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A majority of businesses use marketing automation tools nowadays — in fact, studies cite around 56% of businesses currently use the technology, and that number continues to grow.

While marketing automation software can help companies increase efficiency by streamlining their workflows, there are so many options to choose from, full of different solutions with various features and use cases.

I’ll help you cut through the noise to find the top marketing automation platforms, highlighting what they do and how they can help your team.

In this article, I’ll cover:

• What are marketing automation tools?
• How I Tested the Best Marketing Automation Software
• The Best Marketing Automation Tools
• How to Choose the Best Marketing Automation Software

What are marketing automation tools?

Marketing automation tools use software to automate repetitive marketing tasks.

Some platforms only offer email actions, drip sequences, and CRM updates. Others may help with lead scoring, sales lead rotation, SMS, and more.

Automating your marketing tasks can benefit your business by increasing overall efficiency and allowing you more time to work on high-level projects.

For example, you can use marketing automation tools to collect valuable data that can be used to create more personalized marketing campaigns and increase conversion rates.

How I Tested the Best Marketing Automation Software

Every marketing automation platform offers different benefits and features, making it a challenge to narrow down the best option for your business.

That’s why I tested several options for you. Here’s what I looked for when testing the best marketing automation platforms.

Ease of Use

I don’t know about you, but I’m a visual person. If an interface looks confusing, I’m hesitant to dive in. That’s why I look for simple interfaces that indicate the tool is easy to use.

I look for tools with a simple interface that will guide me through the platform when I first use it. It’s also helpful if the platform includes an easy-to-access knowledge base so I can dive deeper into how a feature works when I need help.

Integrations

Marketing automation tools that integrate with your existing tools are essential.

The whole point of marketing automation platforms is to help you save time by making tasks seamless. This is made possible when everything in your tech stack connects.

When testing the best marketing automation platforms, I looked for software with a library of integrations. In my experience, the more app integrations available, the better connected the platform is.

Price

This can be subjective to your budget and business size, but price is still a factor I considered when reviewing these tools.

Tools that offer more features and support can command a higher price simply because they can help you reduce the number of tools in your tech stack.

If you’re just getting started with automation and want to see if you can benefit from one of these tools, it’s also helpful to look for ones that offer free trials. A free trial — or better yet, a free forever plan — lets you experience what the platform offers without fully committing.

Here, I’ve cultivated a list of marketing automation tools to help you sort through your options and feel confident choosing the best solution for you and your team.

1. HubSpot Marketing Automation

HubSpot’s marketing automation functionality is one of the most powerful tools on this list in terms of features. According to the G2 Grid for Marketing Automation, it’s also one of the most popular in terms of customer sentiment.

Of course, HubSpot has a full growth suite that includes sales software, marketing software, and support software, which all integrate automatically with HubSpot’s CRM.

In my opinion, the combined effect of having all of your data and growth activity in one place can unleash tons of creative automation possibilities that would be difficult or impossible if you used separate tools.

As a standalone, HubSpot‘s marketing automation functionality includes an easy-to-use visual board where you can craft simple or highly sophisticated conditional workflows.

I’ve found it can take time to master the tool (you’ll scale up more quickly with the help of HubSpot Academy), but once you get a grasp on it, the creative possibilities are endless.

You can set up simple email list autoresponders or build a smart and complex network of rules designed to target specific users with the exact right email, live chat, website experience, and more.

Basically, HubSpot’s automation tools go far beyond email, so you can scale your growth and spend less time on repetitive tasks.

Price: HubSpot’s email and form marketing automation tools are free. Paid versions of Marketing Hub, which start at $15 per user/month, offer increased access and features.

Did you know? 57% of HubSpot Marketing Hub customers saw an increase in the number of leads generated with their marketing campaigns. Check out our whitepaper for more insights into the business value of Marketing Hub (just like this one).

2. Sender

Sender is a top email and SMS automation tool that is affordable for small and growing businesses. It has everything you need for successful campaigns, from a simple drag-and-drop email builder to in-depth analytics and a heatmap.

I like Sender because you can grow your email list with high-converting pop-ups, customize pre-made email templates, and employ an email design builder to create high-converting emails.

Once your email is ready, you can create automated workflows without a hassle and send the right message to the right audience using smart segmentation.

When I tested Sender, I appreciated that I could get started right away for free. Setting up my first workflow (as shown above) was also very easy and included pop-ups that guided me through the process.

Price: Sender has a Free Forever plan that offers many premium features for up to 2,500 subscribers and 15,000 emails per month. Paid plans start around $15 per month.

Best for: With its emphasis on email and SMS automation, Sender is best for ecommerce brands.

3. ManyChat

Marketing automation isn’t just about email. Imagine automating some of the most repetitive conversations you have with customers on other platforms.

ManyChat functions as a chatbot that can do just that on Facebook Messenger, Instagram Direct Messages, WhatsApp, and SMS.

I think ManyChat is great because you can build a bot in minutes with its templates and easy-to-use interface. Plus, the information you learn about your users can be synced to your CRM and other tools.

Price: ManyChat offers a free monthly plan that allows engagement with up to 1,000 contacts via Instagram Direct Messages, Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp. Additional access and features are available through ManyChat’s paid plans, which start at $15 per month.

What I like: I’m a big fan of using templates to save time and brain power. With ManyChat, you can use one of their many templates or its AI assistant to generate automated messages.

4. MailModo

Mailmodo is a one-step email marketing solution platform. It allows you to create and send AMP-powered interactive emails without coding.

I like that you can use their drag-and-drop template editor to build email templates with interactive widgets that give your emails app-like functionality.

If you don’t want to build one from scratch, you can choose one from their template library, which contains templates for various use cases.

Mailmodo also has a visual customer journey editor that follows the same drag-and-drop concept, making setting up email automations a breeze.

For example, you can set up automations that send an email after a fixed interval or by condition, like when a customer opens an email, clicks on a link, or submits a response.

These workflows are easy to set up and highly customizable to your needs.

Mailmodo’s other features allow you to segment your subscribers dynamically, set up send time optimization to send emails at the most optimal time, test different versions of the same email before sending, and view the performance of your email campaigns in a dashboard.

Mailmodo also offers AI-powered features, such as its AI subject line generator, AI content generator, and an AI template creator.

Price: Mailmodo has three pricing plans: Lite ($39/month), Pro ($79/month), and Max ($159/month). Each plan allows you to send emails to 2,500 contacts, with monthly send limits that increase with each plan tier.

What I like: Free trials were one of the features I looked for when testing these marketing automation platforms, so I was excited to see that Mailmodo offers a free 21-day trial period.

5. SureTriggers

SureTriggers is an automation tool that optimizes workflows and simplifies business procedures.

The plugin assists in the automation of repetitive processes, the reduction of manual mistakes, and the enhancement of productivity on your WordPress website.

I think its ability to integrate with other CRM and marketing tools makes it simple to automate numerous processes and boost productivity.

SureTriggers is a useful solution for companies of all sizes wanting to optimize their marketing automation efforts since it includes features like custom workflows, automation triggers, and reporting.

It also offers an effective and user-friendly solution for automating repetitive operations like lead management, customer service, and email marketing in the field of marketing automation.

By automating these processes, users may save operating expenses, enhance lead generation, and boost customer interaction, all of which contribute to better marketing results.

Price: SureTriggers offers a free forever plan for one WordPress website. Paid plans start at $9 per month.

Best for: SureTriggers is designed for WordPress websites, making it a niche solution for the WordPress network of plugins and tools.

6. LeadSquared

LeadSquared is a one-stop solution for sales execution and marketing automation.

You can capture leads across various campaigns and sources, track their activity, and even segment them based on demographics for a targeted approach to marketing.

The omnichannel platform helps you touch base with leads over email, WhatsApp, SMS, social media, self-serve portals, and more.

Once you plan to scale your marketing efforts, you can set up automated and trigger-based workflows to ensure consistent outreach across platforms.

LeadSquared also allows you to set up dashboards and in-depth, real-time reports for insights into campaign performance.

Price: The marketing automation suite is available in four tiers:

• Essential for $150.
• Basic for $400.
• Standard $1,200.
• Enterprise for $2,500.

What I like: The best part about the emails and landing pages on LeadSquared is that they require no code, which is convenient if you’re a less technical marketer like me. The pages can be completely customized with an easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor.

7. SendPulse

Having started out as an email marketing service, SendPulse gradually evolved into a full-scale marketing automation platform with a variety of channels to reach existing and potential customers.

Established brands and small businesses alike can build highly personalized message flows that combine emails, chatbots, and SMS notifications.

I found the visual chatbot builder itself to be very versatile as it allows users to create chatbots for Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Telegram, and Viber. It also supports ChatGPT integration, which will make the chatbot even more human-like.

Price: SendPulse provides a monthly free plan. Paid plans start at $8 per month.

What I like: SendPulse is an all-in-one platform that even offers an online course builder. If you’ve considered monetizing your knowledge or using courses for lead generation, this platform could be a great option.

8. Moosend

Moosend is an email marketing automation platform that caters to various industries, including ecommerce, SaaS, and agencies.

The automation feature uses advanced website tracking and triggers that allow you to send the right email campaign to those in your contacts who are interested in a specific product or service.

For example, you can set up a cart abandonment series to target potential customers who left their shopping carts without making a purchase.

In my experience, collecting and managing customer data can come in handy as you can use it to craft product recommendation campaigns based on product views.

This data also allows you to create detailed reports of the campaign’s progress and the users’ activity so you can optimize the effectiveness of your promotional messages.

Price: Moosend offers a 30-day free trial, so you can try before you buy. After that, Pro plans start at $7 per month.

Best for: One of my favorite parts of testing Moosend was seeing its agency-side features. Moosend can act as a personal client management hub where you can work on multiple client projects from one place. Plus, it comes with customizations, making this a great option for agencies.

9. Bardeen.ai

Bardeen is an AI automation tool that optimizes workflows. With Bardeen.ai, automation is now as simple as texting a friend.

Bardeen helps streamline your workflow with AI, whether you need to keep your CRM clean and updated, personalize outreach campaigns, or synchronize data across various tools your internal team uses.

What I like best about Bardeen is that it’s a Chrome extension. This made it easy to get started and connect it with my existing workflow right away.

The ability to integrate with other CRMs like HubSpot and over 100 other integrations makes it easy to automate numerous processes and boost productivity.

Bardeen is a useful solution for companies of all sizes looking to optimize their marketing and sales automation efforts. Getting started is easy, with thousands of ready-to-use automation templates to choose from.

Price: Bardeen offers a free forever plan, while a Professional plan starts at $10 per month.

Pro tip: Bardeen is a Chrome extension, so you must be a Google Chrome user to take advantage of this workflow tool.

10. Omnisend

Omnisend is an omnichannel marketing automation platform built for ecommerce. Offering powerful automation workflows, you can get started quickly with pre-built templates that keep online merchants in mind.

With Omnisend, you can add several channels within the same automation workflow: email, SMS, Facebook Messenger, push notifications, and more.

I like that Omnisend also uses a user-friendly visual builder and templates, which make creating workflows, forms, landing pages, pop-ups, and emails quick and easy.

Price: Omnisend offers a free plan with basic email marketing automation that is best suited for small businesses just starting out. Medium- to larger-sized businesses will most likely benefit from Omnisend’s paid plans, which start at $16 per month.

What I like: While I wasn’t able to see too many features available since I don’t have an ecommerce shop (most features required me to connect my shop before I could explore), I like Omnisend’s interface. It’s organized and easy to understand, which makes setting up workflows less intimidating.

11. EngageBay

EngageBay is another marketing automation platform designed specifically for small- to medium-sized businesses.

This software offers a wide range of features, including email marketing, social media management, and website chat.

Other commendable features, in my opinion, include drag-and-drop builders for landing pages and emails, A/B testing, SMS marketing, push notifications, abandoned cart retrieval and reminders, autoresponders, and canned responses.

Price: EngageBay offers a free plan for small businesses, as well as three advanced paid plans that scale with your business needs, starting at $12.74 per user/month.

What I like: I like that EngageBay offers a free plan, making it easy for small businesses to get started with automation, even with a limited budget.

12. Ontraport

Unlike other marketing automation tools, Ontraport is a business automation software specifically designed for entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, and small businesses.

While it has CRM and marketing automation functionality, I appreciate that it also has several other features to run and grow a small business, including, but not limited to, email marketing, landing pages, reporting, and ecommerce.

One of the most valuable things Ontraport offers is its focus on reporting and insights. While some tools can be a bit of a black box, Ontraport gives you a clear look at the performance of your campaigns.

Price: Though Ontraport does not have a free plan, it does offer a free 14-day trial with each of its four paid plans. Pricing for Ontraport’s basic plan starts at $24 per month, which includes unlimited email sending and drag-and-drop marketing automation.

Best for: Entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, and small businesses.

13. Brevo

Formerly SendinBlue, Brevo is a digital marketing platform that features well-liked automation software suited for both beginner and advanced marketers.

With Brevo, you can design mobile-friendly email campaigns either from scratch or through customizable templates. You can also run SMS campaigns from Brevo. Advanced features include reporting and lead scoring.

Price: Brevo offers a pretty impressive free plan, which includes basic marketing automation functionality, unlimited contacts, and up to 300 emails per day. Paid plans start at $25 per month.

What I like: Brevo offers other software, such as sales and conversations platforms, plus a CRM, so you can seamlessly integrate your tech stack.

14. ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is an integrated email marketing, marketing automation, and small business CRM.

ActiveCampaign‘s strongest point is its powerful and flexible marketing automation functionality. I think it’s one of the most comprehensive solutions on the market, and its deliverability is also rated as one of the best in the market.

I’ve found that this probably isn‘t the best tool for beginners or those with low technical capabilities, as it takes a bit more time and effort to learn. But when you do learn the platform, it’s pretty powerful.

Price: ActiveCampaign offers a 14-day free trial. Paid plans start at $15 per month.

What I like: ActiveCampaign’s top-rated deliverability rates are a great selling point if you want to ensure you get into your customers’ inboxes.

15. Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement

Formerly known as Pardot, Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement is a cloud automation solution that mostly serves enterprise clients that have the technical resources and time to learn the platform.

It has a ton of features that automate communication to existing contacts, from CRM integration to email marketing, lead nurturing, and an ROI reporting functionality to make sure your campaigns are working.

You can track all interactions on your website and build predictive lead scoring based on the parameters you set. All of this helps improve marketing efficiency and remove wasted time and effort from your sales team.

I should note that while it is incredibly powerful, this software may not be as accessible or affordable for smaller businesses or entrepreneurs as there is not a free plan or trial.

Price: Plans for Marketing Cloud Account Engagement start at $1,250 per month.

Best for: At its steep price point, this marketing automation platform is best for enterprise companies.

16. Keap

Keap (formerly known as Infusionsoft) has been around since 2001 and has helped thousands of marketers deliver on leads, revenue, and customer acquisition targets.

Keap really flourishes in the small business and solopreneur crowd, and in my experience, I’ve noticed it has a pretty sophisticated user base.

You can set up relatively complex decision trees depending on which lead magnet someone signs up for, how many (and which) emails they open and click, or other contact property data.

As Keap‘s features continue to evolve, long-time customers may prefer Keap’s Max Classic plan since it is most similar to Infusionsoft’s original platform.

Price: Keap offers a free 14-day trial and three different paid plans based on customer needs, starting at $249 per month.

What I like: Keap’s features are best for small businesses that need integrated sales and marketing automation.

17. Marketo

Marketo was founded in 2006 as a marketing automation software company. It was later acquired by Adobe and incorporated into its enterprise marketing cloud.

The Adobe integration means that, if you use Adobe Analytics for data measurement and Adobe Target for experimentation and personalization, you’ll have a powerful enterprise marketing automation and optimization suite.

The tool is typically geared toward enterprise customers — it’s a bit out of range for most small business owners.

Price: Adobe does not offer a free trial or plan for Marketo. Since Marketo’s plan prices are determined by your database size, you will need to reach out to the sales department for a quote.

Best for: If you already use other Adobe products, this could be a seamless tool to add to your tech stack.

18. GetResponse

GetResponse is marketing automation software with many different layers and features. Its affordable Email Marketing plan includes basic autoresponders, templates, and a list size of 1,000 contacts.

GetReponse’s more premium plans include powerful features like drip campaigns, contact scoring, event-based automation, ecommerce tracking, and more.

In general, I found this software easy to use. You’ll typically find good results from the tool, although it works best with the simpler features, like email newsletters. It can become trickier to work with the platform if you plan on implementing complicated conditional logic and marketing automation.

Price: GetResponse offers a free 30-day trial. Paid plans start at $19 per month.

Pro tip: GetResponse offers a discounted plan — 50% off monthly plans — for nonprofits.

19. Drip

Drip is one of the few marketing automation tools on this list that is primarily focused on ecommerce marketing automation.

It provides one of the more “open” platforms, claiming that it plays well with “pretty much any marketing strategy you want to put in motion.”

Additionally, I found email to be one of its strengths. Some email marketing and automation features include unlimited email sends, pre-built workflows, and multi-channel marketing.

Price: Though Drip does not have a free plan, it does offer a free 14-day trial. Paid plans are based on your number of email contacts and start at $39 per month.

What I like: Drip excels in personalization and analytics. Overall, I found it to be a powerful tool for ecommerce marketing automation.

20. Mautic

Mautic is the only open-source marketing automation platform on this list. Founded in 2014, Mautic has grown quickly and is seemingly picking up steam with high-tech companies.

Currently, over 200,000 organizations use Mautic, and it is available in over 35 languages.

Price: Free

Best for: For more technical marketers who want access to open-source codes.

How to Choose the Best Marketing Automation Software

A more niche marketing automation product may be better for SMB and B2C environments, but B2B and enterprise companies may need a platform with wider capability.

Here are some key areas to consider as you evaluate marketing automation software products to choose the one that’s right for you:

1. Determine your budget and business needs.

If automation’s benefits can be summed up with one statement, it’s this: It will make you more efficient, so you can focus on the tasks you enjoy and that have the highest return.

With that in mind, you’ll want to evaluate the price as you consider capability.

For SMBs and B2C organizations focusing primarily on email, a scaled-down system might be sufficient. However, with more advanced needs, enterprise (and thus higher ticket) software is more cost-efficient in the long run.

I recommend you choose a provider that’s reasonably priced but can also grow with you as your needs change. After all, reducing bloated operations is critical to scaling effectively.

2. Evaluate the software’s ease of use.

Automation isn’t a simple thing to implement, so make sure the interface of the software will work with you, not against you. See if you can find screenshots of the UX or demo the software so you can determine if it looks simple and easy to navigate.

Automation can be technical, so I suggest looking for providers that have robust knowledge bases, tutorials, and other customer support options.

3. Explore analytics and reporting options.

You’ll want to be able to measure the success of any drip campaigns you have running, so make sure your automation software will keep track of the metrics that matter most to you.

In B2B and enterprise environments with many stakeholders, you may also need advanced reporting abilities such as personalized dashboards or automatic reporting via email.

For example, HubSpot’s marketing analytics software lets you set up custom dashboards to monitor anything from website traffic analytics to email signups, top-performing revenue sources, and more.

4. Research integrations.

How well does the marketing automation software play with your existing stack? Integrations allow you to manage data and get more from your tools.

Pro tip: You can find our essential apps for marketers in HubSpot’s App Marketplace.

5. Consider potential limitations.

Some automation software platforms may limit the number of actions in a month or the database size you’re allowed.

Going into any evaluation, I suggest you know how many contacts you have, how many emails you send on average, and what you want the software to achieve.

This will prevent you from underestimating the cost of your automation software.

6. Request a demo.

Before making a final decision, consider reaching out to each provider’s sales team to request a demo or sign up for free trial offers.

Trying out a marketing automation tool before you buy it can help you determine which features best serve your needs.

Getting Started With Marketing Automation

There are tons of options for marketing automation software. It’s all about choosing the right one for your business purposes, budget, and technical expertise.

Want something incredibly powerful and limitless? It may end up costing more and taking time and effort to learn. The cheaper options, by comparison, might have too limited a scale.

Ultimately, it’s a trade-off that you need to weigh for your business.

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

One of my favorite things to do on my personal website is to dig into web analytics.

I don’t consider myself a technical person, but over the years, I’ve learned to love what metrics like pageviews, new visitors, and traffic sources can tell me about my site visitors.

Not only that, but they also opened my eyes to new business opportunities — which is gold for freelancers like myself.

In this guide, I’ll be covering everything you need to know about web analytics, so you can truly understand which data points mean what, interpret your findings correctly, and make data-backed decisions for your website and business.

We’ll be covering the following points below — click on any of the jump links to skip to that section:

• What is web analytics?
• Importance of Web Analytics
• What is web analytics used for?
• Web Analytics Examples
• Web Analytics Best Practices
• Web Analytics Tools
• Web Analytics Pitfalls to Avoid

There are tons of data you can collect to understand how people interact with your website and identify opportunities for improvement.

You can track overall traffic, bounce rate, traffic sources, new and returning visitors, time spent on site, and much more.

Let’s take a closer look at why web analytics is important below.

Importance of Web Analytics

Web analytics is critical to the success of your business. Here are some specific ways it can benefit your website.

It provides audience insights.

One reason web analytics is important is that it gives you better insight into your site visitors.

For example, one web analytics metric is traffic source. This data tells you not only through which channel your visitors are finding your website but also their geography.

You may think your customers are based on the West Coast and find you through LinkedIn, but your web analytics may show you that a majority of your visits come from mobile searchers in the Northeast.

It improves user experience.

In my experience, web analytics enables you to better understand your site visitors and use those insights to improve their experience on your site.

For example, if you discover that the majority of users on your site are using a mobile device, then you can focus on making your website more mobile-friendly.

Or, if you see that a specific page gets a lot of traffic, you can make sure the page is optimized for the information visitors need.

You can also move the page navigation to a more prominent spot on your website to make sure it’s easy to access.

It guides your SEO strategy.

Web analytics can also shape your content and SEO strategy. By looking at your top-viewed posts, you can begin to identify what types of content and topics perform best with your audience.

For example, if you notice how-to WordPress tutorials make up the majority of your top viewed posts, then you might shift and narrow your focus from definition articles about anything web-related to how-to WordPress tutorials.

Or, maybe you look at your site’s traffic sources and notice that organic and email traffic are your top drivers and paid channels are your lowest. In that case, you might shift resources to invest more in your organic strategy than paid.

Now that we have an idea of web analytics and why it’s important, let’s look at some key metrics you might track to measure progress against — and eventually meet — overarching business objectives, like increasing traffic, leads, and revenue.

Pro tip: Want to quickly see how your website ranks? Use our Website Grader to find out what your website rating is and how to improve it.

What is web analytics used for?

Web analytics is used to improve your website so you can better meet visitors’ needs, improve conversions, and ultimately generate more business.

The amount of data can be overwhelming at first. That’s why I think it’s important to identify a few key metrics, particularly as you’re getting started.

For example, you might start by focusing on the bounce rate for a few key pages on your site.

If visitors are quickly bouncing from your homepage, then that indicates they’re not finding the information they’re looking for quickly or easily enough.

From there, you can identify possible next steps, like redesigning your website navigation.

Before you read on, I want to note that various analytics tools may have slightly different definitions of the following terms. It‘s best to consult your particular tool’s documentation to understand exactly how each is calculated.

Pageviews

Pageviews are the total number of times a page was viewed on your site. A pageview (or view) is counted when a page on your site is loaded by a browser.

So, if a person were to view a page on your site and reload the page in their browser, that would count as two views.

If a person viewed one page, viewed a second page on your website and then returned to the original page, that would count as three views.

Pageviews can give you an idea of how popular a page on your site is, but my experience has taught me it’s important to look at this number in context with other metrics — something a traffic analysis tool can help with.

A page with a high number of views for a post isn’t necessarily popular since a small group of visitors could be responsible for a lot of those views.

A high number may also indicate that a page was confusing and required visitors to return to it multiple times.

Unique Pageviews

Unique pageviews are the total number of times a page was viewed by users in a single session. In other words, a unique pageview aggregates pageviews that are generated by the same user during a session (which I’ll define below).

So, if a person viewed the same page twice (or more times) during an individual session, unique pageviews would only count that pageview once.

Unique pageviews discount instances in which a user reloads or visits the same page in the same session.

That’s why this metric helps you get a better understanding of how many visitors are viewing pages on your site and how popular individual pages are.

Sessions

A session is a group of interactions — including not only pageviews, but activities such as call-to-action (CTA) clicks and events — that take place on your website within a given time frame.

The timeframe of a session varies by web analytics tool. For example, sessions in Google Analytics and HubSpot’s traffic analytics tools last 30 minutes by default.

A session ends, and a new session starts for a user when either:

• A) there has been 30 minutes of inactivity and the user becomes active again
• B) the clock strikes midnight, or
• C) a user arrives via one traffic source, leaves, and then comes back via a different source.

That means if a user lands on your site, leaves, and returns within 30 minutes, Google Analytics and HubSpot will count it as one session, not two.

On the other hand, if a user is inactive on your site for 30 minutes or more but then clicks on a CTA or takes another action, Google Analytics and HubSpot will count it as two sessions, not one, even if the user never left your site.

New Visitors

New visitors — also termed new users, unique visitors, or new visitor sessions, depending on the web analytics tools — are the number of unique visitors on your website.

As the name implies, a new visitor is an individual who visits your site for the first time. Healthy websites will show a steady flow of new visitors over time to make up for those who lose interest.

These individuals are identified by a unique identifier. For example, when using HubSpot, the HubSpot tracking code is installed on your site. Then, visitors to your site are tracked by the cookie placed in their browser by this tracking code.

Two important notes to keep in mind: First, a single visitor can have multiple sessions and pageviews on your site.

Second, unique visitors are not an entirely accurate metric. That’s because most web analytics tools use cookies to track visitors, which doesn’t always distinguish new visitors from returning ones (which I’ll define below).

For example, if a person visits your site via their mobile phone and then on their personal computer, they’ll be counted as new visitors on both occasions.

Returning Visitors

Returning visitors (or users) is the number of visitors on your website who have visited before. Not all web analytics tools include this metric, but some — including Google Analytics — do.

In Google Analytics’s Audience reports, you can look at behaviors to see the ratio of new to returning users on your site.

In my opinion, looking at both new and returning visitors metrics is great for getting a sense of how well you’re retaining your visitors and how effective you are in attracting net new visitors at the top of the funnel.

Your ratio of new to returning visitors will depend on several factors, including your industry, how long you’ve been around, and whether you offer incentives to return to your site.

But, if you’re an established website that’s seeing returning (or new) visitors top 80% of your traffic, attempt to balance this out by attracting more new visitors or retaining old ones.

Again, keep in mind that this metric won’t be completely accurate if the web analytics tool uses cookies to track visitors.

Traffic Sources

Traffic sources show where your site visitors are coming from. Like visitor information, this metric is usually collected via the tracking code on your site.

The number of traffic sources you can track will vary depending on the web analytics tool. HubSpot’s traffic analytics tools track multiple categories, including:

• Organic search.
• Referrals.
• Organic social.
• Email marketing.
• Paid search.
• Paid social.
• Direct traffic.

Ideally, you want to increase all sources of traffic. But, your biggest focus should be organic search, which is traffic that comes from non-paid search results in search engines like Google.

This source has the potential to drive huge amounts of traffic to your site. Plus, I’ve found improving this channel often improves other channels, like referrals and social.

Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors that leave your website after viewing a single page.

You can look at bounce rate as a site-wide metric or a page-level metric. At the page level, bounce rate is the percentage of sessions that started on the page and did not move to another page on your site.

Generally, a bounce rate of 40% or lower is considered good, 40% to 70% is average, and anything above 70% is considered high.

If your site’s overall bounce rate is high, it might help to identify individual pages with high bounce rates.

A high average page bounce rate might indicate there’s a problem with the page’s loading time or that external links are not opening in a new tab or window, among other reasons.

To learn what actions you can take to reduce your bounce rate, check out our 6 Steps to Reduce Your Bounce Rate.

Web Analytics Best Practices

Many aspects of web analytics are specific to your business: what metrics you track, how you build out website analytics reports, and what tools you use.

However, there are some best practices that can help anyone collect, analyze, and report website data more effectively. Let’s look at a few.

1. Pick metrics that align with your business objectives.

Focusing on only one or two metrics won’t provide enough insight into how visitors are interacting with your site, but tracking every single metric might provide too much information to be actionable.

To ensure you’re focusing on the right metrics, start by plotting your business objectives. Think about your website’s top priorities.

Do you want to lower your site bounce rate? Are you looking to attract more new visitors or better retain existing ones?

Once you have one or more objectives in mind, I recommend come up with specific strategies you’ll implement to achieve them.

These may include fixing broken links and images, changing your site’s copy, or better optimizing for your mobile audience, which probably makes up around half of your traffic.

You’re now ready to narrow down what metrics will help you track your progress toward achieving your goals and, ultimately, your business objectives.

2. Use data to drive decision-making.

After collecting your data, determining whether or not you met your goals is only the first step. The next — and arguably more important — step is using that data to test, experiment, and make changes on your site.

For example, say you identified some high-value content, like your Services and Pricing page, through user testing and feedback in your web design process.

However, these pages aren’t getting much traffic.

In this case, you might move the navigation links for these pages to a more visible part of your site or implement SEO measures on these pages to rank higher and capture more organic search traffic.

3. Don’t limit your focus to traffic.

Understanding and reporting traffic data — including pageviews, top traffic sources, and most viewed pages — is important. But it’s just one piece of your website performance. High traffic doesn’t necessarily mean success.

For example, if you’re getting millions of pageviews but no conversions, then you’re probably not meeting all your business objectives.

Or, if new visitors consistently make up a high proportion of your traffic, consider why that might be and how you can attract return visitors more effectively.

4. Always pair data with insights.

If your web analytics report shows that your website received 1 million unique pageviews and 400,000 new visitors this month, that doesn’t mean all that much.

Reporting only the numbers provides an incomplete picture of your website performance. For all we know, these numbers could indicate:

• An increase from last month.
• A decrease from last month.
• Little to no change in pageviews or visitors month-over-month.
• An increase last month but a major year-over-year decrease.

That’s why you must pair your data with insights.

If you instead report that your website got 1 million unique pageviews, which exceeded last month’s unique pageviews by 20% and also showed a significant increase year over year, then the data is much more meaningful and actionable to you and your fellow stakeholders.

5. Look at your data in context.

While collecting and analyzing data, I recommend you think about it in context.

What variables or larger forces could be impacting the numbers? For example, algorithm updates, seasonality, and bots can all have a major impact on your traffic and other metrics.

Imagine that a few pages on your site saw major spikes in traffic. These posts weren’t updated recently, so you look where this traffic came from.

If the traffic mostly came from one country where you usually don’t see much traffic, this was likely malicious bot traffic, which accounts for a quarter of all internet traffic.

In my experience, viewing your data in context can help you better understand, analyze, gain insight, and make informed decisions with your data.

If you find analyzing data overwhelming, I suggest checking out an advanced analytics consulting service. They can help you uncover insights that drive your strategy so that you can achieve your business objectives more effectively.

6. Share and ask for feedback from stakeholders.

As an analyst, you want to provide information to stakeholders in a way that is understandable and actionable. You also want to ask for information and ideas from these stakeholders.

They can provide valuable feedback on how they use the data, what else they want to see or understand about their users or website, and how they think they can improve the user experience or other issues the data uncovers.

Web Analytics Tools

Measuring organizational success requires more than one metric — and more than one tool. Let’s take a look at some web analytics tools you can combine for high-quality data.

1. HubSpot Marketing Analytics & Dashboard Software

Get HubSpot’s Free Marketing Analytics Software

With HubSpot’s free marketing analytics and dashboard software, you can measure the performance of all your marketing assets.

This includes website and landing pages, emails, blog posts, social media accounts, CTAs, and more — all from one dashboard.

I like that you’re able to track your customers’ complete lifecycle, measure traffic overall or on a page-by-page basis, and add multiple reports to your dashboard so you’re tracking your most critical metrics in one easy-to-access place.

You can even break down reports by user characteristics for more fine-grained analysis.

HubSpot’s free tool is ideal for anyone looking for built-in analytics, reports, and dashboards so they can make smarter, data-driven decisions.

What I like: Analytics is fully integrated into everything you do in HubSpot, ensuring you always have the right data available when you need it. There’s no more digging through spreadsheets or datastreams — with HubSpot, everything is accessible and actionable, whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned expert.

2. Google Analytics

Used by over 28 million websites, Google Analytics is the most popular web analytics tool.

With it, you can track pageviews, unique pageviews, bounce rate, traffic channels, user retention, average session duration, sessions by country, sessions by device, and more.

You can also build reports about your audience, acquisition channels, engagement, and conversions.

Understanding the value, flexibility, and popularity of Google Analytics, some platforms offer unique integrations with this tool.

Analytics Amplifier, for example, is a HubSpot app that allows users to match HubSpot customer behaviors — including “hot leads” and “deal amount” — with real-time Google Analytics data.

If you want to learn more about this tool, check out our Ultimate Guide to Google Analytics.

However, I think the sheer amount of metrics, reports, and integrations that can be tracked or created using Google Analytics might be overwhelming.

Users without SEO or technical expertise, like content creators, may find it difficult and prefer a Google Analytics alternative.

What I like: Google Analytics is unmatched in popularity. It gives website owners an all-encompassing view of their site activity and is relatively easy to set up and link to any live site. Plus, Google Analytics offers many powerful capabilities for free.

3. Crazy Egg

Used by over 300,000 users, Crazy Egg is a unique web analytics tool that provides heatmaps, scroll maps, and other visual reports to show you exactly how your visitors are interacting with your site.

Thanks to Crazy Egg’s tracking code, you’ll be able to watch what visitors are hovering over and clicking on in real time via heatmaps.

Crazy Egg also offers comprehensive A/B testing so you can test various content variables like color, copy, and content placement. You can then see how it affects the user experience and conversions.

In my opinion, this makes Crazy Egg an ideal alternative or supplement to Google Analytics for users interested in conversion optimization.

What I like: I like that Crazy Egg is a user-friendly tool for conducting heatmap and scroll map testing, A/B testing, and screen recordings of user interactions. These are great means to better understand users in qualitative and quantitative ways and gain insights to improve the user experience on your site.

4. Semrush

Semrush is a comprehensive SEO tool for keyword research, website audits, competitive research, backlinks, and more. In my experience, these are important elements that contribute to your website and content visibility.

Best for: If one of your website or business goals is to improve your search traffic, then using a tool like Semrush or Ahrefs is essential. Not only do these tools help you understand how you rank in the search engine results pages (SERPs), but they also show you how to improve your website content and technical SEO aspects.

5. Hotjar

Hotjar offers visual behavior insights through surveys, funnels, and heat maps.

The heat maps specifically include mouse movement tracking, which I think is a game-changer for web analytics.

Not only does this data tell you which links and pages visitors are hovering over or clicking on the most, but it also lets you know which content they’re most interested in and how long they spend looking at it.

Pro tip: Hotjar has a free forever plan, so if you’re new to web analytics or on a budget, this option is invaluable.

6. Chartbeat

Chartbeat is a content analytics software for content publishers. It offers intelligence and real-time analytics features to enable media websites to understand what content their audience engages with.

Chartbeat’s goal is to help publishers grasp what keeps their audiences reading and scrolling within their online publications.

What I like: One of Chartbeat’s most popular features is its real-time dashboard. As a former journalist, I know how quickly trends and stories emerge. It’s essential to have insights into real-time web analytics that tell you how readers are reacting to new content.

7. SimilarWeb

SimilarWeb is a competitive landscape analysis tool that enables you to compare your website with one of your direct competitors.

Not only can you see how competitors rank in the search results, but you can also track their performance — such as traffic and engagement — over time.

Best for: If you know who your competitors are and you’re actively competing for the top spot in the search engine results page, then I think this tool is essential.

Web Analytics Pitfalls to Avoid

Like anything else, web analytics can come with its challenges. If you aren’t careful about what you’re tracking (and why), you can easily find yourself in a pitfall.

Here are some potential issues you may experience.

Tracking Too Many Metrics

I’m certainly guilty of this. Whether I’m checking my own web analytics or digging into a client’s, it’s tempting to want to analyze all of them.

But not every metric is important to your overall goals. To get the most out of your web analytics, it’s important to focus on a few key metrics that contribute to your website’s and business’s success and don’t get distracted by the rest.

Inaccurate Data

While most web analytics data is accurate and helpful, not all of it is correct.

For example, one of the most frustrating challenges of web analytics is spam traffic, which is traffic from bots or inaccurate sources. While you can try to set up website blockers that prevent this, it’s best to ignore data that seems inaccurate.

Plus, considering that we’re already on the path towards a cookieless internet and more people are opting out of letting their website activity and behavior be tracked, it’s easy to assume that not all of the data is accurate.

Relying Too Much on the Data

I’ve shared the many ways tracking web analytics can be useful for your website and business goals. But another pitfall you can potentially run into is overreliance on this data.

Your web analytics are only one small part of your website’s overall visibility, performance, and role in the business. The worst thing you can do is make major business decisions based purely on what your web analytics is pointing to.

Instead, web analytics should be used as insights to inform your website’s role and strategy in your company.

Using Web Analytics to Improve Your Website

Whether you’re a small business, ecommerce site, or enterprise company, web analytics can help you and your company grow.

I’ve personally found that web analytics data can uncover new opportunities for both your website and the business as a whole. But it doesn’t tell the entire story.

I recommend focusing on a few key data points relevant to your goals and doing your best to ignore the rest.

When you track the right ones, web analytics can vastly improve your website content, user experience, and overall site ranking.

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

There’s no doubt that in the last few months, you’ve run into Google’s new AI search tool. Often, the tool provides a helpful summary (though sometimes it’s laughably wrong).

While the tools themselves are evolving every day, it seems generative AI search engines aren’t going anywhere. Since Google launched its AI search, it’s already made leaps in relevance and accuracy.

I’m a big fan of not having to scroll through a page of results to find a quick answer, so I’m excited to see how it continues to evolve.

But as a writer, I’m curious to discover what this will mean for the future of digital content. How will this affect the type of work we do, and how will we need to adapt our writing for AI-driven search?

In this article, we’ll explore the insights we already have about writing for generative AI and raise questions we still need answered.

Table of Contents

• How AI Search Has Changed Content Marketing
• How to Write for AI Search
• 7 Helpful Tips on Writing for AI Search

How AI Search Has Changed Content Marketing

1. New Information Retrieval

AI-powered generative engines have majorly shifted how users are retrieving the information they’re searching for.

Instead of providing sources for the user to read, generative engines are providing summaries to answer questions in less time.

Recently, I was trying to plan a movie date with a friend to see A Quiet Place: Day One. She was about to leave on vacation, and I wanted to see if the movie would be in theaters when she got back.

I searched “how long are movies usually in theaters.”

I got an answer without clicking on a single page.

2. Less Spam

Earlier this year, major search engines like Google started cracking down on what they considered spam or unoriginal content — many of which were AI-generated.

AI search engines don’t respond well to spammy content and, instead, are looking for high authority, highly structured articles that the bots can easily scan.

As a result, it seems that quality is above quantity when it comes to what’s most important with your content (though many argue that was already the case).

Let’s talk about one of my favorite examples: recipe blogs.

In the past, if I wanted to find a pad thai recipe through Google, a lengthy article using the phrase “pad thai recipe” dozens of times would rank highest.

I’d scroll through long personal anecdotes I didn’t care about with no tips for actually cooking the dish.

Now, the top recipe is from Recipe Tin.

I still have to scroll before getting to the recipe. However, the content focuses on genuinely helpful tips. Nagi, the writer, discusses what makes pad thai authentic, her brand recommendations for ingredients, and techniques.

This information helps me cook the dish better.

I don’t have to parse through spammy content. I get real tips that I know came from a human.

Image Source

And to clarify: This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use AI to support your content creation. It just means you need to make sure the content is beneficial to readers.

3. Lower Web Traffic

As AI-generated answers start popping up on search engines, websites have seen lower levels of web traffic overall. Top-ranked websites have seen traffic dips as significant as 10%.

This makes sense, given that many users are stopping at the summary instead of proceeding on. This adjustment means the goal of content might not be to rank highly but, instead, to be used by AI and cited in summaries.

I’m not immune to this, even as a content creator. I considered running a half marathon and wanted to see what a training plan might be.

I could Google to see what experts suggest. Instead, I shared a little bit about my skill level and constraints. Then ChatGPT made me a plan.

That was an easy experience that took way less time than searching for an answer.

4. A change in traffic source.

The above point has a bit of nuance. Most content can expect a dip in traffic, but for content that’s highly visible to large language models (LLMs), you could see an increase in engagement by upwards of 40%.

That’s because the goal of writing for AI search is to be cited as a source. When you’re cited in a summary on Google AI Search, users can easily click on your content to learn more.

My HubSpot editor, Kaitln Milliken, recently had her dog spayed and directly benefitted from AI search. She looked up “how do I take care of my dog after she’s spayed.”

“The AI overview had some helpful tips out the gate, but I wanted to learn more,” Milliken says. “I clicked on the articles in the overview first — partially because it was easy, but also because I trusted that these sources had authority.”

5. De-emphasis on SEO.

What makes an article great for search engines is a bit different than what makes an article great for AI bots.

Whereas SEO is focused on keywords, backlinks, and searchability, generative engine optimization (GEO) emphasizes highly structured articles with lots of sources. This guide on GEO can be a helpful resource as you learn the differences.

How to Write for AI Search

Now that you understand the way AI search has changed the content landscape, let’s look at a step-by-step guide for writing for AI search.

I also asked Kaitlin Milliken, who assigned hundreds of articles a year from the HubSpot blog, for her perspective.

Step 1. Find original ideas with high search traffic.

If I’m tasked with writing a blog and I don’t receive a brief, I’ll start by trying to find an original idea around a topic.

In an ideal world, I’d discover a topic with high search traffic and low competition, but often, I settle for making sure that there’s plenty of traffic driven to the topic.

If I receive a brief and the topic isn’t original, I try to find a unique spin on it. Is there a way I can introduce new information here? Can I tie together two topics that haven’t been related to one another before?

Milliken says that today’s search landscape focuses on EEAT, or expertise, experience, authority, and trustworthiness.

While AI can give general best practices, the content that performs best has insight that can only be learned through lived, human experience.

“We know what search terms people want to know, so that’s always on our assignment docket. However, I need the writer to bring a unique, trustworthy perspective to the piece,” she says.

She describes a hypothetical blog post about solving customer service.

“Let’s say you’re the writer and you work in customer service. What’s the de-escalation tip that you use regularly? Then, give me an anecdote about why it works. A bot can’t do that. That’s what readers actually want,” Milliken says.

Step 2. Research, research, research.

Then, I start by digging into research. I’ll focus on finding primary sources with statistics and data that add credibility to my piece.

You can’t always control the ideas you’re writing about, but you can make sure there’s new and fresh information in it to set your article above the rest and provide a comprehensive answer to AI search bots.

“At HubSpot, we’ve noticed that original data from surveys we conduct rank well in our search landscape. We want our writers to use this data plus whatever the latest data online might be. That bolsters trustworthiness, which reads well in AI search,” Milliken says.

Step 3. Organize your content clearly.

The key to writing for AI search is a great structure. When I research first, I can organize my content clearly without having to go back and rewrite.

I’ll start by identifying H2s and then find spots where I can use lists. Often, there are parts of the article that lend themselves to lists, so I take some time to organize the list items before I start writing.

Want an example? Take a look at the article you’re reading. I have subheadings and organized lists throughout.

Step 4. Ask experts.

A significant way to set yourself apart from AI bots that are scanning your content is by including novel, expert information. This is a best practice for SEO, too, and it helps to boost your article’s credibility.

Send some emails to experts asking for their opinions, tips, or advice. Your readers will love hearing directly from folks with deep knowledge of the topic they’re reading about, and AI bots will be more likely to cite your content.

That’s part of the reason I asked Milliken to share her insights for this piece.

Step 5. Use unique and clear language.

Finally, avoid literary clichés and overused words. Instead, focus on straightforward language.

This is an important editing step, too — cut out all the fluff and unnecessary complexity. AI engines favor content that is both unique and easy to understand. Clear messaging makes it easier for them to generate solid summaries.

Step 6. Measure your content’s performance.

HubSpot is making it easy to see how your content is performing with the AI Search Grader microapp. This is one of the first tools on the market that can help you track how your content is performing on AI search engines.

7 Helpful Tips on Writing for AI Search

A lot of AI search best practices are still emerging, but some rules of thumb for AI search writing are becoming clear. Here are seven tips for writing for AI search.

1. Provide comprehensive coverage.

Generative engines prefer content that offers a comprehensive overview and answers potential follow-up questions, so take time to cover topics thoroughly and from multiple angles.

Keep in mind what the AI bot is trying to do — find a way to fully answer the user’s query with a useful and relevant summary. The more comprehensive you are in your content, the easier it is for the AI bot to do its job.

2. Cite your sources.

Credibility seems to be a major determinant of what AI bots are using to fuel their responses, so citing your sources is an absolute must.

Use primary sources and statistics whenever possible, and make sure to include links to where the information came from.

3. Lean on industry experts.

Novel, human information seems to be frequently picked up by AI bots, so be sure to incorporate expert opinions and advice into your content.

Google isn’t penalizing AI-written content, but it is penalizing content that isn’t rich in information. Use the expertise of SMEs to make sure your content stands out to both readers and AI bots.

4. Emphasize scannability.

Structure and scannability seem to be two of the most important factors in whether or not your content is optimized for AI search. That means you need to:

• Incorporate lists whenever possible
• Limit large chunks of text
• Prioritize H2s and H3s that guide the reader through the text

It’s also suspected that AI bots have a few preferred patterns of text. This isn’t verified yet, but I recommend experimenting with various formats and structures.

5. Write conversationally

AI summaries are written conversationally, so it’s helpful to the bot if its original sources are written conversationally, too.

Avoid industry jargon whenever possible and keep your writing to a 7th-grade reading level in most cases. You want your content to be easy to read for both your users and AI bots.

Leigh McKenzie, an SEO expert, shares his insights on this tip.

“Writing in a more conversational manner is becoming increasingly valuable. In an era where automated content can often sound robotic, we crave authenticity,” McKenzie says.

“Content that includes anecdotes, personal statements, and real-life problem-solving resonates more with readers, and I believe we will see a continued shift towards this style.”

6. Use AI writing tools

Writing tools can help you reach greater visibility through SEO and GEO.

Tracking your metrics can show you if your content is being used by generating engines, and microapps can suggest improvements for search engine visibility and even grade GEO.

7. Keep up to date on AI search information

AI search best practices are constantly evolving. While these recommendations are emerging as ways to improve your AI search performance, it’s best to keep an eye on AI search engine updates.

McKenzie stats that keeping up with new information on AI search is incredibly important when it comes to keeping your digital content up-to-date.

“From my experience, the biggest takeaway in navigating the generative SEO landscape is the importance of adaptability. SEO is not static, and being flexible and open to new strategies is crucial for success,” McKenzie says.

Writing for Bots and for Humans

Whenever there’s a shift in the digital content landscape, I get excited. I love learning new things and, with something as game-changing as AI, there’s a lot to discover.

Test formats. Play with expert quotes. Use different kinds of structures. Now’s the time to get really creative and see what works.

AI changes so much every day, so I’m excited to see how digital content changes in the next year or two. Will we still be using SERPs? Will we only be searching through AI engines?

I’m not sure — but I’m excited to see what happens.

 

As a millennial marketer, I can tell you quite a bit about the internet—we practically grew up together!

Nowadays, the internet and marketing go hand in hand, so you need to know what digital marketing is and how to use it if you want to meet your audiences where they’re at—online!

In 2024, there are 2.71 billion online shoppers, a third of the world’s population—underscoring the need for a strong digital presence. With that in mind, I’m here to discuss all things digital marketing. Keep reading to learn more. 

• What is digital marketing?
• Why is digital marketing important?
• Types of Digital Marketing
• What does a digital marketer do?
• Inbound Marketing vs. Digital Marketing: Which is it?
• Does digital marketing work for all businesses?
• How to Do Digital Marketing
• Digital Marketing Examples

How does a business define digital marketing?

Digital marketing is vital for your business and brand awareness. It seems like every other brand has a website, and if they don’t, they at least have a social media presence or digital ad strategy.

Our 2024 State of Marketing Survey found that Social media is the highest-return marketing channel and will see the most growth in 2024. 

Overall, digital marketing is defined as using numerous digital tactics and channels to connect with customers where they spend much of their time: online.

The best digital marketers have a clear picture of how each digital marketing campaign supports their overarching goals.

Depending on the goals of their marketing strategy, marketers can support a larger campaign through the free and paid channels they have available.

A content marketer, for example, could create a series of blog posts that generate leads from an ebook.

A social media marketer might help promote those blogs through paid and organic posts on the business’s social media accounts, and the email marketer could create an email campaign to send those who download the ebook more information on the company.

There are a few major benefits of digital marketing:  

1. You can focus your efforts on only the prospects most likely to purchase your product or service.

Digital marketing allows you to identify and target a highly-specific audience with personalized and high-converting marketing messages.

For instance, you might use social media targeting to show ads to a certain audience based on variables like age, gender, location, interests, networks, or behaviors.

Alternatively, you might use PPC or SEO strategies to serve ads to users who’ve shown interest in or searched for specific keywords related to your product, service, or industry. 

Ultimately, digital marketing helps you conduct the research necessary to identify your buyer personas and refine your strategy to ensure you’re reaching prospects most likely to buy.

2. It’s more cost-effective than outbound marketing methods.

Digital marketing helps you track campaign performance day to day, so you know which channels are performing well and which aren’t. This information helps you optimize your campaign budgets for high ROI.

A digital marketing strategy allows you to pivot continuously, ensuring you never waste money on channels that don’t perform well.

For instance, if you work for a small business with a limited budget, you might try investing in social media, blogging, or SEO – three strategies that can give you high ROI even with minimal spending.

3. Online marketing evens the playing field within your industry and allows you to compete with bigger brands.

If you work for a small business, it’s likely difficult for you to compete with the major brands in your industry, many of which have millions of dollars to invest in campaigns.

Fortunately, there are plenty of opportunities to outrank the big players through strategic digital marketing initiatives.

For instance, you might use long-tail keywords to create high-quality content that ranks on search engines. Search engines don’t care which brand is the biggest, but it does care about prioritizing content that resonates best with target audiences. 

4. Digital marketing is measurable.

One of the biggest benefits of digital marketing is that it gives a start-to-finish view of all the metrics that matter to your company — including impressions, shares, views, clicks, and time on the page.

Unlike most offline marketing efforts, digital marketing allows marketers to see accurate results in real time.

If you’ve ever put an advertisement in a newspaper, you’ll know how difficult it is to estimate how many people flipped to that page and paid attention to it. There’s no surefire way to know if that ad was responsible for any sales at all.

On the other hand, with digital marketing, you can measure the ROI of pretty much any aspect of your marketing efforts.

Here are some examples:

Website Traffic

With digital marketing, you can see the exact number of people who have viewed your website’s homepage in real time by using digital analytics software available in marketing platforms like HubSpot.

You can also see how many pages they visited, what device they were using, and where they came from, amongst other digital analytics data.

This intelligence helps you prioritize which marketing channels to spend more or less time on based on the number of people those channels drive to your website.

With digital marketing, you can identify trends and patterns in people’s behavior before they’ve reached the final stage in their buyer’s journey, meaning you can make more informed decisions about how to attract them to your website right at the top of the marketing funnel.

Content Performance and Lead Generation

Imagine you’ve created a product brochure and posted it through people’s letterboxes — that brochure is a form of offline content. Unfortunately, you have no idea how many people opened your brochure or threw it straight into the trash.

If you have that brochure on your website, you can measure how many people viewed the page it’s on, and you can use a form to collect the contact information of those who downloaded it.

It’s twofold: you measure how many people engage with your content and generate qualified leads when people download it.

Attribution Modeling

An effective digital marketing strategy combined with the right tools and technologies allows you to trace all of your sales back to a customer’s first digital touchpoint with your business.

We call this attribution modeling.

It allows you to identify trends in the way people research and buy your product, helping you to make more informed decisions about which parts of your marketing strategy deserve more attention and which parts of your sales cycle need refining.

5. It’s easier to adapt and change an online marketing strategy.

A great benefit of digital marketing is the ease with which you can change your strategy. Adapting a digital marketing strategy is much easier than other, more traditional forms of marketing, like mailers or billboard advertising.

For instance, if an online ad isn’t delivering as expected, you can quickly adjust it or pause it to yield better results.

6. Online marketing can improve your conversion rate and the quality of your leads.

As digital marketing makes it simpler to measure your marketing efforts, this makes improving your conversion rate simpler as well. Being able to measure the effectiveness of each tactic helps you develop better strategies.

Continuously refining your methods improves your conversion rate. Investing in online marketing ensures that everything is optimized for the highest amount of conversions.

Additionally, not all leads offer the same value for your business. Digital marketing allows you to target a specific audience, which will yield higher-quality leads that are more likely to become customers.

Connecting your business with the most valuable leads will directly improve your conversion rate.

7. You can engage audiences at every stage with digital marketing.

Engaging your audience as early as possible is essential. Making a connection at the first stage of the buyer’s journey helps push the lead through the customer funnel.

Using digital marketing allows you to accomplish that from start to finish and at every point in between.

Online channels allow you to follow the entire buying journey of your customers. Understanding and analyzing how customers are move and operate is important for converting leads.

Digital marketing allows you to track them through that process. And, even if they don’t convert in the early stages, it at least helps ensure they have made a connection with your business.

Here’s a quick rundown of some of the most common digital marketing tactics and the channels involved in each one.

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

This is the process of optimizing your website to “rank” higher in search engine results pages, thereby increasing the amount of organic (or free) traffic your website receives.

The channels that benefit from SEO include websites, blogs, and infographics.

There are a number of ways to approach SEO in order to generate qualified traffic to your website. These include:

• On-page SEO: This type of SEO focuses on all of the content that exists “on the page” when looking at a website. By researching keywords for their search volume and intent (or meaning), you can answer questions for readers and rank higher on the search engine results pages (SERPs) those questions produce.
• Off page SEO: This type of SEO focuses on all of the activity that takes place “off the page” when looking to optimize your website. “What activity not on my own website could affect my ranking?” You might ask. The answer is inbound links, also known as backlinks. The number of publishers that link to you, and the relative “authority” of those publishers, affect how highly you rank for the keywords you care about. By networking with other publishers, writing guest posts on these websites (and linking back to your website), and generating external attention, you can earn the backlinks you need to move your website up on all the right SERPs.
• Technical SEO: This type of SEO focuses on the backend of your website, and how your pages are coded. Image compression, structured data, and CSS file optimization are all forms of technical SEO that can increase your website’s loading speed — an important ranking factor in the eyes of search engines like Google.

For a real-life example on how to successfully implement SEO into your digital marketing strategy, check out our case study on Canva here:

2. Content Marketing

This term denotes the creation and promotion of content assets for the purpose of generating brand awareness, traffic growth, lead generation, and customers.

Want to learn and apply content marketing to your business? Check out HubSpot Academy’s free content marketing training resource page.

The channels that can play a part in your content marketing strategy include:

• Blog posts: Writing and publishing articles on a company blog helps you demonstrate your industry expertise and generates organic search traffic for your business. This ultimately gives you more opportunities to convert website visitors into leads for your sales team.
• Ebooks and whitepapers: Ebooks, whitepapers, and similar long-form content helps further educate website visitors. It also allows you to exchange content for a reader’s contact information, generating leads for your company and moving people through the buyer’s journey.
• Infographics: Sometimes, readers want you to show, not tell. Infographics are a form of visual content that helps website visitors visualize a concept you want to help them learn.
• Audio or visual content: Television and radio are popular channels for digital marketing. Creating content that can be shared online as a video or heard on the radio by listeners can greatly broaden your potential audience.

Stumped? Download 150+ content creation templates by clicking below: 

Download These Templates

3. Social Media Marketing

This practice promotes your brand and your content on social media channels to increase brand awareness, drive traffic, and generate leads for your business.

If you’re new to social platforms, you can use tools like HubSpot to connect channels like LinkedIn and Facebook in one place.

This way, you can easily schedule content for multiple channels at once and monitor analytics from the platform as well.

On top of connecting social accounts for posting purposes, you can also integrate your social media inboxes into HubSpot, so you can get your direct messages in one place.

The channels you can use in social media marketing include:

• Facebook
• X
• LinkedIn
• Instagram
• Snapchat
• Pinterest

Many marketers use these social media platforms to create viral campaigns. Partnering with a popular content creator or participating in a trend that resonates with a wide audience is a viral marketing strategy.

The purpose is to create something shareworthy in the hopes that it will organically spread across a social media channel.

Don’t know how to get started with social media marketing? Download our free social media content calendar to get your social strategy up and running.

 

Download These Templates

4. Pay Per Click (PPC)

PPC drives traffic to your website by paying a publisher every time your ad is clicked.

One of the most common types of PPC is Google Ads, which allows you to pay for top slots on Google’s search engine results pages at a price “per click” of the links you place. Other channels where you can use PPC include:

• Paid ads on Facebook: Here, users can pay to customize a video, image post, or slideshow, which Facebook will publish to the news feeds of people who match your business’s audience.
• X Ads campaigns: Here, users can pay to place a series of posts or profile badges to the news feeds of a specific audience, all dedicated to accomplishing a specific goal for your business. This goal can be website traffic, more X followers, tweet engagement, or even app downloads.
• Sponsored Messages on LinkedIn: Here, users can pay to send messages directly to specific LinkedIn users based on their industry and background.

PPC can be hard to grasp at first, so we’ve created a beginner-friendly guide to get you started. Download it below: 

Download This Guide

5. Affiliate Marketing

This is a type of performance-based advertising where you receive a commission for promoting someone else’s products or services on your website. Affiliate marketing channels include:

• Hosting video ads through the YouTube Partner Program.
• Posting affiliate links from your social media accounts.

This is part of the relatively new wave of influencer marketing. Creating a campaign using influencers can be a highly effective form of affiliate marketing. Finding the right content creators can take your digital campaign to the next level.

6. Native Advertising

Native advertising refers to advertisements that are primarily content-led and featured on a platform alongside other, non-paid content.

BuzzFeed-sponsored posts are a good example, but many people also consider social media advertising to be “native” — Facebook advertising and Instagram advertising, for example.

7. Marketing Automation

Marketing automation refers to the software that automates your basic marketing operations. Many marketing departments can automate repetitive tasks they would otherwise do manually, such as:

• Email newsletters: Email automation doesn’t just allow you to automatically send emails to your subscribers. It can also help you shrink and expand your contact list as needed so your newsletters are only going to the people who want to see them in their inboxes.
• Social media post scheduling: If you want to grow your organization’s presence on a social network, you need to post frequently. This makes manual posting a bit of an unruly process. Social media scheduling tools push your content to your social media channels for you, so you can spend more time focusing on content strategy.
• Lead-nurturing workflows: Generating leads, and converting those leads into customers, can be a long process.You can automate that process by sending leads specific emails and content once they fit certain criteria, such as when they download and open an ebook.
• Campaign tracking and reporting: Marketing campaigns can include a ton of different people, emails, content, webpages, phone calls, and more. Marketing automation can help you sort everything you work on by the campaign it’s serving and then track the performance of that campaign based on the progress all of these components make over time.

8. Email Marketing

Companies use email marketing as a way of communicating with their audiences. Email is often used to promote content, discounts and events, as well as to direct people toward the business’s website.

The types of emails you might send in an email marketing campaign include:

• Blog subscription newsletters.
• Follow-up emails to website visitors who downloaded something.
• Customer welcome emails.
• Holiday promotions to loyalty program members.
• Tips or similar series emails for customer nurturing.

Learn more about email marketing with our free guide: 

Download This Guide

9. Online PR

Online PR is the practice of securing earned online coverage with digital publications, blogs, and other content-based websites. It’s much like traditional PR but in the online space.

The channels you can use to maximize your PR efforts include:

• Reporter outreach via social media: Talking to journalists on X, for example, is a great way to develop a relationship with the press that produces earned media opportunities for your company.
• Engaging online reviews of your company: When someone reviews your company online, whether that review is good or bad, your instinct might be not to touch it. On the contrary, engaging company reviews helps you humanize your brand and deliver powerful messaging that protects your reputation.
• Engaging comments on your personal website or blog: Similar to how you’d respond to reviews of your company, responding to the people reading your content is the best way to generate productive conversation around your industry.

If you don’t have a dedicated PR team, it can be hard to get started. Luckily, we’ve got you covered. Download our free PR kit below: 

Download This Guide

10. Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing refers to a marketing methodology wherein you attract, engage, and delight customers at every stage of the buyer’s journey.

You can use every digital marketing tactic listed above throughout an inbound marketing strategy to create a customer experience that works with the customer, not against them.

Here are some classic examples of inbound marketing versus traditional marketing:

• Blogging vs. pop-up ads
• Video marketing vs. commercial advertising
• Email contact lists vs. email spam

11. Sponsored Content

With sponsored content, you, as a brand, pay another company or entity to create and promote content that discusses your brand or service in some way.

One popular type of sponsored content is influencer marketing. With this type of sponsored content, a brand sponsors an influencer in its industry to publish posts or videos related to the company on social media.

Another type of sponsored content could be a blog post or article highlighting a topic, service, or brand.

12. Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

When a potential lead is searching for a product or business related to yours, it’s a great opportunity for a promotion. Paid advertising and SEO are two great strategies for promoting your business to capitalize on those future leads.

Search engine marketing is another way to increase website traffic by placing paid ads on search engines. The two most popular SEM services are Bing Ads and Google Ads.

These paid ads fit seamlessly on the top of search engine results pages, giving instant visibility. This is also an example of effective native advertising.

13. Instant Messaging Marketing

Marketing your products through messaging platforms is a fast way to reach potential leads, even for those who haven’t offered up their cell phone number.

For example, you can send messages directly to a mobile phone via text or on platforms like Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp. It’s a simple way to let your audience know about flash sales, new products, or updates about their orders.

If your customers have questions or need more information, it’s also a convenient way for them to connect to customer service. You should also consider implementing live chat on your website here.

This way, first-time website visitors will have a quick and easy way to reach out in case they have any questions about your products or services, while you get to promptly offer the details necessary to solve the visitor’s query — details which may lead to an on-the-spot conversion.  

The digital marketer focuses on each channel’s key performance indicators (KPIs) to properly measure performance. For example, a digital marketer in charge of SEO might measure their website’s organic traffic. 

At small companies, one person might own many digital channels and tactics described above, while larger companies typically have a specialist focused on one or two brand channels.

Here are some examples of these specialists:

SEO Manager

Main KPIs: Organic traffic

SEO managers work to rank a business on Google SERPs.

Using various SEO strategies, this person might work directly with content creators to ensure the content is high-quality and up to Google’s standards, even if the company also posts this content on social media. 

Content Marketing Specialist

Main KPIs: Time on page, overall blog traffic, YouTube channel subscribers

Content marketing specialists are digital content creators. They might keep track of a blogging calendar, or develop a content strategy that includes video.

They often work with people in other departments to ensure products and campaigns are supported by promotional content on all digital channels. 

Social Media Manager

Main KPIs: Follows, Impressions, Shares

A social media manager’s role depends on each company and industry. But above all, social media managers manage social media by establishing a posting schedule for the company’s written and visual content.

They might also work with a content marketing specialist to develop a strategy for which content to share on social media. 

(Note: Per the KPIs above, “impressions” refers to the number of times a business’s posts appear on the newsfeed of a user.)

Marketing Automation Coordinator

Main KPIs: Email open rate, campaign click-through rate, lead-generation (conversion) rate

A marketing automation coordinator helps choose and manage the software a marketing team uses to understand customer behavior and measure business growth.

Many of the marketing operations described above might be executed separately, so it’s important for there to be someone who can group these activities into individual campaigns and track performance. 

Inbound Marketing vs. Digital Marketing: Which Is It?

Inbound marketing is a methodology that uses digital marketing assets to attract, engage, and delight customers online.

Digital marketing, on the other hand, is simply an umbrella term to describe online marketing tactics of any kind, regardless of whether they’re considered inbound or outbound.

Digital marketing is often compared to inbound marketing, but it doesn’t differentiate between ‘inbound’ and ‘outbound’ methods.

It’s more of an umbrella term for all marketing that involves digital communication, while inbound marketing is more of a strategy.

Digital outbound tactics put a marketing message in front of as many people as possible online — regardless of whether it’s relevant or welcomed.

For example, the garish banner ads you see on websites that push a product or promotion to people who aren’t necessarily ready to receive it. 

Marketers who employ digital inbound tactics use online content to attract their target customers by providing assets that are helpful to them.

One of the simplest yet most powerful inbound digital marketing assets is a blog, which allows your website to capitalize on the terms which your ideal customers are searching for.

Does online marketing work for all businesses?

Digital marketing can work for any business in any industry. Regardless of what your company sells, digital marketing still involves building buyer personas to identify your audience’s needs, and creating valuable online content.

However, that’s not to say all businesses should implement a digital marketing strategy in the same way.

B2B Digital Marketing

If your company is business-to-business (B2B), your digital marketing efforts are likely centered around online lead generation, with the end goal being for someone to speak to a salesperson.

The goal of your marketing strategy might be to attract and convert the highest quality leads for your salespeople via your website and to support digital channels. 

Beyond your website, you’ll probably choose to focus your efforts on business-focused channels like LinkedIn, where your demographic is spending their time online.

B2C Digital Marketing

If your company is business-to-consumer (B2C), depending on the price point of your products, it’s likely that the goal of your digital marketing efforts is to attract people to your website and have them become customers without ever needing to speak to a salesperson.

You’re probably less likely to focus on ‘leads’ in their traditional sense and more likely to build an accelerated buyer’s journey from when someone lands on your website to when they make a purchase.

This can mean that your product features are higher up in the marketing funnel than it might be for a B2B business, and you might need to use stronger calls-to-action to inspire purchases. 

For B2C companies, channels like Instagram and Pinterest are often more valuable than business-focused platforms like LinkedIn.

What types of digital content should I create?

The kind of content you create depends on your audience’s needs at different stages in the buyer’s journey.

You should start by creating buyer personas (use these free templates, or try makemypersona.com) to identify what your audience’s goals and challenges are in relation to your business.

On a basic level, your online content should aim to help them meet these goals, and overcome their challenges.

Then, you’ll need to consider when they’re most likely to be ready to consume this content in line with their stage in the buyer’s journey. We call this content mapping.

With content mapping, the goal is to target content according to:

1. The characteristics of the person who will be consuming it (that’s where buyer personas come in).
2. How close that person is to making a purchase (i.e., their lifecycle stage).

In terms of the format of your content, there are a lot of different things to try. Here are some options we’d recommend using at each stage of the buyer’s journey:

Awareness Stage

• Blog posts. Great for increasing your organic traffic when paired with a strong SEO and keyword strategy. (You can plug your search terms into our blog topic generator to get content ideas and generate readily optimized outlines.)
• Infographics. Very shareable, meaning they increase your chances of being found via social media when others share your content. (Check out these free infographic templates to get you started.)
• Short videos. Again, these are very shareable and can help your brand get found by new audiences by hosting them on platforms like YouTube.

Consideration Stage

• Ebooks. Great for lead generation as they’re generally more comprehensive than a blog post or infographic, meaning someone is more likely to exchange their contact information to receive it.
• Research reports. Again, this high-value content type is great for lead generation. Research reports and new data for your industry can also work for the awareness stage, though, as they’re often picked up by the media or industry press.
• Webinars. As they’re a more detailed, interactive form of video content, webinars are an effective consideration stage content format as they offer more comprehensive content than a blog post or short video.

Decision Stage

• Case studies. Having detailed case studies on your website can be an effective form of content for those ready to make a purchasing decision, as it helps you positively influence their decision.
• Testimonials. If case studies aren’t a good fit for your business, having short testimonials around your website is a good alternative. For B2C brands, think of testimonials a little more loosely. If you’re a clothing brand, these might take the form of photos of how other people styled a shirt or dress, pulled from a branded hashtag where people can contribute.

1. Define your goals.

When you get started with digital marketing, it’s critical to identify and define your goals since you’ll craft your strategy with them.

For instance, if your goal is to increase brand awareness, you might want to focus on reaching new audiences via social media.

Or maybe you want to increase sales on a specific product — if that’s the case, it’s more important you focus on SEO and optimizing content to get potential buyers on your website in the first place.

Additionally, if sales are your goal, you might test out PPC campaigns to drive traffic through paid ads.

Whatever the case, it’s easiest to shape a digital marketing strategy after you’ve determined your company’s biggest goals.

2. Identify your target audience.

We’ve mentioned this before, but one of the biggest benefits of digital marketing is the opportunity to target specific audiences – however, you can’t take advantage of that benefit if you haven’t first identified your target audience.

Of course, it’s important to note your target audience might vary depending on the channel or goal(s) you have for a specific product or campaign.

For instance, perhaps you’ve noticed most of your Instagram audience is younger and prefers funny memes and quick videos — but your LinkedIn audience is older professionals looking for more tactical advice. 

In any case, having a thorough understanding of how users react to your content across different marketing channels is a must. You’ll want to vary your content to appeal to each specific audience for maximized results.

This is where data becomes all the more important. You can use platforms like Google Analytics to monitor website visitor behavior or native social media analytics tools to see how your followers engage with your social posts, for example.

However, it’s best to access all this data within the same place — it helps spot any similarities or discrepancies between audiences and see how each strategy contributes to your overall marketing goals.

This is where dedicated marketing analytics platforms, like HubSpot, come in handy. These solutions offer the tools necessary to see what content works best for each channel, examine how users move from one marketing channel to the other, as well as compare your marketing strategies’ results side-by-side.      

If you’re starting from scratch, however, feel free to take a look at How to Find Your Target Audience.

3. Establish a budget for each digital channel.

Your budget will depend on the elements of digital marketing you use. 

If you’re focusing on inbound techniques like SEO, social media, and content creation for a pre-existing website, the good news is you don’t need a big budget at all.

You can aim to create high-quality content your audience will want to consume, where the only investment you’ll need is your time.

You can get started by hosting a website and creating content using HubSpot’s CMS.

For those on a tight budget, you can get started using WordPress hosted on WP Engine, using a simple theme from StudioPress, and building your site without code using the Elementor Website Builder for WordPress.

With outbound techniques like online advertising and purchasing email lists, there is undoubtedly some expense. What it costs comes down to what kind of visibility you want to receive as a result of the advertising.

For example, to implement PPC using Google AdWords, you’ll bid against other companies in your industry to appear at the top of Google’s search results for keywords associated with your business.

Depending on the keyword’s competitiveness, this can be reasonably affordable or extremely expensive, which is why it’s a good idea to focus on building your organic reach too.

4. Strike a good balance between paid and free digital strategies.

A digital marketing strategy likely needs both paid and free aspects to truly be effective.

For instance, spending time building comprehensive buyer personas to identify your audience’s needs and creating high-quality online content that converts them, you’ll likely see strong results despite minimal ad spend. 

However, if paid advertising is part of your digital strategy, then the results might come even quicker.

Ultimately, aim to build your organic (or ‘free’) reach using content, SEO, and social media for more long-term, sustainable success.

When in doubt, try both, and iterate on your process as you learn which channels — paid or free – perform best for your brand.

5. Create engaging content.

Once you know your audience and have a budget, it’s time to start creating content for the various channels you will use.

This content can be social media posts, blog posts, PPC ads, sponsored content, email marketing newsletters, and more.

To create conversion-focused content consider using Content Marketing Software. With this software, you can utilize an AI-powered content writing tool, repurpose blog posts into content for other channels, and improve your content quality by optimizing it with built-in SEO recommendations.

6. Optimize your digital assets for mobile.

Another key component of digital marketing is mobile marketing.

In fact, smartphone usage as a whole accounts for 69% of time spent consuming digital media in the U.S., while desktop-based digital media consumption makes up less than half — and the U.S. still isn’t mobile’s biggest fan compared to other countries.

This means optimize your digital ads, web pages, social media images, and other digital assets for mobile devices is essential.

If your company has a mobile app that enables users to engage with your brand or shop for your products, your app falls under the digital marketing umbrella, too.

Those engaging with your company ovia mobile devices need to have the same positive experience as they would on a desktop. This means implementing a mobile-friendly or responsive website design to make browsing user-friendly on mobile devices.

It might also mean reducing the length of your lead generation forms to create a hassle-free experience for people downloading your content on the go.

As for your social media images, it’s important to always have a mobile user in mind when creating them, as image dimensions are smaller on mobile devices and text can be cut-off.

There are lots of ways you can optimize your digital marketing assets for mobile users, and when implementing any digital marketing strategy, it’s hugely important to consider how the experience will translate on mobile devices.

By ensuring this is always front-of-mind, you’ll be creating digital experiences that work for your audience, and consequently achieve the results you’re hoping for.

7. Conduct keyword research.

Digital marketing is all about reaching targeted audiences through personalized content — all of which can’t happen without effective keyword research.

Conducting keyword research is critical for optimizing your website and content for SEO and ensuring people can find your business through search engines.

Additionally, social media keyword research can also help market your products or services on various social channels.

You’ll still want to conduct keyword research even if you don’t have a full-time SEO strategist. Try creating a list of high-performing keywords related to your products or services, and consider long-tail variations for added opportunities.

8. Iterate based on the analytics you measure.

Finally, to create an effective digital marketing strategy for the long term, it’s vital your team learn how to pivot based on analytics.

For instance, perhaps after a couple of months you find your audience isn’t as interested in your content on Instagram anymore — but they love what you’re creating on X.

Sure, this might be an opportunity to re-examine your Instagram strategy as a whole, but it might also be a sign that your audience prefers a different channel to consume branded content.

Alternatively, perhaps you find an older web page isn’t getting the traffic it used to. You might consider updating the page or getting rid of it entirely to ensure visitors are finding the freshest, most relevant content for their needs.

In any case, having access to all of this data in the same place through platforms like HubSpot analytics can be a godsend. You can track performance across multiple channels within easy-to-digest dashboards, compare their results side-by-side, and get all the data necessary to quickly spot new opportunities and adjust your strategy.

Digital marketing provides businesses with incredibly flexible opportunities for continuous growth — but it’s up to you to take advantage of them.

I’m ready to try online marketing. Now what?

If you’re already doing digital marketing, you’re likely reaching some segments of your audience online. No doubt you can think of some areas of your strategy that could use a little improvement, though.

That’s why we created a step-by-step guide to help you build a digital marketing strategy that’s truly effective, whether you’re a complete beginner or have a little more experience.

Next, let’s look at some examples of digital marketing that will be sure to inspire you.

1. Lego’s Rebuild the World Campaign

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This is a great example of a digital marketing campaign because it says something about the brand. In this campaign, Lego takes a stance on important global issues as a way to connect with its audience.

Nowadays, it’s becoming increasingly important for companies to discuss global issues and show alignment with their customers in that way. The major play of this campaign is to help share the brand’s story and messaging.

Given that 82% of customers shop from brands that share their values, this was a good move for the toy brand.

Pro-Tip: Consider a cause or concern important to your target audience. Then find a way to incorporate your stance on the matter in your marketing to show viewers that you share in their values. 

2. Dove’s Reverse Selfie Campaign

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As we continue to learn how social media affects children, especially young girls, Dove decided to send a message. The Reverse Selfie campaign shows the reverse of what a teen girl did to prepare for a selfie and photoshop the picture.

The purpose is to increase awareness of how social media can negatively impact self-esteem.

This is an excellent example of what marketing content can look like when you know your audience intimately.

By knowing its audience of real women, many of them parents, Dove was able to bring light to an often overlooked consequence of the growth of social media.

What I Like: Dove’s campaign shows the importance of knowing your audience to create relatable, understandable, and compelling content.  

3. Jennifer Lopez’s #InTheMorningChallenge

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In this social media campaign, Jennifer Lopez created a dance challenge to promote her new song. With this challenge, fans would do the same dance in their pajamas and in dress up clothes.

This was a successful social media campaign as the video had over 16 million views and over 5,000 posts.

Using social media is a great way to engage your audience and get them to participate with your brand one-on-one.

What I Like: The #InTheMorningChallenge is a great example of a challenge that is fun and simple enough for fans to participate in on their own. When creating a challenge or trend to promote your brand, remember K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Sweetheart).  

4. Always’ #DayoftheGirl Campaign

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This is another digital campaign focused on emotional marketing. With this campaign, Always asked their own employees what tips they would give to girls. T

he women offer their valuable insight in a way meant to inspire everyone for International Day of the Girl, an international holiday that occurs annually in October.

Again, this isn’t a campaign where the product is mentioned much, but that isn’t the point. The point of this digital campaign was to inspire its audience.

What I Like: With that message, they could reach even more people, increase brand awareness, and show their audience that the brand aligns with their values.

5. Topicals – Email Marketing

Topicals, a skincare company, uses email marketing as part of a digital marketing strategy. The image below displays a marketing email that advertises a subscribe and save deal, where people get 20% off refills if they choose to subscribe.

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Pro-Tip: Notice how Topicals uses bold letters and colors to emphasize their deals and CTA button. Make sure to do the same in your own emails.

6. Ashley White – Affiliate Marketing

Ashley White is an esthetician who uses affiliate marketing. In her X profile, she includes a link to a personal Linktree page where she shares referral codes and discounts for people that shop with her codes and links. 

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What I Like: As she markets herself as an ambassador for these companies, the businesses generate brand awareness as someone visiting her Linktree might be inspired to try a new brand (and an influencer recommendation can make this inspiration even more powerful). 

7. Samsonite – Search Engine Marketing

Search engine marketing is a great example of digital marketing, where brands bid on keywords and showcase ads for their products in SERPs when someone queries a related keyword. 

The image below is an example from Samsonite, where a query for the word “luggage” surfaces various luggage options from known brands that have created ads to feature their products front and center in search results. 

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8. Yes Williamsburg – Sponsored Ad 

Yes Williamsburg uses native advertising within its Instagram feed to share a paid sponsorship with a local Brooklyn business.

The Reel is tagged as a paid partnership, but it appears organically in a users feed like a standard post. The ad is also in line with Yes Williamsbug’s usual content of sharing information about unique local businesses for people to try. 

Pro-Tip: Today’s audiences (especially Gen-Z) do not like to be blatantly advertised to, so creating content that feels organic and natural is more helpful than content that feels like an advertisement. 

9. HubSpot Blog – Content Offers

Content offers are a form of digital marketing where businesses share helpful content with site visitors that it knows will benefit them.

For example, the HubSpot Blog often features content offers and learning material for people to learn more about the blog topic. 

For its blog post 11 Marketing Strategies for Black Owned Businesses, readers that want to know more about developing a marketing strategy can download an ebook for further learning. 

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10. For Keeps Bookstore – Local Business SEO

A search engine optimization strategy for many local businesses is an optimized Google My Business profile to appear in local search results when people look for products or services related to what you offer. 

For Keeps Bookstore, a local bookstore in Atlanta, GA, has optimized its Google My Business profile for local SEO so it appears in queries for “atlanta bookstore.”

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Integrate Digital Marketing Into Your Strategy

Any opportunity where you can connect to your audience is an opportunity to convert a lead or acquire a customer.

Digital marketing creates so many more of those opportunities by allowing you to reach prospective buyers through a wide variety of channels.

Whether it’s social media platforms, websites, text messages, or any online medium, it’s an invaluable way to promote your business, service, or product.

Editor’s Note: This blog post was originally published in September 2019, but was updated for comprehensiveness.

 

I talked to the pros — including an SEO expert at HubSpot and the senior product director of AI Overviews at Google — to answer questions about Google’s AI search you didn’t even know you had.

Like many, I’m skeptical of how fast AI seems to be overtaking every activity or task — like simple Google searches. But I also like tech and was curious to learn how the experts are thinking about the problems and opportunities in the exploding AI search landscape.

Table of Contents

• AI Overviews
• How to Use AI Overviews
• Google AI Search Tips for Marketers
• How to Turn AI Overviews On and Off
• Conclusion

AI Overviews

AI-powered search used to be the realm of tech elites, coders and engineers, maybe early adopters and tech enthusiasts.

Google changed all that in May 2024, when the world’s most-used search engine released AI Overviews in the U.S.

At launch, AI summaries appeared at the top of the search engine results page (SERP) of nearly 75% of all search queries. Suddenly, more than 14.2 million queries included AI-generated responses — whether the user wanted it or not.

As of June 4, 2024, about 15% of all search U.S.-based queries trigger AI Overviews. That still adds up to over 2 million searches a day, but it’s entirely possible you haven’t encountered it yet.

Hema Budaraju, Google’s Senior Director of Product for AI Overviews, told me that it’s more likely to show up in specific, complex searches, like “What courses should I take for a specific major in my second or third semester?”

(If you’re curious about AI Overviews but haven’t seen it in action, I tested out a few search queries that will trigger it if you’re in the U.S.: “standard screw lengths,” “types of search intent,” and “time machine where would you go.” You’re welcome.)

After initial backlash from both media and users, Liz Reid, VP, Head of Google Search, released a statement explaining some of the more bizarre AI results (such as telling people to put glue on pizza) and promised that guardrails were already in place to prevent AI Overviews (AIO) from spreading misinformation.

Even if you haven’t encountered it yet, it will still be important to know how AI Overviews affects Google Search. And if you want to optimize your website for AI search — or are just curious about how AI search engines are talking about your brand — HubSpot’s AI Search Grader is a great resource, if we do say so.

A few more tips from the pros:

1. Use natural language for complex, specific queries.

Hema Budaraju tells me, “When I think about AI Overviews, I think about complex questions. I think about perspectives. I think about ways that I can get a jumping-off point that can lead me to the best content on the web.”

She says that AIO is more efficient than traditional searches, which may have required adjustments to search terms or keywords.

Now, Budaraju says, “you can actually ask more naturally … and then have an easy, clear way to dive in to learn more.”

2. Brush up on your digital literacy.

Victor Pan, HubSpot’s Principal Marketing Manager in Product SEO, cautions, “don’t take those AI summaries at face value.”

I think of it like Wikipedia: It’s a fantastic resource, but it’s not a source. You’ll still want to follow through on your research.

3. Context matters.

AI Overviews cites the sources it uses for its summaries, but you may have to click a “show more” button to see them.

Don’t be the person in the group chat who spreads misinformation by insisting that time travel is merely “very difficult” based on AI search results.

Yes, it’s attributed to the perfectly reputable BBC, but click through before you send that text — the AIO summary includes an excerpt from an article about sci-fi TV show Doctor Who, time travel, and real-world physics.

If you use a screen reader, be extra careful.

I tested a few AIO search results with the Chrome Read Aloud extension, and it read the text in the source boxes — but it didn’t call them out as sources. This could make it tricky to figure out where AIO’s information is coming from.

4. “Don’t be afraid of AI.”

Emily Kosko, CEO and founder of VentureX, says it’s the most important advice she can give users.

She acknowledges that AI search can be intimidating, but says you can start small. “Don’t overcomplicate it. Start out by asking simple things.”

Budaraju told me something similar when I asked for her advice for the everyday user: AI Overviews is built on the decades-old foundation of Google search, and with “similar principles and the same guardrails and the same kind of constructs.”

With that in mind, she says to simply use it the same way you’ve always used Google search.

Google AI Search Tips for Marketers

1. Stay ahead of the curve.

“Marketers: Analyze your search console traffic today! Use regular expressions to filter out question search terms and look for drops that can be explained by AI Overviews.”

Victor Pan says that even though AI Overviews queries are integrated into Google Search Console data, knowing your benchmarks today can help you identify problems tomorrow.

For instance, if you usually get a certain number of search queries for “free AI chatbot builder,” and those queries suddenly plummet, it could be because AI Overviews is entering its zero-clicks era. In other words: If AIO search results give users enough info, they don’t need to click through to your site.

2. Innovate.

Take a deep breath if you just read “zero clicks” and panicked.

Pan uses Google’s featured snippets as an example of how savvy marketers are.

When sites lost traffic because the featured snippets pushed them down in the SERPs, “What did SEOs do? They figured out ways to win that featured snippet so they could gain that traffic back.”

“I think something similar is going to happen with AI overviews,” he says.

3. Don’t put all your SEO eggs in one AI-generated basket.

Remember AMPs? They were a new format that Google introduced to decrease load time on webpages.

I worked in digital media when AMPs were introduced, and I recall the ambient panic about its effects on page views. And now, as Pan says, “it’s a dead project.”

With respect to AI Overviews, Pan says that he “wouldn’t get too nitty-gritty with the tactics and details.” Instead, he says to “focus on fundamentally good optimizations or improvements to your content.”

Budaraju says that ultimately, the qualities that make “the page and the content shine are really consistent.”

“So when you think about what makes for great content, what makes for a site to be inviting and appealing — high credibility, great authoritativeness.”

4. Stay calm.

Pan says, “Everyone’s trying to figure out right now what the inclusion criteria is” to be a cited source in an AI Overviews summary. But don’t make rash decisions based on today’s news.

It’s still up in the air as to “whether the actions you take to optimize for AI Overviews will be an enduring content upgrade or a passing fad.”

When I asked Budaraju if she had any advice for SEOs and marketers who were swallowing their panic about zero clicks, she told me, “We’re seeing that people have been visiting a greater diversity of websites for help with more complex questions.”

She added, “the links included in AI overviews get more clicks than if the page had appeared as a traditional web listing.”

Budaraju also assured me that Google will “remain focused on sending valuable traffic to publishers and creators.”

When people click the links from AI Overviews, she said, “the clicks are likely higher quality” and “people tend to spend more time on the site that they’re visiting.”

5. Focus on people, not algorithms.

Pan makes an excellent point: If you’re in an industry that’s affected by AI-powered search, you probably feel like the AI revolution is well underway.

But the average user may have only encountered AI Overviews once or twice.

Budaraju told me to think about the kinds of complex queries that people make every day — “not as a tech reporter, not as a product manager.”

“Keep grounded on what real users do and position yourself to where you think they might be going,” Pan says.

AI search anticipates what people will need. If you want to stay ahead of AI, Pan suggests “following people versus following these algorithms.”

And finally, to answer the big question: You can’t turn AI Overviews on and off. (But I’ll show you five ways to avoid it — keep reading.)

And although Google hasn’t confirmed it, there’s some evidence that AIO summaries appear more frequently in certain types of searches, like those that are 10 words or longer or queries about technology.

There are a few ways to avoid AIO, according to AIO itself:

1. Sign out of your Google account.

AI Overviews only appear if you’re signed in. To sign out of your Google account, click on your avatar in the top right corner of any Google product (Gmail, Google.com, etc.), and select Sign out.

2. Use incognito mode.

If you don’t want to sign out, use incognito mode to avoid AIO. It’s simple: In Chrome, select the File dropdown menu and then New Incognito Window.

3. Disable Search Labs.

If you’re seeing a lot of AIO summaries on mobile, you may have opted into Search Labs.

HubSpot’s Amanda Sellers, Manager of EN Blog Strategy, says that AIOs “increase significantly on mobile if Search Labs is already installed.”

To check, open Google.com on mobile and look for the beaker icon in the upper left corner. From there, you’ll see a list of experiments you can enable or disable.

Sellers also notes that because AI Overviews in Search Labs is an experimental version, users should be doubly cautious about its summaries.

On the left: Search results for “time machine where would you go,” which triggers an AI Overview. On the right: Same search with Search Labs’ AI Overview feature enabled.

The Search Labs AIO feature is only available in the U.S., South Africa, South Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Western Sahara, Zambia, and Zimbabwe — if you’re outside those countries, you won’t see the beaker icon.

4. Filter your results.

If you tap or click on “Web” (if you don’t see it, tap or click on the vertical ellipsis next to “More”). This doesn’t disable AI Overviews, but it does restore a more familiar interface.

5. Reconfigure your default search options.

This one looks more intimidating, but it only took me about a minute to follow these steps:

• Go to Settings > Search engine > Manage search engines and site search
• Select Add next to the Site search section
• Enter a nickname for your AI-less search in the Name section
• Add a shortcut (this cannot contain spaces)
• Paste this in the URL: {google:baseURL}search?q=%s&udm=14
• Click Save or Add

Anytime you want to search without AI, type your shortcut into the search bar, select it, and then search as usual.

6. Use a third-party solution.

This comes with a few caveats: Any third-party extension might be buggy, it might be abandoned by the developer, and you should always be careful about your online security.

The two I’ve tested are uBlock and Bye Bye, Google AI, though there will likely be more options in the future. A reddit user provided these instructions on using uBlock to avoid AIO:

• Download the uBlock extension for Chrome
• Go to My filters
• Paste this: google.com##.GcKpu
• Select Apply Changes

To use Bye Bye, Google AI:

• Download the Bye Bye, Google AI extension for Chrome
• Select Options
• Select Hide AI Overviews (and anything else you want to hide) and select Save

Finally, although I do not recommend an overseas move to temporarily escape AI search, AI Overviews is currently only available in the U.S. You can use it in seven different languages: English, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese, and Spanish.

Conclusion

Google’s entry into the AI-powered search scene is a strong indicator that AI, love it or loathe it, will become as unavoidable as the internet is today. Hema Budaraju told me that her optimism about AI Overviews is rooted in the data and evidence that “people are really liking this feature. People are using it more. People are satisfied more.”

And for the staunch skeptics, I’ll reiterate what HubSpotter Victor Pan and others have told me over and over again: AI isn’t going to replace or bury great content on the internet. And people — you, your audience or users, and all the rest of us — are still looking for great content.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in January 2024 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

 

In a Mint Mobile commercial, Ryan Reynolds reads from a script written entirely by ChatGPT. His prompt was simple (include a joke, curse word, mention the holiday promo in his voice), but he calls the results “compelling” but also “mildly terrifying.”

I think the ad is a great example of one of the many ways marketers can use generative AI: to streamline the creative process.

Reynolds’ use is just one application of many, though, and I’ll go over more generative AI use cases in marketing in this piece, using data from our 2024 State of AI Survey. Let’s see how marketers already use it and how you can leverage it yourself.

Table of Contents

• Benefits of Gen AI for Marketing
• Generative AI Use Cases in Marketing
• The Pitfalls to Avoid When Implementing Generative AI Into Your Processes

Benefits of Gen AI for Marketing

Generative AI offers very real benefits for marketers, and here’s what I learned from our data:

• Generative AI improves the quality of content they create

Most marketers say that the content they make with generative AI performs somewhat better than content created without it

• Generative AI helps them create content more efficiently

Global marketers say that the most impactful result of using AI is that it makes them more productive. 

• Generative AI helps them make significantly more content

75% of marketers agree that AI can help them spend less time on manual tasks (like data entry, scheduling meetings, etc.), which gives them time to focus on content creation duties. 

Marketers also save a significant amount of time using gen AI: 3+ hours when using gen AI for content creation tasks like writing copy, creating images, getting ideas, etc. With this time back, us marketers can let go of manual tasks and focus on responsibilities that need our human touch.

85% of marketers believe AI is effective at helping marketers create more personalized content, which speaks to consumers’ desire for personalization and experiences directly relevant to them and their interests.

Gen AI can also help marketers feel more satisfied at work, as 73% agree that it helps them spend more time on the parts of their jobs they enjoy the most.

How can you reap these benefits yourself? Let’s dive in.

Generative AI Use Cases in Marketing

Marketers who responded to our State of AI Survey told us that the top three tasks they use generative AI for in their role are content creation, research, and learning how to do new things.

The channels marketers most often use AI to create content for are email marketing and newsletters (48%), social media content for audio and video platforms (45%), and text-based social media content (44%).

Marketers report positive ROI from using gen AI to create content for audio/visual channels (48%) and search/SEO content (45%). Using gen AI for email marketing newsletters and text-based social media content most often yields somewhat positive ROI.

Let’s dive deeper into generative AI marketing use cases, featuring expert advice from Samyutha Reddy, Head of Enterprise Marketing at Jasper.

1. Generative AI for content creation.

As I mentioned, marketers told us they most often use gen AI to create content.

They use it to create images for marketing content (with AI art tools) and write copy for marketing content. This makes sense to me because, on the most basic level, all marketing content includes some sort of visual image, text, or both.

Gen AI can also help with more unique marketing tasks, such as generating the most effective and enticing email subject lines based on your historical open rates or translating your content for global audiences.

I like Reddy‘s example of using Gen AI to repurpose content. She says, “Being able to take super lengthy pieces of content, feed them into Jasper’s Content Synthesizer, and have a summary of different viewpoints and pieces of data can help creators form an opinion or perspective that much quicker.”

For example, if I’m converting a multi-page ebook into a blog post, I can speed up my process by pasting the copy into an AI tool and prompting it to list the biggest takeaways. The tool will identify key themes, topics, and ideas, which I can use as a rough draft for my blog. I add my voice and expert perspective, and I’d have a new piece of content that took a fraction of the time to create.

All in all, 84% of marketers say gen AI helps them create marketing content more efficiently. Despite its benefits, most marketers aren’t handing over the reins. They aren’t asking ChatGPT to write an Instagram caption, copying the output into the caption box, and pushing it live. A majority say and recommend marketers use gen AI in their roles but avoid becoming overly reliant on it.

I like to view it as a trusty sidekick. It will give you ideas and help you create your outputs faster, but you make edits and have the final say.

2. Generative AI for content ideation.

As a writer, there‘s nothing worse than staring at a blank document. But these days, you don’t have to wait for inspiration to strike.

AI can help you get the ball rolling even faster than you usually might: marketers report saving 2-3 hours when using gen AI for brainstorming.

Reddy says, “AI really fits at the beginning of the writing process, particularly for content ideation. If I’m writing a blog, I often use Jasper Chat to test new ideas and try different angles, just like I would with a colleague in a conference room.”

Reddy points out that AI tools are especially beneficial for remote marketers who don’t have the physical space to spitball ideas with others.

“It‘s valuable during a time when people are working remotely and teams are distributed. We can get a lot accomplished in virtual meetings, but they’re not often used to just brainstorm or connect. In that way, AI can be really helpful,” she observes.

Tool Recommendation: I regularly use HubSpot’s AI Content Writer in my writing process. Sometimes I use it to create an entire outline; other times to come up with a section heading. Either way, it helps me kick off my process, whether I’m feeling stuck or not. The tool can also help you write social media copy, fill out your landing pages, and even write your marketing emails.

Image Source

3. Generative AI for content research.

A lot of effort goes into writing articles before I even put pen to paper, and 99% of that effort is researching and sifting through information.

Language models have changed the game in this regard. Instead of sifting through search results, tools can help users access information and get answers in record time. For example, prompts like “What’s the difference between [topic] and [topic]?” or “What are the top trends in [industry] in 2024?” can surface specific responses that will help you through your process.

Marketers told us they get back 2-3 hours they’d typically spend conducting their own research using gen AI, so it’s already proven useful.

4. Generative AI for SEO optimization.

As content creators, we want our work to be seen by as many people as possible. One way to get there is by optimizing for SEO.

However, we’re not all experts in technical SEO. For Reddy, this is where AI can really shine.

She says, “I‘m not someone that grew up in the discipline of content marketing, and I never had a tool to help me with the technical aspect of SEO. That’s where Jasper comes into play. It can help content marketers optimize their articles by automating a lot of SEO tasks.”

In action, a generative AI tool could help you conduct keyword research, classify keywords by intent for more focused content, suggest content clusters for your blog, or help you write meta tags and descriptions to improve click-through rates.

But AI doesn’t end at optimization — it can also work as an editor during the final stages of writing. Tools like Grammarly can detect wordiness, offer alternative phrases, and improve readability. The result? SEO-optimized content that people enjoy reading.

Tool Recommendation: As consumers also get more and more usage out of AI search engines, you want to ensure your website is set up to appear in those results. Enter HubSpot’s AI Search Grader, a free app that quickly analyzes your brand based on what your prospects & customers are seeing across AI search engines, then gives you actionable recommendations on how to improve.

5. Generative AI for scaling marketing campaigns.

In an ideal world, there would be a single channel to meet, engage, and convert customers. In reality, marketers need a multi-channel strategy to reach their audience.

Of course, scaling marketing campaigns is no easy feat. As Reddy puts it, “We often burn all our energy on creating one beautiful, optimized piece of content. But then our distribution falls.”

However, marketers can use AI to build entire marketing campaigns from one piece of content, which they can adapt to different formats and lengths.

For example, if I create a YouTube video I want to scale into an entire campaign, I can use AI to convert the video script to different formats, like a LinkedIn Post, Facebook ad, or newsletter copy. I’ll have a multi-channel strategy rather than a single platform or format. It also helps me strategically ramp up my marketing.

Reddy underlines this point, telling me, “It enables me to truly be a project manager and a strategist, versus someone who is waiting on other people to deliver their end of the bargain.”

The Pitfalls to Avoid When Implementing Generative AI Into Your Processes

1. Removing creators from the creation process.

“When incorporating generative AI, the worst thing you can do is remove someone with a strong creative or editorial eye,” cautions Samyutha.

At first glance, AI-written content may look perfect. Yet, many human elements — like humor, empathy, perspective, and cultural context — could be missing. On top of that, generative AI operates with limited data, so the information it collects could be irrelevant, outdated, and even biased.

Most marketers told us they’re only somewhat confident they’d know if the information gen AI provides is accurate, but they have similar thoughts to Reddy. A majority use gen AI to give them an outline/draft to build off of, and a majority also make significant edits to the text that gen AI produces.

Ultimately, I recommend using AI as your first draft — not the last. It can lay the groundwork, but you still need to elevate the content with your unique personality or perspective.

2. Recreating the wheel.

Every marketing team has a different strategy for creating content. As a result, your approach to AI — and how you choose to implement it — is unique to your team.

While AI is exciting and new, Reddy recommends the “less is more” approach when adding it to your workflow.

She tells me, “When it comes to integrating AI, a lot of teams feel pressure to recreate the wheel. However, you don’t have to build all your processes around generative AI. Instead, incorporate AI into your existing processes that already work well.”

For example, a marketing team may have an effective content distribution process, but it could be improved by automating some tasks with AI — like scheduling social media posts and reformatting content for different channels.

With this approach, your marketing strategy isn‘t dependent on AI; it’s improved by it.

3. Raising content demands too quickly.

As AI continues to speed up the creation process, it’s important to have guardrails in place to maintain quality.

Reddy says, “We have multiple processes built to check our work, and that doesn‘t go away because Jasper’s in the picture. If anything, that chain link of feedback is strengthened so we can catch things like inaccuracies or mistakes.”

She continues, “It‘s not about creating content as quickly as you can. It’s about effectively incorporating another piece of technology into your existing workflow.”

Over to You

Us marketers are always looking for ways to stay ahead of the curve and embrace new technology that helps us be more effective. Generative AI is a huge opportunity, but as Reddy puts it, it’s important to always be realistic about this technology.

Ultimately, it’s about knowing when to push this technology into your workflow — and when to pull back. With this approach, marketers can effectively incorporate AI into their strategies for maximum impact.

The goal of marketing is to identify and market to a specific group of people, sharing their business’s solution—with the ultimate goal of converting them into a customer.

Remove all the fancy tools, generative AI, dashboards, and everything else… it really is that simple.

So it’s interesting to see how much we, collectively, struggle to reach our targeted audiences with personalized content. 

Personalized content and account-based marketing (ABM) are revolutionizing how B2B marketers engage with their target audiences. 

Our 2024 Content Consumption and Demand Report highlighted the plethora of data available to enable these tailored approaches. When applied correctly, it can significantly enhance marketing effectiveness. 

In this article, we’ll explore how proper personalization can transform your marketing efforts.

The Power of Personalized Content

Consumers want personalization. 

2021 research from McKinsey showed that 76% of consumers become frustrated when personalization doesn’t occur. The same study states that 71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions. 

Personalization isn’t just a trend—it’s a necessity. 

Beyond your organization’s own zero and first-party consumer data, buyer intent data represents some of the most actionable information available to organizations. It’s an entrée into personalizing your marketing.

But how prepared are organizations to execute such an initiative?

In August 2023, Convince & Convert teamed up with ICUC, a social media and online community agency, to get a clear picture of how organizations are navigating data-driven personalization. In total, they surveyed 319 marketers across B2B and B2C industries. 

Here’s what they learned:

• About a quarter of marketers feel their companies are very or somewhat mature in using data to drive personalization. 
• 22.6% consider themselves moderately mature, 18.5% slightly mature, and 9.1% not mature at all. 
• Only 25.2% of marketers strongly agree that their company can effectively analyze owned customer data to generate valuable insights. 
• Another 39.3% somewhat agree, leaving the rest either in disagreement or neutral. This indicates a significant number of brands need to step up their game to remain competitive.

What the 2024 State of Data-Driven Personalization in Marketing underscores is that while consumers are ready for personalization, businesses are not. 

Perhaps this is why we’ve seen such an explosion in ABM in the past decade.

ABM is Now Just “Marketing”

The primary goal of account-based marketing is to generate more sales for your business with less waste. Pretty standard stuff.

While the practice (under the ABM moniker) has been around for more than 20 years, account-based marketing has become one of the hottest marketing practices within the last decade, especially the last five. 

So why did interest rise so significantly in the 2010s?

My theory is that technology-enabled personalized messages at scale, providing marketers with a wealth of new data from the explosion of social networks and mobile devices. Traditional marketers, still viewing the market as demographics, wanted to work in volume. However, consumers began basing decisions more on detailed online reviews and social media, seeking to belong to niche groups.

As a result, ABM became the ideal solution, targeting specific accounts and aspirations, driving much higher engagement and conversion rates—exposing the flaws of old marketing methods and highlighting the essential role of ABM. While many savvy data and media teams capitalized on individual signals, the majority of teams were content targeting the masses within a single account.

And, hey, it worked! Why bother rocking the boat?

However, ABM has evolved significantly over the past year.

ABM Has Competition

The allure, and even impact, of ABM have waned since the COVID pandemic. Google Trends appears to support this anecdotally. 

The sense I’ve gotten across LinkedIn is that despite its popularity, ABM no longer delivers like it once did. Recent discussions on the platform highlight how ABM is now seen as a holistic marketing approach that emphasizes personalization and strategic targeting rather than just a sales-focused tactic. 

A conversation with NetLine’s General Manager, David Fortino, revealed his thinking on the practice in 2024. “Account-based marketing is, effectively, just…marketing now,” Fortino said. “It has evolved to the point where ABM is no longer a separate entity from the rest of your marketing programs or tactics. Teams now begin with their ABM plans and everything else falls in line.”

Insights from Brett Kahnke, Principal Analyst of Revenue Operations at Forrester, might be the most salient on the matter.

“Forrester has written a lot over recent years, five or six years now on the convergence of account-based marketing with broader demand techniques. And it’s something that the leaders are able to accelerate on in a way that others can’t because the rise in available technology and data that things we’re talking about today has allowed marketers to take some of the individualized messaging and kind of tailored journeys that used to be reserved for just a few key accounts and account-based marketing motion and do them at scale across hundreds of accounts or more.”

There it is: individualized messaging and tailored journeys can now be achieved at scale.

This is why ABM can no longer be king.

The Convergence of Personalization and Buyer-Level Intent 

Building on our earlier discussion about the evolution and impact of ABM, let’s delve deeper into how personalization and intent data are transforming marketing strategies today. 

Insights from Forrester’s B2B Summit 2024 revealed that personalized interactions are highly valued, with attendees appreciating content that made them feel understood and catered to. Personalized content resonates more deeply with prospects, leading to higher engagement rates. 

For instance, personalized emails receive 29% higher open rates and 41% higher click-through rates compared to generic emails according to Salesforce (p. 30). Additionally, personalized interactions help build trust and rapport, positioning your brand as a trusted advisor rather than just another vendor.

Brett Kahnke emphasizes the role of intent data in enhancing these personalized interactions. 

“With the rise of intent data and tools and platforms putting that at people’s fingertips, it is allowing companies to start to mimic some of that behavior at least get some of those benefits because we’re using those insights and, you know, near real-time to tailor both what marketing is saying and what sales is saying using the same source of information.”

With tools and platforms making this data accessible in near real-time, companies can tailor both marketing and sales messages more effectively, leveraging the same source of information.

Measuring Success and Continuous Improvement

While data is integral to marketing strategies, there’s ample room for growth. Most marketers acknowledge the need for more data and recognize opportunities to enhance its utilization within their organizations.

Continuous measurement and improvement are crucial to benefiting from personalization and ABM. Track key metrics such as engagement rates and conversion rates, and refine your strategies based on data insights.

How Account-Based Marketing and Personalization Co-Exist

ABM still holds a prominent seat at the marketing table, with personalization already existing within the practice. The difference lies in the focus.

Tania Saez, an ABM expert, underscores the importance of balancing demand generation with demand capture, leading to better conversion rates and less competition. Use intent data to identify high-value accounts and develop tailored campaigns addressing their specific needs and challenges.

Note: NetLine did sponsor this post.

Enhancing Customer Experience

Tailoring customer touchpoints to individual needs enhances the overall experience, making interactions more relevant and engaging. Author and keynote speaker Zontee Hou shares in her book Data-Driven Personalization that a personalized approach ensures customers find learning, shopping, and engaging with your brand easier and more meaningful. 

Our own data supports this, showing that users willingly share information for high-quality, gated content, providing invaluable first-party intent signals.

Gaining Deeper Customer Insights

Understanding specific customer segments, especially loyal ones, boosts customer lifetime value (CLV). Hou emphasizes the need for deeper insights, and McKinsey notes that leaders use data analytics to build detailed views of customer life cycles, driving strategic and effective personalization.

Achieving a Competitive Advantage

Knowing your customers well allows you to deliver better content and products, giving you a competitive edge. Hou suggests this advantage, and the rise in AI-related content demand indicates that incorporating AI into personalization strategies provides a significant edge.

Improving Customer Retention and Boosting Conversion Rates

Providing relevant experiences ensures customer loyalty, as meeting customer expectations improves retention. Tailored offers and messages significantly boost conversion rates. 

Our report confirms that content formats like playbooks, case studies, and trend reports are associated with immediate buying decisions, making them effective for conversions.

Enhancing Relevance and Identifying Opportunities

Better customer understanding improves content marketing and merchandising. Leaders use predictive analytics and AI to deliver the right content at the right times, revealing cross-selling and upselling opportunities. 

NetLine’s intent data provides real-time insights into buyer behaviors, making it easier to act on these opportunities.

Enhancing Marketing Performance and Efficiency

Focusing on high-converting channels and addressing specific customer needs enhances marketing performance. Investing in rapid activation capabilities and agile models optimizes marketing efforts, resulting in stronger performance and higher ROI.

Leveraging Intent Data for Personalization

Intent data is crucial for effective personalization. NetLine’s INTENTIVE platform provides real-time insights into buyer actions and preferences, enabling tailored content and marketing efforts that improve engagement and conversion rates.

Conclusion

Incorporating these insights into your personalization strategy helps B2B marketers create meaningful and effective customer interactions, driving better business outcomes. Personalization is about knowing what your customers want and delivering it at the right moment, leading to sustained success in the B2B landscape.

Personalized content and ABM are not just buzzwords; they are critical strategies for effectively reaching and engaging target audiences in the B2B space. 

By leveraging the insights from NetLine’s 2024 Content Consumption and Demand Report, marketers can develop highly targeted and personalized campaigns that drive higher engagement and conversion rates.

Olympic ads don’t make as big a splash as Super Bowl spots, but the Games are still a reliable display of marketing creativity every two years. 

As the Paris Olympics come to a close, I’ve collected four ads (plus three honorable mentions) that stood out from the fray in 2024. I also talked to a few marketers at HubSpot to get their perspectives on why these ads work and how you can apply the same tactics to your own marketing campaigns.

And it wouldn’t be the Olympics without some GOATs, so I’ve included a couple favorites from previous Games.

2024’s Olympic Marketing Campaigns

1. LVMH: The Rooftops

If you watched the fever dream that was the 2024 Opening Ceremony, you may recall the masked marauder scampering across the rooftops of Paris and bellhops dancing with oversized Louis Vuitton luggage along the banks of the Seine.

The Louis Vuitton trunks appeared by way of its parent company, LVMH, sponsoring the Paris Olympics. Thankfully (or not, depending on your threshold for absurdity) Louis Vuitton took a different tone for its official Olympics ads.

Completely voiceless and scored only by a crescendoing bassline, the deep shadows and rich colors evoke “luxury” from the first second. The camera skims over well-oiled athletes’ bodies, drawing focus to form over function. Shot entirely at night, the shadows create mystery and build intrigue.

Try This At Home

• Whether you’re going for luxury or beach vibes, make a list or a mood board of everything that evokes your desired tone: colors, shapes, textures, sounds, fonts, you name it. Every single element of your ad should serve the singular purpose of eliciting your defined voice.
• You can also use HubSpot’s advertising plan kit, which includes free planning templates and a guide.

2. Corona: For Every Golden Moment

I particularly like this ad because it breaks from the self-serious tone so many other campaigns use. Kyle Denhoff, Senior Director of HubSpot Media, is also a fan, so I asked if he would break it down:

• Product focus. The Corona ad successfully positions the beer as the hero of the story. Through subtle yet effective visuals, the ad integrates the product into the narrative, and a group clinks beer bottles with a “cheers,” highlighting the product as the ad ends.
• Brand message: The tagline “For every golden moment” cleverly aligns Corona with the prestige of Olympic gold, suggesting that its beer is the top choice for life’s special moments. It’s a message that encourages consumers to associate Corona with vacations, adventures, and friendships, reinforcing the idea that it’s the go-to beer for memorable experiences.
• Cultural relevance: The ad effectively taps into the cultural significance of the Olympics. It uses seamless visual transitions to link personal golden moments with the triumphs of world-class athletes. This elevates the brand by associating it with excellence and achievement — from an event that everyone is watching.

Denhoff also pointed to Corona’s clear understanding of its demographic — adventurous travelers in their 20s and 30s — and noted how Corona skillfully invited potential customers to see themselves in the ad.

Try This At Home

• Keep your product central to the ad without overwhelming your potential customers.
• Elevate your brand by associating it with excellence.
• Know your demographic.

3. Hyundai: It’s OK

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Hyundai taps into familiar Olympic tropes like perseverance and hard work, but from a less familiar point of view. At first, it looks like an ad about Olympians practicing hundreds of hours beginning as very young children.

And then a series of parents tell their respective kids, all frustrated by sports practice, that maybe it’s time to take a break. “Like a break break.”

Instead of pushing through, each of the aspiring Olympians switches sports, accompanied by the tagline, “Never give up on finding what you love.”

Try This At Home

• Subvert tropes: This will require a clear narrative, so don’t skimp on the storytelling.
• Do some good: Simone Biles’ 2024 Olympic comeback has once again put mental health in the spotlight. After drawing criticism from some corners of the internet in 2021, when she pulled out of the Tokyo Olympics to focus on her mental health, Biles delivered a clear message to the haters this year that she made the right call. Hyundai subtly taps into the importance of mental health without being too on the nose.

4. Parmigiano Reggiano Sponsorship

This is technically a 2021 ad, but we’re counting it since it went viral during the 2024 Olympic Games.

Italian gymnast Giorgia Villa was sponsored by Parmigiano Reggiano during the Tokyo Games in 2021, where she pulled out of competition because of an injury. And even though the sponsorship reportedly ended in 2022, I like to think that the Italian team’s group silver medal this year was powered by a barrel-sized wheel of piquant cheese.

Since medaling, ads from her 2021 sponsorship have gone viral. The photos of Villa have the sharp light and deep shadows of a Caravaggio, as she happily holds a wheel of cheese bigger than her torso. She’s been quoted saying that she’s loved the cheese since she was a little girl, and the smile on her face dares you to challenge that.

Try This At Home

• Tap into your audience’s cultural heritage. By paying homage to Italian Renaissance painters, these photos demonstrate a deep appreciation for Italian identity and heritage.
• Don’t be afraid of some unusual juxtapositions if it’s based on truth.

Honorable Mentions: Personalities and Influencers

I’m creating an honorable mentions category because these are neither traditional ads nor easily replicable for your own marketing. But I would be remiss not to include some of the personalities and influencers who have become walking ads for the 2024 Paris Olympics:

Snoop Dogg

The unexpected gold medalist of our hearts, Snoop joined NBC as an official Olympic correspondent in Paris. In my extremely unscientific survey of a few fellow HubSpotters, 100% agree that he’s the best advertisement for the Olympics, hands down.

Dréa Hudson, HubSpot’s Head of Audience Development, Distribution, says, “There is no one — and I mean NO ONE — who I would trust to carry the torch more than him.”

She also sums up his authenticity and appeal: “The ease in which he traverses Paris during the Games is said best by Uncle Snoop himself: ‘It’s me, being me.’”

Snoop’s curiosity is palpable (although he did require the emotional support of bestie Martha Stewart for the equestrian events, as he harbors a slight fear of horses). His joy is real. (As is his paycheck — a reported $500K per day.)

Colin Jost

Most of us don’t have access to professional comedians, but Olympic surfers are probably grateful that NBC does. Their sport got a huge boost in visibility when SNL Weekend Update anchor Colin Jost assumed his position as NBC’s surfing correspondent.

Jost took one for the team and headed to Tahiti, where his reports have largely poked fun at his own ineptitude. After a minor accident involving shallow waters, coral reef, and ants, he claims that he’s visited the medical tent more than any of the athletes (I’ll refrain from further description for the faint-hearted among you).

But as a surfer himself, Jost isn’t just peddling jokes — he has a deep appreciation and understanding of the sport, and he’s making Olympic surfing appointment viewing.

Greyhound Olympics

Instagram and TikTok have been an endless, and endlessly entertaining, source of unofficial Olympic ads and commentary, but I’ll mention just one that’s representative of the style and humor in these homespun Olympic tie-ins.

A greyhound’s ears flop in unison during a walk, and text over the video reads, “My dog could have competed at the Olympics but they cancelled the synchronised ear event.” It hits all the right beats: Shouting out synchronized athletic events, adorable ears, and of course comparing Olympic greatness to a very pointy dog.

Try These At Home:

• It’s a cliche, but it’s true: Be like Snoop and just be yourself.
• Comedy can be an effective marketing tool — but it’ll be even more effective if it’s undergirded by knowledge and appreciation for the product you’re marking.
• Apply Olympic tropes to everyday life.
• Embrace absurdity. Synchronized ear events would undoubtedly draw a huge fandom.
• If everything else fails, put your dogs in an ad. (Kidding. Mostly.)

Best Olympic Campaigns of All Times

When I asked friends and HubSpotters what ads they loved from the 2024 Paris Games, there was a clear consensus: They’re just not as good as they used to be. (According to Vox, there’s a reason for that, and it rhymes with shmartificial shmintelligence.)

So just for fun, here’s two gold medalists from the past decade:

Canadian Institute of Diversity and Inclusion: The Luge (2014)

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The Canadian Institute of Diversity and Inclusion ran this ad in support of gay athletes at the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, Russia. It’s a good reminder that serious topics can still be approached with humor.

Visa: Carpool to Rio (2016)

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Visa’s 2016 Carpool to Rio ad is full of clever details, like the synchronized divers nodding off in unison. This ad stands a little higher on the podium because of its joyous tone — many (most?) slick corporate Olympic ads take a serious view of the athletes’ hard work and the obstacles they’ve overcome.

Marketing Takeaways

Even if you don’t have access to celebrity spokespeople or a corporate budget, there’s still plenty to learn from these ads. The most successful Olympic ads tap into the cultural significance of the Games and find authentic ways to link their product with the best athletes in the world, all without being too overbearing with their product placement. 

“I’m excited but exhausted by so many changes,” Victor Pan wrote in a HubSpot Slack channel just before dropping half a dozen links to the latest AI news. He’s a product SEO here, and he sounds like he needs a hug. 

And no wonder. Even in tech, an industry that thrives on rapid change, AI is accelerating everything it touches by orders of magnitude. AI-powered search engines like Perplexity are gaining mainstream momentum, SearchGPT is securing deals with publishers to sidestep copyright issues, and your friendly neighborhood SEO is pinching the bridge of their nose.

For the scoop on search trends you should know about as a marketer, AI-powered and otherwise, I talked to SEOs here at HubSpot and around the world.

But before we look ahead, let’s go back to the 1990s and take a quick look at how search has changed in the last three decades.

How the Search Landscape Has Changed

An entire generation has grown up never knowing a time before Google.

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To get a broader perspective on the evolution of search, I turned to Mikkel deMib, a Denmark-based SEO who has been doing SEO since before it was called SEO.

“The first few years, we called it ‘search engine positioning,’” he tells me. I was alive and using the internet then, and I still feel like a kid listening to a bedtime story about the land before time.

I ask deMib about some of the major turning points in the last 25 years that might provide some context for understanding the future of search. The switch to mobile, he recalls, was first prophesied around Y2K, shortly after the introduction of wireless application protocol (WAP) that allowed mobile devices to connect to the internet.

“And of course it totally failed,” deMib says, because “from a usability point of view, it was terrible.”

It was another decade before Google adopted a mobile-first philosophy and content publishers adopted mobile-friendly UX. Now, deMib sees upwards of 90% mobile traffic in certain verticals, like women’s fashion — a number that’s not likely to surprise HubSpot readers.

The Evolution of Search in 2024

Rory Hope, Head of EN Growth at HubSpot, echoes Pan’s exhausted excitement.

“There’s a lot of chatter in the industry,” he says, “about Google essentially thrashing between different priorities.” And that’s “causing a great deal of stress for the SEO community.”

Pan takes a long view of all this AI-activated change, cautioning marketers to focus more on the grounding principles of good content rather than trying to optimize for every single update.

When I asked him how SEOs were figuring out how to optimize for Google’s AI Overviews, he reminded me that “there was a time” — October 2015 — “that Google really pushed forward a new format called AMP.” Accelerated mobile pages were designed for faster mobile loading, and — see if this sounds familiar — it let users read content without clicking through to the website.

“And now AMP is a dead project,” Pan says. In other words: We can’t see the future, so let’s not panic just yet about a zero-click world.

Go deeper: We’ve got even more pro tips and actionable advice on adapting to the new search era.

Trends

I use the word “trends” advisedly here. Every SEO I talked to emphasized the interconnectedness of the changes they’re observing, exercising caution about using the word “trend” (See above for Victor Pan calling time of death on Google AMPs).

And many of the SEO trends we saw in 2023 are still playing out.

That said, here’s five things SEOs are keeping an eye on in 2024 and 2025.

1. AI

DeMib, who has seen more than his fair share of false starts and dead-ends in the SEO world, calls AI a “fundamental shift in technology that is maybe as big — maybe even bigger — than the internet.”

Artificial intelligence isn’t so much an SEO trend as what it’s powering: chatbots, search engines, Google’s AI Overviews, and more. AI Overviews (AIO) has especially piqued concern, with everybody racing to understand what will happen if AIO keeps users on Google’s search engine results page (SERP) instead of clicking through to websites.

The vast majority of SEOs are making sure that AI is central to their overall strategies.

In a HubSpot survey of over a hundred U.S.-based SEO professionals, 73% either strongly or somewhat agreed with the statement, “AI tools, features, or solutions are becoming an important part of my company’s SEO strategy.”

Many of those SEOs use AI for tasks like optimizing websites for technical SEO and improving SERP rankings. AI is also a means to efficiency; nearly three-quarters of respondents said they use AI simply to save time.

Not sure where to start? Here’s a pro tip: HubSpot has a free AI search grader app that quickly analyzes your brand based on what your prospects and customers are seeing across AI search engines — then gives you actionable recommendations on how to improve.

2. Zero-Click Search

With the fitful launch of Google’s AI Overviews in May 2024, “zero-click search” shifted from theoretical concern to waking nightmare, depending on who you ask.

We’ll likely see the term used exponentially more in 2024 and beyond, but whether we’ll actually see a zero-click world remains to be seen.

In a HubSpot survey of U.S.-based SEO professionals, only 6% specifically named Google’s AI Overviews as a threat to search traffic. And the biggest concern, generative AI chatbots, was selected by only 13% of respondents.

A tiny percentage, just 2%, believe that Google algorithm updates will result in search traffic losses.

Readers of a certain age may remember when AOL was effectively synonymous with “internet.” DeMib says that pre-2000, “[the internet] was a lot of big sites like Yahoo! and AOL that defined themselves more like a portal. They were trying to give users everything they wanted to keep people on their site.”

It failed for Yahoo! and AOL and it will fail for Google, deMib believes.

“Nobody can give users everything, in my opinion. It’s not going to work. People are still going to want to buy products that are only found on a certain web shop. People want different perspectives. They’re not going to read all the news in one news outlet.”

DeMib also points me to a study that SparkToro CEO Rand Fishkin did on zero-click. Among the findings, Fishkin found that although there’s been an increase in zero-click searches, there’s been a parallel increase in the number of searches.

“It’s evening out,” deMib says. “The number of people who click away from Google is actually about the same, even though the percentage has dropped.” (You can read Fishkin’s full study on the SparkToro website.)

And not everybody thinks zero-click is the start of the SEO apocalypse. Amanda Natividad, SparkToro’s VP of Marketing, asked on LinkedIn, “Do you want people to see your [content] or not?”

She explains: “When I‘m telling you to create zero-click content it’s because you need to optimize for impressions. To optimize your social media content so that people see it.”

3. Follow-up Search Intent

Even with the increase in zero-click queries, Amanda Sellers says “that doesn’t mean that’s the only search users will make.”

Sellers is HubSpot’s Manager of EN Blog Strategy, and she tells me how important it is to consider follow-up searches.

“Let’s say a user searches for something extremely basic and the AI Overview provides an answer. Some people are going to be satisfied with that answer — and some are not. So for the people who are not satisfied, what follow-up searches will they do to further refine their journey?”

Sellers says that anticipating follow-up search intent is key to content strategy in 2024 and 2025. Ultimately, we should be writing content for our audience — not Google. (Ironically, this is also what Google says.)

4. Ranch-style SEO

Clearscope CEO Bernard Huang made ripples in the SEO world with an April 2024 blog post called “Why Ranch-Style SEO is Your Future-Proof Content Strategy.” It begins with an exhortation to “unlearn what you know about SEO.”

That sounds scarier than it is. Huang says that rather than focusing on long, in-depth articles, publishers should “[disaggregate] content into precise, digestible pieces that strategically align with the user’s search journey.” That is, switch from skyscraper SEO strategy to ranch-style.

Huang lists three reasons why ranch-style is the future of search:

• It’s responsive to the shift from keyword-centric to topic-centric SEO.

• It mitigates the negative impacts of generative AI on the web.

• It “partners” with firsthand experience as a ranking factor.

This goes hand-in-hand with Sellers’ advice about follow-up search intent: Good content strategy is about anticipating your readers’ questions at each stage of their journey.

5. Video SEO

Video SEO is already a specialization, but expect more growth in this area. Pan says “consumers want to watch videos on their favorite platforms” — not necessarily your website — and that requires an understanding of both YouTube optimizations and how social media platforms give visibility to native versus externally hosted videos.

Sellers adds, “When you’re creating content in this challenging search landscape, it’s more important than ever to keep in mind how your audience searches for and consumes information.”

Consumers have the tools and ability to research quite literally anything, and an increasing number of prospective customers are turning to YouTube. Rory Hope, HubSpot’s Head of EN Growth, says it’s because they’re “seeking human perspectives in relation to their pain points.”

Plus, Hope points out, more and more video carousels are popping up in Google search results “as part of its goal to serve more human-led perspectives for users.”

All of this adds up to an important focus area for SEOs, Hope says.

“SEOs should be monitoring the search results pages for target keywords and topics to see which ones have video carousels, and then coordinate with media teams to create relevant video content.”

The Future of Search: How Marketers Are Shifting Gears

Search is dead; long live search!

HubSpot original research shows that SEOs are generally optimistic about Google’s AI Overviews and other generative AI search engines, with 48% of respondents saying that AIO would improve search traffic over the next six months.

If there’s one braided through line in these trends, it’s that AI is driving a lot of change in the search landscape, SEO is very much alive and well, and the human element is still vital to search.

More than three-quarters of SEOs agree that they will use AI in 2025.

Google’s addition of a second “E” to E-A-T in late 2022 was a clear signal that publishers should be writing for their readers — not Google. “Content creation isn’t about keywords. It’s about topics and editorial angles,” says Sellers.

“Expertise,” the original “E,” could theoretically be faked by AI. But “experience” — not so much.

To recap, here’s how our experts recommend that marketers and SEOs shift gears to accommodate new trends in the search landscape:

• Write for your audience.
• “Use AI for the things AI is good for, and use human-led content for the things that human-led content is good for.”—Amanda Sellers
• “Everybody should embrace and spend some time with all the new AI-based tools that are becoming available now.”—Mikkel deMib
• “Monitor SERPs for target keywords and topics to see which ones have video carousels, and create relevant video content.”—Rory Hope
• Deepen your topical coverage and sharpen your editorial angles.

Last quarter, newsletter giant The Hustle ran a test that earned 43,876 additional clicks in their emails.

Not 44,000 total. 44,000 more.

If you’re like me, you’d do terrible things for that kind of engagement.

So I banged on their managing editor’s door and demanded to know his secrets.

Thankfully, the process is simple and repeatable — no terrible things required. So put down that crowbar, because I’m going to share a process that you can start today.

The How-To That They Do

Ben Berkley, the managing editor of The Hustle, perpetually sports an impish grin. Which is fitting, because behind that grin is a deceptively simple method — with some twists coming up.

Here’s how it works:

Every weekday morning, Ben cooks up two separate subject lines for each newsletter. At 5:30 am ET, each subject line is sent to only 30% of The Hustle’s audience.

After an hour, the variant with the most engagement is automatically sent to the remaining 40% of recipients.

“That’s it?” you’re thinking. “It’s just a stinkin’ A/B test?!”

Not so fast. I promised you twists:

1.  The variations are sent to four predefined subscriber segments.
2.  The winner is based on the click-through rate (CTR) — not the open rate.
3.  Ben’s secret sauce: The WTF factor.

Let’s dig in.

Twist 1: Segmenting Readers

The Hustle splits the original two test emails among four segments.

To help me understand this, Ben refers me to Kaylee Jenzen, The Hustle’s resident MarTech wizard.

(“If the Nobel Foundation ever adds a prize for newslettering, I’m nominating Kaylee so fast,” he says.)

“The Hustle uses HubSpot workflows to segment contacts with values ranging from 1 through 4,” Jenzen explains. “Email 1 is targeted at segments 1 and 2, while Email 2 is directed towards segments 3 and 4.”

In other words: One email, two variations, four sends. The reason?

“By distributing email sends over time, The Hustle avoids triggering spam filters and ensures more consistent delivery rates,” Kaylee says.

The takeaway: High send volumes are a signal that email service providers use to identify spammers. By reducing your recipient list and increasing send times, you make your emails safer in the eyes of email servers.

Twist 2: Targeting CTR, Not Open Rate

If you’ve tried A/B testing your subject lines before, I’ll bet you based the test on open rate, right?

That’s what nearly every tutorial will tell you, and it’s not a bad choice. But it’s not the only choice.

While open rate measures the number of readers who access the email, it can’t separate out those readers who delete it immediately. Click-through rate, on the other hand, measures the number of readers who actually engage with the email.

“By emphasizing CTR, The Hustle aims to not only capture the reader’s attention, but it also encourages them to take action and interact further with the content,” Jenzen says. “This approach reflects a strategic effort to drive meaningful engagement beyond just opens.”

See, The Hustle’s open rate is already above industry average, so tweaking the subject line only results in around a 1% difference in that metric. (#HumbleBrag?) So instead, its team makes the strategic choice to focus that time and effort on cultivating even deeper engagement.

The takeaway: Open rate might be the metric you want to focus on. But think about your ultimate goal. Optimize to achieve that, not what a YouTube tutorial told you to do.

Twist 3: The WTF Factor

“When people are looking through their inboxes, they’re often just looking to clear all the new stuff out,” Ben says. “And they get in a rhythm.”

That rhythm is the sound of your email being deleted.

“So the goal is to gently jostle someone out of their rhythm,” he says.

That’s where Ben’s secret sauce comes in.

“To do that, you need a little ‘WTF?’ factor sprinkled in.”

As the former executive editor of The Onion, Ben’s no stranger to the WTF factor. But that doesn‘t mean that he’s trying to recreate Onion headlines for The Hustle.

“I never go for shock value or try too hard to throw people off,” he cautions. “But you ultimately want them to see something unexpected and give them a quick pause. You just want them to glitch for a split second.”

Some of my favorite examples:

• 🎨 Believe in yourself, but not like this
• 🕹 Buried under cement in a landfill
• 🔓 Breaking out of toothpaste jail

The takeaway: Your subject line should be surprising enough to shake them out of autopilot and spare a few minutes for your email.

But what does that actually mean?

How to Write Subject Lines Like The Hustle

Ben shares with me what he calls his “Subject Line Manifesto.” These are actual guiding principles for The Hustle’s editorial voice.

1. Be unexpected.

You’re not likely to jostle someone out of their rhythm with a subject line that confirms something they already know.

“Having worked in comedy, I know the power of subverting expectations,” Ben says. “It’s at the core of getting laughs and creating something memorable.”

“Excluding all of the other actual unforgivable crimes, there’s just one unforgivable crime at The Hustle,” he adds. “Being boring.”

That doesn’t mean you have to try to be funny. In fact, that may be inappropriate for your brand. You can subvert expectations with new data, surprising ideas, or a thoughtful question.

What part of your email is adding something new to the conversation? That’s your subject line.

And speaking of which…

2. Strong subject lines come from strong stories.

“The subject line has to match the newsletter’s overall vibe, and also the specific content within each day,” Ben explains. “So really, the work of writing a strong subject line starts with the work of writing strong stories.”

So if your email doesn’t add anything new to the conversation, maybe pause the subject lines for now and revisit your content strategy.

3. Don’t go for cheap laughs.

If you do decide to use humor, don’t use the same pun that 10 of your competitors also used. Chances are, an example just popped into your head. Skip that one.

“Low-hanging fruit in comedy is low for a reason; it’s there because it’s what people expect,” Ben adds. “If you give it to them, maybe you get light laughs, or a pity laugh or two, but you’re probably not getting a belly laugh because they weren’t surprised. Valuable content comes from jolts.”

And while we’re on the subject…

4. Never stoop to clickbait.

“It’s so easy to have a subject line feel like clickbait, and that’s the last feeling we want our audience to have,” Ben warns. “In this hypercompetitive attention economy, if you sour that relationship, you’re never getting it back.”

5. Keep it brief.

The Hustle sees a noticeable lift in performance from subject lines that are only 11-15 characters long.

Their shortest subject lines enjoy an engagement rate almost 75% higher than emails with the longest.

“As I approach subject lines, I always remind myself: Those words are there to whet the palate, not overwhelm it,” Ben says. “You need to give them just enough context to pique their interest, but not so much that they feel like they already have the whole story.”

Now that you’re a subject line expert, let’s talk process.

How to Do the Test at Home

Sending multiple emails every day sounds like a ton of work, and it would be if you did it manually. Thankfully, most email marketing tools have some kind of automated A/B testing feature.

The Hustle happens to use Marketing Hub, so we’ll show you how to do it within HubSpot, but the process should be nearly the same no matter what tool you use.

1. Create your email as usual.

In HubSpot, as with most tools, this will automatically be version A of the A/B test. (So name it accordingly, and give it your first subject-line variation.)

2. Click on “Create A/B test” in the top left corner.

3. Enter a name for version B, then click “OK.”
Don’t overthink this. Naming conventions are one place where it’s safe to let your boring side show.

Even Ben forgives it in this screenshot below.

4. Edit the subject line for version B.

Remember that a best practice for A/B testing is to only change one element per test. Otherwise, you’ll risk skewing the results.

5. Under the version dropdown menu, click “Manage test.”

 

6. Set the A/B distribution to your desired mix.

 

The Hustle uses 30% of their recipients for each variation, with 40% reserved for the winner. But with over two million subscribers (#HumbleBrag confirmed), it can spare a few readers to get more accurate results.

If you have a smaller send volume, you may wish to stick with 20-25% for each test version. While your test will be based on a smaller sample size, the proven winner will be seen by more recipients.

7. Set the winning metric to “
Click
Through Rate.”

 

To replicate The Hustle’s method, you’ll want to choose CTR. That said, consider the goals of your campaign.

The tool will also allow you to choose “open rate” or “click rate.”

8. Set “Test duration” to 1 hour.

 

You’ll see a warning to set a duration of “at least 4 hours” in order to help reach conclusive results.

That’s good advice for most marketing emails, but it can be a problem for newsletters. HubSpot research shows that the best send times are between 9am to noon Eastern time.

You can see why a four-hour test might complicate that. But what you’ll lose in statistical significance, you’ll make up for in eyeballs.

9. Click “Save changes.”

 

10. Review your email settings and recipients as usual, and then send.

 

Get Your Hustle On

To assuage our legal department and prevent you from banging on my door: I can’t promise you 43,876 additional clicks.

But by following a data-driven approach, you’re almost guaranteed to see improvement. Pair that with Ben’s advice, and you’ll be jostling your readers out of their rhythm regularly.

At the very least, you’ll never be boring.