

Exit Intent Popups That Suggest Related or Popular Products

27. Blavity

Why this exit popup works: This example uses a striking image and bold type to attract attention. The message boosts their brand. Plus the contrasting pink on the button with bold text clearly states what you should do if you want mobile content from Blavity.

Popup Examples for Overcoming Objections

28. TOMS

Why this example works: Besides tackling shipping costs, which are the top reason that shoppers abandon online shopping carts, the image Toms uses in this example highlights their top product. This helps entice curious shoppers to keep looking.

29. Quince

Why this popup works: This example makes a bold statement that you can’t ignore. Not just free shipping once, but free shipping on every order.

Free shipping is an important offer for online shoppers. But you don’t usually see anything about shipping until it’s time to check out. This makes it a smart thing to share in a popup.

Increase Conversions With Exit Intent Pop-Ups

Exit intent pop-ups are a simple yet powerful marketing and lead generation strategy. Once you put them into action, you’ll be able to keep more readers on your website and increase conversions and revenue.

Your next step? Learning how to analyze and improve your results.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in November 2021 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Public relations walks a tightrope between creativity, persuasion, and strategy. If you know how to do PR you can impact every part of a business or brand.

Are you looking to expand your brand’s reach? Would you like to expose your business to new people who might want to try your product or service?

Welcome to the world of public relations.

What is public relations?

Public relations (PR) is the practice of using media channels to promote your organization and cultivate a positive public perception. PR is also the process of managing your organization’s brand and communications — especially in times of crisis.

PR is how brands manage the spread of their information, so it’s similar to branding. The main difference is that PR focuses on communication and reputation, while branding relies on visual elements like logos, websites, and marketing materials.

Why is public relations important?

Public relations defines how a company communicates with people — customers, partners, journalists, philanthropists, politicians, and the general public.

All businesses need public relations, regardless of their size or industry.

According to the Pew Research Center, only 27% of U.S. adults trust the information they find on social media. But 56% trust national news media, and 75% trust local news outlets.

Public relations professionals are expert storytellers. They find strategies for how to get your story out in front of the people you want to see it, in media outlets that build trust.

Why? Because, nowadays, customers want to trust the brands they do business with — and nothing builds and fosters trust like public relations.

A public relations strategy may cover a full year of campaigns or address a single goal, like a product launch.

Developing an authentic PR strategy requires a collaborative approach to communication. Sharing a point of view about climate change, diversity, equity, and inclusion is no longer optional for brands.

Internal and employee communications also play a more important role. 46% of PR professionals in 2021 report directly to their CEO, up from 34% in 2014. This figure speaks to the increasing importance of PR in business operations and brand perception.

It can be easy to jump on one-time opportunities for media attention. But if you want to know how to do PR right, start with a public relations strategy.

How to Build a PR Strategy

1. Research internal and external brand factors.

Start with what has gone well in the past for your business, and what efforts didn’t work out. This could include:

• Tracking media mentions
• Reviewing influencer relationships and results
• Evaluating social media engagement and traffic KPIs
• Review buyer personas and customer insights

Next, do some competitive analysis to figure out what is working best for other businesses in your industry. Social listening tools can help speed up this process.

As you close out your research, list any internal or external factors that could have had an impact on your brand. These might include:

• Feature, product, or pricing changes
• Distribution shifts
• Stakeholders and leadership changes
• Employee sentiment
• Legal factors
• Political climate
• Economic shifts
• Trends
• Tech advances

2. Outline your goals.

It can be tempting to jump on tactics you notice during research, but first, decide on goals. Whether you’re addressing a local crisis or planning a year of public relations image-building, this step is critical.

Even a short outline of goals can be enough to steer you and your team toward the right tactics.

There are a few things that every PR plan should include. First, decide who your target audience is for each campaign. Next, choose the key messages you want to communicate to that audience.

Finally, don’t forget to include the metrics you plan to track. Analytics tracking should be part of campaign set-up, not something you add on after a campaign launches.

Forming a strong foundation for your public relations will better enable your success than one-off efforts. Try to make each goal a SMART goal.

This PR plan template can help you make sure that your strategy covers your key messaging and other goals.

3. Create a timeline for your PR campaigns.

Public relations success relies on the right message at the right time. So, create a clear calendar for both short and long-term initiatives.

Be sure to note public holidays and important industry dates. For example, the end of November is an important time of year for most ecommerce businesses.

4. Select the right public relations tactics.

Once you know when and why, it’s time to nail down which tactics will be the best to deliver on your strategy. This comprehensive list breaks down useful public relations tactics. It might also help to look at some PR examples for inspiration.

5. Track your results.

Once you decide on tactics, decide on how you will measure outcomes. Public relations isn’t an exact science, and measuring perception can be tricky. Whenever possible, align your PR metrics with business goals. This can help you draw a clear connection between public relations efforts and ROI.

An important note: A public relations manager often guides strategy around earned media. But they can be more effective with a multichannel strategy, connecting the right topic to the right audience.

Brands manage their PR — or communication and reputation — through various media channels. A great public relations strategy usually includes three types of media.

Media: Owned vs. Paid vs. Earned

The types of public relations, which we’ll review shortly, fall into three main categories: owned, paid, and earned media. Each type works towards the same goal of building a positive brand reputation, but they use different strategies to get there.

Your PR strategies should include all three, as they all provide different ways of reaching, engaging, and building trust with your audience.

Owned media

Owned media is any content that your business controls. It’s often the go-to strategy for businesses looking to build a PR campaign.

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Rightly so, as it’s arguably the most important type of PR-related media that you should be focusing on. This is because you have total control — unlike the other two media tactics.

Owned media includes:

• Social media posts
• Blog content
• Website copy
• Email newsletters

Owned media acts as a “home base” for your PR activity. When people write about your brand or products, they’ll likely reference (i.e. link to) your owned media in their coverage.

Paid media

It’s not uncommon to pay to promote your content in the marketing world,and it’s no different when it comes to PR.

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Paid media refers to paying to make your content visible. It’s standard practice to promote owned media.

Paid media includes:

• Social media advertising
• Influencer marketing
• Pay-per-click (PPC)

Putting some funds toward boosting PR content is becoming increasingly popular. Since the majority of social platforms are reducing organic reach for business accounts, paid media is a fantastic way to make sure your content gets in front of the people you want to see it.

Earned media

Earned media is the tactic used to boost conversation around your brand. It’s essentially word-of-mouth and is arguably the best PR tactic to build your reputation.

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Earned media is the hardest type of PR media to obtain. It takes a lot of effort, consistency, and hard work to establish it — that’s why it’s “earned.”

Earned media includes:

• Mentions in industry news and reviews
• Praise from customers on social media
• High rankings on search engines

All of these media avenues provide ways to use PR to build brand awareness, generate leads, and convert those leads into paying customers — similar to your marketing. Now, let’s discuss the difference.

Unlike marketing, PR doesn’t always have an impact on sales. It typically indirectly promotes your products or services through activities like press release distribution and speaking at industry events. Alternatively, instead of improving the perception of your business, marketing campaigns focus on driving revenue and boosting profits.

People don’t buy products, they buy brands. For this reason, using PR and marketing in tandem drives the best results: typically, someone connects with your brand as a result of your PR efforts and converts into a customer as a result of your marketing tactics.

For example, 33% of marketers used paid media in 2021 to improve brand awareness.

Now, let’s discuss the types of PR you may use as you promote your organization and build and manage your reputation.

1. Business Events

Business events are opportunities to market your products or services and gain exposure for your brand.

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Whether hosted or attended by your company, events are also important sales opportunities. Events give you a chance to meet prospective customers and delight current ones face-to-face.

Speaking engagements at events are also helpful for boosting brand awareness and sharing unique thought leadership or data-driven information that can help elevate your brand.

2. Community Relations

Community relations refers to building positive relationships with the local community around your business.

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This could include charity work, donations, special discounts, or anything that builds a strong relationship with the community and strengthens customer loyalty.

3. Corporate and Social Responsibility

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Corporate and social responsibility is similar to community relations, but it places a greater emphasis on ethical business practices, environmental responsibility, and philanthropy — locally, regionally, and globally. This is a critical area of PR as it directly affects the public perception of your brand.

4. Crisis Management

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Crisis management is the practice of acknowledging, managing, and working to reverse negative communication and perception surrounding a business crisis. PR usually handles anything that could jeopardize or ruin your brand’s reputation.

Manage, plan for, and communicate during your corporate crises with this free crisis management communication kit.

Crisis management is an important function of PR and should be handled quickly, consistently, and strategically. With certain PR tools, you can avert crises through monitoring online chatter and quality-checking any marketing or promotional material that may be misunderstood or misconstrued.

5. Cyber Threat Intelligence

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Only 41% of US businesses have an active plan for threat intelligence. But cyber security is in the top five global risks in the World Economic Forum‘s 2021 Risk Report.

Besides the financial challenges that cyberattacks create, there is also a perception challenge. This can be devastating to a brand’s reputation if it’s not handled skillfully.

These issues will call on PR’s crisis management expertise. It’s also a good idea to build relationships with tech experts and thought leaders in the industry. This can give you the expertise you need to limit the reputation impact of these increasingly frequent attacks.

6. Employee Relations

Employee relations, also known as internal PR, is the practice of communicating with and cultivating a positive employee perception of your company.

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This process may include dedicated employee newsletters or communications, employee perks and benefits, free training and skill-boosting opportunities, employee appreciation events, and working with unions or employee groups.

Employee relations not only keeps your employees motivated, hard-working, and loyal, but it also encourages them to advocate for your business — which can bring in both customers and more high-quality employees.

7. Influencer relations

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Influencers play a powerful role in PR and marketing. According to Statista, the influencer market was worth 13.8 billion in 2021, more than double its value in 2019. That includes micro-and nano-influencers, who represent over 60% of Instagram influencers.

In many businesses, the public relations team also manages influencer relationships. Sometimes marketing, social media, and PR teams share these responsibilities. It will take hard work and experience to creatively collaborate with each influencer to make sure your brand gets the results it wants from its authority.

8. Media Relations

Media relations refers to building positive relationships with journalists, publications, and other news outlets.

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This process typically includes writing press releases, organizing press releases, and scheduling interviews. Not only does this gain exposure for your business and products but it also encourages the media to market your brand for free.

Download our free Inbound Press Release Kit to access step-by-step templates to build press releases and a promotion plan.

9. Social Media Marketing

Social media can be both an earned and paid PR tactic.

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For most companies, social media can be a helpful PR (and marketing) tool —it’s an effective way to amass followers, convert customers, share your content, and resolve crises.

Whether you’re sharing a post with your audience or interacting with a single customer, your social media activity is open to the public. That’s why it’s critical to have a social media strategy that keeps your communications consistent, positive, and accurate.

Now, let’s talk about who’s responsible for these different types of PR: your public relations manager.

What does a public relations manager do?

PR managers are responsible for building, executing, and monitoring your PR strategies and tactics. They typically handle crisis communications, write press releases, and lead a team of other PR professionals who manage your brand’s public presence. You might hire a public relations manager to handle PR for your business, or work with a PR Agency.

Let’s discuss the skills and tasks your public relations manager will know inside out.

PR Manager Skills

Successful public relations managers have a particular set of skills. Besides being flexible and open to change, these are some of the most important skills.

Great Communication

One primary focus of public relations is building your business’s reputation. To do this, public relations managers spend a lot of their time building and sustaining relationships.

Besides speaking about your company at public functions, press conferences, and other events, your public relations team is also connecting with reporters, influencers, and other stakeholders.

For this reason, excellent communication is a key skill for PR managers.

Writing Skills

Public relations managers should also be able to communicate well in written form.

Since PR managers are responsible for writing press releases and company-related news, strong writing skills will help convey the right message to promote your company. This is especially useful for online PR where you’ll need to create blog posts, website content, and press releases to gain coverage.

Creativity

Like marketing, creativity goes a long way in the public relations world. Great PR managers are creative and know how to create a strategy that stands out from the crowd, which is important because a unique story or perspective will drive PR coverage.

Strong Research Skills

Public relations is a social industry, and people might be talking about your brand without directly mentioning it. Good research skills will help public relations managers find and use these opportunities.

A public relations manager must stay up on trends and digital marketing updates. PR professionals can’t operate in a bubble and must stay aware of search and social media changes for their strategies to succeed.

They offer expert knowledge and a fresh perspective to maintain a presence in competitive media outlets.

Public relations managers will also need to do research when planning a PR strategy. Because they might need additional information, statistics, and data points to boost the power of their owned media, strong research skills are essential.

PR Manager Tasks

The day-to-day tasks of your PR manager can vary depending on your industry, active PR campaigns, PR team size, and other factors. However, here’s what they often include:

• Writing press releases to announce company-related news
• Creating fact sheets and media kits about the company to send to media teams for brand-building
• Giving media training to both in-house and external teams
• Attending and speaking at industry events and representing the brand at trade shows, recruiting events, etc.
• Finding and analyzing media coverage and promoting that content through owned and paid media channels

Public relations managers are also responsible for tracking and measuring their PR efforts. The following key performance indicators (KPIs) can help your public relations manager analyze and improve your PR strategies.

Clear measurable goals are the only way to ensure that your PR strategy is effective. In a business world that is increasingly focused on data-driven outcomes, the right KPIs can make or break your public relations programming.

Most PR metrics gauge perception, so it can be difficult to connect company wins directly to public relations campaigns. For this reason, you should select a range of KPIs that align directly with your business goals.

For example, let’s say your business wants to improve brand awareness. KPIs like increased share of voice and website traffic alongside recent brand mentions can show a more direct connection between PR efforts and business goals.

These KPIs will help you track your PR efforts and determine the effectiveness of your PR strategy.

1. Media Coverage and Brand Mentions

Brand mentions occur when someone mentions your brand. Media coverage tracks the number of earned media stories that went live. These metrics are important because they help you measure awareness of your brand and its stories.

You might see brand mentions in traditional news coverage, on other business or personal blogs, in reviews, or on social media. Some media outlets may tag or hyperlink their sources. Others may not link back to your brand or website, which means you have to go looking for them. Check out the PR tools section for some helpful software tools.

Note:It’s important to read brand mentions and media coverage for context. Remember, you want people to be saying good things about your brand, and it’s not always easy to understand the value of coverage until you read the entire piece.

2. Share of Voice

This is an essential KPI for PR. Share of voice measures competitive brand awareness. This metric helps your business understand the scale of customers in your industry and where your brand fits within it. It also tracks your brand reputation.

3. Pitch Interactions

Pitches are another important metric for PR. It can sometimes take longer than expected for a piece to go live. So, track the number of pitches you send and reply to. You’ll also want to track how many email opens and clicks you get from a pitch. These PR metrics can help you create a funnel for earned media mentions.

This can help you better understand which efforts are pulling in the most value, as well as the best ways to scale your strategy.

4. Sentiment

Sentiment, which is a synonym for viewpoint or opinion, measures the attitudes in brand mentions. While brand mentions and backlinks typically improve your brand awareness and SEO, sentiment is what sets apart the positive mentions from the negative ones.

You’ve probably heard the saying, “There’s no such thing as bad publicity.” Whether you agree or disagree, it is good practice to be aware of negative press.

Tracking sentiment can help you understand what your audience is saying about your brand and whether or not you need to address any problems or concerns.

5. Social Media Engagement

Social media engagement encompasses a few types of activity: views, impressions, likes, shares, and comments.

This information shows the level of brand awareness and engagement among your audience members. It also tells you when your audience is most active, i.e. when you should be posting and interacting with your followers.

6. Social Shares

Social shares are different from social media engagement. Social shares refer to when your audience shares something from your website or blog on their social media.

This is a critical metric because it tells you that your audience enjoys your content enough to vouch for it on their social channels. It’s a very clear measure of your brand reputation among your audience.

When looking at social shares, pay attention to what types of content people share most frequently. This will give you an idea of what your audience enjoys the most and what kind of content to create more of.

7. Site Traffic

Site traffic is a sign of successful PR efforts. If people are hearing about your brand through earned media and heading to your site, your PR efforts are reaching your audience.

As you run PR campaigns, track your site traffic once press releases and other efforts go live. Use your site analytics to check your visitors’ referral sources (how they made their way to your website) and aim to replicate this in the future.

8. SEO Metrics

There are a few SEO metrics that can also help you with PR measurement.

Domain authority refers to your website’s SEO ranking and how it performs in search results.

It’s ranked from 1 to 100 (with 100 being the highest) and is a valuable measure of how your website compares to your competitors. The higher your domain authority is, the better your website will rank in search results.

Domain authority is made up of three main factors: links to your site (backlinks), links from your site to other well-ranked websites, and the age of your site. While you can’t magically make your website older, you can use PR to attract backlinks and place links in your content.

Moz offers a free tool to check your domain authority, page rank, and other important website measures.

Backlinks help you find brand mentions. With backlinks, sites that’ve mentioned your brand have linked to your website, making it easy for readers to click through and visit your website.

And it’s not just new traffic you’ll benefit from when collecting backlinks — you could see a rise in your SEO rankings, too.

9. Conversions

While the volume of new customers coming directly from your PR activity isn’t easy to measure, it’s definitely worth investigating.

You can discover where your customers came from by either surveying customers after they purchase and asking how they heard of you or by using a tool like Google Analytics to learn about your customers’ conversion paths (a.k.a. their route to purchase).

Note: While this is an exciting metric to track, don’t feel disheartened if you don’t see an influx of conversion-ready site traffic. Remember, the goal of public relations is to raise brand awareness, spread the ideas of your internal thought leaders, and communicate the ideas of your brand. Those new site visitors could always return and make a purchase in the future now that they know about your brand because of your PR.

10. Advertising Value Equivalent (AVE)

AVE equals what it would cost to buy the space for an earned media placement if it was an ad. At one point this was the only KPI for public relations. But many industry professionals feel that this is an outdated KPI and an inaccurate way to measure PR.

Depending on your business, you may still want to track this KPI. In 2021 41% of PR professionals track AVE for planning, and 34% use this metric to justify fees and budgets.

Now, let’s review a handful of PR SaaS tools that can help you implement your PR strategies and track these KPIs.

Public Relations Tools

We’ve rounded up a handful of helpful PR tools to help you execute your public relations campaigns and measure your impact and performance.

1. Brand24

Brand24 helps you monitor online mentions about your brand, product, or service, and measure the results of your PR campaigns. Slack integrations and a notifications system will help you react in time to prevent a PR crisis.

2. Agility PR Solutions

Agility PR Solutions is a paid tool that provides powerful yet easy-to-use solutions for your media database, monitoring, and analytics. These solutions help identify and connect with influencers, capture coverage, and measure impact.

3. Anewstip

Anewstip is a media search, monitoring, and relationship management tool. You can use it to search media mentions by keyword or handle, reach out to journalists and influencers all over the world, and create a media database of important PR campaign contacts. It offers both paid and free plan options.

4. CoverageBook

CoverageBook is a paid tool that helps you find and collect any coverage of your PR content. It’s a great tool for PR agencies who are building coverage reports for their clients.

5. Covered Press

Covered Press is a paid tool that streamlines press tracking, reporting, and analytics, combining three important tools into a single, all-in-one PR platform. It also offers white-label reporting so publicists can brand their own analytics portals and reports for clients.

6. Flaunter

Flaunter is a paid tool that gives you media access to brand content and PR samples. As a business, it’s a place to publish high-quality brand and product imagery so journalists, influencers, and bloggers can share it.

7. Google Alerts

Google Alerts is an easy-to-use, free tool that allows you to set up email alerts for certain keyword mentions. When a name, keyword, or link is mentioned online, Google sends you a digest email alerting you of the mention.

8. Mention

Mention helps you track who’s mentioned your brand in media and on social media. You can also use this tool to publish on your social media and manage crisis communications. It offers both free and paid plan options.

9. Monitor Backlinks

Monitor Backlinks is a free tool that helps you track who’s mentioned your brand in coverage and added a backlink to your site. It’s also valuable for monitoring and disavowing bad backlinks and keeping your website’s SEO and domain authority at their peak.

10. Muck Rack

Muck Rack is a paid tool that allows you to discover and contact members of the media who might want to cover your PR story.

11. PR Fire

PR Fire is a paid tool that helps you distribute your press release to journalists and receive a report of their performance and reach. It’s ideal for in-house teams who’re doing their own PR.

12. SharedCount

SharedCount shows you engagement data for any social media, blog, or website URL. Once you input a URL, the tool will tally its likes, shares, comments, and other engagement measures. It offers both free and paid plan options.

13. TweetDeck

TweetDeck is a free tool (created by Twitter) that monitors Twitter activity. You can set up Twitter streams that track certain keywords, accounts, trends, or other filters.

These are just a few useful PR tools, and if you don’t see what you’re looking for here, there are more great PR tools to consider.

Start Building Your Public Relations Strategy

With all these tactics, tools, and strategy-building tips, are you ready to start your new PR strategy? As you dig in, remember that public relations is an ongoing, iterative strategy — not a one-off task. Like marketing, it can take a while to see results.

But with a solid strategy and a commitment to spreading the word about your company, you’ll soon see more mentions, backlinks, and general buzz. Then you’ll be ready for the next step to grow your business better.

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

Imagine you spend hours working on a cool graphic for a social media post. You finally get it just right and post it on social media. The next day, you log on and see that someone else has posted your image without your authorization and is purporting your work as their own.

Creating a watermark would help protect you against this common issue and help you with your brand recognition. In this article, you’ll learn about the type of watermarks that exist and how to create your own.

Typically, a watermark has its opacity set to 50% or less. If it’s too bold and opaque, it can distract viewers from noticing other details in the content. However, if it’s too transparent, it will easily be ignored.

 

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A post shared by Bill Barbosa (@billbarbosaphotography)

The opacity will depend on the type of image you have and its purpose. For instance, photographers and videographers will go for a higher lower opacity because every detail of their image matters. They’re also more likely to place the watermark at the bottom of the corner of an image.

For a brand sharing content marketing tips, the watermark will likely be very opaque and placed prominently on the asset for easy recognition.

Types of Watermarks

There are two types of watermarks: visible and digital. They’re used for different purposes by different users.

A visible watermark is what most people think of when we use the term. It refers to a visible stamp, usually a logo, phrase, or pattern, that has been superimposed on an image. Content creators use this type most frequently to prevent theft and help their brand recognition.

A digital watermark, on the other hand, isn’t visible to the naked eye. Instead, the watermark is embedded into the data of the image. While this can also be used by content creators, it’s used more often by banking institutions and news organizations to authenticate media and identify its source.

Why are watermarks important?

Online, particularly on social media, content creators and brands don’t have many reliable resources to protect them against theft. Someone can easily take a screenshot or screenshot work from another user and post it as their own.

While most social media sites do offer reporting tools, there is still a lot of work to be done to protect users online against copyright infringement. One of the few social channels where repercussions are seemingly swift is YouTube, where the use of music and videos is closely moderated.

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As a result, a watermark can help you protect your work. It’s not foolproof but it does offer a layer of security.

Brand Recognition

On social media, content can take off at any time.

If you’re lucky enough to go viral, it’s likely that other pages will repost your content. You want to make sure your content has something identifiable to lead users back to your page.

Reaching a larger audience is also a great opportunity to get your brand out there and build your brand recognition.

Watermark Examples

Adobe

To prevent the illegal download of its creative assets, Adobe adds watermarks to every image a user previews.

Notice that they use two types of watermarks: One located across the entire image in gray with the words “Adobe Stock” and another on the bottom left corner in black.

This allows users to easily preview the image without using it before purchase.

Buzz Media Agency

This media agency uses watermarks in an Instagram post to share their work without the risk of another user stealing it without proper attribution.

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You’ll notice that their watermark is their logo, which makes it easy for users to find them if the image is shared on the platform or anywhere else.

In addition, it’s noticeable without taking the attention away from the other elements in the image.

PR Girl Manifesto

This brand uses a more modern approach to watermarking, one that many companies leverage when posting engaging, shareable content on social media.

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In this case, there are a few things that are different from your average watermark:

• The opacity is at 100%, making it very visible. However, it’s balanced by small font size.
• It’s not a logo or pattern, it’s the page’s Instagram handle instead.

When marketing content on social media, watermarking this way is always a good idea. It keeps your brand at the center and makes it easy for users to find your profile.

How to Create a Watermark

There are many ways to create a watermark. As such, the method you use will depend on the tools you have available and the type of asset you want to watermark.

The most popular tools to create a watermark are:

• Canva
• Photoshop
• Microsoft Word

Because Canva is the most accessible option, let’s cover how to make a watermark with this tool.

1. Visit Canva.com and create an account.

2. Select a template type or create a custom template.

   

3. Create your watermark and select your desired opacity.

   

4. Once you’re done creating your watermark, click “Share” on the top right corner. Then, select “Download.”

   

5. Check “transparent background” and download your watermark.

   
   Note: This feature is only available on Canva Pro. To complete this step for free, download the image then visit removebg.com to upload your image and remove the background for free.

6. Use your watermark on videos, images, and other content.

There you have it! Creating a watermark is a preventative measure that can help you both protect your creative assets and help you build brand recognition.

Have you ever visited a webpage that was in a different language, and your browser asked you if you wanted to change it to your first language?

It’s a life-saver, right?

This is possible due to language tags or hreflang tags, which are used to let search engines know what language the content is in.

Now think about whether you’ve provided the functionality so your own webpages are ready for a global audience. If you haven’t properly tagged or re-directed your content to be optimized in different languages, it may not be gaining the traffic it could be. Let’s take a look at how hreflang tags can help serve the correct results to your visitors.

Jump To

• What Hreflang Tags Are
• What Hreflang Tags Look Like
• Why You Need Them
• How They Work
• Hreflang Generator Tools

Hreflang tags (also known as rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x”) allow you to show Google and other search engines the relationship between webpages that are in different languages. For instance, if your tag needs to link to an English-language blog, you’d use the following tag: hreflang=”en”.

What do hreflang tags look like?

Hreflang tags have an established syntax. Here’s an example of how hreflang tags are written.

Syntax

<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x” href=”https://example.com/alternate-page”/>

The tag is broken down into three parts:

• link rel=“alternate”: Tells the search engine that this is an alternate version of he page.
• hreflang=“x”: Specifies the language.
• href=“https://example.com/alternate-page”: The alternate page is at this URL.

Example

This is a sample of what a webpage will look like when it’s tagged with an hreflang attribute:

<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en-us” href=”https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/hreflang-tags”/>

The “en” in the first part of the tag refers to the language code, English, and the “US” refers to the country code, for the United States.

Let’s say we wanted this same page in Spanish for customers in Mexico. The hreflag tag would be:

<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”es-mx” href=”https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/hreflang-tags”/>

Users with an IP address that notifies which language is being used will automatically see a properly tagged webpage, so a hreflang tag is especially helpful if you have a global audience and want to make their user experience delightful.

Hreflang Tags vs. HTML Lang Tags

There are two different types of language tags: HTML lang tags and hreflang tags.

While both HTML and hreflang tags are intended to optimize content in multiple languages, they have a couple of differences.

Simply put, language (or lang) tag attributes on an HTML tag tells your browser the language of the current document or webpage, while the hreflang tag attribute tells your browser the language of the webpage that’s being linked — for instance, a lang tag on HubSpot.com tells your browser the language of HubSpot.com, but a hreflang tag attribute tells a search engine the language of HubSpot.com when a user searches for HubSpot.

If a user searches for HubSpot.com from Germany, a hreflang tag is responsible for changing the link available in the search engines. However, when someone lands on HubSpot.com in Germany, a lang tag changes the language on the page itself.

Examples

It might be easier to visualize, so here’s a sample lang tag:

<html lang=”en”>

Alternatively, here’s a sample hreflang tag:

<link rel=”alternate” href=”http://example.com/”hreflang=”en”/>

Google recommends using hreflang when indexing websites that are in different languages.

You might also want to use HTML language tags in conjunction with an hreflang tag — they can work together to inform search engines about the content on your webpages. Having both tags tells search engines what language a webpage is in, while directing users from other countries to the appropriate webpage.

Next, let’s explore what hreflang tags are used for and how you can use them for your own webpages.

Why do you need hreflang tags?

Ultimately, it’s helpful to use hfreflang tags so you can create a better user experience. If a user in Germany searches for HubSpot, we want to make sure the result in the search engine shows our site in German and not in English. Besides a better user experience, this can also help reduce bounce rate and increase conversion rates because you’re showing the best version of your site to the right audience.

Another benefit of using hreflang tags is that they prevent duplicate content. Let’s say you have the same content on different URLs aimed at Spanish speakers in Mexico, Spain, and Chile but with slight differences depending on the target audience, like currency. Without an hreflang tag, Google may just see this as duplicate content.

Hreflang tags tell search engines that while the content may look similar, it is directed at different audiences.

How do hreflang tags work?

To illustrate how hreflang works, let’s consider an example. Let’s say you make two homepages that are the same, but one is in English (hreflang=”en”), and the other’s in Spanish (hreflang=”es”).

When a user searches for your homepage in Spanish or from a Spanish-language browser, they’ll receive the Spanish version of your homepage, as long as it’s properly tagged.

Each language and country has its own hreflang tag. Here’s a list of common ones:

• German/Germany: de-de
• English/USA: en-us
• Irish/Ireland: ga-ie
• Hindi/India: hi-in
• Italian/Italy: it-it
• Japanese/Japan: ja-jp
• Korean/Korea: ko-kp
• Portuguese/Brazil: pt-br
• Russian/Russain Federation: ru-ru
• Chinese (simplified for Chinese Mainland)/China: zh-hans-cn
• Thai/Thailand: th-th

If you are sharing the same page in different regions, note that it is possible to have multiple tags on the same page. For instance, if your French website sells to customers in Germany and Spain too, you’ll be able to tag your page accordingly in HTML.

Hreflang tags are bidirectional and work in pairs. If you add a tag to an English page pointing to the Spanish version, then the Spanish version of the page must also have an hreflang tag pointing to the English page.

Keep in mind that because hreflang tags are able to be overridden by other SEO options, your page may rank higher in a different language. To avoid this, make sure search engines are equipped with the correct attributes, so they know which language to present your page in.

If all of this is a little confusing, don’t worry. You can use a free Hreflang tag generator so all you need to do is copy and paste the code. Let’s look at a few examples below.

Hreflang Tags Generator Tools

1. The Hreflang Tags Generator Tool

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With this tool, you can generate hreflang tags for your multi-language site. All you need to do is add the URL to your site and choose which language it’s in.

This is a great tool because you can even upload a CSV with up to 50 URLs and can generate the hreflang tag for 50 sites at once.

What We Like

Their ability to bulk upload 50 URLs at once to generate 50 hreflang tags will save you time.

2. Geo Targetly

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Geo Targetly is another great hreflang generator tool. It’s easy and free to use. All you need to do is input your URL and the language, and then voila.

While you can’t upload 50 sites at once, this is still a quick, easy-to-use option.

What We Like

Geo Targely’s tool is simple and user-friendly, making it a great choice for beginners or those with smaller sites.

3. Sistrix

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The Sistrix tool is similar to the other two tools above. All you need to do is input your URL and language and then the tool will generate the code for you.

While you can’t import a list from a CSV, you can enter multiple domains at once to generate the tags you need.

What We Like

This generator from Sistrix allows you to input several domains at once to generate hreflang tags, plus has a fee tag validation tool if you want to make sure existing tags on your site are correct.

Use Hreflang Tags for a Better User Experience

When you’re optimizing your content for search engines, it’s important to do everything you can to rank on the SERPs. This helps people across the globe find your business.

Ultimately, the point of hreflang tags is to give customers who speak different languages, or who live in different regions of the world, content meant for them.

This article was originally published in March 2021 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

As a business leader, a big part of your responsibilities involves ensuring existing projects and initiatives within your organization are on track while creating space for smart new strategies.

But with a million and one other things fighting for your attention, it can sometimes be challenging to stay up to date.

Fortunately, there’s a tool to help you succeed: KPI dashboards.

KPI dashboards can help you check in with various aspects of your business and make sure everything’s running smoothly.

Let’s take a closer look at what KPI dashboards are and what they can do to help your marketing team succeed in 2022 and beyond.

Every department from sales to operations needs a dashboard, and dashboards are especially helpful for marketing. Between about a dozen online channels to consider (plus offline marketing efforts), numerous elements go into creating and sustaining a healthy marketing ecosystem.

A KPI dashboard helps marketers and business executives identify what’s going on with the elements of their marketing strategy that matter most, where to make changes if things start to go awry, and how to identify opportunities for new initiatives that can spur even greater success.

Getting your dashboard right takes time, but the pay-off is immense. Executives who successfully implement an effective dashboard can get better results and create a more rewarding, enjoyable work atmosphere in which the team has more room for creativity and experimentation.

The KPIs you choose should be related to your strategy and include a mix of forward-looking and backward-looking variables.

While it’s tempting to cram every metric you can think of into these reports, that’s a big mistake. When you’re confronted with a mountain of data, it’s nearly impossible to give the most critical numbers the level of scrutiny they deserve.

What should a KPI Dashboard include?

The best dashboards include only five to nine KPIs. These should, after all, be the key performance indicators behind your business playbook.

If you’re not sure which data points to focus on, think of it this way: what handful of things could totally tank your business if they went south?

Framing it that way can help you sort the vanity metrics, like the number of monthly social media impressions, from the things that matter, like cost-per-acquisition.

Benefits of a KPI Dashboard

KPI dashboards are great because they make it easy to track progress towards goals. Here are some other reasons why you might want to have one.

1. Detailed Overview

KPI dashboards offer viewers a detailed dive into the progress of an organization. Because they are highly visual, it’s possible to organize, analyze, and filter the most important metrics for any business.

Instead of wading through loads of complex data, KPI dashboards break data down in a simple, easy-to-understand form.

2. Better Decision Making

You need the ability to use accurate, up-to-date data if you want to make good business decisions — and KPI dashboards help you with that.

They show the vital operational data of an organization in one place, so KPIs are more visible. By eliminating data silos, this tool increases analytical efficiency and the ability to make the right data-driven decisions.

3. Real-time Analysis

KPI dashboards allow you to monitor the crucial performance metrics in real-time.

With this information available, decision-makers can make proactive moves and drive better business outcomes.

5 Best KPI Dashboard Software to Use

You’ll need a KPI dashboard software before creating a KPI dashboard. Here are 5 of the best around today.

1. Hubspot

Hubspot has a free KPI software you can use to quickly create visually appealing KPI dashboards that are easy to understand.

With Hubspot’s KPI dashboard software, you can also pull data from different departments to overview your organization’s performance. You’ll also not have to worry about data breaches as you can control who can access your dashboards.

2. Geckoboard

Geckoboard’s KPI dashboard software allows you to focus on the metrics that matter in your business. It’s easy to build and allows you to pull data from different sources like spreadsheets, databases, and even Zapier integrations.

3. Klipfolio

Klipfolio helps business owners visualize their data to understand how well they’re performing and make informed decisions about the future.

Kilpfolio also stores historical data so that business owners can compare performance over different time periods.

4. Databox

Like Geckoboard, Databox also pulls data from different sources to help teams monitor trends, collaborate better, and make more informed decisions that drive business growth.

Even if you have zero coding skills, you can quickly learn how to use Databox to create great KPI dashboards. Thanks to the over 70 integrations Databox has, you can also easily connect it to other platforms to collect more data.

5. Zoho

Zoho is another fantastic business intelligence (BI) and analytics platform you can use to create KPI dashboards.

The drag-and-drop dashboard builder makes the platform super intuitive even if you have no prior training. You can also access the report you create on Zoho from your phones and tablets, making it great for mobility.

Once you’ve chosen the software you want, here are some of the best tips and practices to help you create an excellent KPI dashboard.

1. Know your audience

Knowing your audience is essential to any marketing endeavor, and the same is true of creating a KPI dashboard.

Therefore, you must know who’ll work with the KPIs and the kind of information they’ll need to design the KPI dashboard correctly. For example, you can’t expect the same dashboard you create for an executive audience to work for a sales team.

2. Keep it relatively simple

Whether you’re creating a dashboard for busy managers with only minutes to spare or for a team with time to spare to delve into details, your dashboard needs to provide critical information in a simple, easy-to-understand format.

3. Include only what is needed

The heart of any KPI dashboard is brevity and utility. Therefore, stick to including only the most critical and insightful KPIs needed for meeting business and organizational goals.

4. Draft your design

The design of the KPI dashboard will depend on the composition, distribution, comparison, or relationship of the metrics.

For example, a dashboard for analyzing trends will comprise column or line charts. On the other hand, a dashboard for data composition will give the best benefits if you make it with maps or stacked charts.

Here are a few KPI dashboards examples. Notice that they’ve honed in on only the most critical metrics and display the information in clear, concise, easy-to-digest visual formats.

1. Subscription Model Dashboard

Subscription-based businesses are cropping up all over the place. From razors to clothes to meal prep kits, just about anything you could want or need in your daily life can be delivered to your doorstep regularly.

The subscription model is great because it guarantees businesses recurring revenue — a subscriber locks into your service for a set period, meaning regular monthly income for the term of service.

In this example, the leadership team has chosen to focus on metrics that give them a sense of how much monthly and yearly revenue they expect to make and their churn rate.

With this dashboard, the leadership team can quickly identify any potential issues from that handful of data points before those issues become mission-critical.

For example, let’s say the leadership team notices a steady rise in the churn rate, which isn’t ideal.

From there, they could start digging deeper, asking questions about what changes they could make to entice more of their existing customers to renew their membership.

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2. Large Ticket Item Dashboard

This dashboard from DataPine is the kind that could be useful to a marketing team in just about any industry that has a high price point — and, therefore, a high customer acquisition cost. Their focus is on nine of the biggest metrics that give them insight into their strategy’s success.

Rather than focusing on granular numbers, like Twitter followers gained or the number of likes on each piece of content shared on Facebook, they’re measuring numbers linked directly to their budget and tie in with the sales team’s efforts.

Understanding acquisition numbers and cost-per-acquisition provides valuable insight far beyond the reach of the marketing department.

Issues with poor cost-per-acquisition can indicate a need to cut ad spend, but they might also be hinting at a need to change the pricing structure for your offerings. Or they might mean that the sales team needs to shorten lead time to increase the number of acquisitions per month.

No matter what is ultimately identified as the source of the problem, having a dashboard empowers all of your teams to have informed, collaborative discussions about challenges facing your business that are backed up by actual data and numbers.

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3. Deals Closed Dashboard

Epec Engineered Technologies uses HubSpot’s reporting features to create a sleek KPI dashboard with all the most critical information, including “Form to MQL” and “First Page Seen.”

This is an undeniably helpful KPI dashboard to see whether your marketing strategy aligns with your goals. The “First Page Seen” section shows you which pages your visitors initially interact with — if that page hasn’t been updated in a while, consider optimizing it for higher conversions.

Additionally, the “Marketing qualified lead” vs. “Sales qualified lead” categories, shown in chart-form under “RFQ to MQL,” will help you tailor your strategy and determine which leads convert at the highest percentage and what you might do to even out any disparities.

4. Marketing Leads Dashboard

This dashboard made by Geek Dashboard is a fantastic example of how your marketing team can use a KPI dashboard to measure your team’s performance, particularly through leads and conversions.

It’s clear and concise, focusing on the significant factors for marketing — leads, and percent of conversions compared to goal. Additionally, the visuals help your team stay focused on the most critical aspects of your strategy to ensure you’re on track to hit your monthly or yearly goals.

KPI Dashboard Excel Templates

If you’re ready to start creating your own KPI dashboard, the good news is that there are tons of resources out there to help you get it done.

1. HubSpot

HubSpot offers dashboard templates that integrate with Excel, Google Drive, and PowerPoint, so you can easily track those all-important metrics within the program that works best for you and your team.

2. Smartsheet

Smartsheet provides Excel templates for a variety of marketing dashboards.

So whether you’re looking for a broad template for tracking big KPIs to more specific templates for social media marketing, Smartsheet has you covered.

Best of all, the templates are free to download on their website.

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3. Eloquens

Eloquens offers a marketing dashboard template with metrics that they’ve broken down into seven major categories. These categories include sales effectiveness, customer metrics, and budget metrics, and each category has several KPIs that you can choose to track.

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You’ve Created a Dashboard, Now What?

Once you’ve gotten your first marketing dashboard up and running, the real fun begins! Start pulling the numbers regularly — weekly or monthly, depending on how quickly things move in your business. Then, review it regularly and start to look for patterns.

When a number crops up that surprises you, it’s time to examine the cause.

Having all of your marketing information displayed in this simple dashboard makes it easier to identify the source of the potential issue and get feedback from the most relevant parties about what could be behind the startling data point.

Once you think you’ve identified the source of the change, it’s time to do some experimenting. If you missed your goal, try a new approach. If your numbers exceeded expectations, tweak things to lean into whichever existing strategies are most responsible for the high numbers.

Make changes slowly so that you can see how every shift in approach influences your results. Additionally, keep tracking those KPIs regularly so that you can understand the effects of each new tactic.

No matter what, you want to keep returning to your dashboard. This document should become your North Star, guiding your shifts in strategy and providing you with the information you need to understand which strategies drive the best results.

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

What do you do when you have a question or want to find something? Quickly.

If you’re like most, you open your laptop or unlock your phone, pull up a web browser, and head for the search bar. Once you say or type a few words and hit “enter,” you browse the results until you click on a page that looks promising. After the page loads, lo and behold: the answer you need.

The words you type into search engines play a role in how easily you find a blog or web page- and the same goes for the way people find your website. If you want people to find your website, you must understand what keywords are, why they matter, and best practices for how to find them. In this post, you will learn how to do so successfully and strengthen your content strategy on your own (search) terms.

Navigate to what you need to know first about keywords:

What are keywords?

Why are keywords important?

What are good keywords?

Considerations for Choosing a Keyword

How many keywords should I use?

How to Find Keywords the Right Way

How to Create Unique Content Through Niche Keywords

For instance, if you were to type “bikes” into a search engine, the results would show a variety of results that correlate with those keywords:

Here, the term “bikes” is an example of a short keyword; you can count on keyword lengths to fall into two categories:

1. Short keywords that contain one or two terms
2. Long-tail keywords that contain typically three or more terms

As a result, short keywords are generally on broad topics, while long-tail keywords are all about specificity. Take a look at what a long-tail version of “bikes” would look like if you search “mountain bikes for beginners”:

Therefore, understanding which type of keywords to use on your website or blog requires performing some investigation. As you begin your keyword research, you will start to discern the difference between picking a related keyword and writing for a user’s intent.

The 3 Common Types of Search Intent

Behind every keyword is the reason the user makes the search query in the first place. This is known as search intent which falls into 3 categories: informational, navigational, and transactional.

Take a look at your keyword and think about what the user is really asking by making their query:

• If they were to search, “what are nfts” they are feasibly looking for informational content that will explain this topic in detail.
• If they look up “nft marketplace” they are likely searching for navigational content to take them to NFT platforms.
• If they type “best nfts to buy now” they are probably trying to find transactional content that will help them complete a purchase decision.

By speaking to the “why” of the search query, you can tailor each content page to fully provide value to the user and deliver the best possible experience. But to fully grasp how to provide this value, you need to know the impact of keywords and why they matter to your website in the first place.

Now, while keywords are still useful tools for conceptualizing and planning your content strategy, their effectiveness is entirely rooted in context.

For instance, say you’ve written SEO blogs about the various aspects of software. If you have been fleshing out a topic cluster to demonstrate your content authority, Google will have the context it needs when ranking websites like yours.

The keywords you include on your pillar and cluster pages will guide you to produce content on a range of user interests. But with the paradox of choice, how do you choose a good keyword? Your decision will depend on the marketing channel you’re writing for and your short or long-term goals.

Let’s dive into how to define good keywords across SEO and PPC channels to put you in the best position to benefit from your content.

What are good keywords?

What qualifies as a good keyword in SEO is different from what makes for the right target in PPC. But how do SEO keywords differ from keywords for PPC on the SERP?

Understanding this difference takes learning how to use SEO and PPC keywords to your website’s advantage.

Using Keywords in SEO

A good SEO keyword strikes the ideal balance between keyword volume, competition, relevance, and intent based on your website’s authority. Therefore, adding keywords that encompass these factors, will allow you to rank and drive traffic long-term.

Plus, because SEO keywords are free- to rank for and when users click on your content- you can receive high value from the content you produce.

While the roster ranges both on and off the page, SEO content includes:

• Blogs
• Articles
• Website copy
• Metadata like title tags or meta descriptions

Unlike the other forms, the keywords in metadata aren’t ranking factors. But best practices are to include your targeted keyword in the title tag and description. Take a look at how metadata appears on the SERP with the title tags outlined in red and descriptions in blue below: What’s special about finding the right keywords, is that it allows you to write rich content around what people are interested in and satisfy Google’s E.A.T. principle — a major Google core update from 2019. Your keywords will be your guide to writing a piece that meets a search engine like Google’s expectations of:

• Expertise
• Authoritativeness
• Trustworthiness

So before you dive into finding keywords, start by thinking about the topics that matter to your website. What are some things your audience may be searching for that would lead them to you? Have some ideas in mind? Start there.

Using Keywords in PPC

On the other side of Search are PPC keywords. PPC keywords are terms you choose to rank for in order to increase brand visibility and foster website growth. You can bid on your keyword choices, and when you win your bids, you will rank at the top of the SERP like these businesses below:

So, you can use keywords to create PPC ads promoting your products or services through platforms like Google Ads and Microsoft Ads. Then, when users select your ad, you pay for every click you receive.

Now, there are two main types of PPC keywords:

• Branded keywords are words and phrases that include your brand’s name. Their purpose is to attract customers in your audience that are near a purchase decision.
• Non-branded keywords are words or phrases that do not include your brand name. They help you gain new customers who may be searching for what you offer but do not know it yet.

Essentially, pay-per-click advertising generates immediate traffic that can convert into leads or sales. Subsequently, these conversions deliver a faster return on investment for the money and time you put into your ads. You will use PPC keywords to tailor your content to the audiences you decide to target.

When it comes down to when to apply SEO versus PPC advertising, it depends on your business goals. Will your business benefit from the long-term impact of Organic Search or the short-term results of Paid Search? While you contemplate this, remember SEO content concentrates on providing value to the reader, while PPC content focuses on promoting your products or services.

Still, the tricky part is that the internet is a busy place — making it virtually impossible to be the only person writing about any given topic. So even if you create rich content with keywords and provide the context for search engines to understand it, how do you stand out from the crowd?

Well, this is where the following keyword considerations come into play.

Considerations for Choosing a Keyword

Monthly Search Volume

Monthly search volume (MSV) is the number of times people search for a particular keyword in a month. By considering the popularity of a keyword, you can tailor your content strategy and write about new content opportunities.

To find out how many people are searching for a particular keyword, you can use keyword research tools like the one below from Ahrefs. For instance, when you type in the word “insurance” the tool provides the following MSV estimate outlined in red:

Oftentimes, competitive keywords with higher difficulties are the ones in which everyone in an industry wants to rank. For example, broad keywords like “insurance,” “marketing,” or “technology” are all going to be highly competitive because they have a high volume of monthly searches. There is also a bevy of written content on these topics vying for a keyword ranking.

The market for these and similar broad search terms is completely saturated. So getting a foothold for a search term like “marketing” would be like constructing a generic coffee shop between a Starbucks and a Dunkin’ Donuts — you may get a bit of business if a customer notices you in your area, but they’re more likely going to go to one of the established businesses they know.

For your business to truly gain SEO ranking, it’s important to consider less competitive keywords. Focusing on less keyword competition lets you demonstrate what makes you different and reach the best audience for your business.

If we return to our coffee shop example, concentrating on less competitive keywords is like branding yourself as the only ‘specialty cat cafe’ in the city. In this situation, it’s easier to stand out because you’re focusing on what makes you unique to your target buyer persona.

After all, the person looking for a cat cafe to sit in and relax is probably not the same person wanting a quick cup of coffee on their way to work — just like someone searching for “technology” is not the same person searching for “small business technology setup service.”

Intent & Relevance

We’ve established that search intent is the “why” behind the terms users search, but did you know that search engines use this intent to rank content? This relationship is called keyword relevance: how closely related a keyword or phrase is to a piece of content.

For example, say you own a website about baking and you want to target the keyword “easy cake recipes” in your content. But instead of writing a thorough article on these recipes, you write more about the history of cake. Even though this article may be intriguing, it’s not relevant to your primary keyword— and you’re unlikely to rank for your target. So be sure to keep keyword intent and relevance top of mind as you research.

How many keywords should I use?

It’s a question that has withstood the tests of time (spent on digital marketing): what are the optimal number of keywords for SEO content?

Well, for a long time digital marketers organized their entire content calendar around specific keywords — and the number of times to include these keywords on the page. They’d work with their teams to brainstorm focus keywords relevant to their products or services using keyword research tools. Then analyze all the variations of that keyword most likely to be a source of website traffic.

Unfortunately, as time went on, publications began keyword stuffing; publishing irrelevant, poorly-written content with specific keywords just to drive traffic. Eventually, search engines — largely led by Google, and the constantly-changing Google search algorithm — became more advanced. Instead, a more contextual-based approach to digital content was favored over simply keyword count.So as the power of keywords continues to shift, so does the importance of how often you use them. Yet, deciding how many keywords you should use is

still worth the consideration because it is a matter of keyword density: the ratio of keywords on your page versus the overall word count of the piece.

Aside from using a formula to calculate this ratio, you can also conduct a competitive analysis to examine the keyword density for specific keywords your competitors target.

There’s no magic trick to how to get on the first page of Google when it comes to SEO. To rank well on search engines, you need to consistently create rich SEO content and think about how it fits together in the long term. You must also be clear about your content strategy and the keywords you use to guide it.

Leveraging keywords to build your content foundation enriches your content marketing strategy and teaches you how to get traffic to your website — now, we’re going to tell you how to find them.

1. Clearly define your target buyer persona.

Having a clear understanding of your ideal audience is the key to any marketing endeavor. With keyword research, you must understand what questions you can answer or problems you can solve for this target buyer persona. At this point, it’s okay to think in broad search terms regarding what those problems or questions are.

For instance, if you’re a PR agency, you need to find leads who are interested in hiring a third party to help them run a PR campaign. To do this, perhaps you begin by writing digital content that answers the question “How to run a successful PR campaign”.

A broader content topic is a good starting point for building a pillar page for your topic cluster.

2. Narrow your focus and investigate keyword competition.

Once you determine the overarching question or problem to address, it’s time to get more specific. Getting more specific allows you to cater your content to your target audience, and it helps you leverage less competitive keywords.

I like to narrow my focus keyword by using lsigraph.com. LSI, or latent semantic indexing, is a process of generating search query variations by determining how closely a given search term relates to other search terms. Think of latent semantic indexing tools as a way of brainstorming and generating a lot of keyword ideas quickly and easily.

From there, use keyword tools like Google’s Keyword Planner to analyze a competitive keyword. This analysis allows you to determine which keywords have the most potential for your business.

3. Collect data, analyze keyword research results, and repeat.

As you create content around specific keywords, keep in mind that a great content strategist doesn’t just throw content out randomly to see what sticks. Consider using a tool like Google Search Console to track how your website is performing for your keywords.

Google Search Console can also help you see whether your traffic is increasing from keywords you hadn’t planned on ranking for and this informs your future digital content strategy. Having this knowledge is crucial to further refining your keyword planning and identifying content gaps that have significant potential to bring you new customers.

How to Create Unique Content Through Niche Keywords

What’s great about leaning into less competitive keywords is that it will allow you to build your brand authority within a specific field through clearly defined niche content. Niche content is a specialized writing topic that engages a specific audience’s interests to make a viable impact in your industry’s content market.

If we reexamine our “marketing” example above, we see how difficult it is to make an impact by writing general content on “marketing” in such a saturated market. But what if your content targets a longer, more specific keyphrase like “marketing portfolio examples” and an audience of marketers trying to build or bolster their marketing portfolio?

As you can see, although the monthly search volume for this keyword is significantly lower, it would be easier for you to get a foothold in the market thanks to this phrase’s lower keyword difficulty. To become more authoritative in your space, you need to incorporate long-tail keywords into your content strategy.

Because these keywords have less SEO competition, it’s easier to establish yourself as a content authority on a given subject — which is invaluable in SEO.

Whether you’re just getting started with keyword planning or looking to amplify your current content efforts, keep your customer persona at the front of your mind, and don’t be afraid to recalibrate your content strategy as you collect more data. Great inbound marketing is about having the right content reach your ideal potential customers when they need it, and getting smart with your keyword approach is a fantastic way to do that.

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

According to Microsoft’s 2022 Annual Work Trend Index Report, 53% of employees are considering transitioning to a hybrid work setup in the next year and hybrid work is up seven points from 2021.

So, what does it take to lead a hybrid team? We’ve got a few tips.

1. Set rules of engagement.

When everyone’s in the office, many rules and behaviors go unsaid. After all, everyone is in the same space, so it’s easier to pick up on cues. However, when everyone is scattered, it changes how you approach them.

Microsoft’s report found that following the pandemic, few companies (only 28%) have met with their teams to define their new normal since switching to a hybrid or remote model.

This can lead to confusion, unmet expectations, and high attrition rates. Setting a structure around communication and collaboration allows the team to work more efficiently as it promotes cohesion among all members, despite the physical distance.

2. Leverage asynchronous communication.

Speaking of distance, it can be nearly impossible to get everyone on a call at the same time depending on where your team is.

For instance, say you have some team members in California, others in New York, and some overseas in Kenya. Those are three time zones, meaning three different work schedules.

One way to keep your team connected is to leverage asynchronous tools.

For instance, you can utilize bots within your messaging system, whether it’s Slack, Teams, or another platform, to invite your team to share updates, check-ins, etc.

With Geekbot, the software can be programmed to ask your team specific questions, then share their answers.

So, if your team is unable to sync up for daily meetings, you can still get progress updates from everyone in a channel of your choosing.

3. Have a robust onboarding process.

Having a strong onboarding process is more important than ever.

Data from the Microsoft report shows that employees onboarded during the last two years are at greater risk for attrition, are less likely to feel included within their teams, and tend to have weaker relationships with their direct teams.

Since the pandemic, new hires are relying more on their managers for onboarding – and that’s a good thing for the company.

The study found that new hires whose managers played an active role in their onboarding process were 3.5 times more likely to be satisfied with their experience.

Here are some tips to optimize your onboarding process:

• Prepare training materials and create an onboarding guide.
• Launch an internal mentorship program to guide new hires within the first few months.
• Have a welcome chat to introduce the new hire to the team.
• Send your new hire a survey about their onboarding experience to assess gaps in the process.

4. Trust your team.

Trust is the number one component of a successful hybrid or remote team. Without it, neither party is able to successfully respond to their responsibilities.

In the office, you can always keep an eye on your team. Walking by their desk to check in on a project, peeking to see if they’re actively working. When your team is hybrid, you lose that level of visibility.

As such, you’re forced to trust your team. How do you build trust? Well, it’s a two-way street and it starts with you.

Firstly, be transparent. This encompasses everything from sharing feedback on performance to sharing resources to sharing team and company-wide updates.

Secondly, create a space where your team feels psychologically safe – safe to share ideas, be themselves, learn, and challenge the status quo.

Lastly, find out what matters to each person on your team. What do they value? What are their goals? How do they like to be celebrated? How do they learn best?

Trust also extends to their work. Even though 80% of employees say they are just as productive since going hybrid or remote, most leaders (54%) fear productivity has or will negatively impact their teams, according to the Microsoft report.

Avoid the temptation to micromanage your team. Instead, set the parameters for their tasks, check in with their progress, provide resources when needed, and offer feedback. This will empower your team to do their best work knowing that they have the full support and trust of their manager.

5. Prioritize team culture.

According to the 2022 Microsoft report, the top aspect of work employees views as important – other than money – is a positive culture.

Even though your team is hybrid, you still have to work hard to build its culture. If anything, it’s even more important since you don’t have the physical environment to rely on.

When you have a hybrid team, you have to be intentional about everything – particularly connecting on a non-work level.

43% of leaders surveyed in the Microsoft report say relationship-building is the number one challenge in remote and hybrid work.

After all, you can’t just invite your team to a happy hour at a local restaurant or have an impromptu group lunch.

What you want to avoid is an imbalance where some members feel disconnected from the team because of their distance, which is pretty common. In fact, 44% of hybrid employees surveyed said they do not feel included in meetings.

Here are a few ways to make sure your team feels connected:

• Host virtual events, such as escape rooms, magic shows, and cooking classes, that your team can enjoy as a group.
• Have regular “watercooler” meetings that allow your team to gather and talk about anything non-work related.
• Create non-work-related messaging channels based on your team’s interests, like cooking, TV shows, home renovation projects, pets, etc.
• Plan annual or quarterly meetups with your team, if your budget allows.

This is your opportunity to shape it into one that fosters inclusion, collaboration, and trust.

6. Invest in your team’s equipment.

When your team works in an office, there are certain things you don’t need to account for, such as Wi-Fi, computer, headset, desk, etc.

However, if you have some people from your team working from home, they will need to have access to the same equipment to succeed in their role.

There are also nice-to-have items that aren’t needed to complete the job but can make your team happier and more productive. Think headphones and ergonomic equipment.

Instead of seeing it as an additional expense, consider it an investment into your team that will pay off tenfold.

There you have it – whether your team is newly hybrid or has always been, there’s always room for improvement. With these tips, your team will work as seamlessly as you would in person.