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Did you know the current U.S. cosmetics market is worth over $95 billion? 

With the fast growth of the cosmetics industry, it’s become competitive and saturated — especially for startups.  This industry can be even more challenging to break through when you’re trying to sell a product that you’re audience might be less familiar with.

With this in mind, Glow Recipe, founded by Sarah Lee and Christine Chang, aims to bring U.S. awareness to Korean beauty (or K-beauty) trends, as well as its own lines of natural, fruit-based cosmetic products. 

But, before Glow Recipe sold thousands of cosmetic products and built an audience of more than 1 million social media followers, it actually started as a simple product curation site aiming to highlight other K-beauty brands. 

In a recent episode of The Shake Up, Alexis Gay and Brianne Kimmel sat down with Co-CEOs Sarah Lee and Chang to learn how they built a well-known beauty brand and positioned their products for the U.S. and other global markets.

Below are just a few great highlights from the episode, as well as an audio player so you can listen while you read.

Glow Recipe Highlights

How and Why Glow Recipe Began With Curation

[00:18:54] Gay: It seems to me like through the work of several companies, but particularly Glow Recipe, Americans are increasingly aware of K-beauty and the philosophy behind it. … I’m wondering if you could just tell us a little more. What are the actual key markers of K-beauty?

[00:19:17] Chang: The whole catalyst for us starting this was actually the realization that there was a burgeoning interest in Korean beauty at the time. This was all the way back into 2014. We were also seeing not only consumers but also global companies looking to Korean manufacturers and Korean labs for the latest innovations and skincare, ingredients, and technologies.

… We were also seeing that Korean beauty articles … were very focused on [K-beauty] as a 10 to 15-step regimen. … It would almost be a little — in terms of content — too clickbaity, versus really getting at the heart of the matter, which is that Korean beauty is about a philosophy. … It’s something that we ourselves learned at our mothers’ and grandmothers’ knees growing up.

We both have these amazing memories of … our grandmothers using watermelon rind and rubbing that on the skin to suit heat rash, or our mothers just marching over to the pantry. And I know Sarah’s mother — one of her favorite ingredients was cucumber slices. Or my mom would like to use greater potato and [00:20:30] just that holistic very easily, the accessible approach to natural ingredients, incorporating that into your self care routine. We would very often mask together with our moms while watching TV. And it wasn’t a chore. It wasn’t an arduous 15 step thing you had to get through.

[00:22:19] Kimmel: Can you tell us a little bit more about that evolution from becoming the trusted source in your friend group for K-beauty products to then curating this amazing new experience that turned into an amazing community in a very big market.

[00:22:45] Chang: We flew over in 2014 to Korea without so much as a website to get some brands on board. And we pounded the pavement to find these brands that many of which we’re still very close to today. … The commonality was that they were all helmed by really passionate brand founders that had unique products, really clear product formulation philosophies, and we felt like these were the brands … that needed to be introduced to the U.S. and other global markets — because of the sheer astounding innovation, beautiful textures, and ingredient stories we were seeing. … After a lot of convincing … We were able to get eight or nine brands on board.

… On that trip, we kicked off our site right away. … There were a lot of mishaps along the way. I cringe a little bit when I see the early iterations of our site, because at the time you were like, “Hey, it looks great.” … Now, looking back on it, there were some clear optimization opportunities, but it was so fun.

… Every day, we were making emails ourselves. We were cold calling journalists ourselves. We were figuring out the social media content. … It was a lot of scrappiness, but also we really enjoyed it because we knew each and every step we were taking was getting us closer to our goal of bringing K-beauty philosophy to the wider audience and the way that we thought was right.

… We knew that eventually, we would have to take that step ourselves because we ourselves had that formulation philosophy internally that we wanted to really materialize and manifest through, through our own brand and the right timing for that eventually came. So a couple of years after launching RSP as a curation site, we launched our own in-house food-for-skincare brand that you see today, and on the shelves at Sephora in mid-2017. … And that was … a very close partnership with the retailer to make sure that we were successful in launching the brand.

Why Glow Recipe Pivoted from Curation to Product Creation

[00:26:29] Lee: I think the first reason why we started as a curation business model was because we wanted to give the platform and the opportunity to these brilliant founders and brands to go global by providing the content and education and marketing.

… Once we were able to gain that credibility in the market, I think that’s when we needed to really think about what we wanted to do as founders.

… What we wanted to do was combine those [Korean beauty] tenants and create our own brand because we didn’t really think that all of the influx of Chinese and Korean beauty innovations were fully understood by the American consumer. We felt the urge to break down that barrier and create our own brands that are actually much simpler.

[00:28:12] Chang: With Glow Recipe Skincare, it just felt right. Our community could not get enough. People were DM-ing us, our brand, our, our personal Instagrams nonstop asking about … the next draw, product suggestions, ideas. There was just so much passion and buzz around this brand. And we knew that we had struck a chord with it because it was this balance of — yes — Korean beauty philosophy, but also results. …

Also, [one thing that drew audiences was] the fact that we were speaking about fun skincare. For the longest time, I think skincare had been really dominated by a lot of very clinical brands. … Of course, so many brands that are in that space are also really amazing. But I think that sense of sensory reality — that extra moment that touch that made your self-care routine that much more special — all of this was really, really appreciated and we felt like it was ours. [It was] lmost our dutie to the community to make sure that we were giving them what they wanted.

How Glow Recipe Maintained Brand Relationships

[00:29:45] Kimmel: How did you think about … the early community that you had built around curation. Were there specific ways that you were able to learn from those founders or continue to build a relationship with them once you made the transition from curation over to Glow Recipe?

[00:30:12] Lee: some of the founders from the curation brands are still our friends to this date. So there is a lot of synergy that comes from that because we can always pick up the phone, call them, and ask them for opinions about certain things.

… We’re both brand builders and creators, right? So we share so much in common. We terminated our curation business model, but the relationships and the friendships continued to this day. We still touch base with them once in a while, make sure that if they have any questions around navigating the U.S. market, we’re there for them because we want everyone to succeed at the same time.

… When we were transitioning to a creation business, we were not only giving them connections to the networks that we had with the retailers. But, we were asking our customers to not forget about these products or brands. We were giving them site links to those products to continue to shop them because we curated them for a reason.

Why Marketing Product Differentia is Key

[00:31:40] Gay: Did you ever have any doubts at that time that this was the right move, or were you 100% confident? 

[00:31:53] Chang: I don’t think we had doubts per se, but then it’s really hard to gauge the level of success a brand will have. There are so many brands in the industry. We’ve had many conversations with many people in the industry about how saturated the market is. So each and every brand that comes into existence needs to have a real point of difference and a real reason. I think with Glow Recipe Skincare, we were able to really distill some of those personal experiences, those personal passion points into the brand.

… How do we provide products that are different and really add value to [the customer’s] routine when they buy it and make it part of their skincare wardrobe? That perspective, I think, has continued to serve us. And it goes back to those early days where we ourselves were answering every single customer email and writing notes to every single person who purchased from our site.

Balancing Community and Product Management

[00:33:32] Gay: I’m wondering how you balance keeping that customer-first, community-first mentality with some of the less glamorous aspects of creating a product.

[00:33:46] Lee: We’re first-time entrepreneurs. One of the things that we’ve learned, are still learning, is how do we balance everything when we have to oversee everything as founders and co-CEOs. I think the great benefit that we have today is that we have such an incredible, talented team. … I can say with confidence, that they just understand the social space. A lot of our team members are actually relatively young and very plugged into TikTok. So they just have their ears and eyes on the … social media landscape in realtime. Because of that, we’re able to not only react quickly, but proactively share what we have going on transparently with our community.

… That communication aspect, but also the decision making internally for the business has been really instrumental. … We think of every team member as a content creator. When we hire people, we always ask about their storytelling aspect, or photography skills.

… And we often have brainstorm sessions with our team members, just tasking people to think about a challenge that we’re facing, whether it’s a marketing initiative or a new campaign idea where we’re stuck and we want everyone to contribute,

Chang and Lee’s Top Leadership Challenges

[00:37:49] Alexis Gay: What keeps you up at night? What’s hard right now. What challenges you as co-CEOs?

[00:38:06] Lee: It’s a really timely question because there are some key challenges that we’re facing today where, as a company, we’re very rapidly growing. We’re very grateful for that, but that comes with a challenge around how we can make sure that everyone stays motivated and our culture is maintained.

… I think any entrepreneur can relate with something like this. Cause at any point of your entrepreneurial journey, your team pretty much makes up most of what makes a success or not. … I think people s everything. And so we’re trying to figure out how to, you know, hire because we do need to have at least 10 people more on our team and the next few months.

[00:38:52] Chang: We do have a lot of brainstorm sessions because the team is full of ideas and we love having those creative conversations and just really giving everyone an opportunity to voice their thoughts and opinions.

… Going forward, it’s really up in the air, right? Because is that day in the life going to take place at an office, is it going to continue to be worked from home? These are questions I think every founder, every company owner’s, grappling with as we move toward getting out of the 100% work from home time that we all had to be in.

To hear the full podcast, as well as other episodes, check out The Shake Up on the HubSpot Podcast Network. 

To thrive as a small business, you need press coverage. But, unfortunately, coverage doesn’t just come naturally – you need to work for it.

Enter: the press release.

Press releases are important for increasing your brand awareness and helping your public relations (PR). But if nobody sees your release, you won’t get very far. You need to distribute it effectively to get your story picked up by local and/or national newspapers, magazines, or blogs.

In this guide to press release distribution, we’ll cover the following to help you put together a plan of action that results in coverage:

• What is press release distribution?
• Why is press release distribution important?
• How to distribute your press release
• Distribution mistakes to avoid
• Should you use distribution services?

Keep reading to learn how you can properly create, pitch, and distribute a press release for optimal brand awareness.

What is press release distribution?

Before we dive any deeper, let’s iron out exactly what press release distribution is.

It’s the process of circulating or seeding out your press release to journalists, publishers, and members of the press.

Your press release normally provides updates on your company’s products and/or services, projects, partnerships, organization structure, and more. With distribution, you allow various publications to share your press release and thus, reach a wider audience.

Why should you submit a press release?

The purpose of distributing a press release is to land coverage in media publications, such as newspapers, radio, TV news bulletins, podcasts, and blogs. That way, you’re positioning your brand in front of a wider audience.

If you only post your press release on your website, most consumers won’t know about it – which defeats the entire purpose behind writing your press release.

Gaining press coverage helps to get your business or brand name into the public forum. That helps build brand awareness – especially when 71% of journalists consider press releases to be their favorite type of content to receive from brands.

Distributing a press release also has these benefits:

1. Press releases can boost your SEO.

Over three billion Google searches are made every day.

Implementing SEO tactics into your overall marketing strategy will help you rank high for your target audience’s search queries. This means that you’re that much closer to reaching potential customers as they search online for information related to your company, industry, product, or service.

Gaining backlinks to your site from high-authority websites is a huge ranking factor for SEO, as explained in a 2021 study by Backlinko:

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Distributing press releases can help you land coverage on huge publications. Additionally, there’s a chance those websites will link to yours, which can help to boost your search engine visibility.

But what happens if you land awesome coverage without a backlink?

Don’t panic – In the past, Both Google and Bing have suggested that positive brand mentions can play a role in how they rank your site, meaning positive PR coverage can aid your SEO efforts even without a link.

2. A press release can drive local foot traffic to your store.

If your business is a brick-and-mortar shop, press release distributions can help to get people through the door.

Whether you’re running an event or simply launching an eye-catching sale, measuring foot traffic into your store after distributing a press release is a simple way to gauge how successful your release has been.

3. A press release can generate more sales.

If you’re launching a new product or an exclusive line, a targeted press release can have a significant impact on your bottom line. Why? Because it helps drum up interest if it’s innovative and sets you apart from competitors.

Busy shopping days can be a great way to get your products in front of potential customers.

For instance, if you’re offering discounts on Black Friday or Cyber Monday, why not reach out to retail journalists to highlight your offers?

Should you use press release distribution services?

Distributing a press release sounds time-consuming, doesn’t it? If only there was a way to get yours seeded out quickly, at scale.

Fortunately, there is.

If you’re on a tight schedule and don’t have time to manually reach out to local or national publishers, a press release distribution service is the perfect solution.

These services allow you to send out your release to relevant journalists without doing any of the manual work yourself.

While it does cost to use these services, they can save you hours of work. By letting the experts distribute your news story, you can spend time focusing on other tasks.

So, if you fancy taking distribution off your plate, check out these 10 services.

1. Newswire

Newswire is one of the top distribution service providers available in the market. When using the top-rate company, your press release can reach major news outlets, such as NBC, MarketWatch, and NBC.

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Newswire also offers multitarget layering for you to reach your desired audience at the local, state, and regional levels.

Furthermore, the service provider follows a strict editorial process to ensure your press release is error-free when it reaches consumers.

Pricing: Starts at $199 per release and goes up to five figures based on the number of press releases you want and the industries you’re targeting.

2. eReleases

With a media database of over 1.7 million contacts, eRelease is a distribution service you should consider.

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The brand has nurtured relationships with publishers, including influencers and reporters, for over 20 years and promises to include curated emails that will increase engagement.

In addition, eReleases optimizes your press release using white hat SEO practices to increase its chances of ranking on search engines. Furthermore, you can expert a detailed report after distribution with metrics on engagement, audience, and traffic.

Pricing: Starts at $299 and goes up to $599, excluding certain add-ons.

3. EIN Presswire

EIN Presswire is a leading distribution service with affordable pricing.

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With one of the quickest reviewal processes, EIN Presswire only takes about an hour to approve your release during the normal weekday hours. Once your release is distributed, you will gain access to a dashboard that will start populating after two hours.

In addition, EIN Presswire is a high authority website through which you can earn backlinks and reap the benefits on search engines.

Pricing: Starts at $49.95 per release and goes up to $999 for bundles.

4. PR Distribution

PR Distribution provides distribution services in both the U.S. and the U.K.

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Their starter press release package offers a guarantee of 25 placements, ensuring your story will be seen by your target audience.

Every other package offers an unlimited word count, a multi-tiered editing process, and access to ABC, NBC, and other news outlets.

Pricing: Starts at $99 and reaches up to $1,300 for bundle packages.

5. PR Newswire

Whether you’re looking for print or online distribution, PR Newswire is a great option.

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PR Newswire helps connect you to leading publishers in a wide range of industries.

If you’re looking for accurate data on your release’s performance, this provider’s got you covered. You can monitor and measure the impact of your story, and gain insights for future releases.

Furthermore, PR Newswire has a network of over 4,000 websites and 20,000 email subscribers. With a host of distribution channels, it’s up to you to decide which one will work best for your brand.

Pricing: Not published on their website.

6. 24-7 Press Release

Using a cloud-based platform, 24-7 Press Release distributes your news to traditional and digital outlets.

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24-7 Press Release follows a strict reviewal process to ensure your press release is ready to be distributed and follows their guidelines.

With a two-day turnaround time, their starter pack allows you to include up to five industry categories, four images, or documents and be sent to over 50 premium news sites.

The more advanced packages come with next-day turnaround, which is helpful if you have a tight deadline.

In addition, you’ll receive a report that tells you if and where your story was picked up.

Pricing: Starts at $19 per release and goes up to $389 depending on the distribution package you select.

7. PR Web

PR Web is a tool owned by Cision, a PR and earned media software company.

Their press release distribution service allows you to upload your press release (along with rich media like images and videos), then distribute the story to journalists and publications in your selected categories.

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PR Web also provides you with a comprehensive analytics dashboard, so you can monitor the impact of your campaign and calculate important metrics, such as ROI.

Pricing: $99 to $389 depending on the distribution package you select.

8. Response Source Press Release Wire

Response Source is a UK-based distribution service connecting brands with top UK publishers and journalists. With over 20 years of experience, the company has built a thriving network of journalists and publications, so you can benefit from having your news distributed by email to useful contacts.

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In a few simple steps, you can upload your release, set the date for publication, attach your media, select the categories, and choose your distribution channels.

You’ll also get your own “newsroom,” along with access to analytics, such as the number of views your press release received and email open rates.

Pricing: Starts at £85 per press release for ad hoc users and goes up to £1050 for bundles.

9. Presswire

Presswire has a live global database, allowing you to send your press release directly to the journalists who are most likely to pick up your story.

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One standout feature from Presswire is the ability to translate your press release into any language and leverage geo-targeting to deliver it to the appropriate regions.

This distribution service also offers an advanced analytics platform, providing insight on:

• Who opened your press release.
• Whether your release was forwarded.
• How many times it was read.
• How long people spent reading it.

These insights can help you refine your approach for future press releases.

Pricing: Starts at £150 and goes up based on the distribution package and add-on services you select.

10. PR Fire

PR Fire syndicates your release to newswires and journalists in the US and UK in your chosen industry categories – all within four business hours after receiving your content.

The press release is also published on the platform’s social media pages and site.

Additionally, two weeks after your press release is distributed, you receive a report detailing its performance.

PR Fire also offers a copy-editing service, in which a professional edits or rewrites your press release.

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PR Fire has landed its customers press coverage in a range of top-tier publications, including BuzzFeed, Metro, The Huffington Post, and The Times, so it’s worth checking out.

Pricing: £50 to £150 per press release depending on the distribution package you select.

You know how important PR is, and you’ve crafted a succinct, yet powerful, story. All that’s left to do is share it with the world.

But journalists have to write up to seven stories per day. So how do you ensure your press release is one of those stories? And just as importantly, how can you make your distribution email stand out in a crowded inbox?

Follow this five-step guide to learn how.

1. Find journalists who might be interested in your press release.

When have news to share, I’ll bet you’re tempted to tell as many people as possible. You want everyone to hear about it, right?

However, that’s not always the best strategy.

After crafting a great press release, you can identify journalists who may be interesting in creating a larger story surrounding your news.

You can do that by searching for journalists and publishers who’ve already written about your topic or industry.

For instance, let’s say you run a car parts business. You’ve conducted some research around potholes, gathered some interesting data, and turned it into a killer press release. But mailing every journalist under the sun is probably going to be a waste of time.

Instead, it’s worth seeking out publishers who cover the automotive industry and journalists who’ve covered similar topics before.

To do this, fire up Google, type in your topic (potholes), and navigate to the News tab:

As you can see, there are plenty of recent articles on this topic, meaning journalists are more than likely interested enough to cover it.

Next, read some of the articles on Google News and make a note of the journalists’ names.

A simple spreadsheet with the journalist’s name and the publication they write for is a good way to keep a log of your distribution plan:

If you have the budget, you can also use a media database, such as Cision or Muckrack to find relevant journalists and reporters.

This method is much more likely to get you responses because you’re only pitching the release to journalists who’ve demonstrated an interest in your topic.

2. Get the journalists’ contact details.

Next, it’s time to find some contact information for the people on your press release distribution list.

This could be as simple as clicking on an author’s bio on their publication’s site.

… and making a note of their email address:

But, just like anything else in the world of PR, it’s not always that easy.

You’ll often have to do a little digging to find the contact details – starting with a simple Google search such as “[Journalist’s name] email]”.

If that doesn’t do the trick, you could also use a media database like Muckrack:

Don’t have the budget for paid databases? Harness the power of social media.

LinkedIn is an excellent place to discover contact information for professional contacts (AKA, your journalists). Simply search for “journalist” and filter the results by selecting your target publication as “company,” then plug their name into Hunter to find their email address:

Twitter can also be a quick and easy way to get in touch with your target journalists, too.

3. Craft a killer pitch.

Email is the most effective way to send your press release quickly.

However, there’s another obstacle you’ll need to overcome here: Journalists can receive up to hundreds of pitches a day.

So here’s what you should do to stand out: First, keep it brief.

Don’t waste the journalist’s time with a long-winded, self-absorbed introduction to yourself or your business. They probably don’t care.

Instead, get straight into the purpose of your email: The story, and why they should cover it in their publication.

Journalists are time-poor, so they’ll appreciate a nice, succinct message that sells your story in a few words – like this:

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As you can see in the example above, the entire story is sold in the first sentence, with a direct question asking if the journalist is interested – rather than just assuming so.

Follow this up with a couple more sentences to give the journalist some additional context, before adding a line spacer and pasting your full press release.

Note: Avoid adding your press releases as attachments. Journalists don’t like opening attachments in fear of viruses or malware, so eliminate that problem by pasting the body of your press release below your pitch.

Second, you must personalize your pitch.

Show some interest in the journalist’s previous work by indicating that you know they’re a good fit based on the topics they cover.

Try to build a relationship with the journalists first, rather than hitting them with a release and expecting instant coverage.

Sometimes, it’s worth playing the long game by getting to know your desired publisher ahead of your pitch. Engage with them on LinkedIn, respond to their tweets, and generally work yourself into their notifications – and their radar.

3. Make your subject line irresistible.

What’s the first thing you look at before you open an email? The subject line, right? In many cases, it plays a big role in the email open rate.

So, how can you make sure yours gets opened? Try these tips:

• Keep it short and sweet: Ideally, 10 or fewer words.

• Ensure it’s unique: A powerful subject line should be disruptive, innovative, or offer a human-interest angle.
• Be specific: Your subject line should be descriptive enough to let the reader know what to expect when they open the email.
• Provide exclusivity: If you’ve got some unique data or research, mention that. Exclusivity can help you grab a journalist’s attention.

… And one thing to avoid? Clickbait. It’s that simple.

4. Send your press release pitch (at the right time).

Press release? Check. Pitch email? Check. Contact details? Check.

… But that doesn’t mean you’re ready to distribute your press release.

You’ll need to think about the day (and time) you hit the “send” button because certain days and times have better success rates than others.

For instance, some journalists may prefer to sift through pitches in the morning. While others may prefer mid-day or late afternoon.

It’s often a trial-and-error process that you should keep note of.

Additionally, it’s important to consider the day of the week. While modern-day businesses are often active seven days a week, there’s still a traditional lull in pick-up rates when it comes to press release distribution.

So, consider the day you send your release — it might land more coverage if you pitch it midweek, as opposed to sending it first thing on Monday morning.

5. Follow-up on your release.

An age-old question: Should you follow up on your pitch if it doesn’t get traction?

It depends on who you’re asking, but generally, the consensus seems evenly split. Some people believe following up to be a big no-no, while others indicate that it can be fruitful.

If you have a release you’re particularly proud of, it won’t hurt to follow up if you’re struggling to land coverage – provided you’re tactful.

Don’t spam the journalist’s inbox with the same press release and the same pitch. That can get annoying, and ruin your chances of getting your story picked up.

Instead, try tweaking the angle of your pitch to something that highlights why they should care about this story.

How to Submit Local Press Releases

Local press releases are great for small, brick-and-mortar businesses who want to reach consumers who are in their area.

That’s why it’s beneficial to send out your press release to local newspapers, publishers, and journalists.

Many of the guidelines outlined above still apply. What’s different here is that you can take a more personal approach to your pitches as well as distribution channels. For instance, you can target local radio and TV stations that may be interested in mentioning your story.

Press Release Distribution Mistakes

All set to send your next press release? Hang on a second.

Here are some common mistakes people make, and how you can avoid them when you distribute your press release.

1. Your press release is too long.

Your story needs to be short and succinct.

The easiest way to get your press release read is to cut the fluff. Remove any sentences that won’t add value to the reader.

Your press release needs four main sections:

• Paragraph to introduce the news.
• About two to three paragraphs to dive into the “what” and “why” of the news.
• About and contact information.

Remember: Every sentence counts.

2. You’re targeting the wrong people or publications.

If you work for a small business looking to get some coverage, you’re going to get the most success from contacting local publications.

A local business story is rarely important enough to make national news.

You should also double-check that your target journalists are a good fit. Many tend to specialize in one or two interests – emailing a sports reporter about a press release related to health isn’t likely to result in coverage.

3. Your story isn’t newsworthy enough.

Before hitting send and distributing your release, take a moment and ask yourself: “Is this story actually newsworthy?”

If your release is too self-promotional, it may not interest your target audience.

Ensure it’s got a relevant angle and includes information and/or data pertinent to the story.

Accompanying quotes are also great, as they bring the story to life, rather than over-selling your own company. For instance, say you’re partnering with another brand, consider including a quote from the other brand’s CEO, which explains their interest in wanting to partner with you.

4. You didn’t include your contact info.

Imagine crafting that story, pitching it, and finding an interested reporter who wants to contact you for a larger story. But the journalist hits a dead end and is unable to contact you.

Unfortunately, if you don’t include your contact information in the press release, you risk losing out on the chance for increased exposure.

You need to make it easy for journalists to contact you by leaving a phone number and email address in your press release distribution email.

​​Remember to Keep the Relationship Alive

When you need to create a press release, follow the distribution steps in this guide to boost your chances of landing coverage.

Keep tweaking and refining your approach until you see success. Your first piece of coverage could well be the domino that starts the run. A story picked up by one news outlet can soon snowball from publication to publication.

Plus, if your story does get picked up, don’t forget to thank the journalist. It can facilitate a relationship that you can then nurture and facilitate easier coverage down the line.

Ultimately, you can never have too much good press!

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

When marketers like us create landing pages, write email copy, or design call-to-action buttons, it can be tempting to use our intuition to predict what will make people click and convert.

But basing marketing decisions off of a “feeling” can be pretty detrimental to results. Rather than relying on guesses or assumptions to make these decisions, you’re much better off running an A/B test — sometimes called a split test.

A/B testing can be valuable because different audiences behave, well, differently. Something that works for one company may not necessarily work for another. In fact, conversion rate optimization (CRO) experts hate the term “best practices” because it may not actually be the best practice for you.

But A/B tests can also be complex. If you’re not careful, you could make incorrect assumptions about what people like and what makes them click — decisions that could easily misinform other parts of your strategy.

Keep reading to learn how to do A/B testing before, during, and after data collection so you can make the best decisions from your results.

To run an A/B test, you need to create two different versions of one piece of content, with changes to a single variable. Then, you’ll show these two versions to two similarly sized audiences and analyze which one performed better over a specific period of time (long enough to make accurate conclusions about your results).

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A/B testing helps marketers observe how one version of a piece of marketing content performs alongside another. Here are two types of A/B tests you might conduct in an effort to increase your website’s conversion rate:

Example 1: User Experience Test

Perhaps you want to see if moving a certain call-to-action (CTA) button to the top of your homepage instead of keeping it in the sidebar will improve its click-through rate.

To A/B test this theory, you’d create another, alternative web page that uses the new CTA placement. The existing design with the sidebar CTA — or the “control” — is Version A. Version B with the CTA at the top is the “challenger.” Then, you’d test these two versions by showing each of them to a predetermined percentage of site visitors. Ideally, the percentage of visitors seeing either version is the same.

Learn how to easily A/B test a component of your website with HubSpot’s Marketing Hub.

Example 2: Design Test

Perhaps you want to find out if changing the color of your call-to-action (CTA) button can increase its click-through rate.

To A/B test this theory, you’d design an alternative CTA button with a different button color that leads to the same landing page as the control. If you usually use a red call-to-action button in your marketing content, and the green variation receives more clicks after your A/B test, this could merit changing the default color of your call-to-action buttons to green from now on.

To learn more about A/B testing, download our free introductory guide here.

A/B Testing in Marketing

A/B testing has a multitude of benefits to a marketing team, depending on what it is you decide to test. Above all, though, these tests are valuable to a business because they’re low in cost but high in reward.

Let’s say you employ a content creator with a salary of $50,000/year. This content creator publishes five articles per week for the company blog, totaling 260 articles per year. If the average post on the company’s blog generates 10 leads, you could say it costs just over $192 to generate 10 leads for the business ($50,000 salary ÷ 260 articles = $192 per article). That’s a solid chunk of change.

Now, if you ask this content creator to spend two days developing an A/B test on one article, instead of writing two articles in that time period, you might burn $192 because you’re publishing one fewer article. But if that A/B test finds you can increase each article’s conversion rate from 10 to 20 leads, you just spent $192 to potentially double the number of customers your business gets from your blog.

If the test fails, of course, you lost $192 — but now you can make your next A/B test even more educated. If that second test succeeds in doubling your blog’s conversion rate, you ultimately spent $284 to potentially double your company’s revenue. No matter how many times your A/B test fails, its eventual success will almost always outweigh the cost to conduct it.

There are many types of split tests you can run to make the experiment worth it in the end. Here are some common goals marketers have for their business when A/B testing:

• Increased Website Traffic: Testing different blog post titles or webpage titles can change the number of people who click on that hyperlinked title to get to your website. This can increase website traffic as a result.
• Higher Conversion Rate: Testing different locations, colors, or even anchor text on your CTAs can change the number of people who click these CTAs to get to a landing page. This can increase the number of people who fill out forms on your website, submit their contact info to you, and “convert” into a lead.
• Lower Bounce Rate: If your website visitors leave (or “bounce”) quickly after visiting your website, testing different blog post introductions, fonts, or featured images can reduce this bounce rate and retain more visitors.
• Lower Cart Abandonment: Ecommerce businesses see an average of 70% of customers leave their website with items in their shopping cart. This is known as “shopping cart abandonment” and is, of course, detrimental to any online store. Testing different product photos, check-out page designs, and even where shipping costs are displayed can lower this abandonment rate.

Now, let’s walk through the checklist for setting up, running, and measuring an A/B test.

How to Conduct A/B Testing

Follow along with our free A/B testing kit with everything you need to run A/B testing including a 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.

Before the A/B Test

Let’s cover the steps to take before you start your A/B test.

1. Pick one variable to test.

As you optimize your web pages and emails, you might find there are a number of variables you want to test. But to evaluate how effective a change is, you’ll want to isolate one “independent variable” and measure its performance. Otherwise, you can’t be sure which variable was responsible for changes in performance.

You can test more than one variable for a single web page or email — just be sure you’re testing them one at a time.

To determine your variable, look at the elements in your marketing resources and their possible alternatives for design, wording, and layout. Other things you might test include email subject lines, sender names, and different ways to personalize your emails.

Keep in mind that even simple changes, like changing the image in your email or the words on your call-to-action button, can drive big improvements. In fact, these sorts of changes are usually easier to measure than the bigger ones.

Note: There are some times when it makes more sense to test multiple variables rather than a single variable. This is a process called multivariate testing. If you’re wondering whether you should run an A/B test versus a multivariate test, here’s a helpful article from Optimizely that compares the two processes.

2. Identify your goal.

Although you’ll measure several metrics during any one test, choose a primary metric to focus on before you run the test. In fact, do it before you even set up the second variation. This is your “dependent variable,” which changes based on how you manipulate the independent variable.

Think about where you want this dependent variable to be at the end of the split test. You might even state an official hypothesis and examine your results based on this prediction.

If you wait until afterward to think about which metrics are important to you, what your goals are, and how the changes you’re proposing might affect user behavior, then you might not set up the test in the most effective way.

3. Create a ‘control’ and a ‘challenger.’

You now have your independent variable, your dependent variable, and your desired outcome. Use this information to set up the unaltered version of whatever you’re testing as your control scenario. If you’re testing a web page, this is the unaltered page as it exists already. If you’re testing a landing page, this would be the landing page design and copy you would normally use.

From there, build a challenger — the altered website, landing page, or email that you’ll test against your control. For example, if you’re wondering whether adding a testimonial to a landing page would make a difference in conversions, set up your control page with no testimonials. Then, create your challenger with a testimonial.

4. Split your sample groups equally and randomly.

For tests where you have more control over the audience — like with emails — you need to test with two or more audiences that are equal in order to have conclusive results.

How you do this will vary depending on the A/B testing tool you use. If you’re a HubSpot Enterprise customer conducting an A/B test on an email, for example, HubSpot will automatically split traffic to your variations so that each variation gets a random sampling of visitors.

5. Determine your sample size (if applicable).

How you determine your sample size will also vary depending on your A/B testing tool, as well as the type of A/B test you’re running.

If you’re A/B testing an email, you’ll probably want to send an A/B test to a subset of your list that is large enough to achieve statistically significant results. Eventually, you’ll pick a winner and send the winning variation on to the rest of the list. (See “The Science of Split Testing” ebook at the end of this article for more on calculating your sample size.)

If you’re a HubSpot Enterprise customer, you’ll have some help determining the size of your sample group using a slider. It’ll let you do a 50/50 A/B test of any sample size — although all other sample splits require a list of at least 1,000 recipients.

If you’re testing something that doesn’t have a finite audience, like a web page, then how long you keep your test running will directly affect your sample size. You’ll need to let your test run long enough to obtain a substantial number of views. Otherwise, it will be hard to tell whether there was a statistically significant difference between variations.

6. Decide how significant your results need to be.

Once you’ve picked your goal metric, think about how significant your results need to be to justify choosing one variation over another. Statistical significance is a super important part of the A/B testing process that’s often misunderstood. If you need a refresher, I recommend reading this blog post on statistical significance from a marketing standpoint.

The higher the percentage of your confidence level, the more sure you can be about your results. In most cases, you’ll want a confidence level of 95% minimum — preferably even 98% — especially if it was a time-intensive experiment to set up. However, sometimes it makes sense to use a lower confidence rate if you don’t need the test to be as stringent.

Matt Rheault, a senior software engineer at HubSpot, likes to think of statistical significance like placing a bet. What odds are you comfortable placing a bet on? Saying “I’m 80% sure this is the right design and I’m willing to bet everything on it” is similar to running an A/B test to 80% significance and then declaring a winner.

Rheault also says you’ll likely want a higher confidence threshold when testing for something that only slightly improves conversion rate. Why? Because random variance is more likely to play a bigger role.

“An example where we could feel safer lowering our confidence threshold is an experiment that will likely improve conversion rate by 10% or more, such as a redesigned hero section,” he explained.

“The takeaway here is that the more radical the change, the less scientific we need to be process-wise. The more specific the change (button color, microcopy, etc.), the more scientific we should be because the change is less likely to have a large and noticeable impact on conversion rate.”

7. Make sure you’re only running one test at a time on any campaign.

Testing more than one thing for a single campaign — even if it’s not on the same exact asset — can complicate results. For example, if you A/B test an email campaign that directs to a landing page at the same time that you’re A/B testing that landing page, how can you know which change caused the increase in leads?

During the A/B Test

Let’s cover the steps to take during your A/B test.

8. Use an A/B testing tool.

To do an A/B test on your website or in an email, you’ll need to use an A/B testing tool. If you’re a HubSpot Enterprise customer, the HubSpot software has features that let you A/B test emails (learn how here), calls-to-action (learn how here), and landing pages (learn how here).

For non-HubSpot Enterprise customers, other options include Google Analytics, which lets you A/B test up to 10 full versions of a single web page and compare their performance using a random sample of users.

9. Test both variations simultaneously.

Timing plays a significant role in your marketing campaign’s results, whether it’s time of day, day of the week, or month of the year. If you were to run Version A during one month and Version B a month later, how would you know whether the performance change was caused by the different design or the different month?

When you run A/B tests, you’ll need to run the two variations at the same time, otherwise you may be left second-guessing your results.

The only exception here is if you’re testing timing itself, like finding the optimal times for sending out emails. This is a great thing to test because depending on what your business offers and who your subscribers are, the optimal time for subscriber engagement can vary significantly by industry and target market.

10. Give the A/B test enough time to produce useful data.

Again, you’ll want to make sure that you let your test run long enough to obtain a substantial sample size. Otherwise, it’ll be hard to tell whether there was a statistically significant difference between the two variations.

How long is long enough? Depending on your company and how you execute the A/B test, getting statistically significant results could happen in hours … or days … or weeks. A big part of how long it takes to get statistically significant results is how much traffic you get — so if your business doesn’t get a lot of traffic to your website, it’ll take much longer for you to run an A/B test.

Read this blog post to learn more about sample size and timing.

11. Ask for feedback from real users.

A/B testing has a lot to do with quantitative data … but that won’t necessarily help you understand why people take certain actions over others. While you’re running your A/B test, why not collect qualitative feedback from real users?

One of the best ways to ask people for their opinions is through a survey or poll. You might add an exit survey on your site that asks visitors why they didn’t click on a certain CTA, or one on your thank-you pages that asks visitors why they clicked a button or filled out a form.

You might find, for example, that a lot of people clicked on a call-to-action leading them to an ebook, but once they saw the price, they didn’t convert. That kind of information will give you a lot of insight into why your users are behaving in certain ways.

After the A/B Test

Finally, let’s cover the steps to take after your A/B test.

12. Focus on your goal metric.

Again, although you’ll be measuring multiple metrics, keep your focus on that primary goal metric when you do your analysis.

For example, if you tested two variations of an email and chose leads as your primary metric, don’t get caught up on open rate or click-through rate. You might see a high click-through rate and poor conversion rates, in which case you might end up choosing the variation that had a lower click-through rate in the end.

13. Measure the significance of your results using our A/B testing calculator.

Now that you’ve determined which variation performs the best, it’s time to determine whether your results are statistically significant. In other words, are they enough to justify a change?

To find out, you’ll need to conduct a test of statistical significance. You could do that manually … or you could just plug in the results from your experiment to our free A/B testing calculator.

For each variation you tested, you’ll be prompted to input the total number of tries, like emails sent or impressions seen. Then, enter the number of goals it completed — generally you’ll look at clicks, but this could also be other types of conversions.

The calculator will spit out the confidence level your data produces for the winning variation. Then, measure that number against the value you chose to determine statistical significance.

14. Take action based on your results.

If one variation is statistically better than the other, you have a winner. Complete your test by disabling the losing variation in your A/B testing tool.

If neither variation is statistically better, you’ve just learned that the variable you tested didn’t impact results, and you’ll have to mark the test as inconclusive. In this case, stick with the original variation, or run another test. You can use the failed data to help you figure out a new iteration on your new test.

While A/B tests help you impact results on a case-by-case basis, you can also apply the lessons you learn from each test and apply it to future efforts.

For example, if you’ve conducted A/B tests in your email marketing and have repeatedly found that using numbers in email subject lines generates better clickthrough rates, you might want to consider using that tactic in more of your emails.

15. Plan your next A/B test.

The A/B test you just finished may have helped you discover a new way to make your marketing content more effective — but don’t stop there. There’s always room for more optimization.

You can even try conducting an A/B test on another feature of the same web page or email you just did a test on. For example, if you just tested a headline on a landing page, why not do a new test on body copy? Or a color scheme? Or images? Always keep an eye out for opportunities to increase conversion rates and leads.

A/B Testing Examples

We’ve discussed how A/B tests are used in marketing and how to conduct one — but how do they actually look in practice?

As you might guess, we run many A/B tests to increase engagement and drive conversions across our platform. Here are five examples of A/B tests to inspire your own experiments.

1. Site Search

Site search bars help users quickly find what they’re after on a particular website. HubSpot found from previous analysis that visitors who interacted with its site search bar were more likely to convert on a blog post. So, we ran an A/B test in an attempt to increase engagement with the search bar.

In this test, search bar functionality was the independent variable and views on the content offer thank you page was the dependent variable. We used one control condition and three challenger conditions in the experiment.

In the control condition (variant A), the search bar remained unchanged.

In variant B, the search bar was made larger and more visually prominent, and the placeholder text was set to “search by topic.”

Variant C appeared identical to variant B, but only searched the HubSpot Blog rather than the entire website.

In variant D, the search bar was made larger but the placeholder text was set to “search the blog.” This variant also searched only the HubSpot Blog

We found variant D to be the most effective: It increased conversions by 3.4% over the control and increased the percentage of users who used the search bar by 6.5%.

2. Mobile CTAs

HubSpot uses several CTAs for content offers in our blog posts, including ones in the body of posts as well as at the bottom of the page. We test these CTAs extensively for optimize their performance.

For our mobile users, we ran an A/B test to see which type of bottom-of-page CTA converted best. For our independent variable, we altered the design of the CTA bar. Specifically, we used one control and three challengers in our test. For our dependent variables, we used pageviews on the CTA thank you page and CTA clicks.

The control condition included our normal placement of CTAs at the bottom of posts. In variant B, the CTA had no close or minimize option.

In variant C, mobile readers could close the CTA by tapping an X icon. Once it was closed out, it wouldn’t reappear.

In variant D, we included an option to minimize the CTA with an up/down caret.

Our tests found all variants to be successful. Variant D was the most successful, with a 14.6% increase in conversions over the control. This was followed by variant C with an 11.4% increase and variant B with a 7.9% increase.

3. Author CTAs

In another CTA experiment, HubSpot tested whether adding the word “free” and other descriptive language to author CTAs at the top of blog posts would increase content leads. Past research suggested that using “free” in CTA text would drive more conversions and that text specifying the type of content offered would be helpful for SEO and accessibility.

In the test, the independent variable was CTA text and the main dependent variable was conversion rate on the content offer form.

In the control condition, author CTA text was unchanged (see the orange button in the image below).

In variant B, the word “free” was added to the CTA text.

In variant C, descriptive wording was added to the CTA text in addition to “free.”

Interestingly, variant B saw a loss in form submissions, down by 14% compared to the control. This was unexpected, since including “free” in content offer text is widely considered a best practice.

Meanwhile, form submissions in variant C outperformed the control by 4%. It was concluded that adding descriptive text to the author CTA helped users understand the offer and thus made them more likely to download.

4. Blog Table of Contents

To help users better navigate the blog, HubSpot tested a new Table of Contents (TOC) module. The goal was to improve user experience by presenting readers with their desired content more quickly. We also tested whether adding a CTA to this TOC module would increase conversions.

The independent variable of this A/B test was the inclusion and type of TOC module in blog posts, and the dependent variables were conversion rate on content offer form submissions and clicks on the CTA inside the TOC module.

The control condition did not include the new TOC module — control posts either had no table of contents, or a simple bulleted list of anchor links within the body of the post near the top of the article (pictured below).

In variant B, the new TOC module was added to blog posts. This module was sticky, meaning it remained onscreen as users scrolled down the page. Variant B also included a content offer CTA at the bottom of the module.

Variant C included an identical module to variant B but with the CTA removed.

Both variants B and C did not increase the conversion rate on blog posts. The control condition outperformed variant B by 7% and performed equally with variant C. Also, few users interacted with the new TOC module or the CTA inside the module.

5. Review Notifications

To determine the best way of gathering customer reviews, we ran a split test of email notifications versus in-app notifications. Here, the independent variable was the type of notification and the dependent variable was the percentage of those who left a review out of all those who opened the notification.

In the control, HubSpot sent a plain text email notification asking users to leave a review. In variant B, HubSpot sent an email with a certificate image including the user’s name.

For variant C, HubSpot sent users an in app-notification.

Ultimately, both emails performed similarly and outperformed the in-app notifications. About 25% of users who opened an email left a review versus the 10.3% who opened in-app notifications. Emails were also more often opened by users.

Start A/B Testing Today

A/B testing allows you to get to the truth of what content and marketing your audience wants to see. Learn how to best carry out some of the steps above using the free e-book below.

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

Like a tree falling in the woods, if you launch a product without spreading the word — will anyone use it? Will anyone even want it?

Probably not. Whether you’re launching something huge, something small, or you’re updating a current offering, you’ll want to start your preparation well in advance of the launch date.

This includes nailing down your positioning and messaging, sharing that with key teams and stakeholders, listing out all the launch activities, creating assets and content, prepping everyone involved in the launch, and so on.

Because there are so many moving parts in this process, bringing your product to market can be intimidating and tricky.

To help you, we’ve come up with a step-by-step checklist for a successful product launch and gathered the best product launch tips from a HubSpot Product Marketer.

Plus, we’ll review how to know when to delay a product launch.

1. Learn about your customer.

Whether you call it “market research,” or “customer development” it’s key to learn about what drives your customer. Identifying their goals, motivations, and pain points could lead you to developing and marketing a valuable solution.

You don’t need to perform years of intense research to learn about your customer. In fact, we suggest just talking to 12 to 15 current or prospective customers.

When speaking to them, pay extra attention when they start sentences with “I wish a product did this function…” or “Why can’t products do this?” When they give these statements, respond with questions that go deeper, like “Can you get more specific about that?” If they don’t bring up any pain points, ask them a few specific questions that will encourage them to give deeper answers.

These conversations will give you a solid idea of what their biggest pain points are and how you can market a solution to them. Once you learn these key details about your customers, you can develop a buyer persona that your team can focus on serving.

2. Write a positioning statement.

Write out a statement that can clearly and concisely answer these three questions:

• Who is the product for?
• What does the product do?
• Why is it different from other products out there?

If you’d like to go even deeper, create a statement that answers the following questions:

• What is your target audience?
• What segment of the target audience is most likely to buy the product?
• What brand name will you give your product or service?
• What product or service category does your product lie in?
• How is it different from competitors in the same category?
• What evidence or proof do you have to prove that your product is different?

Still need more guidance on how to write a positioning statement? Check out this template.

3. Pitch your positioning to stakeholders.

Once you’ve established your position statement, present it to stakeholders in your company so they are all on the same page.

If your employees have a hard time buying into the product, your customers might as well. If your team loves it, that might be a great sign that the product launch will go well.

4. Plan your go-to-market strategy.

This is the strategy that you will use to launch and promote your product. While some businesses prefer to build a funnel strategy, others prefer the flywheel approach.

Regardless of which method you choose, this process contains many moving parts. To create an organized strategy for launching your product, it can be helpful to use a template, like this one.

As you create the strategy, also start considering which type of content you’ll use to attract a prospective customer’s attention during the awareness, consideration, and purchase decision stage. You’ll need to produce this content in the next step.

5. Set a goal for the launch.

Before you get started on the implementing your strategy, make sure you write down your goals for the launch.

Alex Girard, a Product Marketing Manager at HubSpot, says, “Create specific goals for the launch’s success. Keeping these goals in mind will help you focus your efforts on launch tactics that will help you achieve those goals.”

For example, the goals of your product launch could be to effectively establish a new product name, build awareness, or create sales opportunities.

One of the best ways to set goals for your launch team is to write them out like SMART goals. A SMART goal is Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound.

6. Create promotional content.

After planning out your go-to-market strategy and writing your SMART goals, start producing content that will support and align with those promotional efforts. This can include blog posts related to your product or industry, demos and tutorials, and landing pages.

Our go-to-market template will also help you determine which content you should create for each phase of your prospective customer’s buyer’s journey.

7. Prepare your team.

Be sure that your company and key stakeholders are ready for you to launch and begin marketing the product. Communicate with the company through internal presentations, Slack, or email to keep your company in-the-know of your launch plan.

8. Launch the product

Once you’ve completed all the above steps, you can launch the product.

9. See how well you did achieving your goals.

After you launch your product, track how the go-to-market strategy is performing. Be prepared to pivot or adjust aspects of your plan if they aren’t going smoothly.

Additionally, don’t forget about the goals you set before the launch. See how well you did achieving those goals. If the launch didn’t meet expectations, you can rethink your go-to-market strategy and adjust from there.

The cost of launching a new product varies significantly. For instance, an entrepreneur will see vastly different costs for launching a product on Amazon than an enterprise company might see for launching a product in a million dollar market. 

Let’s consider two examples to explore this more closely. 

In the first example, let’s say you’re an entrepreneur who has invented a design app you’re hoping to sell online. You might conduct market research to determine which marketing strategies work best for your goals, which messaging resonates best with your audience, and which design elements appeal to your desired prospects. If you use a few focus groups to determine these answers, you might expect to spend roughly $5,000. 

When you’re bringing a new app to the market, you’ll need to choose the best go-to marketing strategy for your needs. Regardless of the strategy you choose, they all cost money. For instance, product branding could cost roughly $1,000 if you’re paying a designer to help you out, and website design could cost anywhere from $500-$3,000 if you’re paying a web designer a one-off fee. 

These fees don’t include the cost you need to pay yourself and any employees if this is a full-time job. It also doesn’t include the costs of hiring an engineer to update the app’s features and ensure the app is running smoothly. 

With this simplified example, you’re looking at roughly $8,000. Of course, you can cut some costs if you choose to do any of these tasks yourself, but you might risk creating a subpar customer experience.

On the other end of the spectrum, let’s consider a large enterprise company that is launching a new product. Here, you’ll likely pay upwards of $30,000 – $50,000 for market research.

Perhaps you’ll spend $15,000 on brand positioning and the marketing materials necessary to differentiate yourself against competitors, and you might pay upwards of $30,000 for all the product design and brand packaging. Finally, your marketing team could need a budget of roughly $20,000 for SEO, paid advertising, social, content creation, etc. 

All said and done, launching a product against other enterprise competitors’ could cost roughly $125,000. Again, that doesn’t include the costs you’ll pay your marketing, product development, and engineering teams. 

How to Launch a Product Online

To launch your product online, you’ll want to ensure you’ve followed the steps above. However, there are a few additional steps you’ll want to follow to gain traction primarily online. 

1. Figure out the story you want to tell regarding your product’s bigger purpose. 

What story do you want to tell across social platforms, landing pages, and email? This is similar to your positioning statement, but needs to be geared entirely towards your target audience. Ask questions like, Why should they purchase your product? And How will your product or service make their lives better? 

Communicating cross-functionally ensures the communication materials you use across various online channels align — which is key when it comes to establishing a new product in the marketplace. 

Consider, for instance, how Living Proof announced its new product, Advanced Clean Dry Shampoo, on its Instagram page. The story revolves around a simple nuisance common with most other dry shampoos — How consumers still want that just-washed feeling, even when using a dry shampoo. 

Image Source

By focusing on how the product will benefit consumers through storytelling, and using a new hashtag #NoWastedWashes, Living Proof builds excitement and demand for its new product. 

2. Display customer testimonials, case studies, and other social evidence to positively frame your new product. 

Consumers want to see that other consumers have already taken the risk and purchased your new product before doing it themselves. This is where social proof comes into play. 

In the weeks leading up to a product launch, or shortly after its launched, begin posting customer testimonials, reviews, and case studies to showcase how your new product has already helped other people. Take this a step further and employ influencers to share the word about your product as well, if it’s a good fit for your brand. 

Consumers are smart enough to know they shouldn’t trust every advertisement they see — but they can trust fellow consumers. So leverage that trust through social proof methods. 

3. Create a social and email campaign. 

Create a full, comprehensive social media campaign to increase interest and awareness in your new product.

Use paid advertising to reach new audiences, create full product explainer videos to use across your social channels, and use email to reach existing customers and provide an exclusive, first look at your new product’s features.

Additionally, you might consider hosting a live stream to connect directly with prospects and existing customers, and invite experts from your product development team to explain the new features of your product. 

It’s important to note — in this stage, you’ll want to pay attention to how consumers are interacting with the communication materials regarding your new product. Share concerns and feedback with the product development team — it’s important to trust your consumers and use their feedback to strengthen your product. 

4. Have a pre-order option. 

If a consumer is excited to purchase your new product, don’t make them wait — provide an option to pre-order the product or service before it’s even available. This helps spread out demand, while enabling consumers to purchase the product whenever they’re feeling most inclined to do so.

Product Launch Best Practices by Industry

1. How to Launch a Digital Product

When launching a digital product, you’ll want to begin building anticipation with a strong content marketing strategy. Use blog posts, email marketing, social media, and other channels of distribution to increase interest and demand for your digital product. 

You’ll also want to ensure you’re leveraging lead generation strategies to reach existing customers and prospects. 

For instance, let’s say you’re launching an online course on SEO. In the weeks leading up to launch, you might create SEO-related blog content to send to your email subscribers with an option to join the SEO course’s waitlist. This helps you gauge the effectiveness of your marketing materials while reaching an audience that has already demonstrated interest in your brand. 

How to Launch a Product on Amazon

Anyone who’s ever shopped on Amazon knows the importance of a good product listing. In the week’s leading up to launch, take the time to create a strong, high-converting product listing — including taking high-resolution photos of your product, writing a description that outlines your product’s differentiating features, and using keywords to help your product rank on Amazon. 

Additionally, product reviews are incredibly important on Amazon, so you’ll want to ensure you have reviews ready-to-go before you even launch your product on Amazon. To do this, ensure you’ve either launched your product on your own website first (which gives you time to earn reviews before launching on Amazon), or send your product to a select group of interested buyers ahead of the full launch, and collect reviews from them. 

Finally, ensure you’re ready for an Amazon product launch by checking inventory. You never know how quickly your product might gain traction on the ecommerce super-store, so make sure you have enough product to fulfill Amazon orders quickly. 

Take a look at HubSpot’s The Ultimate Guide to Selling on Amazon in 2021 for more information related to Amazon. 

How to Launch a SaaS Product

To launch a SaaS product, you’ll want to start by researching competitors and understanding the marketplace at-large. There’s plenty of demand for SaaS products, since more than 38% of companies work almost entirely on SaaS. However, the SaaS industry is also well-saturated, so before launching a SaaS product, you’ll want to determine how your product differs from all the others in the industry. 

To create a successful product launch, you’ll want to conduct market research and focus groups to determine the true benefits and differentiators of your product. 

Next, you’ll want to employ a strong content marketing strategy to increase your website’s visibility on search engines, and to ensure your business is appearing in search results for topics related to your product. 

Since you aren’t launching a physical product, your marketing efforts need to convince businesses that your product can solve for their needs. For instance, take a look at how HubSpot positioned the new Operations Hub product in this introductory video: 

Additionally, you might want to offer free trials or a freemium option for smaller businesses on lower budgets to test out your offerings before committing. 

For a full SaaS rundown, take a look at HubSpot’s Ultimate Guide to Software as a Service (SaaS). 

How to Launch a Food Product

To launch a food product, you’ll first need to ensure you’re prepared for the costs required to do so — including how much it costs to package and store the product (including packaging, warehousing, and distribution), and how much it costs to sell the product (including branding and digital marketing). 

Next, you’ll want to follow federal and state food regulations. For instance, you need to ensure you’re following health department rules for food preparation surfaces, refrigeration, and sanitation.

You’ll also need to make sure the labeling you use on your product’s packaging is accurate, which requires you to send your food product to a lab for analysis, and check with your state commerce to see what it requires when it comes to nutrition labels. 

When launching a food product, you’ll likely want to hire a food broker. A food broker can foster relationships with national or local grocery stores, and will create a promotional plan to help increase sales as soon as your food hits the shelves. 

Typically, a supermarket will test out your product for a few months before determining if there’s enough consumer interest to keep it stocked — which is why a food broker can be incredibly useful for using business intelligence and industry knowledge to ensure a successful food product launch. 

Product Launch Tips

To learn the best practices for a successful product launch, I talked to Alex Girard again.

The HubSpot Product Marketing Manager said he had three main tips for a successful product launch:

• Your product positioning should reflect a shift you’re seeing in the world, and how your product helps your customers take advantage of that shift.
• Create a recurring schedule for you and the core stakeholders for the launch to check in and ensure you’re all on the same page.
• Make sure you keep the product team in the loop on your marketing plans. The product team could have insights that inform your overall marketing campaign.

However, sometimes, external factors might impact your ability to launch a product. When that happens, you might need to delay your launch.

How to Know When to Delay a Product Launch

To understand when, and why, you might hold off on a product launch, Girard told me there are three key reasons why you might want to delay a product launch, including:

• When your product itself isn’t ready, and you need to change your timeline to create the best customer experience possible.
• If a situation occurs where your current customers are having a less than optimal experience with one of your current products. Before launching and promoting a new product, you should make sure your current customers are satisfied with your existing product offering.
• If something occurs on an international, national, state, or local level that requires your audience to readjust their priorities and shift focus away from your company and its product launch. Make sure that when the time comes to launch, your target audience is ready to learn about your new product.

If you’re looking for templates to coordinate your team efforts and align your company around your new product’s messaging, download our free product marketing kit below.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in November 2015 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Your website’s bounce rate is a metric that indicates the percentage of people who land on one of your web pages and then leave without clicking anywhere else on your website – in other words, single-page visitors.

How sticky is your website? If visitors bounce, it suggests they either didn’t find what they were looking for, or the page wasn’t user-friendly. A high bounce rate also means visitors aren’t looking for more content on your site, clicking on your calls-to-action, or converting into contacts.

For inbound marketers whose primary goal is to attract and convert website visitors into highly qualified leads for their sales teams, it’s scary stuff. So, let’s get into how to decrease your bounce rates.

Improving Your Bounce Rate Infographic

Fortunately, QuickSprout has created an awesome infographic that explains why bounce rate is so important, highlights benchmark industry averages for bounce rate, and identifies a variety of changes you can make to help reduce your website’s bounce rate. Check it out!

And if you want help converting visitors who are about to bounce from your site, try using HubSpot’s free lead capture tool Lead Flows to create a call-to-action with a relevant offer triggered by exit intent.

Bounce Rate Benchmarks

Having a benchmark is so valuable when trying to understand where you stand against competitors in your industry. 

Find below some 2021 key statistics on bounce rates.   

1. Set realistic expectations.

When it comes to your bounce rate, it’s important to set the right expectations. As mentioned in the infographic, look at your historical data as a baseline for how your website has performed in the past.

Then, compare it to the average for your industry and platform.

Let’s say your company is a B2B brand with an average bounce rate of 56%. As seen in the previous section, the average bounce rate across industries is 47%, so you might say yours is really high.

However, the data also shows that bounce rates are much higher for B2B industries, at 75%. So, at 56%, your company is actually doing quite well. While this doesn’t mean you should stop your efforts at reducing the bounce rate, it’s important to know how you stack up against benchmarks.

In this case, where you’re only in competition with yourself, it’s time to rely on historical data to guide your strategy.

2. Attract the right visitors.

Picture yourself in a grocery store. You’re looking for a particular item and you go down an aisle. You look around and you can’t find it. So, what do you do? Leave the aisle and ask for help, or just try the next one.

Think of your website as an aisle at the store. If your content doesn’t match the visitors you’re attracting, they’ll quickly leave.

So, how do you make sure you’re attracting the right visitors?

• Create multiple landing pages with unique content and keywords for your different buyer personas.
• Maintain top rankings for branded terms.
• Write attractive, useful meta descriptions for search engine users.
• Improve targeting of online advertising campaigns.

3. Prioritize the user experience.

In this day and age, no one has the patience to navigate through a difficult website. You only have a few seconds to make a good impression and present a website that users enjoy being on.

To do so, follow these steps:

• Make your text readable through sensible organization and the use of larger fonts, bulleted lists, white space, good color contrast, and large headlines.
• Use well-organized, responsive layouts that allow for quick and easy navigation on all platforms and browsers.
• Don’t let ads distract from your content: Place static ads to sides, and avoid pop-ups and self-loading multimedia ads.

4. Speed up your page load time.

Page speed is one of the main reasons website visitors leave a website. In fact, Google reported in 2017 that when a page load time goes up to 10 seconds, the bounce rate on mobile goes up 123%.

Think about it: When was the last time you waited over a minute for a page to load? Most users’ first instinct is to exit and find another website to meet their needs.

Several factors can contribute to a slow website:

• Image size

• Self-loading multimedia content.
• Site server

The ideal page load time is two seconds or less. Make sure you test your page speed regularly to ensure it falls within that timeframe.

5. Produce high-quality content.

Content can make or break your website visitor’s experience.

Your content should be:

• Engaging – Does your content make your visitors want to keep reading?
• Clear – Is your content easy to understand and digest?
• Relevant – Does it answer the question your website visitors are asking? Or is it clickbait (a big no-no)?

If you’re not sure how to answer these questions, have an objective third-party review your content. You should also consider hiring a copywriter who is an expert at producing high-quality content.

6. Monitor, test, and optimize.

Every change you make to your website can have an impact on your bounce rate. From the placement of an ad to the content on the page.

With this in mind, you must monitor your website closely to assess traffic changes. If you notice a rise in your bounce rate and a drop in visitors, run A/B tests to determine what page elements could be affecting your traffic.

Once you identify the issue(s), optimize your page.

When it comes to bounce rate, there’s always room for improvement. Use optimization tools (more on that in the next section) to identify opportunities to lower your bounce.

Want to start optimizing? Use this checklist to maximize your website’s performance.

How to Decrease your Bounce Rate on Shopify

When you run an ecommerce business, monitoring your bounce rate is a priority, as an increase can drastically impact revenue.

To first thing you can do to decrease your bounce rate on your Shopify website is to make sure your search campaign is aligned with your landing page. This means ensuring the keywords you’re targeting align with what you’re offering on your landing page.

In addition, your landing page should be optimized for conversion by following best practices (e.g. clear CTA, no navigation bar).

The next step is to add credibility to your page. You can do so by displaying customer reviews and testimonials as social proof. You can also add trust badges on your website to indicate you’re a reputable company.

To further improve your page’s performance, add a live chat feature to assist website visitors as they shop. You may learn valuable insights from these interactions that help you optimize your page.

Lastly, invest in tools like Optimizely, Hotjar, Unbounce, and Crazy Egg to better understand your visitors’ behavior on your site and identify areas for improvement.

How to Decrease Bounce Rate of Your Blog

Reducing your blog’s bounce rate is all about following tried-and-true formulas:

• Have a clear structure and page hierarchy – Using headers and subheaders help visitors (and search engines) understand what information is on the page and how it is organized.
• Use high-quality media – Photos, gifs, illustrations, and videos are great for breaking up long sections of text as well as diversifying your information delivery method.
• Make your content error-free – When users see a page riddled with mistakes, it can make them question the brand’s credibility and lead them to exit out of the page.
• Include a clear call-to-action – Having a clear next step for your website visitor will help guide them in the direction you want them to go. Want them to read other articles? Hyperlink them in your post. Want them to download an offer? Include the CTA in the post.

How to Decrease Email Bounce Rates

Email bounce rates are defined differently than bounce rates on other channels.

An email bounce rate refers to the number of emails that are not delivered to a subscriber list. There are two types of bounce rates: hard and soft. The former refers to a permanent reason why the email cannot deliver while the latter refers to a temporary issue.

For instance, say you have 100 email subscribers. You send an email blast and 98% of them receive your email. Your email bounce rate, in this case, would be 2%.

The average bounce rate is 0.7%, according to Campaign Monitor. However, this number can vary slightly by provider.

A bounce rate ranging between 0 and 2% is normal. Anything beyond that and you’ll want to look deeper.

Here are some ways to reduce your email bounce rate:

• Use double opt-ins – Sending a confirmation email to a recipient with a CTA to subscribe will ensure the submitted email is correct and working properly.
• Clean out your subscriber list regularly – Removing inactive subscribers is another way to verify that your email addresses on file work are healthy and active.
• Invest in a reputable email provider – Free sender platforms will not cut it when it comes to email marketing. This means leaving your Gmail, Hotmail, or Yahoo accounts for personal use and looking into HubSpot, MailChimp, SendinBlue, and more.

Designing a Website with a Low Bounce Rate

Having a website with a bounce rate requires constant monitoring and maintenance.

By making sure your content is aligned with your visitors’ needs, your content is easy to navigate, and your conversion elements are clear, you can keep a low bounce rate.

Ready to start optimizing your website? Use this checklist as your guide. It includes everything you’ll need to improve your website performance, including SEO and security.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in July 2014 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

The human attention span is short. This means that your website’s content has to inspire, delight, and engage your target audience in mere seconds.

Maybe your content is performing well on social media. It’s resonating with audiences and earning engagement. But it’s possible that when you look at website metrics, there’s a different story being told.

If your session time is low and your bounce rate is high, then your above-the-fold content may be to blame. Not to worry: We’ll go over everything you need to know about above-the-fold content, including best practices and examples that will inspire you.

Your above-the-fold website content directly impacts your engagement metrics, because it can inspire users to explore the rest of the website and its offerings. If it’s not properly optimized, you’ll likely see a boost in bounce rate and a decrease in conversions.

A web page that is slow to load, congested with information, and hard to use will probably not draw the reader in the same way a page with the opposite design would. This can hurt your website’s lead generation potential.

Let’s say you’ve been losing traffic. It’s possible the content website visitors see when they first visit your page isn’t interesting enough to keep them there. Your page might be compelling by the time visitors start scrolling, but if the content isn’t dazzling and user-friendly right off the bat, visitors can easily click away.

This means that your content above the fold could probably be re-done to engage visitors.

If your website has compelling above-the-fold content, you’ll likely see higher conversion rates and lower bounce rates. If you’re unsure, try to self-test by looking at your website from a new perspective — if you were a new viewer, would you stay on your site at first glance?

Let’s talk about some ways you can ensure your above-the-fold content engages web users.

Above the Fold Website Design Best Practices

When you design your webpage, keep these practices in mind. They’ll keep visitors’ attention and encourage them to explore the rest of your website.

1. Keep your design simple.

Above-the-fold content shouldn’t be extremely busy — if it is, readers might not know where to look first and click away from the page. Alternatively, if they’re not able to find the answer to their challenge quickly, they’ll likely choose another website.

To keep your page looking professional, organized, and user-friendly, try adding one featured image or multimedia, such as a GIF or video, to the content above the fold. Then, add a short headline that introduces your webpage, and a sentence below it that describes your page in more detail.

2. Make the content engaging.

Simple web pages are one way to keep a user’s attention. But when they get there, take opportunities to delight them. For example, when you write your headlines and body text, they should echo your brand voice.

You don’t have to make huge changes to delight the visitor. For example, if there’s a CTA button on your page, you could try “Ready to get started?” instead of “Learn more.”

If the featured photo on your webpage is static, see if you can deliver the same message with a GIF instead. Additionally, if all of your copy is one color, try adding one or two more — a good rule of thumb is to incorporate your brand colors for professionalism and consistency with the rest of your website.

3. Design your content for usability.

Above all else, your content should be easy to interact with. For instance, if you’re working on the above-the-fold content for a product page, make sure your above-the-fold content is functioning as it should.

Let’s say your product page’s above-the-fold content is a video. Does it load correctly, include captions, and offer sound options?

Additionally, think about the experience of the user. If your above-the-fold content features a video that autoplays, will it interrupt the user’s interaction with the page? To combat this issue, make sure the video plays on silent and includes subtitles, if needed. Make sure to incorporate other web accessibility standards as well.

4. Solve challenges for the reader.

Your content above the fold should answer the challenge of the user. To illustrate, let’s say you work for an email marketing service provider, and a user searches “email marketing software” and lands on your homepage.

Your content, then, should include a few, if not all, of the keywords “automated email marketing software” in some form. For example, your headline could read “Email Automation for Marketers,” and expand on that in the supporting text.

Those are a few guidelines to keep in mind when designing your content. Next, we’re going to look at above-the-fold website examples that will inspire you.

Above the Fold Content Examples to Inspire Your Own

1. Wistia

Wistia lets its users create dynamic videos for marketing campaigns. The above-the-fold content introduces Wistia’s services using a mix of multimedia: GIFs, videos, and short copy, to show off the capabilities of the service.

Wistia’s homepage feels casual, welcoming, and professional at the same time. The homepage video stops visitors in their tracks. They’ll likely spend more time watching the talk-show-inspired clip that explains Wistia’s services. As a consumer, when I see real people on a webpage, it’s inviting and compels me to explore further. After the video, users will have an idea of the software’s offerings, straight from expert marketers.

2. Velocity Partners

Velocity Partners, a B2B marketing agency, doesn’t have a company overview video for their above-the-fold content. Instead, the homepage has a fascinating 3D animated video and a paragraph of content that explains why innovative marketers should leverage new content formats to tell more refreshing stories.

The phrase “Great marketing moves” describes what the business is all about, and is short, simple, and to the point, letting the summary do the heavy lifting when it comes to attracting visitors. Velocity Partners’ above-the-fold messaging sparks curiosity, and in turn, the incentive to keep scrolling.

It’s important to note, however, that if you want to use above-the-fold content similar to Velocity Partners’, make sure the first few seconds of your collateral, as well as your copy, are the most engaging. If they aren’t, the visitor probably won’t feel inclined to stay on the site past reading the headline.

3. VeryGoodCopy

VeryGoodCopy is a creative agency that crafts articles, landing pages, web pages, and emails for brands. Above the fold, the website lets the copy describe what the company can provide for users.

The headline conveys the opportunity for marketers to learn how to persuade by leveraging ample white space and social proof. It also includes an enticing headline, a brief description of their content topics, and a vivid call-to-action. This simple and engaging above-the-fold design ensnares their visitors’ attention and convinces them to check out their micro-articles.

4. Shopify

Shopify’s above-the-fold content leverages images to invite the reader to explore. Shopify allows entrepreneurs to begin their own ecommerce business. The above-the-fold content uses images of products sold on Shopify to show how the software is used.

The homepage includes artistic images to make a lasting impression on the user. And, even though copy is sparse, the tagline is packed with purpose and compels visitors to click that green CTA to start a trial.

5. Ann Handley

Ann Handley, a Wall Street Journal best-selling author and partner at MarketingProfs, uses the homepage on her website to impress users by highlighting her marketing prowess. Hyperlinking and linking are heroes here — linking to other pages on a website can earn more clicks on various pages on a site.

She also leverages white space, a welcoming picture of herself, a catchy tagline, compelling copy, and a vibrant call-to-action to persuade her visitors to consider working with her. From this homepage, the visitor knows what Handley looks like, what she has done, and how to contact her. As far as above-the-fold content goes, it’s a home run.

6. Mint

Above-the-fold content can maximize on simplicity, like it does for Mint, a budget tracking and planning software. The simple, yet professional, homepage effectively conveys the company and how they can help customers.

Notice the copy in the headline — it emotionally connects to the reader in two sentences, opening the door for them to explore the app of a company that knows them.

Mint also has a video of their app in action to catch their website visitors’ attention. This helps the visitor visualize how the app will look if they decide to sign up.

7. InVision

How do you show customer stories dynamically above the fold? Let’s take a look at InVision’s sleek example.

InVision is a digital product design company that helps users easily build sleek impressive websites, so the design team at the company knew the homepage had to impress visitors. It does, auto playing a silent version of the company’s overview video, complete with testimonials from decision-makers at companies such as Uber and Twitter.

The copy that’s layered above the video does a great job of concisely explaining what the company does for users, and the “Get Started Free” CTA even entices me, a marketer who isn’t looking to design a website, to learn more about the company’s offerings. It also doesn’t hide the titles of those decision-makers from the video — “Dantley Davis, Netflix Design Director” is large enough that it can catch users’ eyes when they aren’t looking.

8. Animalz

Similar to VeryGoodCopy, Animalz is a content marketing agency whose website doesn’t bombard visitors with messaging about their services in the above-the-fold design. Instead, visitors are greeted with the headline, “The world’s best content marketing happens here,” which entices a marketer like me to read further.

The CTA copy is different from run-of-the-mill CTA buttons. “Let’s talk,” rather than, “Click here to learn more!”, implies that when visitors click on the CTA, they will be taken to a real person who can offer them more information about the service.

The website also leverages white space, and uses simple, hand-drawn images to entice the reader to scroll down. The purple squiggle runs down the webpage to introduce Animalz’s top customers, and leads to a form to get in touch with the company.

9. Ahrefs

Maybe you work for a company that wants a no-nonsense homepage that conveys the benefits of the product without congesting the page with an overload of information. If that description fits you, take a look at Ahref’s above-the-fold approach.

The headline describes what the service does: It helps users improve their SEO without necessarily being an SEO expert. The CTA seals the deal by communicating pricing information.

Satisfied customers are listed at the bottom, right before the fold, to give a rounded-out overview of how Ahrefs can be a benefit to successful companies. If you want your homepage to use more copy, rather than visuals, try presenting it in a simple way that doesn’t use more than 30 words, like Ahrefs did.

10. Twitch

After typing in Twitch.tv into your browser, you’re immediately immersed into what the website offers: live streams for gamers. This is because as soon as your browser accesses the website, a featured live stream begins autoplaying.

While it can be a bit jarring to suddenly hear voices coming from your browser, Twitch’s above-the-fold design doesn’t use any copy to describe their services. Instead, users can jump right in and demo the content themselves, browsing streams without having to make an account or read anything. They can keep scrolling to see popular streams, click one, and explore the site’s capabilities from there.

Because of how the site works altogether, this above-the-fold approach works. Twitch offers visitors to trial their services without doing any reading. Visual platforms similar to Twitch can benefit from this method, pulling in visual learners and non-visual learners alike.

11. Skillshare

Skillshare uses video to explain the bulk of their services above the fold. Because the software offers online classes in a variety of subjects, the video displays an overview of what Skillshare can help you accomplish, learn, and feel.

The video highlights confident-looking adults diving into their passions, which is what Skillshare helps users with. The sign-up box inspires visitors to explore their creativity with the software — and get started for free.

12. Flock

The messaging app Flock doesn’t waste any time: It right away includes an email capture form above the fold. The key to including an email capture form is to design it so it doesn’t interrupt the experience of a first-time visitor to your website.

The supporting images illustrate how Flock works, and the CTA text displays a little personality (“Get Flocking”). Using a form to spice up your homepage can be simple and effective when you include a clickable button and an image to display an overview of your company to visitors.

13. King Arthur Flour

The above-the-fold content of this Boston-based baking ingredient supplier, King Arthur Flour, is top notch. It gives visitors the choice to watch a video tutorial on how to make sourdough bread, right away inviting them to engage.

I could get a feel for the company’s offerings: a Facebook Page (which houses the business’ baking show), recipes, a baking FAQ, products for purchase, and even a “Baker’s Hotline”, which works as a Contact Us page.

The slideshow features, equipped with a glossy photo and their own CTA, gave me a complete overview of everything the company can do for aspiring bakers. It goes outside of just the business’s products, and instead, offers helpful information for bakers in general, which is welcoming to someone who may be intimidated about bread baking.

14. Clarkisha Kent

Are you a freelancer wondering how to make your above-the-fold content stand out among your competition? If so, when you design your homepage, make sure it accomplishes two things: displaying personality and offering easy navigation options.

This is because, while your work has to precede you, so does your personality, especially as a freelancer. If you’re a writer, like Clarkisha Kent, your copy has to sell it, like her website does.

The inclusion of a headshot and interesting headline quickly displays more of who Kent is as a writer, and the angle she is likely to take as a contributor to websites. Her navigation bar includes links to viral tweets she’s made and clippings from other publications, so her homepage doesn’t have to.

Instead, her homepage serves as an introduction, which can precede her before the rest of her website. When users are drawn in by a minimalistic web page with cliffhanger text, they’re likely going to be interested in exploring the website to fill in that gap. For instance, when I read, “Chaos bringer,” I instantly wanted to know how, which prompted me to look at her past work.

15. Good Witch Kitchen

This is another example of how to convey the personality of your brand if you’re a freelancer or small business owner. Good Witch Kitchen is the name of Kristen Ciccolini’s holistic nutrition business. The website’s above-the-fold content contains an introduction of who she is and why she does what she does.

Ciccolini’s logo and copy accurately provide a quick view of the services Good Witch Kitchen provides: A non-diet approach to nutrition management from an expert.

16. Aya Paper Co

This stationery brand makes good use of the area above the fold by including a slideshow that prompts visitors to shop for birthday cards, explore new products, and build a gift box for someone. This works exceedingly well because it gives users a chance to find what they need from the slideshow alone.

The website then includes a series of customer testimonials to sway visitors into becoming customers. From the above-the-fold content alone, you get a sense of the brand’s aesthetic, ethos, and commitment to environmental sustainability.

17. BREAD Beauty Supply

For those who’d like to keep their brand imagery strong above the fold, BREAD Beauty Supply’s example will be sure to offer some inspiration. The brand includes a video of customers showing off their curly hair — which is what their products are used for — with a large version of its logo placed over the video.

The brand then seals the deal by including a “Shop All” button at the bottom. You can still make a “splash” with your above-the-fold website content; you’ll only need to include a CTA.

18. Ceremonia

Ceremonia is another haircare brand that, like BREAD Beauty Supply, uses a video to catch visitors’ attention. It also includes a CTA button at the bottom that invites visitors to “Shop All.”

This above-the-fold website example is effective because it conveys the brand’s mission and aesthetic while still fully using the available real estate. The video inspires one to take care of one’s hair using the products. It shows people being carefree and enjoying the environment. The brand’s products are made from naturally derived ingredients, and the video hints at that without using text.

In the same way, you can hint at your products’ background using strong imagery in a video.

The Benefits of Above the Fold Optimization

Above-the-fold optimization is critical to ensure your website visitors don’t bounce off the page. That way, you can increase the chances of visitors becoming customers. By optimizing the content above the fold, you can:

• Increase user engagement by right away inviting users to shop or reach out to you.
• Greet users with on-brand messaging.
• Establish the value of using your product or service.
• Show the results your website visitors can see if they choose to purchase from you.

Now that you have some inspiration about how to keep your customers engaged on your landing pages, which strategy are you going to use for yours? I can’t wait to see what you come up with.

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

Nowadays, it seems like a new company is starting every hour.

While starting a company may seem easier now than ever before, entrepreneurs have an uphill battle from the moment they start a business. On average, a new business competes with 25 competitors to stand out and thrive in its industry.

Aspiring business owners who go in blind without a clear, actionable plan for marketing, hiring, finances, and operations are destined to face significant challenges. This is why crafting a business plan is an essential step in the entrepreneurial process.

In this post, we’ll walk you through the process of filling out your business plan template, like this free, editable version:

Download a free, editable one-page business plan template.

We know that when looking at a blank page on a laptop screen, the idea of writing your business plan can seem impossible. However, it’s a mandatory step to take if you want to turn your business dreams into a reality.

That’s why we’ve crafted a business plan template for you to download and use to build your new company. You can download it here for free. It contains prompts for all of the essential parts of a business plan, all of which are elaborated on, below.

This way, you’ll be able to show them how organized and well-thought-out your business idea is, and provide them with answers to whatever questions they may have.

Featured Resource: Free Business Plan Template

Building a Successful Business Plan

In the next section, we’ll cover the components that make up a business plan, such as an executive summary and company description. But before we get to that, let’s talk about key elements that should serve as building blocks for your plan.

At the core, your business plan should answer two questions: why your business and why now?

Investors want to know why your business is entering the market, i.e. what problem it’s solving and how it’s different from what’s currently out there. They also want to know why now is the right time for your type of product or service.

Too often, business plans are too idealistic and not realistic enough. While having a vision is important, your plan needs to be rooted in research and data.

So back to the question of why and why now – consider three things:

• Your industry – How does your product or service fit within your industry? Are you targeting a specific niche? Where do you see the industry going in the next five to 10 years?

• Your target audience – Who are you targeting? What challenges are they facing? How will your product or service help them in their daily lives?
• Your unique selling proposition (USP) – What sets you apart from your competitors? Is it your product/service features? Your company values? Price?

Once you know the answers to these questions, you’ll be equipped to answer the question: why your business and why now.

Featured Resource: Free Business Plan Template

1. Cover Page

Your business plan should be prefaced with an eye-catching cover page. This means including a high-resolution image of your company logo, followed by your company’s name, address, and phone number.

Since this business plan will likely change hands and be seen by multiple investors, you should also provide your own name, role in the business, and email address on the cover page.

At the bottom of this page, you can also add a confidentiality statement to protect against the disclosure of your business details. The statement can read as follows: “This document contains confidential and proprietary information created by [your company name]. When receiving this document, you agree to keep its content confidential and may only reproduce and/or share it with express written permission of [your company name].”

2. Executive Summary

The executive summary of your business plan provides a one- to two-page overview of your business and highlights the most crucial pieces of your plan, such as your short-term and long-term goals.

The executive summary is essentially a boiled-down version of your entire business plan, so remember to keep this section to the point and filled only with essential information.

Typically, this brief section includes:

• A mission statement.
• The company’s history and leadership model.
• An overview of competitive advantage(s).
• Financial projections.
• Company goals.
• An ask from potential investors.

3. Company & Business Description

In this section, provide a more thorough description of what your company is and why it exists.

The bulk of the writing in this section should be about your company’s purpose – covering what the business will be selling, identifying the target market, and laying out a path to success.

In this portion of your business plan, you can also elaborate on your company’s:

• Mission statement
• Core values
• Team and organizational structure

3. Product & Services Line

Here’s where you’ll cover the makeup of your business’s product and/or services line. You should provide each product or service’s name, its purpose, and a description of how it works (if appropriate).

Next, add some color to your sales strategy by outlining your pricing model and mark-up amounts.

If you’re selling tangible products, you should also explain production and costs, and how you expect these factors to change as you scale.

4. Market Analysis

The market analysis section is where you’ll provide details about the audience to which you’re marketing your business. This should encompass the size of your total addressable market, your market’s demographics and psychographics, and location analysis for your business’ operating space.

It helps to reference your market research documentation in this section, like a Porter’s Five Forces Analysis or a SWOT Analysis (templates for those are available here). You can also include them in your appendix.

If your company already has buyer personas, you should include them here as well. If not, you can create them right now using the Make My Persona Tool.

5. Marketing Plan

Unlike the market analysis section, your marketing plan section should be an explanation of the tactical approach to reaching your aforementioned target audience. List your advertising channels, organic marketing methods, messaging, budget, and any relevant promotional tactics.

If your company has a fully fleshed-out marketing plan, you can attach it in the appendix of your business plan. If not, download this free marketing plan template to outline your strategy.

6. Sales Plan

It doesn’t matter if your sales department is an office full of business development representatives (BDR) or a dozen stores with your products on their shelves.

The point is: All sales plans are different, so you should clearly outline yours here. Common talking points include your:

• Sales team structure, and why this structure was chosen.
• Sales channels.
• Sales tools, software, and resources.
• Prospecting strategy.
• Sales goals and budget.

Like with your marketing plan, it might make sense to attach your completed sales plan to the appendix of your business plan. You can download a template for building your sales plan here.

7. Legal Notes

Your investors may want to know the legal structure of your business, as that could directly impact the risk of their investments. For example, if you’re looking for business partners to engage in a non-corporation or LLC partnership, this means they could be on the line for more than their actual investment.

Because this clarification is often needed, explain if you are and/or plan to become a sole proprietor, partnership, corporation, LLC, or other.

You should also outline the steps you have taken (or will need to take) to operate legally. This includes licenses, permits, registrations, and insurance.

The last thing your investor wants to hear after they’ve sent you a big chunk of change is that you’re operating without proper approval from the local, state, or federal government.

8. Financial Considerations

Ultimately, investors want to know two things:

• When they will earn their money back.
• When they will start seeing returns on their initial investment.

That said, be clear, calculated, and convincing in this section. It should cover:

• Startup costs.
• Sales forecasts for the next several months/quarters.
• Break-even analysis for time and dollars.
• Projected profit and loss (P&L) statement.

Facts and figures are key here, so be as specific as possible with each line item and projection. In addition, explain the “why” behind each of these sections.

However, keep in mind that information overload is a risk, especially when it comes to data. So, if you have pages upon pages of charts and spreadsheets for this section, distill them into a page or two and include the rest of the sheets in the appendix. This section should only focus on key data points.

9. Appendix

A detailed and well-developed business plan can range anywhere from 20 to 50 pages, with some even reaching upward of 80.

In many cases, the appendix is the longest section. Why? Because it includes the supportive materials mentioned in previous sections. To avoid disrupting the flow of the business plan with visuals, charts, and spreadsheets, business owners usually add them in the last section, i.e. the appendix.

Aside from what we’ve already mentioned – marketing plan, sales plan, department budgets, financial documents – you may also want to attach the following in the appendix:

• Marketing materials
• Market research data
• Licensing documentation
• Branding assets
• Floor plans for your location
• Mockups of your product
• Renderings of your office space or location design

Adding these pieces to the appendix enriches the reader’s understanding of your business and proves you’ve put the work into your business plan without distracting from the main points throughout the plan.

Use a Business Plan Template to Get Started

Writing a business plan shouldn’t be an insurmountable roadblock to starting a business. Unfortunately, for all too many, it is.

That’s why we recommend using our free business plan template. Pre-filled with detailed section prompts for all of the topics in this blog post, we’re confident this template will get your business plan started in the right direction.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in June 2017 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

We see graphic design at work every day.

Everything from logos, posters, magazines, product packaging, ads, and more.

It’s an industry that’s always in demand. Why? Because brands always need designers, whether it’s to create branding assets or design an upcoming event flyer.

If it’s an industry you’re interested in, discover the steps you can take today to learn graphic design and find out what you need to keep in mind as you start your career.

1. Learn key design principles.

Graphic design is a visual communication tool that combines the use of graphics, typography, color, and illustration to communicate a message.

And while there are endless ways to communicate a message (that’s where the creative part comes into play), there are key principles that every graphic designer must follow:

• Hierarchy
• Alignment
• Contrast
• Space
• Color
• Proximity
• Repetition
• Balance

These fundamental concepts ensure that a design is cohesive, impactful, and clear.

In addition to these principles, there are other elements that come into play, such as typography and color theory.

The former relates to the way in which your copy (i.e. text) is arranged while the former refers to how people perceive color and how it impacts messaging.

Once you understand these concepts, you can then dive a little deeper. More on that in the next section.

2. Find a course.

Contrary to popular belief, having an eye for design isn’t an innate trait – it’s a learned skill.

Once you have a broad overview of graphic design, it’s time to dive in with an in-depth course.

A course will teach you about the history of graphic design, the various subdivisions within the discipline, the psychology behind design principles, and the tools you’ll need.

Here are the top online resources for graphic design courses:

• General Assembly
• Skillshare
• LinkedIn Learning (formerly Lynda.com)
• Udemy
• Coursera

Then, of course, there’s always YouTube University. The best thing about this university is that it’s 100% free.

The downside here is that you likely won’t find the same depth in the material on YouTube and you won’t have the support of a professor.

Plus, you’ll likely be tasked with finding your own homework to practice what you’ve learned. However, it can be a good place to start if you’re on a budget.

3. Master design programs.

It’s hard to think of graphic design without immediately thinking of the tools they use.

So much of graphic design work relies on the use of tools like Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign, Adobe Photoshop, and Sketch.

These are all powerful software that allow you to create everything from logos and illustrations to website designs.

While they aren’t free to use, consider them investments in your career, as you will likely use them for every project you take on.

4. Network with fellow designers.

In addition to the knowledge you’ll gain from your courses, it’s important to speak with designers who are currently working in the field.

This will help you get a 360-view of what it’s like working as a graphic designer and what it takes to succeed in your role.

Start on social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn. You’ll find plenty of design communities and groups that share information and opportunities.

You can also use sites like MeetUp to find designers in your area who are interested in meeting up as well as Eventbrite to find fun events you can join.

Networking across is as important as networking up. Make sure you lean on your community for support and advice as you develop your skills as a graphic designer.

5. Practice, then practice some more.

Now that you’ve learned everything you need to know, it’s time to put that knowledge into action.

When learning anything new, practicing is key. It’s not enough for you to take in the knowledge, you have to use it and learn how it works in real time.

So, now that you understand design principles and have learned from the experts, it’s time for you to gain your own experience. You can start by searching for graphic design exercises online.

For instance, Type Connection and KernType allow you to test your typography skills. You can also use sites like Sharpen to find design prompts to work on. They have prompts in various categories, from branding to marketing and user experience (UX).

Once you feel confident in your ability, consider taking on a design project of your own. It could be a passion project you give yourself or one you seek out.

This will help you get real-world experience in what it takes to start a project from start to finish and all of the non-design implications you must consider.

9 Tips for Learning Graphic Design

1. Always keep an ear to the ground.

As marketers, we already know how much there is to learn from influencers.

They are highly knowledgeable in their niche and are often willing to share the secrets to their success in their content.

If you seek out their content regularly, you’ll become more familiar with the graphic design world, discover more tips from industry leaders, become comfortable with relevant terminology, and stay on top of trends.

Wondering how to engage? Turn to YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram.

And don’t be afraid to reach out to them. You never know who might respond to your questions – and any positive connection you make will only help you move further along in your journey.

What to Do Right Now

• Build a Twitter List of influential designers on Twitter, so you can follow their daily insights without having to pick out their tweets from a sea of friends, coworkers, and news sources on your timeline.
• Have a mix of well-known designers who personally inspire you and those whose work you do not enjoy. That last point may seem counterintuitive, but consistently observing the work of that group can help you understand why you don’t like it, which is a key part of understanding design.

2. Collect inspirational work.

Once you decide to learn design, start building a catalog of work you think is successful.

That can be as simple as bookmarking images in your web browser, making a Pinterest board, or saving items to a folder on your computer.

Sifting through a catalog of inspiring work will help you to identify trends – both past and present – and can inform your own personal style.

What to Do Right Now

• Get acquainted with leading designer portfolio sites like Dribbble and Behance. These platforms showcase an abundance of high-quality work from leading designers across the spectrum – everyone from web and UX designers, to graphic designers and typographers.
• Set aside time in your day to review these sites and use apps like Panda to make the collection process easier.

3. Dissect the process.

One of the most pivotal moments in my design journey was when I recognized that every single illustration, infographic, and icon I had ever ogled over was the product of someone mastering how to combine shapes and lines.

Analyzing the process behind a design will allow you to understand the steps required to produce a piece of work.

Depending on your current skill level, you may have a leg up in knowing which tools were used, or which aspect was created first. But if you’re a beginner, don’t let that stop you – examining the construction of a design will let you flex your creative muscle.

Educated guesses will do far more to teach you than doing nothing at all. Plus, you’ll likely find that:

1. You know more than you think you do.
2. When you identify holes in that knowledge, you’ll know what techniques or concepts you need to explore to narrow the gap.
3. There’s more than one way to achieve the desired result.

What to Do Right Now

• Download a free vector or PSD design resource, and dig through the layers to see how the designer constructed the object. You can find a number of those files here.
• Once you pick your file, open it in Photoshop, then open the Layers Panel (which you can learn to use here) and un-collapse some of the folders, so that you can see the layers contained within them.

By simply changing the visibility of the layers, you can begin to see how the designer used each shape to build upon one another. You can also begin to understand how to use Photoshop Effects, like drop shadows and strokes.

4. Get specific with your online search queries.

As you begin creating your own designs, you’ll likely hit an obstacle where you think to yourself, “Hmm, how the heck do I do that? “

Chances are, others have wondered the same thing.

Like many self-taught disciplines these days, the majority of my own technical design knowledge was gained by watching a YouTube tutorial while I actively followed along.

The key is to be really specific with your searches, so you can find a highly relevant tutorial.

Searching for something like “How to Create an Icon” might deliver really broad search results. Instead, type in exactly what you want to learn, like, “How to Create a Flat Icon with a Long Shadow.” Boom.

What to Do Right Now

Browse a design terminology glossary to find the specific terms for techniques you’re trying to learn.

That can help you find what you’re looking for online much more easily, in addition to helping you familiarize yourself with the language.

5. Reproduce your favorite work.

Let me be clear: Under no circumstances should you infringe on anyone’s copyrighted work. Never reproduce someone else’s work and try to pass it off as your own.

That said, re-creating a design you like, without advertising it as your own work, is helpful in gaining a deeper understanding of design techniques.

You’ll have to get creative with the method you choose to recreate the design. Don’t get frustrated if you can’t duplicate a design exactly – remember, the process is more important than the result.

What to Do Right Now

• Find a design piece you think is successful, which should be easy if you’ve created an inspiration catalog.
• Open up your go-to design software to recreate it.
• Start dissecting the design and recreating it using your own process.
• If you get stuck, use specific search queries and lean on your design community.

6. Embrace negative space.

The proper use of negative space is often overlooked by beginner and advanced designers alike.

What is negative space, or white space? It’s the space in your design that’s not occupied by any visual or written element. A design piece that doesn’t incorporate enough negative space is like a sentence with no spaces: itisdifficulttocomprehend.

What to Do Right Now

Learning to effectively use white space won’t happen overnight. You’ll have to try out different options to find what works for each design.

• Read some of the articles on this list, compiled by David Kadavy, author of Design for Hackers: Reverse Engineering Beauty. Then, try to put some of these theories into action.

Remember, there’s no hard-and-fast rule to using white space. It takes practice. Eventually, you’ll find that exercises in resizing elements of your composition and changing the layout will lead to a natural understanding of the amount of breathing room required.

7. Don’t be afraid to get feedback.

On some level, everyone is afraid of criticism. We’re afraid our ideas will get shot down and we’ll be sent back to square one.

Learning to accept constructive criticism is no easy task, but it’s key to becoming a better designer.

Paul Arden, who was the creative force behind Saatchi & Saatchi at a pinnacle of its success, wrote this in his best-selling book, It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want to Be:

“If, instead of seeking approval, you ask, ‘What’s wrong with it? How can I make it better?’ you are more likely to get a truthful, critical answer. You may even get an improvement on your idea. And you are still in a position to reject the criticism if you think it is wrong. Can you find fault with this?”

The takeaway: Design critics allow us to incorporate others’ viewpoints into our work and improve upon our ideas. You always have the option to reject the feedback but considering it in the first place is what’s important.

Design is subjective in nature, and just because someone else has a different opinion doesn’t mean you’re wrong.

In fact, trusting your intuition is equally important. Just make sure you have the means to back up your design decisions.

What to Do Right Now

• Have a one-on-one conversation with an experienced designer. If you don’t know anyone in the design world, join an online community of designers.
• Post on Reddit’s Design Critiques.
• Publish your work on social media and ask for feedback from fellow designers.

8. Pick a passion project.

If you only listen to one piece of advice from this post, let it be this one.

In your career, you’ll likely be involved in design projects you aren’t passionate about. And that’s OK.

So, in the beginning, give yourself the room to work on projects you can’t wait to get into. This is the time when you need the motivation to get you through those tough early days of learning something new.

When you get frustrated, a passion project can fuel you to push through.

It’ll also provide direction. Time and time again, the hardest part of learning design is not knowing what to design. Be decisive and choose something you can work on for an extended period of time.

What to Do Right Now

• Align your interests or current situation with your projects. If you’re a blogger, try creating the header image for your next post. V
• Voice your willingness to work on an offer with your content team.
• Looking for a job? Redesign your resume and try to further your personal brand by creating a logo.

There are a number of ways to work design into your day, but it’s up to you to pick something that matters to you.

9. Just start.

t’s easy to be intimidated by the sheer amount of learning associated with graphic design, but remind yourself that even the most talented designers were newbies once, too.

What makes the creative field so special is that everyone’s journey is unique – there’s no one way to approach DIY design. You’ll find your own means to discern what you want and need to learn.

Furthermore, design is an iterative process, so keep reworking your ideas and projects.

As you progress, you’ll develop your own workflow, and one day, that design that took you all day will only take you an hour.

Trust me, I’m living proof.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in June of 2017 and has been updated for comprehensiveness. 

Ask “What makes a great leader?” and you’ll get a different answer every time.

For me, a great leader is empathetic, adaptable, and inspiring. For others, a great leader should be decisive, intelligent, and relatable.

That meaning continues to evolve over time.

One concept that has long been debated is whether leadership is innate or learned.

Some see leadership as a black and white concept: Either you’ve got it or you don’t. But is that really true?

In this article, we’ll explore the trait theory of leadership and what critics say about it.

This idea, first introduced in the mid-1800s, looks at certain traits as inherited, such as:

• Intelligence
• Confidence
• Creativity
• Competency
• People/communication skills
• Trustworthiness
• Decisiveness

For a long time, this was the agreed-upon idea in society. You either had what it took to be a leader, or you didn’t.

The trait theory and approach have served as a benchmark for how we look at our leaders. It puts the emphasis on the person, rather than the followers or environment – which can be helpful in understanding why people gravitate toward particular leaders.

Then, about a century later in the 1940s, the narrative expanded.

Researcher Ralph Stogdill discovered that some people were leaders in some situations, and not in others. This contradicted the trait theory idea and introduced leadership as something that was influenced by the environment.

Think back to your group projects in college or high school.

Where did you fall in the roles? Were you the leader, the supportive but quiet contributor, the I’ll-do-everything-myself, the absent last-minute helper?

You might have been all four depending on the situation. Perhaps you only feel comfortable stepping up as a leader if no one else wants to.

With this in mind, there are several additional leadership theories:

• Situational leadership theories argue that leaders emerge based on need. If a situation requires it, one person will emerge as the leader. However, that same person may not rise to the occasion in another environment.
• Behavioral leadership theories suggest that leadership is a learned behavior that anyone can study.

Now that we know which theories are out there, let’s talk about what critics say about the trait theory.

Criticisms of the Trait Theory of Leadership

Many leaders today strongly disagree with the trait theory of leadership.

They believe that anyone can learn and build the skills needed to succeed as a leader. A small survey sample of U.S. consumers echoed this sentiment.

And there is some research to support this.

A 2008 study on heritability and human development found that 70% of leadership capacity is not inherited genetically, but rather learned through experience.

Additional research studies suggest that few traits differentiate leaders from followers. When comparing leaders with their followers, there are little differences in the traits they possess or have the potential to possess.

Another criticism of the trait theory is that it overlooks socio-economic inequities.

How do you determine who has the potential for leadership if your population doesn’t begin at the same starting line?

For instance, marginalized groups who grow up in underfunded and undersupported communities may not have the same opportunities to showcase their leadership abilities. Their abilities to develop this potential may also be limited.

With this in mind, some view the idea that leadership is inherited as flawed, as it does not factor in all variables.

Trait vs. Process Leadership

These two concepts fall on opposite sides.

The former argues leadership is innate, while the latter maintains that it builds over time as a result of the interactions between the leader and follower(s).

As a process leader, you are responsible for nurturing relationships with others and offering support. Through time, the theory states, you will gain the role of a leader and create an environment in which your followers can succeed.

When examining both theories, both theories can be true.

Leadership is nuanced, and as such, can operate within various models and environments.

For the trait side, everyone is born with personality traits, talents, and gifts, which make us more likely to succeed in particular environments and roles.

For instance, an extrovert can exhibit the qualities of a leader. They have little trouble in social settings and they communicate with confidence. With this in mind, they likely won’t have to work as hard as an introvert to engage with their peers, colleagues, and leaders.

However, an introvert can build those same skills through exposure and experience. On that same note, an introvert may rise to the occasion in more intimate settings.

What’s more, leadership is a constantly evolving concept. While the trait theory was initially the most popular way of viewing leadership, more theories have evolved that expand our understanding of it.

For instance, conversations surrounding psychological safety have only recently gained traction in the workplace. Leaders are now trained on creating an environment in which employees feel safe to share ideas, concerns, and mistakes.

As our understanding of what works best to motivate teams, leadership styles also evolve. As such, there will always be an educational component to being a leader.

There isn’t a right or wrong theory when it comes to leadership. All theories provide some insight into what it takes to be successful as a leader.

While the trait theory offers a rubric for the qualities of a leader, the process theory focuses on how to nurture relationships. The situational leadership model views leadership as a flexible concept that is heavily based on the environment.

If you’re working toward a leadership role, consider these models and use them as building blocks to find your own style.

As a brand, influencer, or creator on Instagram, you know how convenient it is to manage your profile within the app and on a device that sits in your pocket. However, if you ever wanted to view it on a larger screen, like your desktop, you probably had to use an external third-party tool.

Enter Instagram Creator Studio, where you can manage accounts using the familiar in-app tools but on your desktop. Plus, a bonus: the ability to schedule posts. In this post, discover how to use Instagram Creator Studio to manage your profile, from scheduling content to understanding your analytics to monetizing your content.

Specifically, marketers can use Creator Studio to:

• View all of your account’s content (IGTV, photos, Stories, etc.) on a desktop.
• Schedule all of your Instagram content to post at a later date so you can be consistently active in your feed.
• Understand insights for your profile and posts, like performance metrics, follower data, and engagement type, to ensure you’re creating content that your audience enjoys.
• Eligible accounts with over 10,000 followers can monetize content and manage brand collaborations.

Below we’ll outline everything you need to know to begin using Instagram Creator Studio to manage your profile.

How To Connect Instagram To Creator Studio

It’s important to note that you need to have a Business or Creator account to use Creator Studio and connect your account to a relevant Facebook page. Once you’ve done all of those things, here’s how to connect your Instagram account to Creator Studio:

1. Go to the Creator Studio website.

2. Select the Instagram icon on the top of the screen (as shown in the image below).

Image Source

3. Click the green Instagram Login button and follow the instructions in the pop-up window to log in to your account.

4. As mentioned above, you’ll need to connect your account to a relevant Facebook page. If you haven’t done so already, follow the on-screen instructions to connect one to your account.

Once you’ve successfully linked your account, it’s time to start using the platform.

How To Use Instagram Creator Studio

You can use Instagram Creator Studio to post content, schedule content, and get insights for your account. Below we’ll explain how to do all of those things.

When you first connect your account, you’ll land on the Creator Studio dashboard (as shown in the image below), where you’ll see an initial overview of your profile content library, including video, photo, carousel, Stories, and IGTV content. You can click on specific tabs to view each content type individually.

Please note that your page should show all of your posts and content; this is merely an example.

The menu on the left-hand side of the screen (as shown in the image below) has the following options: Content Library, Calendar, Insights (discussed further below), and Monetization.

Under the Calendar tab, you’ll see an overview of the posts you’ve scheduled for the future. Further below, we’ll discuss how to schedule posts so they’ll appear on the calendar.

Under the Monetization tab, you’ll be able to manage your brand collaborations. To have access to this feature, you’ll need an active, public account, 10,000 followers, consistent engagement over the past month, and no history of content violations.

The other tab on the Creator Studio dashboard is the Create Post button, and we’ll discuss how to use it below.

How To Post on Instagram Creator Studio

1. Click the green Create Post button on the top left-hand corner of the Creator Studio menu, as shown in the image below, and select the type of post you’re making: Instagram Feed or IGTV.

2. If you select Instagram Feed, you should see the pop-up window displayed in the image below. Upload the photo you want to post, and add a description to your image.

3. If you want to turn off comments on your post, select the Advanced Settings option on the right-hand side of your screen and toggle the Turn Off Commenting button into the on position.

Add Alt Text on Instagram Creator Studio

The accessibility features within the Instagram app are also available in Creator Studio. To add alt text to your content, follow the steps above for uploading your preferred content type.

Before publishing or scheduling a post to your Instagram feed, navigate to the Accessibility section in the Advanced Settings tab, as highlighted in the image below, and add your alt text.

4. When you’re satisfied with your upload, select the blue Publish button on the bottom right of the pop-up window.

To upload an IGTV video on Creator Studio, follow these steps:

1. Click the green Create Post button on the top left-hand corner of the Creator Studio dashboard and select IGTV from the drop-down menu. You should see the pop-up window displayed in the image below with an upload, title, and description box.

2. Upload your preferred video, and add a title and description.

3. If you want to share the IGTV video to your feed, check the box that says Share Preview To Feed underneath the Choose Where Your Post Will Appear Title.

4. Select the Cover Image tab on the right-hand side of your screen, and choose whether you want Instagram to create an auto-generated image, upload your custom frame, or use a video frame preview.

6. When you’re satisfied with all of your selections, click the blue Publish button on the bottom right-hand side of your screen to share your post on Instagram.

The steps outlined above will help you share a post to Instagram immediately after you upload it. Below we’ll go over how to upload content and schedule it to be posted for later on Creator Studio.

 

How to Schedule Posts on Instagram Creator Studio

To schedule a post on Instagram Creator Studio, follow the same steps you would as if you were going to upload content to your Instagram Feed or an IGTV video. Then,

1. Navigate to the blue Publish button on the bottom right-hand side of the screen and select the down arrow.

2. In the popup window, follow the on-screen instructions and select the date and time you want your post to be posted.

3. After you’re satisfied, click the blue Schedule button and schedule your post. You should then see a list of your scheduled posts in your content library, as shown in the image below.

After you’ve shared your content, you’ll want to understand the success of your content through your insights. Below we’ll explain the insights you can get and how to access them.

 

How To Get Insights From Instagram Creator Studio

The Creator Studio Insights tab gives you more information about your audience and how they interact with your posts. Here are the specific metrics you’ll get:

• Audience: Information about your followers and their gender, age range, and location (top countries and cities). You’ll also be shown when they’re most active, so you can schedule your posts when they’re most active on the platform.
• Activity: Information about how people engage with your account. This includes the reach your posts have, the number of impressions they get, and the actions people have taken (website clicks, taps to get directions, etc.).

1. Select the Insights tab on the right-hand side of the Creator Studio dashboard, as shown in the image below.

2. Select either Activity or Audience from the drop-down menu.

3. Navigate through either tab to learn more about the engagement on activity on your profile.

For example, if you select Activity, you should see the number of actions taken on your account over seven days, including website visits, profile visits, emails, accounts reached, and total impressions. The image below is an example of a Creator Studio activity insights page.

If you select Audience, you’ll see a bar graph displaying your followers’ age and gender breakdown, when they’re active on the app, and two location breakdowns.

Instagram Creator Studio boasts a unique feature not offered within the mobile app: scheduling posts. If you’re hoping to make the switch from managing on only your mobile device to a desktop, leverage the tips on this list to begin using the tool.