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This post is a part of Made @ HubSpot, an internal thought leadership series through which we extract lessons from experiments conducted by our very own HubSpotters.

A few months ago, I came to a startling realization: My job is meetings.

Maybe you can relate. From morning to night, I spend my time jumping from Zoom call to Zoom call. I race to grab a snack in the two minutes I’m afforded in-between calls, and I’m mentally exhausted by the end of the day. It’s a struggle to decompress before spending time with friends and family.

And, equally challenging, the amount of meetings I have takes away from my ability to get my work done.

I’m Chris Saly — an Engineering Lead at HubSpot.

As an engineer, my day job was code. Sure, we needed meetings to discuss things and stay updated as a team, but the main mechanism and value of my job was the quality and reliability of the code I produced.

Now, the primary value of my job is talking to others. Whether it’s as a mentor, being involved in tactical decisions, or helping set a strategic vision, most of these goals are communicated through meetings.

However, there are some very real consequences to my role as an EL. Among other things, my meeting-heavy life was taking its toll on my mental health, relationships, and workplace productivity.

I knew something had to change. Here, I’ll show you how I incorporated a framework into my calendar planning to reduce meetings, and take back control of my time.

My Job is Meetings

As an engineering lead, I manage the 12 engineers in my group and provide a strategic vision for the pillar in collaboration with my project management, business system analysts, and design peers.

We build internal tools and systems that support the HubSpot Sales, Success, Support, Marketing, and Operations teams to do their jobs day-to-day.

As a result, in additional to the typical duties of an EL at HubSpot, there is also a healthy dose of stakeholder management thrown in, as well.

The nature of my role means that meetings cover a wide range of topics. I might go from one meeting talking about the three year vision for HubSpot’s Sales team, to a systems design discussion on something we’re building right now, to a mentoring conversation with a Tech Lead and then into a critsit retrospective.

What I’ve realized is that my job is now meetings.

What prompted this?

I noticed a a number of days over the last several months where despite finishing work at 5 or 6, closing the laptop and entirely disconnecting from work, I was still amped up and my brain was in ‘work mode’ at 9 PM.

I was struggling to decompress. And considering nearly half of professionals report a high degree of exhaustion after numerous daily video calls, I’m willing to bet most of you understand this frustration.

My calendar on Oct 28th last year is a fair example of what a typical day would look like before Christmas:

• Start my day with a 1-1 with a Tech Lead to discuss mentorship and team health.
• Followed by a conversation across multiple product groups on the technical feasibility of a specific suggestion for a 2021 compass item.
• Then a kickoff meeting for our pillar that is partially selling the vision and partially a social chat.
• After a quick break we’re onto an in-depth technical overview of a system we need to start using as engineers.
• Capping off the day with a meeting with ELs+Director in Flywheel that, depending on the day, might cover people management, technical visioning, or our groups strategy.

So … What’s The Problem?

While I was feeling overwhelmed, I didn’t really understand why, so I took a couple of steps to figure out where things were going wrong.

First, I made a table of all of my meetings, categorized by their purpose, and calculated the amount of time I spent on them on a weekly basis (see below for more details on this)

I also did some soul-searching to see how I was feeling about my meetings. Whether there were days I dreaded, or days I really enjoyed, and tried to get in touch with why I felt that way.

This gave me a couple of realizations. First, I realized the ratio of time spent on supporting teams that report to me, working with peers, and staying abreast of things happening in the company felt right to me.

However, the sheer volume of meetings had crept up on me. Over the course of the previous six months, my group had doubled in size and meetings had passed a threshold without me noticing.

I also realized my meeting load on a weekly basis varied depending on when all my recurring meetings happened to fall.

And, perhaps most challenging of all, I realized there were no themes or focus to my meeting days. One meeting might be deep in the weeds, and the next would be a 30,000 foot view. Changing contexts throughout the day like that is hard, and takes unnecessary mental energy.

Plus, as I’m sure most can relate, the pandemic made my life outside of work Zoom-heavy, as well, with remote birthdays and happy hours. All of which is to say: I was tired of all the screen time.

When I thought about how this all affected me, I came up with the following list:

• I sometimes end the day not being able to turn of my brain and spend time with family & friends.
• It’s a mentally taxing thing to change contexts all day long time and it has an outsized effect on how much energy I have for myself at the end of the day.
• I often feel like I’m running in place trying to take notes, digest information, grab a snack, and use the bathroom as I go from one meeting to the next.
• I struggle to make time for things like AMAs, All Hands, Science Fair, Tech Talk & Hub Talks. After Christmas I had a 12 week tech talk backlog because I just didn’t have the time or capacity to watch them.

If this list resonates with you, don’t despair and keep reading. Fortunately, I came up with a solution to my meetings-heavy job.

A New Framework for Meetings

If my job is meetings, I needed a framework for those meetings to live in — which included boundaries and rules to keep my sanity, as the old ad-hoc approach clearly wasn’t cutting it any more.

First, here are the boundaries I set in regards to my mental health:

• No more than 90 minutes of meetings in one go: There’s only so long I can pay attention and go without a bathroom break.
• Scheduled 15/30 minute breaks before and after any 60 minute block: I book these in as ‘meeting gap’ meetings on my calendar to stop people booking over them.
• No more than 2.5 hours of meetings in the periods before or after lunch: If I go beyond this I can’t decompress in the evenings.
• Hard stop of meetings at 5 PM: I need at least 15 mins to wrap up my thoughts for the day, send a few slacks and take notes for tomorrow. Trying to send a message at 6pm when hangry isn’t a good idea.
• Friday has no meetings, and certainly no meetings after 3 PM on Friday: I use Friday as a catchup and focus day so keeping it free of meetings is key to that. I also need time to wind down from the week and if I’m leaving stuff undone it really affects my weekend

Obviously, these aren’t set in stone, and I’m willing to make exceptions to these if there is a genuine need e.g. If there’s a critsit or a big business impact.

But for regular day-to-day meetings, I’ve found there are very few meetings that can’t wait a couple of days. I’ve also realized meetings rarely need to be more than 90 minutes.

If I need exceptions to these boundaries more than once or twice a month, my spidey sense starts tingling.

Once I set those mental health boundaries, I took it a step further by creating a table to organize my meetings and discover patterns.

First, I put all my meetings into a spreadsheet, tagged each with some relevant tags, and used that as my basis for both analyzing and changing my meeting schedule. It allowed me to play with meeting cadences, and see how it would affect the overall picture.

It also gave me a some data I could analyze to answer the following questions:

• How much time was I spending with teams in my pillar versus my peers and the pillar structure versus the larger Revenue Product Group?
• How much time on broader company alignment like tech talk, AMA, science fair, company talks, etc?
• Was I over-indexing on supporting any particular group and did the overall balance feel right?
• Were there any low priority meetings that were too frequent?
• Was the meeting volume per week roughly the same? And is that what I wanted?

Let’s dive into some of the features of this table now.

1. Color Coding

I’ve been color coding my calendar for over a year now and it’s been really useful, but it’s been ad hoc and I often forget or change what the colors mean without thinking about it. This time I wrote it down to keep myself honest, and so I can refer back to it if I need to.

Color coding my calendar makes it easy to see at a glance what my day and week looks like. If there are too many yellows or reds (meaning medium or high priority) on my calendar I know I need to reschedule or skip some meetings. If I have a day that looks like a rainbow, that probably means I’ll be changing contexts all the time and should try to move things. If I have a solid block of color with no grey in it, I have no ‘me time’ and will be fried by the end of the day. Any of these things are enough to get my spidey senses tingly.

Here’s how to change colors in Google calendar.

2. Meeting Frequency

My meetings had a jumble of recurrences that had grown organically and could be on any schedule, which led to a pretty messy and inconsistent calendar. To help make things clearer and more regular I’ve categorized them into buckets with default recurrences:

• Weekly: High value, high impact. Things that require regular and high volume communication e.g. Direct reports/mentorship, an active project that is close to going live.
• Twice a Month: Things that require ongoing close alignment e.g. same level peers and high stakes projects.
• Monthly: Important topics that don’t change all that rapidly e.g. skip-level 1-1s, project updates.
• Every two months: Just keeping in touch e.g social and connection keeping, interesting projects but doesn’t need active involvement.
• Quarterly: Alignment and planning e.g. product group meetings, OKRs, etc.

Using this rubric has a few benefits:

• It made me think about the purpose of meetings and decide what the appropriate cadence is
• It gave me a common benchmark to compare meetings so I have comparably valuable meetings on similar cadences
• With most meetings now happening once or twice a month, I can often pair similar meetings on the same day which means less context switching.

3. ‘Week in Month’ Meetings

Before I started this my recurring meetings were generally on an ‘every X week’ basis — as in all of my meetings recurred every 2, 3, 4 weeks.

The change I’ve made here is to move all meetings to a ‘week in month’ basis. This means that instead of meeting with someone every four weeks, I’ll meet with them every 3rd Thursday, or instead of every two weeks, it’s every 2nd and 4th Tuesday.

This approach has a number of benefits:

• It combines with ‘meeting frequency’ above to allow me to theme days and weeks so I’m not changing contexts all the time
• It gives a certain cadence to the month e.g. it’s the middle of the month so I know I’m talking to team X this week
• There are 12 months in the year but 13 blocks of 4 weeks, so it inherently slightly decreases the number of meetings
• It frees up the 29th, 30th & 31st as mostly meeting-free days
• Aspects of our business and lives often run on a monthly cadence and tying meetings to that same cadence can be a really useful tool. (Examples of this might include Irish public Holidays, which typically fall on the first Friday of the month and people often take the Thursday or Monday to make it a long weekend; performance reviews and ACR often happen at the beginning of the month; and sales have end-of-month targets, which leads to more pressure on the systems in the last few days of the month.)

All of this color coordination and categorization is well and good — but I’m betting you’re thinking, Well … did it work?

Let’s dive into results now.

So … Is It Working?

I’ve been making these changes since the beginning of the year and I’ve had great results so far.

My mental health has improved and I have more time and energy for myself each day after work. I’ve drastically decreased the amount of days that I struggle to decompress when the work day is done.

I’ve caught up on all the tech talks and I’m following up on action items from meetings more reliably and quickly. I also have more time to get non-meeting work done, and generally feel much more productive.

This was a fairly typical way for my calendar to look before:

And this is a typical week now:

Ultimately, what worked for me might not work for you.

But I encourage anyone who feels overwhelmed by their schedule to take the time to proactively assess and diagnose for redundancies, wasted time, or time that could be better spent re-charging. Simply taking the time to analyze my calendar enabled me to create a more efficient schedule that worked for me.

So maybe that’s really the lesson here: Figure out how your job can work for you, not the other way around. Each person is unique with specific preferences, and if you don’t fight for your calendar to look the way you need it to … who will?  

Instagram is a top-rated app, with more than 1 billion monthly active users. Within the app, individual users, influencers, brands, and businesses alike share high-quality photo and video content, interact in comments, and exchange direct messages.

However, as it is a visual-centered platform, some people across the globe have trouble using the app as they don’t have the same access to cellular data and internet connection required to load many of the app’s features.

As Instagram wants its platform to be accessible to all, they created a solution: Instagram Lite. Read on to discover what it is, the features it offers, and how it may affect global social media marketing.  

What is Instagram Lite?

Instagram Lite is an Android app that is significantly smaller in size (2MB vs. 30-80MB+) than the original Instagram app, so users with differing cellular and internet connection can still benefit from what it has to offer without experiencing a lagging app or differing user experience.

The goal was to create a more accessible app for emerging markets. Tzach Hadar, Director of Product Management at Facebook Tel Aviv, says “Our teams build these lightweight versions of our apps for people with low connectivity or limited data plans because our basic premise is to leave no one behind.” As such, Instagram Lite still contains many of the valued features within the original app:

• Photo and video sharing
• Stories, stickers, and gifs
• Explore page and recommendation algorithms
• Messaging/DMs (groups supported)
• Reels and Reels tab
• Dark mode

As it is a less-heavy load on devices, features that require significant data or connection have been left out, such as:

• Animations when switching between Stories
• Story filters and AR filters
• Swipe-to-type controls
• Going Live
• Shopping and Product tabs

The app is able to save such significant space on devices by running off of code saved to the cloud rather than on the phone. Kelly Hendrickson, Social Media Marketing Manager at HubSpot, says “What excited me most about Instagram Lite is that it makes the platform more accessible. It requires less space on a phone as well as less data, making it easier to run. This is key in emerging markets.”

Where is Instagram Lite available?

Instagram Lite is currently available in 170 countries, with India being the largest country of access. Worldwide release is set to happen soon.

What is the Instagram Lite UX like?

The most significant difference between the Instagram Lite UX is the quality of content on the app, and a lack of graphics and animations that need data to load. While images aren’t grainy or pixelated, they may not be HD in order to ensure that users can load content without experiencing any lagging. A prime example is that when navigating between two different Stories, the animation that is present in the original app is missing.

Other than that, the Instagram Lite UX is not much different from the original Instagram app. For instance, users have the same profile tab (as shown in the image below) with their profile photo, follower and following count, an image feed, and a Reels tab for those who create them.

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The home tab, where your Instagram Feed is displayed, is the same as well, with the stories carousel in the top portion of the screen, the heart icon showing likes and interactions, and the messaging arrow button.

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If you want to share a post on Instagram Lite, the post button is in the navigation footer instead of above the Stories carousel.

Will Instagram Lite impact global social media marketing?

When Instagram Lite becomes available globally, it will require marketers to pivot from typical Instagram marketing strategies. As it currently doesn’t support ads, marketers will have to focus on engagement and building an audience rather than using shoppable tools to drive sales. Hendrickson says, “Part of pulling back features, though, is the removal of advertising. This reminds us how vital Instagram is for brand awareness. When someone can no longer purchase from within the platform, you have the opportunity to influence their decisions down the road by becoming a valuable account for them to follow.”

In addition, marketers will need to be mindful of the quality of photos and videos they upload, as the app is meant to save space and require minimal data usage. Instead, your Instagram Lite strategy may focus on high-quality copy and influencer partnerships in new countries as a means of attracting audience attention, driving engagement, and converting users to paying customers via links to website landing pages.

Marketers will also need to create content able to be understood by those in different markets and relevant to their interests.

Before Instagram Lite becomes available in your country, take the time to research emerging markets that already have access to the app, learn more about their interests and pain points, and begin creating a strategy that will help you show them the value you can provide.

Then, when the app becomes available, you’ll be ready to leverage the information you learned to begin posting on the app.

Chances are, you’ve probably spent an afternoon falling down a rabbit hole of YouTube videos.

I certainly have, and I think I’d be pretty embarrassed to see the total amount of time I’ve spent on the platform.

While it’s a great source of entertainment, YouTube has also proved itself to be a valuable tool for marketers. In fact, 70% of viewers bought from a brand after seeing content on YouTube. And, with a global user base of more than 2 billion people, it’s also safe to assume that your target audience is on the platform.

However, just as it is for all social networks, building a presence on YouTube requires understanding which segments of your audience are already there and what they’re watching. Having that information makes it easier to create content that speaks to their interests, maximize ROI, and achieve general marketing success. In this post, we’ll go over key YouTube statistics you need to know for 2021 to help you succeed in your marketing efforts.

Have you ever double-tapped an image on Instagram, reacted to a video on Facebook, or clicked a search result in Google, only to realize afterward that it was actually an ad?

Maybe you never realized it was an ad at all — you just thought it was a cute picture of a dog.

More than ever, ads can be contextual, relevant, targeted, and helpful in ways they never could before. In short, ads today are content.

But the online advertising landscape is changing.

New platforms, ad types, and targeting capabilities are popping up all the time.

Let’s dig into everything you need to know about online advertising across ad platforms for social media, paid search, display, and native advertising.

If you’re only interested in learning about a certain type of online advertising, you can use the table of contents below to navigate to each section.

How to Advertise Online

93% of all online interactions start with a search engine, and with those odds, you can catch the attention of the audience you want through online advertising.

There’s plenty of ways to advertise your business strategically. Think about who you’re trying to reach when you start. Ask yourself “What target demographic am I advertising to?” and “How can I place my product or service offering in front of my target?”.

The answer is to see where your target demographic spends the most time online. Research their most frequented social media channels and most searched keywords. You can take this information and translate it to organic and paid marketing.

Not all online advertising has to cost money, people can find your business organically through social media marketing. Making a business page on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or even TikTok can capture people’s interest through engaging posts and content.

Now if you want to use pay-per-click (PPC) marketing, most social media offers business pages the ability to pay a fee to promote posts/ads within the interface. Or if you are looking to advertise on a search engine for targeted keywords, Google Ads or sixads can guide you through the process of payment and execution.

There are three key ways that digital advertising can help you improve the performance of your organic marketing efforts.

With digital ads, organic performance can benefit from:

1. An increase in brand awareness by displaying your content to individuals within and outside of your networks.
2. A better understanding of your audiences by leveraging the targeting and analytics of the ads platforms.
3. The creation of higher-performing content by understanding what ad content helps you achieve your business goals and what doesn’t.

The goal of any ads strategy should be to get a positive return on your investment, which comes down to whether you’re getting more revenue out of the ad campaign than the cost you’re putting in.

How can you determine what your ad spend should be to get the most return on your investment? To start answering that question, we’ll need to understand the bidding system used by the ad networks.

A bid is the maximum amount of money you’re willing to pay for the desired action on your ad. If it sounds like an auction, that’s because it is an auction. Ad networks have a limited amount of ad space, and to determine whether or not your ads are shown to your target audience, they run an auction to see how much each advertiser is willing to pay for ad space.

Just like in an auction, the highest bidder wins. Let’s say you bid $10 for a click on your ad, and the next highest bidder only pays $5 for a click.

Each ad network will only make you pay the lowest amount possible to win the bid. In this example, you might be willing to pay $10, but in reality, you’ll only have to pay $5.01 to win the bid. Winning this “auction,” in addition to the overall quality of your ads, will determine how your ads are displayed on the different ad networks.

Here’s another example of how the ad auction works from WordStream.

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At this point, you might be thinking, “Okay, I get how the auction system works. But how do I figure out how much I should actually spend to see a return on my investment?”

My advice is to work backward from your revenue to determine what your maximum bid should be.

Use this equation:

Lifetime Value (LTV) x Average Lead-to-Customer Rate x Average Conversion Rate

Your LTV is how much a customer is worth to you throughout their relationship with your business. The average lead-to-customer rate is the rate at which your leads become paying customers. And your conversion rate is the rate at which new contacts convert on your content offers by filling out a form.

Combined, these metrics show you how much you should spend on your paid ads to break even.

Let’s say that you want to use digital ads to promote your new content offer. You’re going to need to know what your maximum ad spend should be to see a positive return on your investment. Assume that you know the following about your business:

• Lifetime value: $500
• Average lead-to-customer rate: 10%
• Average conversion rate: 20%

Plug these numbers into the equation above to determine what your maximum ad spend should be: $500 x 0.10 x 0.20 = $10. This means that you can spend a maximum of $10 per click on your ad to break even. Your goal should be to spend less than $10 to see a positive return on your investment.

Types of Online Advertising

Now that we know more about how to advertise online, let’s dive into the various types of online advertising.

Social Media Advertising

Every month, there are nearly 2.5 billion active users on Facebook, 1 billion on Instagram, and 330 million on Twitter worldwide.

Whether it’s to chat with friends, stay connected to people across the globe, or for business and networking purposes, consumers are on social media for a multitude of reasons — and marketers know it. Because of the sheer number of active users on these platforms, advertising spend invested in social media channels is at an all-time high. Social media advertising across the world is projected to exceed $8.5 billion this year.

Advertising on social media comes with many advantages. You can:

• Reach very specific target audiences with the help of targeting features and different audiences across all of the social media platforms.
• Leverage a variety of ad formats to advertise in a way that aligns with your business goals.
• Invest in the specific advertising efforts that drive leads and sales for your business.

Let’s take a look at eight popular social media networks, including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, Snapchat, and TikTok. We’ll cover the audiences and ad types available on each one.

1. Facebook

Facebook is the most widely used social media network. Almost 2.5 billion people around the world use Facebook. That’s more than 30% of the world’s population.

With so many people using Facebook, you’re almost guaranteed to be able to reach an audience that’s relevant to any type of business. That’s where one of the most powerful features of advertising on Facebook comes in: audience targeting. The targeting capabilities on Facebook are unmatched by any other social media network.

There are three types of audiences that you can target on Facebook:

1. Core audiences: An audience based on criteria like age, interests, and geography.
2. Custom audiences: Get back in touch with people who have previously engaged with your business.
3. Lookalike audiences: Reach new people whose interests are similar to those of your best customers.

Facebook’s advanced targeting can be used to target your ads to the most relevant audience — and even tap into new audiences you’d otherwise never reach with organic content alone.

Advertising on Facebook includes a range of ad types, including:

• Photo ads
• Video ads
• Story ads
• Lead ads

Photo ads are great for sharing collections of image content. Video ads are great for product explainer videos and branding. Story ads allow you to use a combination of photo and short-form video content. If you want to learn more about the different ad types, here’s a great course from HubSpot Academy all about Facebook Advertising.

Personally, my favorite way to advertise on Facebook is with lead ads because they give you the best of both worlds: sharing visual content and generating leads all at the same time. Facebook Lead Ads allow you to capture lead information without directing people out of the Facebook platform.

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No matter your business’ size or industry, you can use lead ads to find potential customers who are likely interested in your products or services. With lead ads, you provide a helpful piece of content that encourages viewers to sign up for a newsletter, receive a price estimate, or request additional business information. In return, when the viewer fills out the form, the business receives a new lead.

Another way to advertise on Facebook is through Facebook Messenger.

Facebook Messenger is a separate messaging app that comes with its own advertising opportunities. Facebook Messenger is the go-to messaging app in countries including the U.S., Canada, and Australia. Other messaging apps like WhatsApp and WeChat are the more popular choice in countries throughout South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia.

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Across the world, 20 billion messages are exchanged between people and businesses every month on Facebook Messenger. Ads play a big part in initiating conversations on Facebook Messenger.

There are a few different ways you can use Facebook Messenger as part of your advertising strategy.

• Facebook Messenger call-to-action in ads: Start conversations with ads on Facebook that include a call-to-action to send a message.
• Facebook Messenger Story Ads: Run story ads on Messenger Stories.
• Facebook Messenger Ads: Use messenger ads to deliver content directly into users’ Facebook Messenger chats.

All of these ad types come together to encourage your audience to kick off conversations with your business. They can be used to get in contact with a sales team, request more information on a product, or even share other content like blog posts or ebooks.

My favorite way to advertise on Facebook Messenger is retargeting. Retargeting ads in Facebook Messenger are a great way to start targeted conversations and send personalized offers and content.

Sponsored messages allow you to advertise to people who have already interacted with your business in Messenger. This is a great way to re-engage your audience in a personalized way.

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2. Instagram

You can also advertise on Instagram through the Facebook Ads Manager. Instagram has over 1 billion monthly users globally. That’s a little less than half of the number of users on Facebook. The majority of users are between the ages of 18 and 34.

There are three ways that you can advertise on Instagram:

1. Promote posts and stories directly from your Instagram professional account.
2. Create ads from your Facebook Page and promote them on both Facebook and Instagram.
3. Create ad campaigns in the Facebook Ads Manager to access full targeting capabilities.

I recommend taking the third option and creating custom campaigns for your audience on Instagram.

Instagram has similar ad types to Facebook, including:

• Photo ads
• Video ads
• Story ads
• Ads in Explore
• Shopping Post ads

By far, the most interesting ad types right now are ads in the Explore Tab and Shopping Post ads. People using Instagram Explore are exploring their interests and discovering new content creators. Ads in Instagram Explore are a great opportunity to put your brand in front of a new audience.

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Shopping Post ads allow you to include a tag that shows the product’s name and price within your image. Clicking on the tag takes your prospects directly to a product page where they can purchase the item — all without leaving the Instagram app.

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3. LinkedIn

The LinkedIn platform has over 660 million monthly active members worldwide. Users on the platform are largely made up of working professionals which makes LinkedIn a great place for B2B (business-to-business) advertising. LinkedIn is the go-to platform for working professionals, which provides B2B advertisers a large audience pool to reach.

Plus, the advantage of advertising on LinkedIn is its unique targeting capabilities. On LinkedIn, you’ll have access to unique targeting criteria that isn’t available on other platforms.

You can target users on LinkedIn by unique demographics, including job title, job function, and industry. Maybe you only want to advertise to potential customers at the director level who work in customer service within the recruiting industry. LinkedIn’s targeting capabilities make that possible.

Plus, with the option to include lead gen forms in your LinkedIn ads, LinkedIn can be a lead generation machine. This will allow you to not only reach a very specific audience but drive leads without directing them outside of the LinkedIn platform.

The most interesting ad type of LinkedIn is Message Ads. Message Ads allow you to send direct messages to your prospects to spark immediate action.

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How to use LinkedIn Message Ads:

• Deliver a targeted message with a single CTA.
• Drive stronger engagement and response than traditional emails.
• Measure the impact of your messages.

But a word of warning: Don’t send too many Message Ads to the same people or it will come off like spam. And, make sure the messages sound authentic – if you were writing a LinkedIn message to a friend, what would you write in it?

If your Message Ads are too stiff, they’ll come off as spammy, too. Remember: This channel is a one-to-one conversation. Direct messages are sacred spaces – if you’re going to advertise there, you need to be extra careful about taking the time to make your Message Ads feel personal and relevant to your end-users. Make sure you’re delivering value to them in a way that feels authentic.

4. Twitter

Digital advertising is less common on Twitter because organic reach is still a significant driver of a brand’s performance on Twitter. This is very unique to Twitter – but even so, ads can still deliver strong results depending on what your goals are. Twitter has over 330 million monthly users globally. The majority of users are between 35–65 years old.

Advertisers have discovered a few niches that have high engagement on Twitter: B2B and e-commerce. Many B2B companies are using Twitter as a digital marketing tool, and Twitter users are known to spend a lot of money online. This makes advertising specifically to these audiences a great strategy.

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Twitter breaks down its ads into five goals:

• Awareness: Promote your tweets and maximize your reach.
• Tweet engagement: Promote your tweets and get more retweets, likes, and replies.
• Follows: Promote your account and grow your Twitter following.
• Website clicks: Promote your website and get more traffic.
• App downloads: Promote your app and get more downloads.

All of these can work together to help you grow your audience on the platform and convert users into customers.

5. Pinterest

Pinterest is a unique social media platform with 300 million users who are highly engaged and predominantly female. Some people say that Pinterest is the only platform where users actually want to see ads from brands they love because Pinterest is all about visuals.

How to advertise on Pinterest in four steps:

1. Pick a pin: Promote your best pins so they appear in the most relevant places.
2. Decide who sees it: Set up targeting so the right people see your ads.
3. Pay for results: Choose to pay for engagement or visits to your site.
4. Track what’s working: Once your campaign starts, see how it’s doing and make changes.

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Pinterest is great for businesses relying on photography to sell their products and who have a female target buyer persona.

6. YouTube

YouTube is the second largest search engine, second only to Google, with over 2 billion monthly active users. Ads on YouTube appear before and during other YouTube videos or as a stand-alone promoted video that’s displayed after performing a search.

Since you can target demographic information and interests, you can serve your videos to specific relevant audiences already watching videos from similar brands or on related topics.

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7. Snapchat

Snapchat’s 218 million users are predominantly made up of people between the ages of 18–24.

Snapchat offers a few ad types, including story ads, sponsored tiles in Snapchat Discover, and augmented reality (AR) lenses.

Snapchat’s ad types feel pretty similar to the advertising options on Instagram. What really makes Snapchat unique is the augmented reality lenses. AR lenses are sponsored by a business to create interactive moments that users can use and share with their friends. It might be hard to believe, but in this example from Dominos that pizza isn’t really there — that’s the AR lens at work.

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8. Tiktok

One of the newer — and most popular — players in the social media advertising world is TikTok. TikTok is all about creating short, creative, and oftentimes funny videos. TikTok has exploded in the past few years and has reached 500 million monthly users.

Advertising options are still limited; they are mainly geared towards driving awareness. TikTok doesn’t hyperlink posts to websites and only recently started allowing advertising, so businesses advertising on TikTok focus on boosting brand awareness rather than leads or traffic.

Promoting TikTok videos allow brands to build awareness with a young target audience. Most of the posts you’ll see on TikTok are aimed at getting laughs. From a brand perspective, you’ll want to create videos that are funny and align with other content on the platform. Think of things like dance challenges and memes. This type of content is the most effective.

Paid Search Advertising

People searching online are looking for something specific and will click on the first result they believe is going to be the most helpful to them.

You might be thinking: “I already appear in organic results on search engines. Why should I pay to advertise too?”

Well, there are three key reasons:

1. On average, digitally prepared businesses anticipate four times better revenue compared to the less-prepared ones
2. Advertising on search engines protects you from the competition who may be advertising on your branded terms.
3. Search ads appear first in the search engine results pages (SERPs) above the organic results.

Paid search advertising allows advertisers to capture the attention of their audience in a more targeted way than with organic search alone.

Search ads allow you to anticipate the wants, needs, and desires of your potential customers and serve ads to them that are highly contextual. Over time, the analytics of your search ads can help you analyze and improve those ads to reach even more people.

But how does Google know how to deliver the right ad to the right person? That’s where keywords come into play. A keyword is one word or phrase that someone uses to describe what they need in search. Advertising on search platforms takes the targeting capabilities available on social media platforms, like demographics and location, and layers it with the addition of keywords.

When a Google user types a query into the search field, Google returns a range of results that match the searcher’s intent. Keywords align with what a searcher wants and will satisfy their query. You select keywords based on which queries you want to display your ad alongside.

Keyword research is just as important for paid ads as it is for organic search. That’s because Google matches your ad with search queries based on the keywords you selected. Each ad group you create within your campaign will target a small set of keywords and Google will display your ad based on those selections.

Let’s say Mary is moving to a different house and is looking for a home mover. So she goes into Google and types “who are the best movers.” By searching “best home movers,” she’s going to see results for advertisers that targeted keywords like “moving companies” and “top-rated movers.”

Search engines also consider your intent when choosing the types of ads to display.

In the example above, search ads were the most helpful resource. But what if you’re looking for a location-based business, like a coffee shop? In Google maps, you might see “Promoted Pins” like these, shown in purple on the map and in the search results on the left. Promoted Pins are a great way for businesses to attract customers to their business based on location.

What if you’re looking to make a purchase? Well, Google might show you a different kind of post to match your intent, such as Shopping Post Ads.

In this example below, Google shows you shopping post ads for the keyword “buy snowboard.” Since my query includes the word “buy,” Google knows that I’m interested in making a purchase, so I am shown ads for products I might be interested in.

So how do you select your keywords?

Keywords typically fall under two categories: brand and non-brand.

A brand keyword is a word or phrase that includes a brand’s name or variations of a brand’s name. For example, some of HubSpot’s brand keywords include HubSpot, HubSpot Free CRM, and HubSpot Marketing Hub. These are all variations of the HubSpot brand and the tools that we offer.

Non-brand keywords are all other relevant keywords that don’t include a brand’s name or variations of a brand’s name. Some of HubSpot’s non-brand keywords include inbound marketing, sales software, and customer relationship management.

While these keywords are not part of HubSpot’s brand name, they are relevant terms that allow HubSpot to reach audiences that might be interested in eventually making a purchase.

Brand and non-brand keywords play a role in your digital advertising strategy. Brand keywords help you protect your brand from your competitor’s ads.

If you don’t run ad campaigns for brand keywords, you’ll leave your business vulnerable to losing website traffic to the competition who is bidding on your brand keywords. Non-brand keywords still have a role to play, too. Non-brand keywords allow you to reach new audiences unfamiliar with your brand.

When it comes to when your ad is displayed, you don’t just want to pick a certain group of keywords and have the ad shown only when those keywords are entered into the search engine.

This is where match type comes in. Since there’s an infinite number of ways that people can actually search for one term, Google gives you three match types to choose from: exact match, phrase match, and broad match. You can even use a broad match modifier and exclude negative keywords to optimize where your ads are delivered.

Let’s take a look at each match type:

• Exact match: A keyword set to exact match will only display your ad if the search term includes that exact keyword or a very close variation. Exact match keywords are surrounded in [brackets].
• Phrase match: A keyword set to phrase match will display your ad if the search term contains the same order of the words, but it can also contain additional words. Phrase match keywords are surrounded by “quotes”.
• Broad match: A keyword set to broad match displays your ad when the search term contains any or some combination or variations of the words in your keyword, in any order. Broad match keywords don’t include any symbols.
• Broad match modifier: The broad match modifier allows you to select keywords that must be included in the search query for your ad to be displayed. Keywords with a broad match modifier use a +plus sign.
• Negative keywords: Excludes your ads from being shown on searches with that term. Negative keywords include a -minus sign.

Google vs. Bing vs. Yahoo

There are a few advertising platforms out there for search, including Google, Bing, and Yahoo. But Google is by far the most used search engine out there. With 3.5 billion search queries a day, over 71% of the total searches made daily around the world are done on Google. Google brings in six times more searches every day than Bing and Yahoo, combined.

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But this doesn’t mean you should entirely rule out advertising on these other platforms. In some cases, you can achieve impressive results with a smaller ad spend on Bing and Yahoo than you could on Google since there is less competition from advertisers.

My recommendation is to dig into your organic traffic to identify if Bing or Yahoo make up a significant amount of traffic for any given keywords or topics. This might indicate that advertising for those keywords on Bing or Yahoo could be profitable.

Regardless of where you advertise, the good news is that advertising on all of these platforms more or less work and look the same. So knowing how to advertise on one will make advertising on the others easier.

Native Advertising

Publishers like BuzzFeed and The Dodo produce content that snowballs in popularity on social media almost every day. And they make money by helping other brands do it, too. Brands will pay these publishers to craft posts and videos that follow the publishers’ formula for virality. They also pay publishers to distribute this sponsored content to their massive audience through social media and their website.

This is native advertising.

Check out this example from Geico. It partnered with BuzzFeed to create this video advertisement for morning workouts. It’s a topic that is loosely related to insurance, which Geico sells, and it tapped into BuzzFeed’s expertise to create this video that feels right at home with the rest of the content on the site.

When you pay for a publisher’s native advertising services, you’ll be able to leverage their editorial expertise and audience reach to help your brand tell captivating stories to a bigger and better viewership. And each publisher is going to support different ad formats and creative types.

During the creative process, you’ll collaborate with publishers to craft sponsored content that covers one of their main topics and looks like a regular piece of content on the publisher’s website.

This way, even though your post is technically promotional, it won’t disrupt their audience’s browsing experience. They’ll enjoy reading your post and won’t feel like you or the publisher are advertising to them. This exposes your work to a huge, engaged viewership and attracts new followers to your brand.

Native advertising creates a symbiotic relationship between publishers and brands. Publishers who do sponsored content right reap the benefits of another revenue stream and gain more audience trust if they promote a native ad from a trustworthy brand.

For brands, collaborating with prominent publishers can unleash unprecedented amounts of creativity to help them win over the publishers’ audience and boost engagement — as the click-through rate on native ads far exceeds traditional. For example, T Brand Studio, the New York Times native ad business, crafted sponsored posts that captured as much engagement as some of nytimes.com’s highest-performing articles.

To find the optimal native advertising opportunities for your brand, try using StackAdapt or Nativo.

Display Advertising

Display ads are a controversial topic in the digital marketing community. For almost 25 years, advertisers have abused them by tricking internet users into clicking misleading ads — some malicious display ads have even infected people’s computers with viruses. It’s easy to see why people have developed banner blindness and can’t stop downloading ad blockers: display ads have the reputation of being intrusive, distracting, and irrelevant.

On the other side of the spectrum, though, display advertising technology has advanced to the point where ad networks can leverage data and machine learning to offer advertisers more effective targeting strategies and consumers more relevant ads.

Ad networks like Google Display Network and Facebook’s Audience Network are the leaders in the banner ad renaissance. They can display your ads to the right target audience at the right place and time. And if you want more control of your advertising, they’ll let you decide where to place your ads. Below, we’ll cover each ad networks’ features and targeting capabilities:

1. Google Display Network

When you use Google’s Display Network, you can design visually appealing ads and place them on over two million websites and apps, YouTube, and Gmail.

You can also build new audiences by targeting people who are most likely to be interested in your product or service and remarket website visitors just by importing a list of their contact information.

If you don’t want to build out your ideal audience or deal with bidding, you can let Google Ads do it for you. Its automated targeting and bidding features can identify your highest-converting audience for the best return on investment.

Display ads can be most effective when retargeting an audience that’s already familiar with your brand.

2. Facebook’s Audience Network

With Facebook’s Audience Network, brands can expand their Facebook ad campaigns and use the same targeting data they use on the platform to advertise on a huge collection of websites and apps.

Brands can place native ads, banner ads, full-screen ads, in-stream video ads, and rewarded video ads (for example, “Watch this video ad to get more tokens!”) on the network’s websites and apps that their Facebook audience frequently visits.

This type of advertising can be particularly effective for mobile games, like in the example below from 5agame who was able to attribute 80% of their revenue through their rewarded video.

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Now that you know about all of the digital ad types that are available, the next step is to learn how to leverage the right ads for your business to achieve your goals.

If you want to continue leveling up your ads training, check out HubSpot Academy’s free course on the Digital Advertising Training Course.

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

Google Chrome browser extensions allow you to increase productivity, reduce distractions, and source content — all in the comfort of your internet browser.

The best part is that you have plenty of options. The Google Chrome web store offers a variety of different tools that help you become safer, smarter, and more productive with just one click. We’ve curated the best ones here.

We can’t guarantee that these extensions will make puppy YouTube videos less tempting to watch, but we recommend them for busy marketers who want to make their time online more efficient. We’ve broken them down into different categories if you want to jump ahead:

• Productivity
• Security
• Social Media
• SEO
• New Tab
• Content Sourcing
• Blogging

Please note: All of these are free tools, but some of the services that they work with may have paid features or subscriptions.

For all of the greatness that the internet affords — cute animal videos, GIFs, and interesting blogs — one of its biggest downsides is how distracting it can be. How many times have you sat down to work and been pulled into a pit of procrastination?

Perhaps you get absorbed in updates on social media, or maybe you click through Wikipedia trying to determine what exactly Gina Rodriguez’s first TV role was (it was on Law & Order). No matter where you click online, it’s easy to be pulled into a black hole of distraction and low productivity.

Check out the extensions below to remedy this problem and be your most productive self.

1. HubSpot Sales

Users: 800K+

HubSpot’s Sales tool connects your email inbox with your CRM. Instead of having to navigate back and forth between the two products, this extension allows you to transfer contact information from your email directly into your CRM. This saves employees time in their day-to-day workflow and retains valuable information about customers.

Another cool feature that HubSpot Sales provides is the tracking and logging of emails. Users can send emails and receive alerts when their message is delivered, opened, and clicked on. The email thread can then be logged continuously into the CRM throughout the entire correspondence.

2. Todoist

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Users: 700K+

Todoist is a project management tool that lets you create highly organized and visually appealing to-do lists across all of your devices. What’s neat about the Chrome extension is that you can see your to-do list, or your team’s shared lists, and add tasks to it without having to open a separate tab, app, or device.

3. Reply

Users: 10K+

Reply’s Chrome extension helps you research and engage with your potential prospects on LinkedIn. This is a fast and easy way to find and verify anyone’s email address — both one by one or in bulk using LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

Once you get the contacts, you can sync them to your CRM — including HubSpot — or connect with the prospects right away.

4. StayFocusd

Users: 600K+

StayFocusd lets you budget your time on specific websites so you can eliminate distractions when you need to buckle down and work. It’s highly customizable — you could set your time limit to 20 minutes on Twitter and only five minutes on Facebook, for example. It also has neat features like the Require Challenge: Once you set time limits on sites, if you want to go back and change your settings, you have to complete a challenge (think: retyping a piece of text without typos or answering questions).

5. LastPass

Users: 10M+

LastPass is a password manager that autofills in passwords for all of the accounts you save with this extension. You only have to remember one password: your LastPass password. This saves you time and headaches and increases the security of your personal data.

6. Add to Trello

Users: 10K+

If you use Trello for project management, team collaboration, your content calendar, or just a personal to-do list, this extension lets you easily add links as cards to your Trello boards.

7. Extensions Manager

Users: 100K+

We couldn’t give you 50+ different extensions to try out without also suggesting Extensions Manager. Try this tool to organize all of your extensions so they don’t take up half of your browser’s screen. It shows you what extensions you have operating on Google Chrome and gives you the option to hide some of the icons to keep your browser better organized.

8. Toggl Track

Users: 300K+

If you often find yourself spending too much time on one task — to the point that you no longer have time to complete other tasks — consider using the Toggl Track Chrome extension. It initiates a timer right within the comfort of the browser. There’s no need to start a timer on your phone. Simply open up the extension and begin tracking the time you spend on tasks.

9. Print Friendly & PDF

Users: 700K+

If you ever need to save a page in a print-friendly format or as a PDF, you can easily do so with the Print Friendly & PDF Chrome extension. The extension removes ads and other cluttering elements from the web page to turn it into a pleasant reading experience. You can also delete images and change the text size.

10. Email Finder

Users: 200K+

Whether you’re carrying out sales outreach, seeking guest blogging opportunities, or looking for the owner of a small website, Email Finder will automatically give you a list of verified emails associated with that domain. It’s an absolutely brilliant tool for sales reps and marketers who want to save time when looking for potential contacts at a company.

1. HTTPS Everywhere

Users: 2M+

“HTTPS” is a website protocol that ensures a site is secure before you visit it. And although you might recognize this tag at the beginning of most websites, it’s not quite ubiquitous across the internet — nor does it guarantee that the site you’re browsing is 100% secure.

The Chrome extension, HTTPS Everywhere, rewrites the request you send to any website you visit in Chrome so you can be sure your browser produces the secure version of that site. Browse assured that all your personal information is kept safe and your computer doesn’t catch malware while you’re online.

2. Click&Clean

Users: 1M+

If you’re constantly searching and downloading work material during the day, it can be a tedious task to clear your browser history. You just don’t have the time to keep pulling up your history page and manually clearing your cache or download log.

The Click&Clean extension for Chrome allows you to clear your cache, URL searches, website cookies, and download history with a single click of a button on your browser toolbar. The extension can also scan your computer for viruses and clean up your hard drive of unused applications — helping your computer run faster as a result.

3. J2TEAM Security

Users: 200K+

J2TEAM Security isn’t your average firewall. This Chrome extension starts with basic virus protection. It also allows you to customize your website block list and ensures your Chrome browser uses the “HTTPS” security tag on blogging sites — preventing you from visiting user blogs that are deemed unsafe.

The extension also offers a variety of Facebook-specific privacy settings, such as blocking the “seen” tag after you read certain private messages and hiding how long you’ve been active in Facebook Messenger.

4. Ghostery

Users: 2M+

Ghostery is a sophisticated ad-blocking extension designed to remove ads that distract or interrupt you while you’re viewing specific website content. It also disguises your browsing data so ad-tracking tools are unable to collect personal information that you’d prefer to keep private. These features help to speed up webpages’ load time and ultimately improve your browsing experience.

5. Checkbot

Users: 40K+

Checkbot combines technical SEO with modern security to help you analyze both how safe and how optimized a website is for search engines. Because search engines like Google prioritize website security in addition to content quality in their rankings, this Chrome extension is a handy one-two punch for content creators and web developers.

Checkbot can test the page speed, SEO, and overall security of more than 250 URLs per domain for free — and help you improve in these three categories to protect you and your website visitors from unsafe material.

6. Avast Online Security

Users: 10M+

Avast Online Security is known as a “web reputation plugin,” examining each individual website you visit for suspicious information. The extension also warns you if the site you’re visiting simply has a bad reputation. In turn, you can rate the websites you visit to help Avast get better at flagging potentially unsafe webpages while on Chrome.

7. FlowCrypt

Users: 70K+

This security extension is specific to emails, allowing you to send and receive encrypted emails (and attachments) to and from your colleagues. It’s one of the best ways to be sure your emails are kept private and secure while in transit to the recipient.

FlowCrypt uses PGP encryption, which stands for “Pretty Good Privacy” — the standard for encryption in most email clients. The tool integrates perfectly with Gmail, adding a “Secure Compose” button to your inbox.

8. Fair AdBlocker

Users: 1M+

Fair AdBlocker offers both malware and adware in one browser extension. The tool protects you from malware as well as distracting ads and pop-ups. Once installed, you can configure your blocking settings to hide the types of ads you’re least interested in seeing — especially those that carry dangerous information that can infect your computer.

9. Speedtest by Ookla

Users: 2M+

Find out how fast your internet connection is and learn how quickly websites are loading. Knowing this information can help you move to another internet connection if needed, and you’ll also get to see performance metrics for your own site.

10. Hola Free VPN

Users: 7M+

Whether you need to cloak your identity online or browse content from another country, Hola Free VPN allows you to do that for free. The tool can help you browse the internet safely and anonymously without needing to pay for an external VPN service.

Chrome Extensions for Social Media

1. Bitly

Users: 500K+

This extension lets marketers quickly and easily shorten links and share them on social media directly from their browser. This is particularly useful for social media marketers and allows for personalization with an Enterprise plan.

2. BuzzSumo

Users: 20K+

BuzzSumo provides insight into how content is performing. When you’re on a web page, click the extension to show metrics such as the number of social shares and backlinks to a piece. This tool provides an easy way to see how much engagement your content is generating. You could also use BuzzSumo to perform competitor analysis and uncover strategies that might make your content more shareable.

3. Pinterest

Users: 8M+

This extension allows you to easily save items onto your Pinterest boards without navigating away from what you’re doing. What’s neat about this tool is that it shows you multiple pinnable items available on each website so you can save more than one item to your board at a time. (Normally, you would have to click into each blog post or image in order to separately pin each to your boards individually.)

4. Save to Facebook

Users: 1M+

Facebook’s “Save” feature lets users aggregate links, images, and videos they find on Facebook in one location in their account. This extension allows you to do the same from anywhere on the web, making Facebook a centralized place to save content you’re interested in checking out later.

5. RiteTag

Users: 30K+

RiteTag shows you how hashtags are performing on Twitter and Facebook before you post content. Once you log in to RiteTag using your Twitter or Facebook credentials, it checks the hashtags you begin typing in real time and color codes them:

• If your hashtag is green, it means the hashtag will help your content be seen now.
• If your hashtag is blue, it means the hashtag will help your content be seen over time.
• If your hashtag is gray, you should select a new hashtag because it has low levels of engagement.
• If your hashtag is red, you should select a new hashtag because it’s so popular, your content will disappear into the crowd.

6. Buffer

Users: 200K+

Buffer allows you to easily share content from any website to your Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn profiles. If you’re a Buffer customer, you can also use the extension to schedule posts from your browser without needing to access the Buffer website. You can also queue posts for future publication.

7. App for Instagram

Users: 90K

Want to keep tabs on Instagram notifications without having to constantly check your phone? With this extension, users can see what’s happening on their Instagram content directly within their browser. As opposed to having to check your phone, you can access your Instagram feed right in the browser and see other Instagram user’s content in much greater detail.

8. Reddit Enhancement Suite

Users: 1M+

Do you regularly use Reddit in your personal life or in your marketing efforts? And are you specifically a fan of the old version of Reddit? Download the Reddit Enhancement Suite Chrome extension to enhance your experience on the website and browse posts much more easily than you did before. This extension is only compatible with the original version of Reddit.

9. SocialAnalyzer

Users: 800+

SocialAnalyzer is a social media monitoring tool that allows you to keep up with trending posts in one of your target markets or industries. See the most recently published posts and videos on YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook, and see whether people are interacting with the content that people are already publishing. You can use this tool to further refine your social media marketing efforts and track brand sentiment.

10. HubSpot Social

Users: 20K+

Are you a current HubSpot customer? HubSpot Social allows you to post on your social media profiles straight from your browser. You can schedule posts in advance, share a quote from an external article directly to your social feed, and share webpages, too. No need to access your HubSpot portal in another tab. Do it straight from your current webpage.

Chrome Extensions for SEO

1. SEOQuake

Users: 700K+

SEOQuake is a Chrome extension that allows SEO marketers to easily get insights about different websites without leaving their web browser. With one click, you can find search ranking and backlink information about the search results on a Google results page. It also provides details about the amount of backlinks the website has (according to SEMRush), shows you the keyword density of a page, and lists external and internal links.

2. Check My Links

Users: 200K+

Check My Links does what it says it will: It quickly scans web pages and shows you which links are working properly and which are broken. With this extension, marketers can ensure that their own websites are functioning properly for their visitors. Additionally, marketers can check for broken backlinks to their content on other websites. That way, they can build backlinks to their content and increase their domain authority.

3. NoFollow

Users: 100K+

NoFollow quickly indexes web pages and identifies links that are coded with the no-follow metatag. No-follow links aren’t crawled by search engines and don’t contribute to search engine authority, so SEOs can use this extension to determine if external sites are backlinking to them with followed, or indexed, links.

Additionally, you might use no-follow links on web pages you don’t want crawled, such as a landing page or thank you page, and this extension can easily double-check if you’ve coded links correctly. In the example screenshot below, no-follow links are highlighted in red.

It’s a brand new month, everyone! It’s a time for new beginnings. New email campaigns, blog posts, and social media strategies are on the horizon.

But, aren’t we forgetting something? With last month’s activities done, we need to pause for a second to examine what worked and what didn’t. You can’t do that just by saying last month’s activities were “great” — because “great” doesn’t pay the bills.

If you can prove that your marketing activities actually made an impact on your business, you’ll have many more opportunities at your disposal. More budget to play with, potential hires to bring on board, and more ideas to put in action. Sounds like every marketer’s dream, right?

So how do you go about first, finding the right metrics to use, and second, proving your marketing’s ROI to your boss? Why, with a monthly marketing report template, of course. Download our completely revamped PowerPoint and Excel templates by clicking here, Keep reading to learn how you can calculate your ROI in marketing through Excel, and use them in real life.

For example, if you’ve been running a $800 campaign for three months, and you’re seeing a average sales growth of 5% per month and $10000 sales growth from the previous month, then your ROI calculation can assess that trend: (10000 – (.05*10000) – 800)/800

Additionally, if you’re a HubSpot customer, you can access an ROI calculator programmed with the same formula in our CRM. But let’s go ahead and break down how it’s done in Excel for you with and without an existing sales trend.

How to Calculate ROI in Excel

Inputting formulas into Excel is a quick and easy way to solve any equation, and calculating return on investment can be done in a matter of seconds. For an equation without a pre-existing sales trend, the simple ROI equation can be plugged in with ease in Excel as follows: (Sales Growth – Marketing Cost)/Marketing Cost

When you have the amount of sales growth collected and the amount it cost to market collected, plug in the variables into their own rows or columns. When completed, select a free cell to type in the formula using your data.

With these steps completed, press “ENTER” and you’ll have your ROI calculated. If the formula doesn’t automatically calculate it as a percentage, make sure the outcome is recorded as such by selecting the Home Tab > Number > Percentage.

How to Calculate ROI in Marketing

Figuring out your return on investment with more factors — or more realistic outcomes — doesn’t have to be a tricky feat.

For example, over a 12-month campaign, your team may identify an existing sales trend in organic growth and can use it to determine a more precise return on investment. Plug in this variable along with the original factors and input them using this ROI equation: (Sales Growth – Average Organic Sales Growth – Marketing Cost)/Marketing Cost

To compute the percentage, press “ENTER” and you’ll have a more precise ROI to base your marketing decisions on for the future.

Now that we’ve reviewed a couple of examples, let’s walk through how to use your data and how a HubSpot resource can make your marketing reporting a piece of cake.

Which Metrics Should You Track?

First things first — which metrics should you be paying attention to in the first place? Not all metrics were created equal, and if you’re going to capture your boss’ attention with this PowerPoint deck, you’re going to need to tell your story efficiently through data. Click through our marketing metrics template and get tips on how you can put together your marketing report deck.

How to Create Your Own Marketing Metrics Report

So now you know what metrics you need, but what about customizing the PowerPoint slides to fit your business? Follow these four steps so you’ll have engaging, accurate, and concise slides to show to your boss.

1. Download our monthly marketing reporting templates for Excel and PowerPoint.

2. Open up Excel, and fill in the metrics you want to track.

Equations and graphs will automatically populate based on the metrics you add.

3. Copy the graphs and paste them into PowerPoint.

4. Customize your graphs and charts to fit your company’s theme.

After crunching a bunch of numbers, you probably need a little creative break anyway. Click on individual elements in the graph to customize them. If you really want to get fancy with your presentation, check out these five simple PowerPoint tips.

5. Add relevant examples to back up your graphs.

If you truly want to explain your marketing team’s success from the past month, don’t forget to include a slide here or there that touches on specific examples. For example, if you have a blog post that drove a crazy number of leads in a month, you could include that example slide with a few bullet-point takeaways after the “Leads Generated by Marketing” slide. These specific examples give color to your presentation and justify the time spent on future projects.

ROI Excel Templates

Excel is one of the best tools to use when tracking and calculating ROI regularly.

Download our monthly marketing reporting templates for Excel and PowerPoint.

In the above collection of marketing reporting templates, you’ll get to fill in the following contents (and more) to suit your company:

1. Reach

In this template, you can calculate your marketing reach. For example, you can calculate the reach of your blog, email, or social media.

Then, the graphs below will help turn your data into a visual graph.

2. Visits

With this template, you can calculate your visits. This will include visits via several sources and channels including paid traffic, direct traffic, and social media referrals.

Then, the graph below will create a visualization of your data.

3. Leads

In this template, you can input how many leads are generated with your marketing campaigns.

In the graph below, you can visualize your leads depending on the sources.

4. Customers

In this template, you can calculate your customers via traffic source. In the below graph, you can visualize your customers.

5. Conversion Rates

In this template, you can calculate conversion rates by inputting your information.

Keep Better Track of Your Marketing in Excel

Excel is a tool meant to help you in your business, and it’s an organized way to track your team’s success. Make sure to use it to your advantage, and who knows, after a few months of this you may have a bigger budget or a brand new marketer on board.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in September 2013 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

You’ve probably heard that it’s crucial to keep a full, flowing funnel for a business. But what does this mean, and how do you know when you’re on the right track?

Funnel reporting is key to understanding the inner workings of your business. With a detailed funnel report, you can see where customers are at every stage of the sales process. The funnel report can show how many leads you are generating, what deals are being negotiated, what contracts are being finalized, and, ultimately, how many sales are going through.

Knowing your funnel at all times can help ensure that funnel doesn’t dry up, leaving you without leads or consistent sales. So, let’s dive into what exactly funnel reporting is and how to create a funnel report.

What is funnel reporting?

Before you understand funnel reporting, you need to understand the funnel. The funnel is essential to mapping out the customers’ journey to purchasing, from brand awareness all the way through to a sale. Keeping a funnel full of ongoing leads is important to a thriving business.

As such, a funnel report can give insight as to how a customer discovers your brand and what leads them to either flow through the funnel all the way to purchase or drop off somewhere along the way.

The funnel report can determine how effective your marketing efforts are, the number of people coming into the funnel, and conversion rates. This report can also provide insight into ongoing lead generation and sales, so you can see just how many leads you are generating and how many are in the process of signing contracts or making purchases.

1. Awareness

As the customer first enters your funnel, it’ll be through awareness. There are many ways a potential customer can first hear about your brand, whether they hear about your product through word of mouth, see an ad on Instagram, or pass your billboard while driving to work.

2. Interest

Once the customer has found your brand, if they like what they see, they’ll likely start doing some digging. Reading reviews, checking out your FAQ section, and comparing you to competitors are all likely to happen in this stage.

3. Decision

Now, the potential customer will start really considering making a purchase. They might consult with a sales rep or ask for pricing quotes.

4. Action

As the customer moves through the funnel, they will use the information gathered from the previous steps to decide whether or not to make a purchase. That’s why investing in excellent branding, marketing, and customer service is so important, as they will each leave an impact throughout the funnel process and can ultimately be a make-it-or-break-it situation for potential clients.

Ready to start reporting? Here’s how to create a funnel report. These reports can typically be generated through tools like Google Analytics. To make it easier, consider Dashboard & Reporting Software, which will house all your analytics, reports, and dashboards in one easy-to-navigate space.

1. Input Data

First and foremost, you’ll need to input data, from the number of customers clicking on your website link to the number of sales that go through and everything in between. This is something that can be automated and pulled for you through Google Analytics or HubSpot. You’ll set the number of building blocks to differentiate the different stages as well.

2. Filter

Next, you can filter out data you don’t need. The platform you use to create your funnel report will offer basic and/or customizable filter options.

3. Organize into Groups

To better analyze the report, you can organize the funnel by different marketing methods or products being sold. For example, you might create a funnel breakdown that separates the types of marketing used.

4. Visualize

Now, the platform will display the funnel report based on your filters and breakdowns. You’ll be able to see how many people found your website, then compare it to say, how many people made an inquiry, signed up for your newsletter, and/or purchased your products or services.

5. Note Strengths and Weaknesses

With your funnel in front of you, note conversions. See where customers are dropping off and where they are coming from. Your funnel report might show a lot of people coming in from social, despite most of your efforts being on email marketing, where less people are converting into sales. Noting your observations can help you adjust your future marketing strategies.

1. Next-Step Conversions

One of the simpler funnel reports is for next-step conversions. This funnel report will show the conversion rates between steps. So if you have 500 people see your social media ad, and 100 click through to your website, the conversion for this step is 20%.

2. Cumulative Conversions

Similarly, cumulative conversion funnel reports will also visualize conversion, but they will compare each stage’s numbers to the starting stage. This is most helpful when making comparisons to competitors or previous funnel reports.

3. Trends

A funnel trend will visualize changes in conversion rates as time goes on, for better or for worse. This can help you note what marketing strategies work and which ones don’t over time.

4. Time to Convert

How long does it take for a potential customer to make a purchase from the awareness stage to the action stage? A time-to-convert funnel will show how long it takes a customer to make it through each stage of the funnel.

5. Frequency

A frequency funnel report can help you identify what stage is most successful in drawing in customers or where customers tend to drop off.

Use Funnel Reports to Improve Marketing Strategies

A funnel report is an invaluable tool to track the progression of potential clients to customers making purchases. Knowing how clients become aware of your brand and what leads to them ultimately abandoning or making a purchase can help you sharpen your marketing skills.

A funnel report will allow you to visualize the weaker parts of your marketing strategies to improve them while also spotlighting successful — sometimes surprisingly-so — components of the funnel.

Did you know that the first video published on YouTube was only 18-seconds long?

Since launching in 2005, the video giant’s founders have learned time and time again that content doesn’t need to be long to engage audiences.

Now, following a nearly year long beta period – as well as the success of TikTok, Instagram Reels, and other viral video platforms – YouTube Shorts is in full swing and creators can now take advantage of the YouTube Shorts Fund.

Let’s talk about what YouTube Shorts is, how it works, and how brands like yours can leverage it.

What’s the latest with YouTube Shorts?

In September of 2020, YouTube Shorts – a YouTube app feature that rivals TikTok and Instagram Reels – began its first round of testing in India. The beta feature enabled users to see and create 15-second videos with musical overlays.

Even in its most basic beta form, the Shorts feature saw solid performance in India.

In late February of 2021, Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai announced that videos on the India-based Shorts player receive 3.5 billion cumulative daily views.

The Shorts beta was fully released in the U.S. in March of 2021, surpassing 6.5 billion daily views.

A few months later in July, Shorts launched globally in over 100 countries.

With YouTube Shorts still in beta mode, marketers are wondering how they’ll take advantage of this video feature, what the final platform will look like, if it will have similar virality to TikTok, and how it could help brands better engage with YouTube’s more than 2 billion active users.

The truth is, as short-form video platforms grow more and more popular, it’s hard to know which will rise above the others. And, because the YouTube Shorts is still evolving, we can’t fully predict what using it will be like in the near future.

Here’s one thing we do know: YouTube houses millions of hours of branded content. As such, YouTube Shorts could be worth your time – especially if you already have a video strategy on the platform.

Below, I’ll walk through the basics of YouTube Shorts, and what opportunities it could provide for marketers upon its official launch.

When explaining why YouTube decided to launch Shorts, a blog post from the tech giant read, “Every month, 2 billion viewers come to YouTube to laugh, learn and connect. Creators have built entire businesses on YouTube, and we want to enable the next generation of mobile creators to also grow a community on YouTube with Shorts.”

“User-generated short videos were born on YouTube starting with our first upload, a short 18-second video called ‘Me at the zoo.’ As technology advances, creators and artists can now take advantage of the incredible power of smartphones to easily create and publish high-quality content wherever they are in the world,” the YouTube post added.

The post continues to say that consumers today enjoy bite-sized content that they can enjoy at any time of the day. A platform like YouTube Shorts allows viewers to step away from long-form video content and alternate as they please.

What YouTube Shorts Looks Like

YouTube Shorts is currently in beta in over 100 countries.

While we don’t know what Shorts will look like for certain when it moves out of beta, I took a few screenshots of the beta I recently discovered on my YouTube app to help marketers envision the potential user experience.

Creating YouTube Shorts

When you have the YouTube app, creating a Short is one tap away.

When you land on the home screen, you’ll see the “+” icon on the lower center navigation. Once you click it, you’ll see “Create a Short” from the menu.

When you tap Create, the Shorts creation interface will be similar to that of Instagram Stories in that it opens to a camera screen that allows you to:

• Record segments of a 60-second clip or a full minute-long video.
• Upload pre-created content from a camera roll.
• Film a “short” with back or front-facing cameras.
• Adjust video speed.
• Set a recording timer.
• Pick sounds for musical overlays.
• Add filters and text.

Here’s a quick screenshot of some of the platform’s features.

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Watching YouTube Shorts

Before the Shorts beta test, YouTube had already been testing a section of its site where shorter videos were placed, shown below.

Today, YouTube added a dedicated shelf for the Shorts feature to its app homepage where you can start to view Shorts created by beta testers as well as short videos YouTube already had on the platform.

When watching a Short, you can tap icons on the right bottom of the screen to “Like,” “Dislike,” or comment on the video. If they enjoy what they see, they can also tap the “SUBSCRIBE” to follow the video creator.

Once a viewer finishes a Short, they can swipe their finger up – like on Reels or TikTok – to see a vertical feed of more Shorts from other creators.

Users can also access this vertical feed on their home screen, by clicking on the Shorts tab.

What Makes YouTube Shorts Different from Its Competitors

As a marketer, seeing every social media platform launch Stories or short-form video features might be overwhelming.

And, now that so many have come out, you might be asking yourself, “Will YouTube Shorts provide more opportunities than Instagram Reels or TikTok?“

Well, we still don’t know yet. However, we think YouTube Shorts will be worth watching. Here are a few reasons why.

1. Short-form creators could see a bigger reach.

While Gen Z users flooded TikTok, causing its astounding early growth, YouTube, the second largest website globally, launched Shorts to more than 2 billion monthly active users.

Rather than wondering, “Will YouTube Shorts get awareness?“, ask yourself instead, “How do I tap into YouTube’s huge audience with Shorts?“

According to Nelson Chacon, HubSpot’s principal YouTube content strategist, you’ll want to know which segment of YouTube’s huge audience you want to market to before producing Shorts – or any other YouTube video for that matter.

Additionally, if you have a solid subscriber list, continue to create content that’s still relevant to them – even if it’s shorter-form.

“Your subscribers know your channel for its content and Youtube, as a platform, works best with consistency,” Chacon says.

For example, say you regularly create long-form content related to your product or industry and find that it engages your audiences. Chacon notes that you can use Shorts to create quick tutorials or step-by-step videos around those content topics.

2. Brands in most industries could leverage Shorts.

Because TikTok has a somewhat niche user-base filled with younger consumers, some types of brands, such as B2B companies, might have a harder time growing awareness there.

While YouTube shares similar popularity with young adults, the content on its platform is so vast that it brings in people from all sorts of age groups, countries, industries, and niches.

Ultimately, there’s a video for everyone on YouTube. With Shorts, more brands will be able to engage with audiences from a much wider range of audience targets.

For example, while a B2B brand might have difficulty connecting with Gen Z consumers on TikTok, they might be able to connect with professionals looking for industry-related content on Shorts.

Similarly, if you target older generations, such as Gen X, your short-form content might get more engagement on YouTube than TikTok.

3. YouTube Shorts could be less vulnerable than other viral platforms.

This summer and throughout the fall of 2020, TikTok was threatened with bans and censorship regulations.

Why is this concerning? If you’re a marketer who spends time mastering content strategies on a social media app, a ban or regulation of that app could mean that the content you’ve worked so hard on might never be seen.

However, because YouTube is one of the oldest and most successful online platforms, and it’s owned by the publicly traded Alphabet, it might be seen as more trustworthy to governments than viral apps that provide less public data security information – like TikTok.

4. Shorts could provide long-term benefits.

While Instagram Stories and Reels content expire by default after 24 hours, some YouTube Shorts beta testers say Shorts don’t disappear from YouTube – which could help grow long-term YouTube awareness.

For example, if a person who prefers short-form content stumbles upon your YouTube page, they can see all of your short videos, rather than only being able to access your longer content.

Or, if someone’s in a rush and searching for a quick how-to video related to something you’ve filmed, they might find and watch your short videos on that topic – even if you published them months ago.

How 5 Brands Use YouTube Shorts

1. Danessa Myricks Beauty

Have exciting news you want to share with your audience? Take a page out of this brand’s playbook.

In this countdown-style video, Danessa Myricks Beauty used a short to promote its launch in Sephora and build some anticipation.

In the first half of the video, multiple people can be heard saying “One more day.” Then, we see the CEO sending off a package to be sent to Sephora stores.

Here’s why this works: There’s no time wasted in this Short. It’s engaging from the very start and every frame serves a purpose. Secondly, there’s a clear message – the audience leaves knowing the 5Ws (who, what, when, where, why).

Lastly, this Short creates excitement for the brand’s growth and invites the audience to join in the countdown.

2. LYFE Marketing

Who said informative content had to be long? LYFE Marketing shows that you can create fun, engaging, and informative content in under 30 seconds.

In this Short, the brand breaks down color psychology. The talent in front of the camera simply points to the text which appears on different parts of the screen during the video.

If you don’t have a big media budget, this is an effective, low-effort method of creating content your audience will be interested in.

3. WebFX

Shorts are a great way to repurpose content. You can take content from a blog post, live stream, or downloadable report to create a short-and-sweet video.

Digital marketing agency, WebFX, created a short to explain the costs behind social media marketing.

With the use of graphics, WebFX delivers great information in a succinct way. It’s likely the brand has an article or other form of content that dives deeper into this topic.

But for social media, snippets are the way to go. When done right, they pique your audience’s interest and lead them to your website.

4. The Voice

To promote its new season, NBC’s The Voice created a Short featuring this year’s hosts.

What works well here:

• It serves as an ad for the brand.
• It utilizes text to emphasize certain phrases and keep the audience engaged.
• It includes a banner at the end with clear directions for viewers on when and where to watch the show.

5. Satori Graphics

Here’s another great example of how graphics and illustrations can take your Shorts to another level.

Satori Graphics is a popular YouTube channel to learn graphic design. The channel features hundreds of long-form videos on the topic and this Short serves as an extension of what’s already on the channel.

This tactic can work well for attracting new viewers to the channel, as a one-minute video is less intimidating than a 20-minute video. It’s similar to how you present a content offer at the end of a blog article.

A reader may be more likely to read a blog post first than read a 20-page report, as it’s an easier point of entry. The same concept can apply to Shorts.

How to Prepare for YouTube Shorts

While we aren’t sure how Shorts will evolve, it’s not too early to consider how you could implement it into your social media or video marketing strategy. Here are a few quick tips to keep in mind.

• Optimize short YouTube videos: Chacon says global creators should begin to add, “#shorts” to descriptions of videos that are 60 seconds or less.
• Identify short-form topics: Are there any topics your team creates content around that could be distilled into a few quick tips, steps, or data points? If so, you might be able to repurpose this information by creating a Short.
• Audit your short-form videos: Have you created Instagram Reels, TikToks, or other social media videos that would only need a few light tweaks to engage your YouTube audience? If so, you could test them on Shorts when the platform launches.

To learn more about YouTube Marketing, check out our Ultimate Guide – or download the free resource below.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in March of 2021 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

In the marketing industry, we treat experts like they’re village elders, soaking up every tip and trick they have to offer so we can implement them into our own work, desperately hoping for similar results.

But, when you really think about it, marketing is always changing and experts often don’t have visibility into your unique context.

This naturally begs the question: what should you do when you can’t find a solution to one of your problems on the internet? To find the answers to your unique problem, consider channeling your inner Sherlock Holmes and become an investigator.

Investigators forage for information that’ll lead them to the answers to their own specific questions. And, as a marketer, one of the best investigative tools at your disposal is A/B testing.

Every company has a different set of customers, so there’s no one-size-fits-all formula for designing the most optimal website, crafting the most compelling copy, or building the most effective product.

To figure out which website design, line of copy, or product feature will produce the best results for your company, you must discover what your unique set of customers prefer.

To help you do this, we’ve curated eight of the best A/B testing tools that’ll help you optimize your website design, copy, product, and, most importantly, help you find the answers tailored to your needs

1. HubSpot & Kissmetrics’ A/B Testing Kit [Featured Tool]

Don’t know where to start with A/B testing? This tool may be just what you need.

Download the kit for free to get started with A/B testing in your business – an A/B test tracking template, a how-to guide for instruction and inspiration, and a statistical significance calculator to see if your tests were wins, losses, or inconclusive.

It’s ideal for businesses just getting started with A/B testing, or for businesses that need a way to track their existing tests.

Pricing: Free

2. Google Optimize

Google Optimize offers a set of tools under the Google Marketing Platform to help brands improve their website’s performance.

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Their A/B testing tool, in particular, offers more than just the standard A/B testing. Users can test more than two versions and can also run:

• Multivariate testing
• Split URL testing
• Server-side experiments

The best part? It’s free to use for all your testing and personalization needs.

Pricing: Free

Landing Page A/B Testing Tools

3. Freshmarketer

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Freshmarketer, which is the marketing arm of the business platform Freshworks, is a conversion rate optimization software that offers A/B testing and split URL testing.

Their A/B testing tool can test, target, and validate your experiment, integrate with Google Analytics, and even track the amount of revenue your experiments have generated.

Freshmarketer’s Split URL testing tool can help you test multiple variations of URLs, turn winning test variations into real web pages, and grasp the effectiveness of your web design by offering heatmaps of every variation of your split URL test.

Pricing: Starts at $19/month for A/B testing features

Web Testing Tools

4. VWO

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Trusted by over 4,500 enterprise brands including eBay, Target, and Virgin Holidays, VWO is an A/B testing and conversion rate optimization platform tailored specifically for enterprise brands.

In their suite, you can build A/B tests, Split URL tests, and multivariate tests with a drop-and-drop editor.

To gauge the performance of your tests, VWO offers a robust reporting dashboard. VWO also offers a SmartStats feature that leverages Bayesian statistics to help you run faster tests, give you more control of your tests, and reach more accurate conclusions.

Pricing: Upon request

5. Optimizely

With 24 Fortune 100 companies as customers, Optimizely is a digital experimentation platform for enterprise marketing, product, and engineering teams.

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Using their powerful A/B and multi-page experimentation tool, you can run multiple experiments on one page at the same time, allowing you to test various variables of your web design.

Optimizely also offers testing on dynamic websites, various experiment dimensions like an ad campaign, geography, and cookies, and various experiment segmentation parameters like device, browser, and campaign.

Pricing: Upon request

6. Omniconvert

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It’s a conversion rate optimization platform that offers an A/B testing tool, as well as survey, personalization, overlay, and segmentation tools.

Using their A/B testing tool, you can run A/B tests on desktop, mobile, and tablet. Additionally, you can turn winning versions of an A/B test into the control for a future test and leverage Frequentist or Bayesian statistics to validate your tests.

Omniconvert also blends their segmentation tool with their A/B testing tool to let you test over 40 segmentation parameters, like:

• Geolocation
• Traffic source
• Visitor behavior

This allows you to improve your website’s user experience, product features, and content’s ability to engage and convert.

Pricing: Starts at $167/month

7. Crazy Egg

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Crazy Egg is a website optimization software that offers A/B testing, heat mapping, and usability testing tools.

Its A/B testing tool lets you test variations of every single page on your website by adding one snippet of code to the pages you want to experiment on.

Crazy Egg also lets you build A/B tests without any coding experience, sends more traffic to the optimal variant of your test once it recognizes it’s the winner, and offers intuitive conversion tracking and reporting tools.

If you work for a small business, Crazy Egg is definitely a tool you should consider.

Pricing: Starts at $24/month

8. AB Tasty

With AB Tasty’s conversion rate optimization software, your team can build and run A/B tests, split tests, multivariate tests, and funnel tests with their visual editor.

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You can also leverage their advanced targeting to test based on various criteria like URL, geolocation, weather, and more.

To help validate your tests, AB tasty offers reports that display your tests and their confidence levels in real-time. This allows you to make decisions quickly and accurately.

Pricing: Upon request

9. Convert

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Trusted by brands like Sony, Unicef, and Jabra, Convert is an A/B testing and web personalization software that offers A/B testing, split testing, multivariate testing, and multipage experiment tools.

Convert also offers an advanced segmentation tool that allows you to segment users based on their historical behavior, cookies, and JavaScript events.

Additionally, Convert can gauge the performance of all your tests by reporting on a large mix of metrics, from your variations’ clickthrough rate to its return-on-investment.

If you want to use Convert in conjunction with your other tools, they offer a ton of integrations with third-party tools, like WordPress, Shopify, and HubSpot. Convert is best suited for small businesses.

Pricing: Starts at $699/month

10. Adobe Target

Testing your website is important, but what if you have other channels that you want to test? Adobe Target helps you do exactly that.

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Whether you’re want to test your app’s new home screen or want to experiment on your internet-of-things system, this tool’s got you covered.

In addition to testing on multiple platforms and devices, Adobe Target also offers testing on both the client and server side, offering advanced features for experienced teams.

Pricing: Upon request

11. Leadformly

Struggling to capture leads through your forms? Perhaps visitors are leaving right before reaching the final step. Or maybe they leave halfway through completion.

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In any of these cases, you want a tool like Leadformly to help you get to the bottom of this. Even teams with high-converting forms can still benefit from testing their forms, as they may discover additional ways to increase their CVR.

Pricing: Starts at $37/month

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

To succeed at our jobs, we often ended a wide range of skills, from simply communicating to in-depth product knowledge.

Soft skills, like communication, fall into the category of interpersonal skills, and they are typically expected of everyone, regardless of the position you apply for. In this post, learn what interpersonal skills are, examples of what they look like in action, and how to develop them and display them on your resume to stand out against other applicants.

Interpersonal skills relate to all aspects of life, from close relationships to business partnerships.

Interpersonal Skills in Organization

In the business world, interpersonal skills dictate how we get along with our team members. For example, suppose you sense tension at work. You may pick up on this and use active listening to get to the root of the problem and then use effective communication to come to a resolution.

Why are interpersonal skills important?

Many career paths come with consistent interaction with people, whether coworkers or teammates, so it’s crucial to know how to interact with everyone. Without them, it would be challenging to perform as expected.

Given this, employers look for people with strong interpersonal skills because it means they can work well with others and communicate in a way that drives business success. In some jobs, like customer service, strong interpersonal skills are critical.

Most critically, interpersonal skills help us interact with others in a respectable manner. Even if you’re a software engineer who spends most of your time on the computer, you still need to interact with your teammates and sometimes explain technical details to those who may not have the same know-how, which requires good communication.

There tends to be some confusion about interpersonal skills vs intrapersonal skills, so we’ll explain the difference below.

Intrapersonal vs. Interpersonal Skills

A few letters make up the difference between intrapersonal and interpersonal skills, but they are different. Specifically, interpersonal skills are how you speak to yourself in your mind, and interpersonal skills are involved in conversations with other people.

However, both relate to each other through emotional intelligence. Having strong self-awareness (intrapersonal) can help you become better with interpersonal skills, as you’ll be able to manage your emotions, regardless of the situation, and respond accordingly.  

Types of Interpersonal Skills

There are various types of interpersonal skills, and many complement each other. Below we’ll list common interpersonal skills and give examples of what they look like in action.

• Communication — The way you communicate clearly and effectively with others.
• Conflict management — How you deal with troubling business situations as they arise, whether mediating an issue between colleagues or seeking solutions for a personal matter. Regardless of your level of seniority, conflict management is an essential skill.
• Empathy — Empathy is the most important interpersonal skill, as you need to have empathy, understanding, and care for those around you and that you work with daily.
• Leadership — Involves being able to motivate and encourage others, regardless of whether you’re in a leadership role, and being able to step up to the plate in scenarios where a leader is needed.
• Listening — Strongly relates to communication and empathy; you need to listen to your coworkers, so they feel comfortable, listened to, and valued.
• Collaboration — As an employee, it is crucial to be able to get along with others and work as a team to get the job done.

Examples of Interpersonal Skills

Type of interpersonal skill	Example of interpersonal skill in action
Communication	Non-verbal communication and body language, public speaking, verbal communication, written communication, ability to develop rapport
Conflict management	Problem-solving, active listening, mediating
Empathy	Being caring, compassionate, diplomatic, kind, practicing active listening, being understanding, developing rapport
Leadership	Encouragement, management, mentoring, motivation, dependability, consulting, constructive criticism, diplomacy, flexibility
Listening	Active-listening, curiosity, ability to focus and show that you’re focused, and listening to those who are speaking
Collaborate	Ability to see both sides, make people feel respected and valued, work in teams, and understand team dynamics

How to Develop Interpersonal Skills

Interpersonal skills are essential, regardless of the role you’re in. Here are some tips for developing your interpersonal skills and improving upon the ones you already have.

1. Leverage available resources.

Look for online courses or books from experts that explain the importance of interpersonal skills and give tips on developing them based on their own experiences.

2. Identify areas for improvement.

Identifying areas for improvement can help develop your skills.

You can ask for feedback from people who work with you daily and hear about areas that they think could use improvement. If you work in customer-facing roles, you can monitor your NPS scores or customer feedback surveys to get a sense of where they feel you fall short.

3. Ask for feedback, and learn from it.

One of the best ways to get a sense of your skill level is to ask for feedback on your current performance from people that interact with you every day, like colleagues, mentors, or bosses.

For example, maybe you work in teams on a day-to-day basis, and one of your colleagues says that sometimes they don’t feel heard by you. You can learn from their assessment and make an effort to practice active listening.

4. Practice your skills.

As with most skills, one of the best ways to develop them is by practicing them. Put yourself in situations where these skills will be required of you, like stepping up during team meetings and assuming leadership roles. As mentioned above, you can then ask for feedback from peers and learn what went right and what needs more work.

5. Recognize that there is no “end” to developing your skills.

Although your desire may be to be perfect, there is no way to be perfect. Everyone is always learning on the go and developing their skills, especially since role requirements can vary.

For example, working in customer service may require you to focus more on problem-solving and empathy, while assuming a role as a manager may require you to spend more time collaborating and conflict management. Recognize that there is always room for growth and development and, as long as you are aware of this, you’ll develop the skills you need to succeed.

Interpersonal Skills on a Resume

It’s important to emphasize your interpersonal skills on a resume, as many employers look for them. Sometimes interpersonal skills are referred to as soft skills instead of technical skills like having product knowledge.

The most important thing to do is to identify the skills you have that match the job description of the new role, so you can explicitly demonstrate how they’ll help you succeed.

Once you’ve identified these skills, you have three options for displaying them:

• A simple bulleted list of skills,
• A bulleted list of your job accomplishments and the interpersonal skills you have that have helped you achieve this success,
• In a summary of your experience at the top of your resume.

As mentioned above, there is no finish line for developing your interpersonal skills. Those you need for each job will likely change depending on your industry, and it is always important to continuously be learning. However, leverage the tips on this list, put yourself in situations where you’ll need to practice your skills, and you’ll find yourself succeeding in your roles, regardless of whether you’re just starting out or are a seasoned executive.