Blog

It’s clear from the data that marketing will continue to trend toward social media at a faster rate than in previous years.

Below is a current snapshot of the top four trendy social media channels for your lead generation content strategy includes (in order of survey ranking).

Facebook

The platform leads in ROI and was predicted to see the most investment in 2023, as 1 in 4 marketers plan to invest for the first time this year.

Our combined tip for Facebook and Instagram is to explore and leverage the Meta Ads Manager that works across both of these platforms as well as FB Messenger to save time via integration and data sharing.

Instagram

In 2022, 58% of marketers surveyed already leveraged IG, and the platform was expected to see high first-time use in 2023.

YouTube

The 2022 survey revealed that this platform will see the most overall growth in 2023, with 91% of the marketers who already use it planning to maintain or increase their current investment.

29% of marketers who didn’t use it planned to try it for the first time in 2023. There are at least seven places to optimize text for your video, so make a list of long and short-tail keywords related to your content and fold them in everywhere you can.

TikTok

56% of marketers surveyed who already leverage TikTok planned to increase their investment in 2023, 16% plan to invest more this year than they ever have before, and 28% of non-users plan to start.

This represents the highest growth in investment among all social media channels. There are two lead generation forms available through TikTok — one is native to the app, or you can connect your website’s form if it is compatible.

By experimenting with different types of lead generating content, you can observe which ones resonate with your audience and convert the most leads. You can always do more of what works, but never get too comfortable!

Keep Experimenting with Lead Generation Content Strategy

8 in 10 marketers shared that they have seen more change in their industry in the last three years than in the previous 50 combined.

Data-driven marketers who are prepared to pivot and adapt will find the most success with their lead generation content strategies this year and beyond.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in October 2014 and has been updated for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.

6 Artificial Intelligence Examples

11 Artificial Intelligence Examples from Real Brands in 2023

i4lead Dec 23, 2023

2023 was the year AI became mainstream. What was once a sci-fi fantasy is now a staple in day-to-day business operations. AI’s in your smartphone, shopping experiences, and maybe even your morning coffee routine.

Mom-and-pop shops, e-commerce stores, tech giants — everyone’s using AI. They’re using it to streamline operations, predict market trends, and create more engaging customer experiences.

This guide will explore 11 examples of real brands using AI in 2023 and beyond.

How Teams Use AI Today

5 Generative AI Examples

Best Practices for Using AI in Everyday Life

The Best of Both Worlds: Merging AI with Human Insight

How Teams Use AI Today

Marketers know the actual value of their work lies in separating high-impact tasks, like creative brainstorming and strategy, from the low-impact, tedious work.

And here’s the kicker: our report on AI Trends for Marketers highlights that 90% of marketers say these tools free them from those mind-numbing tasks.

So, how exactly are teams using AI today? Let’s find out.

Content Creation

Generative AI tools, like Jasper for text generation and Midjourney for image creation, support content creation by producing text, crafting images, and even generating music or code, depending on your input and requirements.

It’s not just hype — 48% of marketers in our survey already use these tools to craft content. AI connects the dots, fills in the blanks, and turns ideas into something tangible.

Suppose you’re working on a campaign. You have the concept but need visuals and catchy copy.

This is where AI steps in. It generates options and tweaks them based on your feedback; voila, you’ve got custom content in a fraction of the time. It’s all about working smarter, not harder.

Data Analysis and Reporting

AI tools automate complex data analysis and transform insights into easy-to-understand reports and compelling visualizations.

Here’s something to think about About 45% of marketers in our survey use generative AI for this exact purpose. But why is this shift so crucial?

Creating quarterly reports previously was a marathon task. Data analysts and marketers sifted through mountains of data from different platforms for a couple of insights.

AI now does the heavy lifting by sifting through data, spotting trends, and bringing it all together in sleek presentations. ChatSpot, for example, integrates with our CRM to generate instant progress reports.

An automated, integrated process saves time and results in smarter, more informed decision-making.

Research and Inspiration

Imagine brainstorming for a new campaign only to hit a roadblock in the ideation process. AI kick-starts your brainstorming process by providing endless inspiration and research possibilities.

Here’s how many marketers in our survey use generative AI for research.

chart showing how marketers are using generative AI

With access to massive databases of creative content, AI generates ideas based on popular trends, audience preferences, and past successful campaigns. It also supports keyword research, content optimization, and competitor analysis.

And the best part? AI can do this in seconds, giving you more time to focus on bringing those ideas to life.

Of course, take everything with a grain of salt and use your critical thinking skills. AI may be advanced, but there’s always a risk of creating inaccurate or biased content. Use AI to get past your creative block and spark new ideas, not to replace your creativity and expertise.

Customer Behavior Prediction

Using extensive databases, AI identifies patterns in consumer interactions and preferences to predict customer behavior. It combines this data with insights from neuroscience studies for a deeper understanding of how customers think and respond to stimuli.

Why is this important?

It‘s all about getting into your customer’s head. Take Predict AI by Neurons, for example. It’s built on a massive database with eye-tracking data from over 120,000 people and more than 100 billion brain response data points.

What does this mean for you? In seconds, Predict gives you insights into how and why customers respond to your ads and your brand.

Vizit follows a similar tangent. The AI-powered tool gives you data on what images and designs motivate your customers to click the “buy” button.

artificial intelligence examples

This knowledge lets you tailor your products and marketing strategies to align perfectly with your audience’s wants and needs. Instead of just shooting in the dark, you’re making informed decisions.

When you understand your customers better, you create experiences that resonate. This leads to happier customers and a more memorable brand.

6 Artificial Intelligence Examples

Where generative tools are one side of the AI marketing coin, predictive analytics represent the other. Predictive analytics uses AI to classify data and forecast future trends, customer behaviors, and market dynamics.

Predict domain authority.

Domain authority is a search engine ranking score that predicts how likely a website is to rank on search engine result pages. The all-in-one SEO tool, Moz’s Domain Authority (DA) checker, is one of the best (if not the best) tools.

free domain authority checker

DA estimates a site’s potential to rank. This way, SEO professionals prioritize their efforts better.

Sites with higher DA are more likely to rank well, giving SEOs an idea of how challenging a field is to rank well in. SEOs, marketers, and PR professionals can also identify valuable link-building opportunities using DA’s link quality assessment.

According to Chima Mmeje, a senior content marketing manager at Moz, DA uses a complex neural network instead of the simpler linear model still used by industry peers. The change enhances the platform’s ability to understand link quality and detect spam.

“While DA doesn‘t forecast rankings directly, it relies on Moz’s proprietary internal metrics, such as link counts, Spam Score, and link distributions, to estimate a page‘s potential to rank well. This upgrade helps users better understand and improve their website’s standing in search results,” says Mmeje.

What we like: Predictive AI processes and analyzes large volumes of complex data far better than traditional methods. Identifying and understanding patterns in search engine behavior, backlink profiles, and other key ranking factors provides deeper insights and more accurate predictions about a site’s potential to rank well.

Implement predictive lead scoring.

How do you identify the most promising leads? That’s where predictive lead scoring comes in.

Predictive lead scoring uses AI to evaluate potential customers based on their likelihood to convert. In our webinar, “10x Your Marketing & Sales Productivity with ChatSpot AI by HubSpot,” RevOps consultancy and HubSpot partner ScaleOps highlighted how they use ChatSpot for precisely this.

They create an ideal customer profile based on past buying behaviors and then pinpoint which prospects fit this profile best.

use predictive lead scoring to identify promising leads

But why is this so crucial? Predictive lead scoring takes the guesswork out of the equation.

It uses data, not hunches, to make predictions. This means less human error and biases and more efficient targeting of the right leads.

The result? Your sales team focuses their efforts where they count the most on leads more likely to convert.

What we like: AI removes the reliance on intuition and replaces it with data-driven insights, resulting in greater accuracy and efficiency in lead targeting.

Classify customer support tickets.

Ever wonder how big players like Zapier keep their products top-notch and their customers happy?

Here’s an AI trick from Reid Robinson, Zapier’s Lead Product Manager. He uses Zapier to pull in product support issues and then hands them over to GPT-4 for sorting and analysis.

use AI to classify customer support tickets

Every week, he gets a report highlighting the main issues to tackle. Fixing problems before they blow up polishes Zapier’s products and shows customers it cares about the experience they’re delivering.

What we like: Anything that supports the customer support process and makes it more efficient is a win. A proactive approach to help issues shows dedication and a desire to put customers first.

It reduces the time and effort spent on manual sorting, freeing up valuable resources you can use for other stuff.

Conduct regular data analysis.

Data analysis doesn’t have to be a monthly headache. Reid Robinson at Zapier makes data analysis a breeze with the new Assistants API feature.

“Export data every week, get your ChatGPT Assistant to analyze the data with Code Interpreter, and then output the analysis with a visual chart in Slack,” Robinson says.

use AI to conduct regular data analysis

What makes this stand out? It’s the consistency and ease. You’re getting these insightful visual reports without fail every single week. This regularity means no more data backlogs or last-minute rushes.

You’re always up-to-date and making informed decisions based on the latest data.

What we like: Regular AI-assisted data analysis like this streamlines workflows and ensures that your team is always in the loop with the freshest insights. It’s a smart way to stay ahead.

Create a centralized data hub.

ASUS, the multinational computer, phone hardware, and electronics manufacturer, has offices worldwide.

Its business intelligence team oversees global marketing investments and strategy, with each regional branch reporting marketing activities at different times, in various formats, and on diverse platforms.

This lack of standardization created a massive hurdle. To fix this, ASUS uses Improvado, a predictive AI platform, to establish a centralized data hub.

This hub made a unified source for the organization’s diverse data needs, including Management, Data Analytics, Business Intelligence, and Digital Marketing.

The hub connects to Google Data Studio templates, which are automated and centralized, with custom models for filtering data by regions, products, and marketing campaigns.

This centralization improves data availability and facilitates quicker experimentation and deeper insights. ASUS takes a unified approach to handling data to save time and resources — up to 80 to 100 hours per week in IT and 30% annually in marketing.

Conduct deeper SEO research.

Standard SEO research focuses on basic keyword analysis and surface-level content evaluation.

The problem with this approach? It often misses the deeper intricacies of search engine algorithms. It also overlooks the importance of understanding user intent, content context, and the complex relationship between ranking factors.

You create too simplistic strategies not fully aligned with modern search algorithms.

B2B SaaS agency Stratabeat does things differently.

Tom Shapiro, CEO of Stratabeat, highlights how they use marketing tools based on natural language processing models from Google Cloud Platform, IBM Watson, and OpenAI as part of their SEO stack,

He adds: “The platform enables us to conduct deeper SEO research, more thorough Google SERP analysis, and SEO scoring of content.”

The AI-driven approach better explains how search engines rank and perceive content in search results pages (SERPs). It‘s no longer just about keyword density in SEO scoring; it’s about the overall relevance, quality, and context of the content in relation to user queries.

What we like: This method provides insights beyond traditional metrics, leading to better search engine ranking and content optimization.

5 Generative AI Examples

There’s a lot of optimism related to AI. Our latest survey data shows that 68% of marketing leaders at the director level and above believe that fully implementing AI and automation would drive unprecedented business growth.

Here are five ways generative AI is making a huge difference.

Fine-tune content drafts.

If you use AI correctly, it becomes your editing buddy. Think of it as a sophisticated co-pilot that helps refine your content drafts.

AI tools can suggest grammar, style, and tone improvements, ensuring that your message is clear and resonates with your intended audience.

Wordtune is an AI assistant that fixes errors, understands context and meaning, paraphrases text based on writing tones, and generates text based on context.

Ben Pines, Director of Content at Wordtune, uses the tool to refine his content writing process in three ways:

“The first is to explore and expand on the topic I want to write about,” Pines starts. “Let’s say I want to write about adapting content to various social media mediums, and I want to give an example of a piece of content adapting it to the platforms.”

In this case, Pines says he would use AI to summarize the tone of each platform quickly.

“I could do this myself, but AI saves me a lot of brain power when exploring my ideas,” he says.

Pines says the second use case is to expand on sentences and rephrase content.

“When I write, it’s a very intuitive process involving getting to the flow. I can make leaps from one point to another, and AI does great work mitigating those leaps for my readers,” he explains. “My first draft of a sentence is not always perfect, so I rephrase some of the sentences using AI to make them clearer.”

The third use case Pines discusses is editing. He notes that gaps and mishaps always happen when you write. Going over the content with AI’s extra eye has proven to be very helpful.

“I use these three methods no matter the writing task: email, social media posts, and long-form articles. While the writing process for each piece can be very different, I stick to these three use cases to ensure I keep my content while retaining my style,” Pines says.

At the same time, Ben also focuses on the “assistant” part of using AI, ensuring it supplements his thinking instead of replacing it.

What we like: Ben pointed out how important it is to maintain your style and voice when using AI for writing.

He also highlights the versatility of AI in different types of writing tasks, showing that it can be a helpful tool no matter what kind of content you create. It’s up to you to figure out where these tools fit into your workflow.

Maintain a fresh link-building strategy.

The email finder tool Hunter.io team uses generative AI to keep its link-building strategy fresh and monitor if any links have fallen off.

Why is this important? Any marketer knows that a link-building strategy is essential to improving SEO and driving traffic to your website. They also know that keeping track of all those links can be a massive headache.

Antonio Gabric, Outreach Manager at Hunter, recognizes how short the lifetime of backlinks is.

“We discovered that in less than two years of actively building backlinks, we lost around 9% of all backlinks built,” Gabric says. “Generative AI helped us reclaim over 50 backlinks in less than a month.”

Gabric shared the following steps to help you level up your link-building strategy.

Collect all backlinks in a spreadsheet.
Build a Google Apps Script with the help of AI that will automatically check if the specific URL still links to our target page.
Run the script.
Get results in less than a few minutes.

You can ask ChatGPT to help you along this process. After collecting backlinks in a spreadsheet, Gabric asked AI to help him build the Google Apps Script.

You’ll get a code with all the instructions to make it work.

use generative AI to refresh your link building strategy

“Usually, the code won’t work from the first try, but you should paste the errors you get in Google Sheets as a prompt, and after a few iterations, you’ll have a working script,” Gabric notes.

Here’s the output:

use generative AI to refresh your link building strategy

What we like: Manually checking hundreds of links is time-consuming and tedious. AI allowed Hunter to automate this process and save time. They could then reshift to other marketing tasks.

Connecting AI to a Google Apps script made the process much easier and more efficient.

Automate content summaries

Snorkel.ai is a data-centric AI platform that transforming manual AI development processes into programmatic solutions. Matt Casey, the Data Science Content Lead, has incorporated generative AI into the marketing strategy at Snorkel AI.

“I use a Python pipeline built on OpenAI’s APIs to automate the generation of content summaries and sample tweets for articles on our blog, as well as some early drafts of content,” he says.

Casey says he recently developed a new workflow with OpenAI’s playground.

“We have a conference coming up that includes pre-recorded content, and we want to make a strong promotional push focused on that content in the days after the conference,” he says.

He recalls, “To that end, we wanted to pre-package blog posts around these presentations and do so as quickly as possible.”

So, how does Matt achieve this?

The workflow goes like this.

1. Get an automated presentation transcript (we’re using Descript, but other options exist).

get automated transcript of the presentation

2. Paste that transcript into OpenAI’s playground.

3. Ask GPT-4 to summarize the transcript.

4. Ask GPT-4 to write an outline for a blog post based on that outline.

Ask GPT-4 to write an outline for a blog post based on that outline

5. Prompt GPT-4 to write an article that matches that outline using the transcript for reference.

What we like: This is a fantastic solution for businesses that repurpose content. Repurposing pre-recorded content into blog posts can be time-consuming.

This approach ensures you don’t pile up dust on pre-recorded content and can squeeze out more value from the time spent developing it.

Create custom blog images.

Digital marketing agency for SaaS business Singularity Digital creates custom blog headers using Midjourney. Stock images, while convenient, fall flat because they lack originality. Custom blog headers, on the other hand, stand out.

Not only do they align perfectly with the content‘s theme, but they also reflect your brand’s identity.

Here’s how Patrick Herbert, Director at Singularity Digital, uses Midjourney:

1. Go to Midjourney and look through the Explore page using keywords related to your blog, industry, and brand. Find some designs you like and copy the prompt.

midjourney community feed

2. Go to the Midjourney discord and paste the prompt in.

midjourney discord

3. Review your results and regenerate if needed. You can experiment with the prompt to get variations on the images.

AI examples; midjourney

4. Upscale one of the images you like and save it.

AI examples; midjourney

5. Upload that to your Canva design and remove the background with the background removal tool by clicking on the image and then “edit photo” in the top right corner.

background removal tool in Canva

6. Play with your design as much or as little as you like, then export it from Canva and upload it to your website.

examples of artificial intelligence in everyday life

What we like: Custom images add a lot of personality to your blog posts. You can also repurpose them for social media posts.

Midjourney provides endless options for unique, branded blog headers without breaking the bank or taking up hours of your time.

Improve internal content distribution.

Critical information often gets buried under a pile of emails or lost in a sea of intranet pages in most organizations. Efficient internal content distribution ensures every team member can access necessary information easily.

It also adds fuel to your employee advocacy strategy. When employees know what you’re up to and have content to repost, they actively participate in your brand’s story.

Sprout Social’s research shows that 62% of all employees would post company content to their personal pages if their company wrote it for them.

Providing employees with ready-to-share, engaging content keeps them informed and turns them into powerful brand advocates.

Matt Casey at Snorkel.ai has developed a quick and convenient way to distribute internal content.

“I built an earlier genAI pipeline to expand my internal content distribution capacity. This one — which is a fully automated job — checks the blog for new content every 15 minutes,” he says.

use genAI to expand internal content distribution capacity

“When it finds new content, it generates a summary and a few sample tweets and sends the entire package to a private channel on Slack,” he says.

He explains, “I then copy that post into our company-wide marketing channel, edit it as needed, and send it out. This has been a huge help in getting the word out about new content across the company.”

Here’s what the Slack update looks like:

use genAI to expand internal content distribution capacity

What we like: Keeping everyone in the loop is a great way to ensure that employees are well-informed about company updates and initiatives.

Automating the process allows team members to access and share content without wasting time searching for it.

Podcast: 6 AI Growth Hacks Top Marketers Don’t Want You To Know

Click here to listen to the full episode.

Best Practices for Using AI in Everyday Life

AI is never a replacement for your own thinking. Here are three best practices to balance how you use AI:

Learn how to write prompts.

The quality of AI‘s output hinges on the input it receives. This is where prompt engineering comes into play. It’s a skill that involves crafting clear, concise, and powerful prompts to guide AI toward producing the desired results.

Here’s a thread from Justin Fineberg, Co-Founder at Cassidy, a tool that allows you to create customized AI assistants on how to write ChatGPT prompts.

how to write ChatGPT prompts

Fact check the output.

Always cross-reference AI output with reliable sources. This step is especially important when the output involves data, historical facts, or specialized knowledge.

Why? AI is a tool, not an infallible source. It‘s a blend of technology and the data it’s been trained on, which has limitations or biases.

Almost half of marketers in our survey who use generative AI say they’ve received information that they know is incorrect. What’s more concerning? Only 27% are very confident they would know if the information were inaccurate.

A quick way to do this is by heading to Google. Look for reputable sources that corroborate the AI’s output. The fresher the data, the better, as this ensures relevance and accuracy.

Don’t over-rely on AI.

AI’s great, but recognize its limits, too. Not every task is right for an AI tool.

Jobs that demand creativity, originality, personal opinions, or unique perspectives often don’t yield the best results when left to AI.

For instance, tasks involving controversial or political topics could result in biased or oversimplified outcomes if tackled solely by AI.

Instead, strike a balance. Use AI as a tool to augment your skills, not replace them.

Use it for data-driven tasks, routine inquiries, and basic content generation and reserve tasks that require deep human insight, emotional intelligence, and ethical judgment for yourself.

It’s an incredibly powerful tool, but it works best when complemented by human creativity and critical thinking.

Improve your editing skills.

Want to get the best out of AI-generated content? It starts with honing your editing skills.

Think of AI as your initial draft writer. It’ll give you a great starting point, but the real magic happens in the editing phase.

Here are two resources to start with:

The Cutting Room by Tommy Walker. A YouTube series where industry-leading marketers talk about their content-marketing philosophy, process, and pre-game before they edit an article live.
How to Edit by Ryan Law. A self-paced video course that teaches you how to self-edit your work.

When you know how to edit, you fine-tune the language, style, and ensure the content aligns with your voice and goals. This is where you add your personal touch, tweak nuances, and make sure everything is just right.

Stay updated with newsletters

AI advancements are as important as the tech itself. New tools, updates, and techniques emerge regularly.

Keep yourself updated with the latest news to ensure you’re making the most of it. Newsletters are a great way to do that. You can keep up with AI news by subscribing to these newsletters:

AI Breakfast: A comprehensive analysis of the latest AI projects, products, and news every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
The Rundown: Get an overview of the latest news, tools, and step-by-step tutorials in this daily newsletter.
AutoGPT: A weekly analysis from experts on the latest AI projects, products, and news.

The Best of Both Worlds: Merging AI with Human Insight

Each of the examples covered in this piece highlights one common theme: the most effective use of AI comes not from relying on it exclusively but from combining its capabilities with human insight and expertise.

AI‘s computational power and human creativity, judgment, and intuition create a powerful dynamic that enhances decision-making, problem-solving, and innovation.

This blend of tech and human touch is the cornerstone of a future where AI doesn’t just automate tasks but also enriches our understanding.

Bad Marketing Advice in Action (and What We Can Learn)

i4lead Dec 23, 2023

Bad marketing advice can make or break a brand. If marketers sidestep well-meaning but counterproductive suggestions, they’re better positioned to capture consumer interest.

What happens if they take this marketing advice to heart? Spoiler alert: It’s not great.

Here are 11 examples of bad marketing advice in action — and what we can learn from these customer-facing failures.

11 Examples of Marketing Advice Gone Wrong

Read on for our list of 11 bad marketing moments, or use the jump links to find your favorite example.

1. The KFC Calendar Clash

On November 9th, 2022, KFC sent a mobile notification to its app users that encouraged them to “treat themselves” some great fried chicken and commemorate Kristallnacht.

The problem? This isn’t a fun German holiday — it’s known as the Night of Broken Glass and is associated with a wave of Nazi attacks against Jewish German populations.

Whoops.

For KFC, the problem stemmed from semi-automated content creation. Put simply, a content creation bot saw that Kristallnacht was listed on the German calendar and assumed it was important. It was — just not for the right reasons.

What we can learn:

Here, the bad advice is taking humans out of the loop. A quick look by staff could have prevented this problem, but instead KFC traded speed for sales. Best bet? If someone tells you to cut out the human connection, don’t take it to heart.

2. The Gap Logo Lesson

From 1990 until 2010, the Gap used the same, familiar logo: Its name in white lettering on a blue background. Sure, it wasn’t the most exciting logo but it was simple, easy to recognize, and generally well-liked.

On October 6th, 2010, however, the Gap debuted a new logo: One with their name in a different font, in black, and with a small blue square in the upper-right corner.

Customer backlash was instant and savage. While Gap tried to salvage the situation by treating customer complaints as a crowd-sourcing exercise, the original logo was back by October 12, 2010.

What we can learn:

While there’s nothing wrong with a change, there’s no reason to fix what isn’t broken. If your logo or name or website is performing well, leave it alone — at least until you’ve gotten a solid amount of customer feedback.

3. The Pepsi Protest Problem

Pepsi has always struggled to match the market reach of its arch-rival Coca-Cola.

While a 2017 commercial featuring Kendall Jenner got the brand some much-needed attention, Pepsi executives would have probably preferred if everyone forgot the ad existed.

Why? Because it featured a smiling Kendall Jenner at an unnamed protest. Jenner makes her way to the front of the protest line, approaches a police officer, and hands him a Pepsi. He takes it, and the crowd cheers.

Put bluntly, it was a terrible look for the brand. With protests on the rise across the United States as social tensions boiled over, the ad seemed glib and dismissive of the reality that often comes with protests.

Martin Luther King’s daughter tweeted about the commercial, making it clear that Pepsi missed the mark.

What we can learn:

While real-life events can be a great catalyst for marketing efforts, brands need to consider if their product makes sense in context.

Are protestors joyfully drinking Pepsi at events? Not likely. Does Pepsi have anything to do with civil unrest? Nope. For brands, it’s often better to stay in their lane than try to shoehorn in social justice.

4. The Burger King Tweet Trainwreck

On International Women’s Day in 2021, Burger King UK sent out this gem of a Tweet:

“Women belong in the kitchen.”

It was immediately followed up by two further Tweets that made it clear the first was a joke and that the company was actually trying to reduce the gender disparity of chefs in the restaurant industry.

Instead, they increased animosity among their customers. Many didn’t bother reading past the first Tweet, and those that did weren’t exactly amazed by BK’s attempt at “humor”.

The result was a bad look for the brand that made them look tone-deaf at best and misogynist at worst.

What we can learn:

This one’s easy: If you’re going to make a joke, make sure it’s funny. If it’s not, at least make sure you’re not punching down. Make fun of your own brand or a company with more clout. Don’t go after women on women’s day.

5. The Dove Double-Take

Dove meant to highlight diversity with their ad. The concept was simple: Women of different ethnicities used Dove body wash and then removed their shirt. Under each shirt was another shirt, and a woman of a different ethnicity.

The problem? The last transition showed a black woman using Dove, then taking off her brown shirt to reveal a white woman. The implication that by getting “clean” black had turned to white did not sit well with audiences.

What we can learn:

Good intentions don’t always lead to good results. While the black actress in the ad defended the spot, and it’s clear that Dove wasn’t trying to imply that white = clean, the context of the ad made that interpretation entirely possible.

Better to get real-world feedback and find out it’s back to the drawboard than have to spend weeks apologizing for unintended racism.

6. The Bing Brand Debacle

Microsoft’s service has the second-highest market share in search engines. But don’t get too excited — in practice, Bing nabs 3% while Google gets 92.5%.

The numbers make it abundantly clear why Bing wanted to reinvent itself and make a move on Google.

The 2010 plan, however, was flawed from the start — for some reason, Microsoft decided the best approach was to try and make Bing into a verb, like Google.

But here’s the thing: No one is going to say “Just Bing that”, “or I just Bing’d that.” First, it’s already been done by Google, and second, saying Bing out loud just sounds ridiculous. Not surprisingly, the campaign went nowhere.

What we can learn:

If someone advises you to simply copy what another brand is doing, get a second opinion. While many brands have similar marketing strategies, advertising doppelgangers rarely work out well.

7. The Huggies Hard Sell

Dads are dumb, right? That’s the idea behind a 2012 Huggies commercial, which saw fathers tasked with taking care of the children and even — gasp! — changing their diapers, all without their wives around.

Not surprisingly, the ad went over like a lead balloon. Single parents and same-sex couples both expressed their frustrations, and dads in general felt like it missed the mark.

For most of these men, parenting was an equal-opportunity job, not something they only did when they had no choice.

What we can learn:

Lighthearted commercials are a great way to connect with customers if they avoid stereotypes.

Huggies could have just as easily gone with messaging that showed babies of all shapes and sizes creating large amounts of — waste, shall we say — for their parents to clean up, and how Huggies outperformed the competition.

8. The EA Criminal Catastrophe

Back in 2009, Electronic Arts was getting set to release its Godfather II video game. To help promote the game, they shipped advance copies to media outlets. Nothing strange about that, right?

Sure, except for the fact that EA included an actual set of brass knuckles with every advance copy. Not only is this a terrible idea from a marketing standpoint, it’s also illegal in many states.

The company quickly realized its error and asked for the knuckles back — while the misstep did generate some buzz, the game still ended up as a commercial failure.

What we can learn:

Unexpected marketing tactics can be a great way to capture customer attention, but you’ve got to think them through. If at any point anyone suggests something that might be illegal or even resides in a legal gray area, take a pass.

9. The Kenneth Cole Cairo Clash

Clothing brand Kenneth Cole made the very odd marketing choice to connect political unrest in Cairo with the launch of their new spring collection. Needless to say, it did not go well.

In 2011, the brand Tweeted that millions were in uproar in Cairo, then suggested that the reason was because the brand launched its new spring collection.

Not only does the Tweet make zero sense, but it’s also wildly insensitive considering that more than 800 people were killed during the protests.

What we can learn:

Ads that are timely can have a massive impact — consider the “You can still dunk in the dark ad” run by Oreo when the power went out at Super Bowl XLVII. The difference? The Super Bowl is a sporting event. The Cairo protests were a civil uprising.

10. The Heineken Beer Breakdown

Light beer has gained popularity as counting carbs has become more common. Beer brand Heineken wanted to capitalize on the moment with a simple slogan: “Sometimes Lighter is Better.”

At first glance there’s nothing really wrong here. It’s not a great tagline, but it’s not bad either. The problem? It could be taken as, well, a little bit racist.

Heineklen could have avoided any problems if they’d thought it through, but instead made a commercial where a light beer slides down a bar, passing the hands of dark-skinned patrons before ending up with a white woman.

Tweets from Chance the Rapper called attention to the blunder and Heineken was forced to apologize.

What we can learn:

First, it’s worth investing in a diverse marketing team — you never know what you might miss. Second, don’t rush it. Set marketing ideas aside for a few days or a week and come back with fresh eyes. Better to catch a mistake than have to pull an entire ad campaign.

11. The Audi Audacity

Audi has earned a solid name for itself in Germany and the U.S. Its efforts to sell used cars in China, however, quickly went off the rails.

The ad took place at a wedding, with the mother of the groom examining the bride like she was a used car — aggressively inspecting each aspect of the woman’s appearance before deciding she’s good enough.

Audi’s tagline, “an important decision must be made carefully” drew parallels between cars and women — parallels that made women seem like property that must be inspected prior to purchase. Not a great look.

What we can learn:

It’s not always easy to tell what’s funny and what isn’t. When in doubt, however, there’s a simple solution: Ask the group you’re targeting. Bring them in, let them see your ad, and ask what they think. If they like it, great. If not, change course.

Learn From These Marketing Failures

Bad ad advice is out there, and chances are you’ve heard all of it at least once.

In some cases, however, bad advice is coming from inside the house — from unconscious bias to “funny” jokes that aren’t so funny on second or third thought, there are plenty of ways for companies to miss the mark.

Best bet? Learn from the failures above.

Opt for inclusive and caring over spiteful or sarcastic. And if something does go wrong, own it. Don’t equivocate about your intentions; instead, offer a sincere apology that recognizes what you’ve done and what you’ll do to make it right.

Long Tail in Marketing: Apply That Ish to Content Strategy

i4lead Dec 23, 2023

Somewhat like the vastness of interstellar space, it’s hard for me to fathom just how much stuff there is for sale in the world — it’s staggering.

Yet even with so many sellers already providing the most popular products, one strategy that still breaks through is to take advantage of the “long tail” in marketing, monetizing the realm of the deeply niche.

Similarly, there is a ton of value beyond popular content keywords, and savvy marketers know that the best optimization brings in the right customers — qualified leads primed for conversion.

Thoughtfully chosen long-tail keywords deliver choosy shoppers like me past the flashy and popular front-page products because we’re looking for something more precise. I know I’ll be excited to buy it immediately — when I find it.

Let’s dive into this strategy, look at some long tail marketing examples, and then explore how this idea applies beautifully to content marketing.

The term “long tail” was coined by Chris Anderson to describe the graph below.

It illustrates the difference between selling a high volume of popular items (the head portion in the graph, in red) versus a low volume of many more items that aren’t as popular (the longer, mustard-colored tail of the graph.)

Graph of how the long-tail theory works.

According to Anderson’s long tail blog, this theory more specifically focuses on the tail portion of the graph over time, hence the tagline of his book: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More.

“The potential aggregate size of the many small markets in goods that don’t individually sell well enough for traditional retail and broadcast distribution may someday rival that of the existing large market in goods that cross that economic bar,” Anderson writes.

We’ve seen this theory play out and watched brick-and-mortar stores that relied on selling from a smaller, curated catalog closed up shop.

The only way through was to take their business online, seriously diversify their offerings, or team up with other brands to stay large enough to compete. (Man, do I miss those dELiA*s catalogs.)

Long Tail in Marketing Examples

Let’s take a look at some examples of successful long tail marketing.

Streaming Entertainment

While streaming services like Netflix, Disney+, and AppleTV carry and/or create popular shows and movies that attract us to subscribe, they also offer a wide variety of less popular titles to fill out their services each month.

The variety contributes to watch time and attracts niche visitors — like my mom. She will still watch anything if it has Steven Seagal in it, no matter how often she’s seen it. No matter how many times we’ve all seen it, Mom.

ICZOOM

This B2B e-commerce platform for electrical components has been making gains via long tail marketing this year. They recently released details about their accelerated growth and steady market expansion.

According to a press release from ICZoom, the purchase volume of small, medium, and micro enterprises is very disaggregated. These businesses rarely get support from large distributors, agents, and original equipment manufacturers.

“These same small, medium, and microelectronic companies, however, can form a long-tail market with a huge scale and broad prospects. Although the demand of a single small and micro company is extremely small when these companies are aggregated, an extremely large market is created,” the press release says.

Amazon and Etsy

Amazon sells more than 12 million products. When you add in their seller’s marketplace, where they allow others to sell wares for coins, that number jumps to over 350 million products.

That’s a very long tail that only grows longer each year.

We all know that on Cyber Monday, we’ll be wallowing in wide-screen TV deals above the fold, so most of Amazon’s marketplace sellers focus on less popular items further down the tail to make gains on the shopping holiday.

Meanwhile, I and millions of other shoppers will be on Etsy looking for that one strangely specific thing I know my mom-friends will understand immediately and embrace enthusiastically.

In 2022, there were nearly 7.5 million sellers on Etsy to serve over 96 million active Etsy shoppers.

Guess who’s not achieving first-page results on an Etsy search for “jewelry”? Basically, 7.5 million sellers — and many of Etsy’s first-page results for jewelry are paid ads, too.

Using long-tail keywords that set them apart from the fray is the way for sellers.

HubSpot’s Blog

HubSpot targets long-tail keywords to gain traffic and produces a lot of content throughout its portfolio of web assets to attract more unique visitors. This will continue to be true even as AI shakes up the scene!

“We know that HubSpot’s CRM and product can help organizations across sizes and industries,” says Kaitlin Milliken, a program manager on HubSpot’s Blog.

She explains, “Our blog posts need to serve this wide-reaching audience with helpful content and real-world, human insights.”

Applying the Long Tail Concept to Content Strategy

Having introduced the long tail concept in its natural retail habitat, let’s now apply it to content creation. Here are six ways you can see it in action, and I’ll explain how to leverage each for the benefit of your content strategy.

1. Optimize your site for many keywords, including long-tail phrases.

SEO is an essential part of any inbound marketing strategy. It’s a smart play to optimize your site for as many keywords and long-tail key phrases as you can, as long as they are all directly relevant to your product/service.

Remember, if your keywords are not relevant, they are irrelevant. Using keywords that are a poor match for your business, however popular the keyword, bags you useless traffic that bounces and degrades your trustworthiness.

It’s a big ol’ waste of resources.

Other benefits of long-tail key phrases are that they won’t have nearly as much competition as keywords at the head, and visitors to your site from long-tail key phrases tend to be better leads because they’re searching for something very specific.

Long tail keywords accumulate to a lot of traffic for a blog.

Long-tail key phrases may drive a low volume of traffic individually, but as you can see in the graph above, the combined traffic of all the keywords in the tail portion adds up to be significant.

Avinash Kaushik, one of the OG analytics gurus, recommends that you use SEO to tackle keywords in the head of your long-tail graph and use PPC to drive traffic for long-tail keywords. Here’s a low-tech but lovely article he wrote on this topic.

2. Create a lot of content.

More often than not, sites with the most content — original, authoritative, and valuable content, to be specific — also attract the most visitors.

Reddit and Quora are solid examples of sites with a huge variety of content, helping them attract millions of visitors daily.

long tail in marketing, page popularity for HubSpot blog posts.

Above is a snapshot of popular pages from the HubSpot blog. The blog home page and some articles that made it to the Digg and Reddit home pages continue to drive many visitors.

But when we add up how many page views we get for all the other pages over time, it’s evident that these lower-volume traffic drivers create a significant impact when considered collectively.

Even towards the far end of the long tail, the last 20 or so content sources drove more than 1,000 page views.

3. Grow your following on social.

One way to bring in traffic is through social media channels, which is best for capturing audiences that access the internet via mobile. Let’s consider the long-tail nature of retweets:

long tail in marketing, graph of retweets per engaged follower.

Here, you see a graph reflecting the distribution curbs of reposting on X, which ran in Applied Sciences. Over time, the sum of the retweets by people who only retweet occasionally adds up to be significant, pulling in meaningful traffic.

Please remember that the key to gaining followers and getting these retweets is sharing valuable content and engaging with the audience.

Like any content, you want it to be authentic, authoritative, and insightful — humor typically gains followers on social, too.

4. Next, invest in a link-building strategy.

Please understand — I am not suggesting that you should pay a bunch of people to link to your site.

In my experience, the best way to build up link juice is to publish great content that provides real value so that other creators will want to link to your site or content.

Integrity and authenticity just work better, for longer, with a higher ROI. Though I learned this in the ancient days from my early mentor in this industry, it still holds true.

long tail in marketing, graph of backlinks to HubSpot sites.

The graph above shows that some sites, like big search engines and industry-specific search sites, will naturally drive a lot of traffic to you. But as we saw before, scores of sites that drive a low traffic volume to you are still valuable.

If you notice from your data that some of those sites bring in quality leads, take note. You should invest time and energy into building a relationship with them to grow that funnel.

5. Spread your content around.

The first graph below shows a snapshot of the traffic HubSpot used to get from all the social media sites where we actively shared or uploaded content.

If we hadn’t shared content on all the sites in the tail, our site stats would have been lighter by at least a few thousand visitors.

Long tail in marketing, graph showing social media sites HubSpot shares content on.

Taking that a step further, check out the leads we generated from those same sources in the following graph:

Long tail in marketing, graph showing HubSpot's leads from content sharing.

Once you get your content out there in various ways, you can determine with concrete data which sources are worth leaning into going forward — and maybe even why those audiences are your top lead generators.

Knowing more could help you customize your content by platform to increase growth further.

6. Maximize your website’s footprint.

HubSpot offers many free tools to help you grow your website in several ways, increasing traffic to the main site over time. Take a peek at how this HubSpot portfolio of web properties grew:

Long tail in marketing, graph showing HubSpot web assets.

Grader.com and website.grader.com brought in the most visitors, creating opportunities to link their traffic to the main HubSpot site.

Depending on the size of your business and its digital marketing budget, it could be challenging to build tools and manage multiple sites immediately.

If you have to start small, you can’t go wrong by investing in a blog. It’s a low-risk and flexible way to open a door to more traffic, no matter your industry.

What you stand to earn from these investments is demonstrated in the graph below.

Each time you increase your digital footprint on the internet by adding another site, you use them to drive qualified traffic and leads back to your central hub.

Don’t sweat it if your main hub isn’t what brings in the most traffic. Lean into whatever is working best for you.

Make long-tail marketing part of your content strategy.

Leveraging the long tail in marketing isn’t just a strategy for retail — apply it to your content strategy! Diversify your keywords, content, and web asset portfolios to catch and guide more traffic.

Maximize your opportunities by writing content for niche areas using long-tail key phrases. And whatever great content you create, share that stuff all over the place.

“Fight. Win!” Edna Mode, The Incredibles

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in May 2009 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

PPC Keyword Research: The Complete Guide

Pay-per-click (or PPC) marketing can feel like a daunting task. From creating ads to monitoring performance and understanding bidding strategies, there’s a lot to take in. But PPC keyword research is an often under-appreciated, yet necessary, component of search engine marketing.

With proper keyword research, you can more accurately build ads and landing pages that encourage clicks from users. Completing PPC keyword research can ultimately lead to more conversions on your website and a positive return on your ad spend, which is why it’s worthwhile.

In this post, I’ll walk you through everything you need to know about PPC keyword research — from why it matters to how to begin researching and beyond.

Table of Contents

What is PPC keyword research?

PPC keyword research refers to the process of identifying keywords to include in pay-per-click advertising campaigns, usually through Google Ads or other search engine marketing platforms.

The goal is to identify keywords you want to bid on as part of your PPC campaigns. Then, your ads will display when users search for those keywords.

Here’s how keywords are categorized:

Average Monthly Searches: The number of times the keyword is searched per month on the search engine.
Cost-per-Click: An estimate of how much you’ll pay each time a user clicks your ad when it appears for this keyword.
Competition (CMP): A score from 0-100 in Google Ads’ Keyword Planner that indicates the level of competition for placing an ad for a keyword. When looking for new keywords in Keyword Planner, these are denoted as low, medium, or high.
Top of Page Bid: An estimate of how much you’ll need to bid on a particular keyword to ensure your ad appears in the keyword’s search results. Since this can fluctuate, Keyword Planner gives you both a low-range and high-range estimate.

These basic metrics are important because they can help you estimate the amount you’ll need to spend per month on your ads for them to be effective.

Different Types of PPC Keywords

We can divide keywords in several different ways. Each category is important to understand so that you can craft relevant ads that properly meet the search intent behind the keywords.

Some of these categories are provided directly by Google in your Google Ads account. SEM tools provide others as a helpful way to further guide your PPC keyword research.

Search Intent

There are a few ways to categorize keywords by search intent, but some common categories provided by SEM tools include:

Informational: The searcher is looking for information, such as definitional content or “how-to” guides.
Navigational: The searcher is looking for a specific website or company, often to log in to an existing account.
Commercial: Searchers are looking for products or services, typically in research mode. They may be looking for something specific, but not necessarily to make a purchase at that moment.
Transactional: These types of keywords have the highest purchase intent. The user is looking to take action right at that moment, whether that action is booking tickets, buying an item, or signing up for a service.

Different searches have different intent behind them. Sometimes, people are just looking for information. These informational keywords lend themselves well to search engine optimization (SEO), which focuses on organic search results. However, for PPC campaigns, they are less effective.

The most effective keywords to target for PPC are those with high search intent, mainly commercial or transactional keywords.

With these keywords, you can capture search traffic when purchase intent is highest. Your ads are likely to attract more website traffic and convert more users to customers for these keywords.

Many brands will choose to also bid on keywords in the navigational category, particularly for searches of their own company. It’s a way to double down on traffic capture alongside the organic search results for your company.

You can also leverage navigational (or “branded” keywords) to bid on your competitor’s brand names and potentially steal some of their search traffic. (Sneaky, I know.)

Keyword Length

Keywords can also be divided into short-tail keywords or long-tail keywords.

Short-tail keywords are the most popular way to search for a topic, product, etc. They have the highest monthly search volume, but they’re not very specific.

A good example would be “boots.” According to Keyword Planner, this term is searched between 10,000 to 100,000 times monthly.

On the other hand, long-tail keywords are less popular ways to search for topics or items. They usually contain more qualifying terms but are searched less frequently per month.

Using the example above, a long-tail keyword in this instance would be “brown women’s ankle boots.” This keyword is a lot more specific and might yield better results in a PPC ad campaign. However, it’s searched far less frequently at 10 to 100 times monthly.

Keyword Match Types

Depending on your product, service, or campaign, you might want to be highly specific with your keywords. At other times, you might want Google to do some of the PPC keyword research for you. That’s where match types come in.

When you add keywords to your PPC campaign, you can choose between:

Exact Match
Phrase Match
Broad Match
Negative Keywords

If you select Exact Match, Google will only display your ads for exactly the keyword term you have entered. It will also include extremely close matches, such as small spelling errors, plural versions, or a reversed version. For example, your ad will display under both “women’s boots” and “boots women” searches.

Phrase Match slightly expands your selected keywords so your ad will show up for variations of the search term. If you’re targeting “women’s boots,” your ad might also display under search terms like “best women’s boots.”

When you select Broad Match, Google will display your ads for phrases that are related to your keyword. In the same example, your ad may also display under search terms like “women’s doc martens” or “brown ankle boots.”

Negative Keywords are keywords that you instruct Google not to show your ad for at all. In your boots campaign, for example, you might want to use a Broad Match strategy. But you’ll want to instruct Google not to display your ads for terms like “men’s boots” or “women’s sandals” by adding them as Negative Keywords. Similarly, you might want to exclude terms like “free” or “sale.”

Why does PPC keyword research matter?

Understanding the keywords you want to target — and how you want to target them — directly impacts the effectiveness and cost of your PPC campaigns. That’s why PPC keyword research matters.

But let’s get more granular with why it’s crucial for your business.

Ad Relevance and Quality Score

Relevancy isn’t just important as a fundamental advertising principle. Google takes the relevance of your ads against the keywords you’re targeting and uses that information in a way that impacts your ad performance.

Alongside your ads, Google looks at the landing page you’re using and your past performance on Google Ads (the number of clicks your ads have earned) and gives you a Quality Score. The score is between 1 and 10. It then measures how relevant your ads and landing page are to the keywords you’re targeting.

When it comes to bidding on keywords, Google favors ads with a high Quality score. So, if your score is low, your ad strategy will be ineffective, or you’ll have to spend a lot more to appear in searches for your chosen keywords.

Return on Advertising Spend (ROAS)

At first glance, it can seem easy to load a campaign with perfect keywords. They relate exactly to your product or service and the purchase intent is high.

But this kind of strategy can quickly lead to an extremely high ad spend — and ads that don’t perform.

PPC keywords should be carefully categorized into separate campaigns, with specific landing pages built for each campaign. The estimated cost-per-click and the competition metrics are all indicators you can use to figure out how much your campaign will cost to run.

By paying close attention during the keyword research campaigns, you can ensure a positive return on your PPC investment—also known as Return on Ad Spend (ROAS). This means that the revenue you earn from your ads outpaces what you’re spending to run them.

Seasonal Targeting

Just like purchasing habits, lots of keywords have seasonal fluctuations. The searches for given keywords can spike at different times of the year or can trend upwards sharply based on market conditions or global events.

Careful keyword planning means you can target keywords and how much you spend on them at just the right time.

You can use tools such as Google Trends (or “Glimpse”) to see how keyword searches spike at different times. Here are the search trends for our “women’s ankle boots” example over the past five years:

Without fail, the searches for this term spike massively from October to November and start to trend back down around January. This type of insight can improve how efficient your PPC campaigns are, as you can see when to turn them off and switch them on for maximum results.

How to Research PPC Keywords

Do you need help with the step-by-step process for PPC keyword research? I’m here to help.

In this guide, imagine we’re an eCommerce store launching a new range of women’s ankle boots for the fall/winter season to guide some of our decisions.

1. Create your Google Ads account.

First things first, head to Google Ads and set up your account. Ensure you’re signed into the Google Account under which you want to run your ads. Click “Sign In.”

When you create your account, you’ll need to select whether you’re an individual or an organization, confirm your address, and provide payment details.

2. Switch your account to expert mode.

Google defaults your Google Ads account to Smart Mode.

This makes it very straightforward to set up and run ads, but you won’t be able to use Keyword Planner or see a lot of the detailed metrics you want to double-check for your PPC keyword research.

So, before you get started, use the Settings icon on the right-hand side of the gray toolbar and select “Switch to Expert Mode.”

3. Access keyword planner.

Use the hamburger icon in the top left corner to open the menu. Select “Tools” and click “Keyword Planner.”

You’ll see a screen with two options: “Discover new keywords” or “Get search volume and forecasts.” At this stage of your ad planning, you’ll click the first option to start checking out your keyword options.

4. Start finding keywords.

Now comes the fun part. Think carefully about the products or services you’re trying to promote. Your PPC campaign should be specific to a category, especially if you offer a wide variety of product or service options.

Start entering keywords that relate to your product. Here are some that you might enter to kick off a campaign for online sales of women’s ankle boots:

Tip: If you’re really stuck for keywords, try using the option to “Enter a site.” Keyword Planner will use the URL to pull a list of PPC keywords found on the web page you’ve entered. You can use your own site or a competitor site to start generating ideas.

Here are the results Keyword Planner gives us with these starting keywords:

But the planner also gave us a huge list of keyword ideas that we might want to use in our campaign. Unfortunately, many of the top ideas relate to Doc Martens boots, and we don’t sell those.

That doesn’t mean we should discount the entire list, however, as you’ll see in the next step.

5. Refine your keyword ideas.

Keyword Planner gives you a few different ways to refine the list of keyword ideas it has provided for you.

First, you can use the keyword suggestions under the “broaden your search” box to add in new ideas:

Next, you can use the “Refine” button to remove different options from the keyword ideas. For example, you can remove all brand-related searches so that terms like “Doc Marten” or “Timberland” are removed from the keyword ideas.

Similarly, Google will interpret the keywords you’re looking at and give you lots of options to refine the provided keyword ideas. In our example, Google enables us to remove different colors, styles, materials, and more from the keyword ideas.

All you have to do is de-select various options to refine your keyword idea list:

Now, Keyword Planner is giving us a much more relevant set of keyword ideas for our women’s ankle boots campaign:

6. Save your keywords and test results.

Start selecting the box to the left of the keywords you think would be worth targeting for your PPC campaign. This can take some time as, even with refinement, Keyword Planner will provide an extensive list of ideas.

Once you’ve selected a group of keywords you’d like to explore targeting, you can add them to an existing Ad Group or create a brand new one:

Create your ad group, and then select “Add Keywords” in the same dark blue bar. You’ll then be able to view your list of selected keywords under the “Saved Keywords” tab.

At any stage, you can click the circular + button to add more keywords to your list, or you can go straight to “Create Campaign” in the top right to start building your ad copy and bidding strategy using these keywords.

7. Keep an eye on your forecast results.

As you continue to refine your keywords by adding new ideas or negative keywords, it’s a good idea to keep an eye on the Forecast tab. This gives you an estimate of the results you can expect from the keywords you have selected:

However, these forecasts should be used as a guideline only. The actual results of your campaign will depend on the quality of your ads, landing page, keyword strategy, and bidding strategy.

8. Rinse and repeat.

Depending on how many campaigns you’d like to run, you can repeat this process over and over for your keyword research, creating a new Ad Group for each new category of keywords.

Staying organized with your saved keywords and ad groups is key to creating highly targeted, successful campaigns that drive a positive ROAS.

Best PPC Keyword Research Tools

Curious which PPC keyword research tools are worth using? I’ve rounded up a few of my favorites.

1. Google Keyword Planner

Sometimes, the best place to start with PPC keyword research is to get the information right from the horse’s mouth. With Keyword Planner, you’re getting data directly from Google, so you can rely on its accuracy.

That being said, it’s not the smoothest tool, so it might feel a little overwhelming for beginners. You’re also limited to Google, even if you also want to run PPC campaigns on other search engines like Bing or Yandex.

What I like: The best part about Keyword Planner is that it’s completely free to use. But it also gives you the ability to move straight from keyword research into implementing your PPC campaign all from one place.

2. Ahrefs

Ahrefs is a popular tool for both organic and paid search engine marketing. While the keyword research portion of the dashboard is more heavily geared towards organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO), it gives you plenty of PPC data, too.

Like Keyword Planner, you can organize keywords into lists. When you’ve narrowed down a starting list of keywords, you can export the list to paste them into Google Ads as needed.

What I like: Ahrefs is a visually appealing tool and a little easier to wrangle than Keyword Planner. It’s also more intuitive to generate new keyword ideas off the bat.

3. SEMRush

SEMRush has a lot of functions for digital marketers, including SEO, social media posting, content marketing, and more. When it comes to PPC keyword research, it offers similar functionality to Ahrefs but with more organization.

SEMRush has a specific PPC keyword tool for you to easily analyze, group, and remove keywords from different lists according to the campaigns you want to run.

For an extra monthly spend, you can also access the AdClarity extension to sneak a peek at competitors’ ad spend and performance.

What I like: The ability to easily filter out duplicate keywords across lists helps ensure your ad groups remain clean and are not competing with each other to bid on the same keywords.

4. Keywords Everywhere

Keywords Everywhere is a Chrome extension that enables you to examine keyword data right in the Google search results.

Simply enter a keyword, and you’ll get data on the search volume, Cost-per-Click (CPC), search trends, and competition.

It’ll even give you this data on related search terms in a separate box to the right-hand side of your Google search results.

What I like: Keywords Everywhere is very cost-effective, especially for beginners or marketers who run a small number of campaigns. You can buy 100k credits for $15 and simply use the credits as you need rather than being tied into a monthly subscription.

Start your PPC keyword research today.

Whether you’re a total beginner to Google Ads or a seasoned marketer looking to refine your PPC strategies, keyword research is the place to start.

Effective PPC keyword research creates efficiencies in your ad spend and performance so your ads can continually provide successful bottom-line results.

Go get researching.

How to Run Google Ads: A Guide to Setting Up Your First Campaign

What is a Google Ads campaign?

As the former head of marketing at two different tech companies, I can tell you firsthand: You can optimize your content for search engines all day, but sometimes, pay-per-click advertising — or PPC — is the way to go.

In this blog post, I’ll walk through everything I’ve learned about how to run Google Ads, from creating your account to launching your first campaign.

Of course, PPC is just one part of an effective marketing strategy. And remember: Your competitors are likely buying ads for the same search terms and keywords you’ll be targeting, so standing out from the crowd can be challenging.

But if you’re struggling with a limited organic presence and want to boost ROI fast, I’m here to tell you that paid ads might be your best bet for driving traffic to (and conversions from) your website.

Build Your Google Ads Campaign Like a Pro

How to Create a Google Ads Campaign

How to Cancel a Google Ads Campaign

What is a Google Ads campaign?

Google Ads is a pay-per-click (PPC) advertising platform that you can use to get your ads listed on Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs).

With this system, you can create just one campaign, which is used to organize groups of similar ads, or you can run multiple campaigns at once through your Google Ads account.

Each campaign includes multiple ad groups. These groups, in turn, house your keywords, ad text, and landing pages.

In my experience, I’ve found that structuring a Google ads account with campaigns helps make it easier to target different audiences (for better personalization), to be more intentional with bidding, and to run other tests without affecting the main campaign.

As marketing expert Max Freedman explains, “No matter which type of campaign you choose, it will likely include more than one ad group.”

Max says, “Each ad group may represent a different product you want to market to the same audience, and each ad group may have a unique keyword set.”

For example, imagine you work for an organization that sells two products. One is a more lucrative opportunity, while the other is less important but requires some spending.

With separate campaigns, you can give each of these products its own ads, putting more of your budget toward bidding on ads for the more lucrative product without risking that the less lucrative one might eat up all your spending.

For more information on how ad spending works, check out our ultimate guide to Google Ads.

Below, I’ll share some of my favorite real-world examples of Google Ads campaigns. Then, I’ll go through some of my top tips to help you optimize your Google Ads strategy and teach you how to post Google Ads like a pro.

Build Your Google Ads Campaign Like a Pro

When I first started out as a junior marketer, I thought advertising was just for big companies. But in fact, companies of every size and in every industry can benefit from setting up a strong Google Ads campaign.

Indeed, PPC advertising can be a highly effective strategy to drive revenue for any business.

As entrepreneur Neil Patel explains, PPC is “different from other advertising models (like banner ads with a CPM or cost per thousand impressions) because you’re not paying for eyeballs.”

He says, “Instead, you’re paying for results. No results? No clicks, leads, or sales? You don’t pay. Simple as that.”

So, if you’re looking for inspiration, here are some of my favorite examples of Google Ads campaigns, promoting everything from marketing agencies to holiday destinations:

1. New Breed Marketing

Search Term: “what is inbound marketing”

Links to:

Oftentimes, I’ve found that customers may know that they have a problem, but they’re not really sure where to start when it comes to solving it.

That’s exactly the challenge that New Breed Marketing aimed to overcome with this Google Ads campaign.

New Breed Marketing, one of HubSpot’s agency partners, is an inbound marketing service provider.

Because New Breed‘s customers might not know what “inbound marketing” even is — let alone why they should work with New Breed to start implementing it — New Breed simply aimed to define the term for their customers.

In this way, their ad helps buyers confirm that inbound marketing is indeed what they’re looking for.

This ad is as simple as PPC advertising gets. The meta description is just one sentence long, indicating little more to searchers than the fact that inbound marketing is a process they should be investing in.

Meanwhile, the blue link — or “Site Extension” — promises to explain inbound marketing in the form of a downloadable guide.

This prepares viewers who click through to the website to submit their contact information in exchange for access to that guide.

Remember: Google Ads campaigns cost you money every time somebody clicks on one of your ads.

That means you need to ensure that you’re getting something tangible out of every one of those clicks, whether that’s a new lead, a warm prospect, or a sale.

2. Nettitude

Search Term: “cybersecurity”

Links to:

One question I always think about when setting up an ad campaign is how broad or narrow I want the scope of the campaign to be.

In general, if you focus on very broad search terms, searchers will be less likely to want to buy something right away. On the other hand, a broad term is a great way to access a much wider range of potential customers.

In this ad from Nettitude, you can see the latter effect at play. For this campaign, Nettitude bid on a broad, one-word search term: “cybersecurity.”

While this broad search term doesn’t target a narrow, specific type of searcher, the details of their Google ad ensure that the link will be relevant and useful to many different types of searchers — no matter their level of interest when they start their search.

While this approach isn’t always effective, I think Nettitude does two things particularly well in this case.

First, its meta description highlights several value propositions that most people looking for a cybersecurity solution are likely to be receptive to, from its promised “2-hour response time” to the offer of a “free initial consultation.”

These phrases quickly emphasize how easy and convenient it is to get started, substantially lowering the hurdle for potential customers to reach out.

In addition, I think it’s always a good idea to display a phone number directly on the page. Since this search term is likely to reach a broad, diverse group of people, it makes sense to try to get them on the phone as soon as possible.

I’ve found that this can help nurture customers’ interest and keep them from wandering off to another search result (and forgetting all about you).

3. Rock Content

Search Term: “content marketing course”

Links to:

Rock Content, another one of HubSpot’s agency partners, is a content marketing service based in Brazil.

I really like this particular ad campaign because it’s a little unusual: The Rock Content team opted to bid on a search term that’s only somewhat related to the service offered on its landing page.

How does this work? Rock Content is interested in the search term “content marketing course” because it offers them the chance to connect with marketers looking for classes that will help them increase their content marketing knowledge.

I found this campaign really clever because it aims to pivot these searchers away from their initial goal — taking a class to improve their content knowledge — toward instead engaging in an evaluation to determine how much they already know.

This evaluation might not be exactly what every searcher is looking for, but it is a smart way of refocusing their interest on a related service and introducing them to Rock Content’s offerings at the same time.

4. Destination Canada

Search Term: “cheap holiday destinations”

Links to:

Similar to Nettitude’s broad, cybersecurity-focused campaign, this campaign from the travel site Destination Canada also leverages a broad search term to drive people toward its unique, narrower offering.

Specifically, this campaign is designed to reach people who are generally interested in exploring options for affordable vacations and then pivot them toward learning more about all the fun things you can do on a holiday trip to Canada.

The landing page isn’t a casual article, but it’s also not a detailed itinerary. In this way, the campaign finds a middle ground, targeting the middle-of-the-funnel space to drive value for the brand.

After all, when launching a Google Ads campaign, you don’t want your ad to be too broad to convert customers — but you also don’t want to be so close to the cash register that your searchers aren’t yet ready for what you’re offering them.

Destination Canada’s approach strikes that balance perfectly, holding users’ interest while avoiding chasing them away with overly specific content.

In addition, the ad includes two sub-links beneath the main Site Extension.

I’ve found that sub-links like these can be a great way to highlight the key subjects that will be covered on the landing page if the user clicks through, thus maximizing the ad’s click-through rate.

5. FM Training

Search Term: “leed certification online”

Links to:

FM Training is a certification hub for facility managers (FMs), and one of the many things FMs are responsible for is making sure that their building facilities are LEED-certified.

Earning this certification requires substantial coursework, but it can be a challenge to find curricula that cater specifically to these professionals.

That’s where FM Training comes in. Their Google Ads campaign is designed to make sure that FMs know they’ve come to the right place.

The first sentence of the meta description clearly states the target audience and provides a highly concrete value proposition: “Many FMs See a Salary Increase of 6% Or More.”

In this way, the ad uses the limited space available to send a strong message, encouraging viewers looking to get certified to click through and make a purchase.

I also think this ad offers another great example of the effective use of multiple links.

While some of the other examples we’ve looked at link to just one landing page or just one or two sub-links, this ad includes five Site Extensions directly beneath the ad.

This helps users jump directly to the information they’re most interested in, further boosting the chances that they’ll end up converting.

6. LeftLane Sports

Search Term: “hiking boots for women”

Links to:

Finally, I think it’s important to highlight how Google Ads can be particularly powerful for local businesses. This campaign from Boston-based LeftLane Sports makes the company money even if users don’t click on the link.

How is that possible?

If prospects in the Boston area search for “hiking boots for women,” they won‘t just see a paid ad inviting them to make an online purchase from LeftLane Sports — they’ll also see exactly where the brand’s nearest storefront is and even how long they’re open that day.

This is a great way to drive website traffic to the most relevant product pages while also promoting your business’s local presence in the process.

How to Create a Google Ads Campaign

Clearly, there are a lot of different ways to design an effective Google Ads campaign. So, if you’re ready to get started with your Google Ads strategy, read on for a step-by-step guide on how to run Google ads.

1. Create a Google Ads account.

Before you can do anything, you’ll need to visit the Google Ads website and sign up for an account.

As part of signing up for a Google Ads account, Google will automatically take you through the process of creating your first campaign, which includes setting up a payment method.

Google charges fees on a per-click basis, so be prepared to share your banking/credit card information during the setup process.

Note: I know you might be nervous about handing over your financials, but don’t worry.

You won’t get charged for ad spend until you fully set up your first campaign and start getting clicks, and you can always turn it off once you get through the registration process.

2. Select your campaign goals.

Once you’ve created an account, the Google interface will prompt you to select a primary goal from the following three options:

Get more calls.
Get more website sales or signups.
Get more visits to your physical location.

Remember, this goal will be tied to your advertising campaign. As such, I would definitely recommend choosing the one that most closely represents the results you want to see.

3. Complete the “Describe your Business” section.

Next, Google will prompt you to enter your business name and website, as well as other important information to describe your business. This information is used to help predict your audience and can also be used in the ad itself.

4. Designate your geographic area.

In this section, you’ll designate where around the world you want your ads to appear. In my experience, this is particularly helpful for local businesses — but it’s helpful even if you’re an online-only shop, too.

After all, if you don’t have a physical storefront, you may be less concerned about geographic constraints, but it’s still not a bad idea to consider where the majority of your audience lives.

And if you’re not sure, you may want to back up a step and consider your buyer personas first.

For example, why spend money advertising to people in the Midwest if the bulk of your customers live in the Northeast?

Another factor to consider is whether your company serves international buyers. If so, you can reach users in other countries by expanding your campaign’s geographic area to include those locations.

Just be careful to avoid selecting too broad an area. If buyers in other countries are unable or much less willing to make a purchase, you might end up paying a lot of money for visitors who never end up purchasing anything.

As content marketing specialist Susie Marino explains, “When you host a dinner party, you don’t invite everyone you’ve ever met. You choose a select few.”

Susie says, “This way you can cater the experience to their specific tastes and interests. Similarly, you don’t want your Google Ads campaign to show to the world.”

As such, she notes that it’s important to designate the right location for your campaign, to ensure you’re inviting the right people to your Google Ads dinner party.

5. Set your keyword themes

Google will automatically offer some themes based on your website content, but it’s a good idea to customize your keywords.

I’ve found that using Google’s suggestions as a jumping-off point (while making sure to adapt their suggestions based on your own specialized knowledge and perspective) is generally the best way to set your campaign up for success.

It’s also important to keep in mind that you’ll be competing against many other companies for the same audience.

So, when you choose the keywords for which you want your ad to show up, take some time to think carefully about which ones are most likely to reach people who are ready to buy.

For instance, if you’re setting up a Google Ads campaign for a shoe store, you might assume that a keyword like “luxury shoes” might be the way to go.

But instead, you may have better luck with a more specific phrase, such as “red leather heels.”

You might miss out on people who are looking for shoes of all types, but you’ll snag those who have a particular shoe in mind.

Plus, these customers may be more likely to make a purchase if your ad leads to a landing page with red leather heels, thus making the ad that much more likely to pay off.

Another way to limit clicks that don’t lead to purchases (and thus save money) is by using negative keywords.

For example, you can tell Google to show your ad to people searching for “red leather heels” but not to people who include “stilettos” in their search.

Negative keywords like this will tell Google what terms you don’t want your ad to show up for, helping you further target your ad to the people most likely to actually be interested in what you have to offer.

6. Write your ad

As a writer myself, this is my favorite part of the Google Ads process. It’s also one of the most important parts of any Google Ads campaign. The copy on your ad is the critical ingredient that will convince potential buyers to click.

Importantly, you want to write copy that attracts plenty of people — but you also want those people to buy. If they click but don’t buy, you pay anyway.

So make sure to keep your target audience in mind when crafting your ad, rather than just casting as wide a net as possible.

There are three key components of a Google ad:

Headline.
Description.
Destination URL.

Below, I’ll walk through the various factors you’ll want to keep in mind for each part.

Note: Google will automatically start you off with just one ad. However, if you want, you can choose to set up multiple ads in a single campaign.

Headline

The headline is the first thing viewers will see when your ad shows up on an SERP — so it’s vital to start with a great headline, full of search terms that will be relevant to your niche.

Google splits the headline up into three sections of 30 characters each, so make each character count. If you’re struggling to stay within the character limit, see if you can use any abbreviations or shorter synonyms to convey the same ideas.

Description

After the headline, you get space for two 90-character descriptions. Use the first description section to highlight the benefits of your product or service. How will your company solve your buyers’ problems or address their pain points?

Then, in the second description, you can highlight a key feature.

Of course, no one gets their ad copy perfect the first time. So don’t be afraid to experiment: If you notice that your ad isn’t getting a lot of traction, be ready to change the tone or content of the text.

Destination URL

The last element of your ad is the destination URL or the webpage people will be sent to when they click on the ad. Just choose the page you want them to land on and paste the URL into the field.

Note: You can use these templates to plan out your Google Ads, make sure they fit within the character counts, and preview what your ad will look like when it’s live.

Download Now

7. Set your ad budget

Once you’ve set up your first ad, it’s time to start thinking about the money. Google’s ad platform enables you to designate a daily budget to keep you from spending more than you’re comfortable with.

You’ll want to set aside enough money to make a difference, but don’t break the bank.

Especially when you’re just getting started, it may make sense to set a fairly small budget and then expand your spending as you learn more about what works.

If you want more control over the price per click, you can manually set the bids for clicks, and then your ads will just stop showing once your budget is spent. That’s a good way to make sure you won’t end up with a shocker of a bill later.

Most importantly, remember that your budget isn’t set in stone.

As entrepreneur and marketing specialist Allen Finn writes in his comprehensive guide to ad campaign budgeting, “Every niche, every account, is different. When in doubt, pay close attention to the wealth of data available to you and adjust accordingly.”

Once you start your campaign, make sure to set aside some time to review the results — and continuously adjust your budget based on performance.

8. Complete the “budget and review” section.

You’re almost done! In this section, you’ll be reviewing your campaign settings. It’s best to double-check each of the following:

Your daily budget.
Your monthly budget.
The impressions you’ll get for that budget.
The clicks you expect to get based on that number of impressions.
The location(s) you’re targeting.

9. Double-check your double check.

I can tell you from personal experience — you can never be too careful when it comes to double-checking your ad campaigns. Before you launch your ads, it’s always a good idea to check over everything one more time.

Is everything spelled correctly? You’ll miss out on keyword searches if your ad has a typo, not to mention the risk of countless potential customers seeing an embarrassing mistake.

Once you’re sure that everything is set up correctly, take a deep breath and move on to the next step.

10. Set up billing

Because Google charges per click, it will ask for your payment information during the Google Ads account setup process.

By providing your payment information, you’re giving Google the ability to charge you for the advertising costs accrued through your campaign.

11. Hit submit

Once you’ve dotted your i’s and crossed your t’s, you’re ready to go! Hit “submit,” and voila — you’ve set up your first Google Ads campaign.

To create additional campaigns, perhaps with different or tighter keyword groups, just select Campaigns from the menu on the left. Then, click the blue “plus” button and choose “New Campaign.”

The Google interface will then walk you through the additional steps to set up a second campaign.

In addition, once the campaign is set up, it’s worth considering A/B testing different versions of your ads, in order to further optimize them.

Try out different headlines, introduce new features, focus on different benefits — and then take note of how those changes impact the number of conversions. There’s always a way to make your ad perform better. It’s up to you to find it!

How to Cancel a Google Ads Campaign

To cancel a Google Ads campaign, first sign in to your Google Ads account. Then, follow the instructions below:

Click “Campaigns” from the menu on the left.
Find the campaign you want to cancel.
Click the checkbox next to that campaign.
Click “Edit” from the drop-down menu that appears.
Click “Pause” to place the campaign on hold, or “Remove” to permanently stop the campaign.

Note: You can select multiple campaigns to bulk edit.

When you’re setting up your first Google Ads campaign, it’s only natural to feel a little nervous or overwhelmed. But with this guide to how to post Google ads, you’ll be on your way to crafting a Google ads strategy like a pro in no time.

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

Blogging Statistics — 31 Stats You Need to Know in 2024

Online marketing is a fast-paced and ever-changing landscape, but one thing remains the same: content is king.

We’ve compiled a list of 31 blogging statistics that will help guide your content marketing strategy in 2024 so you can spend less time fretting and more time creating content that delights and converts.

Your business blog presents an opportunity to connect with your audience by providing helpful and enjoyable content that keeps people coming back.

Brands that prioritize blogging see 13 times more ROI than brands that don’t, so read on for facts and stats to keep you in the know and inspire your future content marketing endeavors — feeling inspired to start your blog?

Great! Let’s get into the facts.

General Blogging Facts
The Benefits of Business Blogging
Writing, Formatting, and Posting
Blogging Challenges
Building a Successful Blog

General Blogging Facts

There are over 600 million active blogs across the internet. (Growth Badger, 2022)
More than 50% of bloggers are between 21 to 35 years old. (Truelist, 2022)
Blog posts remain the most popular content format, with 9 out of 10 marketers using blogging to achieve content goals. (SEMrush, 2023)
There are an estimated 32 million bloggers in the U.S. as of 2022. (Statista)
Over 2 million blog posts are published daily. (Hosting Tribunal)
The niches that have the highest percentage of blogs with over 50,000 monthly sessions are food (42.8%), lifestyle (13.3%), and travel (10%). (RankIQ).

The Benefits of Business Blogging

80% of internet users interact with both social media sites and blogs. (DemandMetric)
59% of marketers find blogging valuable. (DemandMetric)
Websites with active blogs have 434% more indexed pages and 97% more inbound links than those without. (BKA Content)
Companies with blogs produce an average of 67% more leads monthly than companies that don’t blog. (DemandMetric)

blogging statistics, business blogging statistics

After video and eBooks, blogging is the third most common content marketing strategy. (HubSpot)
80% of bloggers report that blogging drives strong marketing results. (Orbit Media)
90% of businesses use content marketing tactics, such as blogging. (DemandMetric)
Companies that blog get 55% more website visitors than businesses that don’t. (HubSpot)
Bloggers, on average, include 2-3 images per post. (Orbit Media)

88% of bloggers who gate content report some/strong results from blogging (35% of them report strong results). (OrbitMedia)
Bloggers who use 7+ images per post are 2.3x more likely to report strong results. (OrbitMedia)

chart showing bloggers who add more visuals get better results

70% of people would rather learn about a company through articles than advertisements. (DemandMetric)

Writing, Formatting, and Posting

In 2022, it took bloggers 4 hours and 10 minutes to write a typical blog post, up from 3 hours and 57 minutes in 2019. (Orbit Media)

40% of content marketers say original visuals, such as infographics, perform best in their articles. (Venngage)
The average blog post is 1,376 words. (Orbit Media)
Many business bloggers argue that listicles (list articles) are the most popular blog post format. (HubSpot)
B2B blogs are typically 12% longer than non-B2B blog posts. (Orbit Media)

B2B bloggers vs. B2C bloggers - average time spent per post

Posts with video experienced a 4x increase in engagement metrics. (Orbit Media)

88% of marketers use visuals in over 50% of their blog articles. (Venngage)
Bloggers who publish 2-6 times weekly are 50% more likely to report strong results. (Orbit Media)

bloggers who publish more frequently get better results

Blogging Challenges

52% of bloggers say engaging with readers through their content is getting harder. (Orbit Media)
Although content creators say that producing original visuals provides results, 35% say they struggle with creating this content consistently. (Venngage)

The chart below highlights content creators’ biggest struggles when it comes to implementing visual content in articles:

chart highlighting content creators' biggest struggles when it comes to implementing visual content in articles

43% of people admit to skimming blog posts. (HubSpot)
B2B bloggers spend, on average, 26% more time on each post than B2C bloggers. (Orbit Media)
The average human attention span has decreased from 12 seconds to 8.25 seconds in the last two decades. (Golden Steps ABA)

Building a Successful Blog

Now that you’ve seen the benefits of running a business blog, you might be eager to get one started on your site or improve upon your current blog.

Regardless of where you are in blog development, brainstorm ideas for engaging posts that keep your buyer persona in mind, optimize your web content for SEO, and follow other best practices that have led businesses to gain ROI from their online content.

Want more success tips on how to be a better blogger? Check out this post with tips from HubSpot’s own blog team. With our free blog builder, you can get started blogging today.

40 Inspired Business Card Designs Too Useful to Throw Away

5 Good Business Card Examples To Help Get You Started

If you network a lot, you likely have dozens of business cards in different bags, pockets, and wallets. But when you’re looking for something about the same size and thickness as a business card?

It becomes clear how alike most business cards have come to look.

As a company rep or prospective employee, you need to stand out from the pile. So, we’ve gathered business card examples based on insights from marketing managers, recruiters, and decision-makers to help.

12 Business Cards for Company Reps

12 Business Cards for Prospective Employees

11 Creative (and Useful) Business Card Ideas

5 Business Card Examples To Help Get You Started

1. A Captivating Tagline

A good business card example with a captivating tagline

Expert Insights

One key element that David Bitton, co-founder and CMO of DoorLoop, looks for in a business card is “a captivating tagline that captures the essence of their offerings.”

That’s because “it’s crucial that a card clearly communicates what makes someone stand out and why I should be interested in engaging with them,” says Bitton.

David suggests a tagline that’s concise and easy to understand. But to steer clear of “clichés and exaggerated claims.” Instead, opt for something that uses originality to spark people’s curiosity while showing a clear understanding of your target market.

2. A Snippet of Uniqueness

A business card example with a cartoon likeness showing a snippet of someone’s uniqueness

Expert Insights

“What I crave on a business card is a taste of their personal brand,” says Chris Kille, the entrepreneur behind Payment Pilot.

Besides someone’s “obligatory name and contact details,” Kille looks for “a snippet of their uniqueness.” That could be a memorable tagline or “even a graphic that embodies their spirit.”

Kille believes this is a way to turn business cards into mini billboards that say, “Hey, this is who I am, and this is what I bring to the table!”

3. Testimonials or Recommendations

A business card example featuring a testimonial.

Expert Insights

“Including a brief testimonial or recommendation from a satisfied client or colleague can be a powerful addition to your business card,” says Jeff Wenzel, vice president of marketing and crowdfunding at KoreConx.

Testimonials work because “the positive feedback builds credibility and reinforces the value you bring to the Table.” Wenzel recommends “a concise and impactful testimonial highlighting your expertise and the results you deliver.”

4. Essential Contact Information

A business card example with essential contact information.

Expert Insights

“The #1 thing I look for on a business card is essential contact information,” says Coty Perry, chief marketing officer at Anglers.com.

“That may seem like an obvious ask, but trust me—these days, it’s really not,” continues Perry. “People are so wrapped up in the idea of having physical media in a digital-first world. They often forget that value comes down to function as well as form.”

Perry recommends getting the basics right before being “overly clever.” So don’t forget to include your name, position, email, and LinkedIn profile or website URL.

Perry also says to keep it simple, with “no more than three avenues of communication.”

5. Brand Consistency

An example of a business card that reinforces brand consistency.

Expert Insights

“I appreciate when business cards incorporate branding elements like the logo, color scheme,

or tagline,” says Amelia Thomas, head of marketing at FlexiPCB.

Adding these elements reinforces brand consistency and helps Thomas better “remember the organization associated with the card.”

12 Business Cards for Company Reps

1. QR Code

A business card with a QR code.

Expert Insights

Nelson Brassel, head of business development at Ten Speed, appreciates company reps having a QR code on their business cards.

That lets him save someone’s information without needing “to hold onto the physical card after the initial face-to-face interaction.”

Social profiles, personal websites, and digital versions of business cards are examples of information Brassel has saved after scanning a QR code.

2. Telling the Brand’s Narrative

A business card with a clear brand narrative.

Expert Insights

“For business cards, it‘s important that you include the company logo and tagline that effectively tells the brand’s narrative,” says Alex Csedrik, marketing manager for Jack Lingo Asset Management.

The logo and tagline should describe what you do as a company rep “in a succinct way.” Csedrik warns this is essential “because every point of contact someone has with your brand is an opportunity to tell your brand’s narrative.”

3. A Tactile Experience

An example of a business card with a tactile element.

Expert Insights

Goran Paun, principal creative director at ArtVersion, has seen trends come and go and digitalization sweep across all marketing sectors. Yet, “there remains something inherently effective about a well-crafted business card,” says Paun.

Paun recommends experimenting with the quality of the paper and enhanced printing techniques, such as letterpress or engraved stationery.

These elements can “elevate a business card from a mere information carrier to a memorable, tactile experience for the recipient.”

4. Embossed Lettering

A business card with embossed lettering.

Expert Insights

“Embossed lettering, in my opinion, can make your card look classy and contemporary,” says Gerrid Smith, director of e-commerce at Joy Organics. Adding foil stamping can also help your card stand out at networking events.

But Smith recommends only stamping “any particularly crucial information, such as your organization‘s name, on your company’s business card.” That will stop your card from looking cluttered and unorganized.

5. Traditional Card Dimensions

A business card using traditional dimensions.

Expert Insights

“Convenience rules. I think you shouldn’t give out your whole résumé at marketing gatherings,” says Starandlink Founder Royal Hernandez.

“Business cards are supposed to fit in a wallet but display important data.” Hernandez reiterates that standard cards are 3.5 inches by 2 inches.

But “you can make your cards bigger or smaller as long as they‘re able to remain functional and fit in someone’s pocket.”

Hernandez says to make sure that when the recipient folds back or cuts the raised edge, “critical information is within traditional card measurements.”

6. Invoke a Positive Memory

A business card which creates a positive memory for chocolate lovers.

Expert Insights

“There was a time in the 2000s when people wanted to be Creative with what was on their business cards,” says Black Rabbit’s Head of Creative Wojtek Jeżowski.

So, “instead of ‘Account Manager,’ we might have seen ‘Orchestrator of Client Success and Advertising Solutions.’”

But Jeżowski sees a business card-like advertising, with the best kind being simple. Also, like advertising, “whether that business card invokes a positive memory of your person” matters.

After a networking event, “there will be a large stash of cards on a table somewhere, and it won’t matter how flashy it is,” says Jeżowski. People will care more about how they “felt about something” when they need to make a decision.

7. Handwritten Personalisation

A business card with a handwritten element.

Expert Insights

“When I receive business cards, the ones that really stand out to me usually have a personal touch,” says 201 Creative Co-Founder Jared Bauman.

It could be as simple as “a handwritten note or a signature in pen on each card.” Bauman likes this approach because it adds a human element and shows someone put thought into their introduction.

When receiving cards from vendors, Bauman also appreciates a notes section.

“It may seem like a small thing, but this feature can make your card stand out from the pile,” says Bauman.

The section also helps during follow-ups because it’s “great for jotting down context or personal reminders” shortly after meeting someone.

8. Eco-Friendly Business Card

An eco-friendly business card.

Expert Insights

“In an era dominated by digital interactions, a business card remains a tangible reminder of a first meeting,” says Teresha Aird, co-founder and chief marketing officer at Offices.net.

“For me, it is not just about contact information, but also about conveying personality and professionalism.” Aird says your card should reflect “the character, expertise, and uniqueness that you bring to your role and industry.”

Your choice of materials is one way to do that.

Aird pays attention to reps “who are mindful of sustainability, choosing eco-friendly business card materials” because it demonstrates “their commitment to environmental responsibility.”

9. Cool Graphic Design

A business card with an interesting robot design.

Expert Insights

“I’m pretty particular about what I like to see on a business card,” says Will Yang, head of growth and customer success at Instrumentl.

“One of my favorite cards was from a salesperson who had a really cool graphic design,” recounts Yang.

The card looked like “an old-fashioned robot stamp with some text over top of it.” But their contact information was also in “really nice lettering that was easy to read and understand.”

“It showed both sides of their personality,” says Yang. “One side was fun and quirky; the other side showed them being professional and knowledgeable about their industry.”

10. Simple and Clean

An example of a simple and clean business card design.

Expert Insights

Kieran Sheridan, founder and co-owner of GulfPhysio, likes to see a business card “that is well-designed, but not too ostentatious.”

“The goal of a business card is to convey information about who you are and what you do quickly and easily; it shouldn’t take more than a second or two to read,” says Sheridan.

Sheridan recommends keeping your card simple and clean, with the most critical information being “clear and visible at a glance.”

According to Sheridan, essential information includes your name, title, company name (if applicable), and contact information.

11. Interactive Elements

A business card design with a QR code that leads to a podcast.

Expert Insights

Derrick Hathaway, a sales director at VEM Medical, finds interactive elements on business cards “particularly intriguing.”

Hathaway remembers a recent example of receiving a card that “had a scannable QR code leading to a personalized video message from the individual.”

“This interactive touch not only showcased their technological savvy but also allowed me to connect with them on a more personal level,” says Hathaway.

12. Certifications

A business card example with an accreditation.

Expert Insights

Ricky Allen, the marketing director of Ever Wallpaper, says a logo and contact information are “essential for creating an excellent first impression.”

But it’s also essential to include any certifications you or your company may have. That’s because they show whether you or your company has “the necessary skill set” a prospect needs to meet business goals.

12 Business Cards for Prospective Employees

1. Job Title

An example of a business card with a job title.

Expert Insights

“I believe that business cards are an excellent way to make a good first impression while networking,” says Jaden Oh, CMO and founder at Traffv.

In particular, business cards for prospective hires should “include relevant information such as a job title.” Including a job title immediately shows a potential employer your specialism and helps to “form a positive impression.”

2. Social Media Handles

A business card with social media profiles.

Expert Insights

Henry Waddilove, managing director of Novus BC, says it’s vital for potential full-time hires to include important information that shows their “professional identity.”

Waddilove says this applies whether the business cards are for internal or external use.

A key element to include on your card is “the handles or links to your social media profiles.” But Waddilove warns you should exercise caution by making sure the platforms you include “highlight your work or experience.”

3. Skills and Experience

An example of how you can use a business card to display your skills and experience.

Expert Insights

“When it comes to business cards, I like to see clear, concise information that tells me what the person or service does and how they can help me,” says WallPanels’ Founder Christian Sculthorp.

For prospective employees, that means seeing if people have “the skills and experience to help my business grow.” Elements like a job title or a specific accreditation can quickly showcase your skills and experience.

4. LinkedIn Account

A business card with a QR code that leads to a LinkedIn profile.

Expert Insights

“There are several key elements that belong on a business card,” says Cody Candee, founder and CEO of Bounce. “But the one that I immediately look for with prospective hires is their LinkedIn address.”

“Having the basics such as a name, business website, and phone number are a given,” explains Candee.

But a “LinkedIn account on a business card indicates a candidate who is not hesitant to show off their full qualifications, reviews, past experience, as well as their continuous involvement in your industry.”

That transparency sends a message of confidence.

5. A Touch of Creativity and Personalization

A business card with a creative and personalized design.

Expert Insights

“What I personally appreciate seeing on business cards from prospective employees is a touch of creativity and personalization,” says Nikita Sherbina, co-founder & CEO at AIScreen.

Sherbina cites unique designs, memorable taglines, or even a small personal anecdote of ways to showcase your personality as a prospective hire.

For Sherbina, creativity and personalization “leave a lasting impression and sparks curiosity, making the encounter more memorable.”

6. QR Code to Digital Portfolio

A business card example with a QR code that links to a portfolio website.

Expert Insights

“As an entrepreneur, business cards still hold significant sway for me, even in this digital era,” says Erin LaCkore, founder at LaCkore Couture.

LaCkore recommends adding “a QR code to a digital portfolio” on your business card. It’s “an excellent modern touch, showcasing the candidate’s understanding of blending traditional and digital marketing,” explains LaCkore.

7. Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

A business card example with a quick catchphrase.

Business cards need a unique selling proposition. Aquick catchphrase or remark can show your unique value or specialization helps to create interest. Will help differentiate you from the competition.

8. Embedded NFC Chip

An example of a business card with an embedded NFC (Near Field Communication) chip.

Expert Insights

Steve West, Founder of Entrepreneur Nut, appreciates business cards with an embedded NFC (Near Field Communication) chip.

“When tapped with a compatible device, it can automatically trigger actions like opening a resume, displaying a demo reel, or launching a personalized landing page, showcasing your skills and projects,” explains West.

West recommends that prospective hires in “the tech industry” or “web developers” could integrate an NFC (Near Field Communication) chip. That way, their business card would demonstrate tech expertise.

9. You Are What You Say You Are

A graphic designer's business card that shows the designer knows what they’re doing.

Expert Insights

“When we’re recruiting and chatting with partners or potential hires, we want to see proof you are what you say you are and can do what you say you can do,” says Shawna Tregunna, CEO and chief strategist at Acclivity Agency.

“If you are a designer, your business card should show your skills visually. If you are a writer, I expect a clever tagline or blurb. If you are a social media expert, if I don’t see your social icons, I’m suspicious,” Tregunna explains.

If Tregunna is hiring for a marketing role, they expect a candidate “to be able to show and tell me about your skills. And every touch point with a prospect (potential client or hiring manager) is an opportunity to show that.”

“If you can’t do that when marketing yourself, I’m going to seriously doubt you can do it effectively for us and our clients,” warns Shawna.

10. Business Appropriate Email Address

Expert Insights

“The first thing I’ll look for is a ‘business appropriate’ or ‘moderately professional email address,’” says Tommy McMaster, vice president of marketing at Keytos.

“I’d much rather see and communicate with ‘[email protected]’ as opposed to ‘[email protected],’” explains McMaster.

A professional email address is one way McMaster confirms if a candidate “is or has the potential to become a serious business professional that helps drive value for our organization.”

11. Embracing Minimalism

Expert Insights

“So here‘s my take on this personally — it’s about embracing minimalism,” says Peter Mendez, co-founder and experience director at Crafted.

“A few years ago, I received a business card that had just a name and an email. That’s it. It sparked my curiosity, and I was more inclined to reach out and learn more about the person and their Work,” Mendez explains.

Although this is an unexpected approach, Mendez says it worked because “the effectiveness of a business card lies not in ‘what’ it reveals, but in ‘what’ it conceals.”

The power of this approach “lies in its ability to kindle curiosity and engagement,” which can be a conversation starter.

12. Attention to Detail

Expert Insights

“When it comes to business cards, I‘m a firm believer in the adage ’less is more,’” says Phil Treagus-Evans, managing director at Giraffe Social Media.

“For a prospective employee, the card should communicate professionalism and attention to detail. I like to see a clear name, job title, and contact information — an email address and a LinkedIn profile are usually sufficient,” says Treagus-Evans.

11 Creative (and Useful) Business Card Ideas

1. Bill Nye the Business Card Guy

This business card, created by University of Nebraska Graduate Research Assistant Aaron Alai, is an interactive tutorial that teaches the recipient how transistors work. You can see a video of the card in action on his website.

2. For When You Need to Sit a Spell

U.K.-based e-commerce home furnishings shop Bentply lets you turn their business card into a little chair with just a few flicks and folds.

3. In-Person Photoshopping

Graphic designer Dario Monetini encourages people to have fun with his business cards — and he has some with sunglasses on them, too, if you want your friends to look even cooler than they already do.

4. Erase Last Night’s Mistake

If you ever wonder what you‘d look like if you hadn’t gotten that ink, this business card from Baywood Laser Tattoo Removal gives you a quick glimpse. Also great for job interviews and meeting the in-laws.

5. Check Your Tire Treads

1010Tires created incredibly useful business cards with a direct tie-in to their business — keep this business card on you, check your tread depth periodically, and come see us when you need new tires. Brilliant.

6. Which One’s Better: This, or This

Similarly functional, this optometrist turned her business card into an eye chart. If you’re having trouble making out any of the rows, make an appointment.

7. Better Than Duct Tape

Any avid biker would keep this business card from Broke Bike Alley handy — it doubles as a patch for your tires.

8. Nom Nom Nom

This is a business card made out of beef jerky — how cool is that? Unless you get really hungry or forget to take BC Adventure’s survival training courses, you could probably hold on to this for a while. (Anyone know how long beef jerky stays good for?)

9. C’mon, Folks, Pretend You Like Each Other (Yuk Yuk)

This is a totally inbound business card from Vorderman Photography. Try to crop your photos with this free tool, and you’ll soon realize you’d rather leave it to the professionals.

10. Emergency Cheese Grater

I’ve actually been in this emergency before. Block of cheese, no way to shred it. And I thought I was so gourmet, not buying pre-shredded.

11. This Message Will Self Destruct In…

This Dutch headhunter created an edible business card. So I guess if he gives it to you, the expectation is that you have to eat it.

I think that‘s how it works. This is truly outstanding, and technically, you’re not throwing anything away — it’s nourishment.

Our Favorite Marketing Campaigns of 2023

i4lead Dec 21, 2023

It was an interesting year to be a marketer. Expectations were high, budgets were low, content moved at the speed of light, and marketers had to make magic happen through it all.

As 2023 comes to a close, I polled the HubSpot Media Team to see what their favorite marketing campaigns of the year were. Check out the full run-down below.

HubSpot Media’s Favorite Marketing Campaigns of 2023

The Barbie Movie

Let’s start with the obvious: Barbie owned the first half of 2023.

To promote the summer blockbuster, Warner Bros. and Mattel teamed up to execute one of the most robust, well-rounded marketing campaigns we’ve ever seen. The “Barbie” movie’s marketing engine, from experiential activations to product collaborations, had it all. Some of the highlights include:

Ken’s Malibu Dreamhouse that was listed on Airbnb
Barbie-themed co-branded products with brands like Crocks, XBOX, BEIS, and Homesick Candles
An experiential Barbie-themed boat cruise in Boston
The Barbie meme generator

However, Warner Bros. and Mattel can’t take all the credit — “Barbie” also had a ton of organic marketing support. Opening the same weekend as “Oppenheimer” led movie fans to create the “Barbenheimer” double feature trend on social media, giving both films a marketing boost. Also, anytime we saw the color pink this year, we couldn’t help but think of Barbie.

Snoop Dogg and Solo Stove

In the fall, Snoop Dogg shared a cryptic social media post implying that he was giving up smoking. Naturally, the post garnered a lot of attention, as Snoop Dogg’s marijuana use has been a big part of his brand since day one.

It turns out the post was a teaser to promote his collaboration with Solo Stove, a brand that sells smokeless fire pits. The brand announced Snoop was its official “smokesman” and dropped an official ad days after his initial social media post.

Walmart Black Friday

Walmart tapped into nostalgia marketing in a big way with its “Mean Girls” themed Black Friday campaign.

The retailer rolled out a series of commercials starring the original cast of the 2004 film reprising their roles. This campaign was well-produced and effectively targeted the largest demographic of holiday shoppers: millennials.

Millennials are expected to spend more than other generations this holiday season. The original “Mean Girls” was a generational film that many millennials know and love, and the ads immediately sparked nostalgia for this important group of consumers.

Dunkin’ Donuts x Ben Affleck

In February, Dunkin’ Donuts aired its first-ever Super Bowl commercial starring Ben Affleck. The Massachusetts-raised actor has been photographed enjoying Dunkin’ coffee several times over the years, so it made sense for him to become an official spokesperson for the brand.

The Superbowl commercial kicked off a series of Dunkin’ Donuts ads starring Affleck, and the partnership is a great example of brand alignment and a celebrity endorsement that just makes sense.

Nicki Minaj’s Gag City

Nicki Minaj has one of the most engaged fan bases on the planet. This year Minaj fans, known as the Barbz, rallied around the release of her latest album Pink Friday 2 effectively creating a viral marketing moment for the rapper.

11.17.23 #PinkFriday2 🎀 pic.twitter.com/Tm9ugiGAlH

— Nicki Minaj (@NICKIMINAJ)
September 5, 2023

In September, Minaj shared the album cover on social media. The cover featured her set in a pink futuristic city. Her fans quickly began using the term “Gag City” to describe the album cover and used AI to generate their own pink cityscape images to depict Gag City. Barbz essentially created an online world and generated memes to help promote the album.

Other brands like Baskin Robbins and Microsoft Bing quickly got in on the action, creating their own Gag City images and adding fuel to the trend.

we’re ready to SERVE 🍨💅 #gagcity pic.twitter.com/CSoImO0W2O

— Baskin-Robbins (@BaskinRobbins)
December 7, 2023

While it’s unclear whether the Gag City campaign was deliberate marketing from Minaj and her label or purely an organic movement created by her fans, it’s an interesting case study at the intersection of fan UGC and generative AI.

Dove Self-Esteem Project

The Dove Self-Esteem Project had a string of stellar campaigns supporting its impact work this year.

In the spring, Dove took on social media beauty filters with the #TurnYourBack campaign. The campaign featured celebrities and influencers sharing unretouched content warning their followers about the dangers of digital distortion and encouraging them to turn their back on filters that change their natural features.

Soon after, Dove launched an initiative with Lizzo called the Dove Self-Esteem Project Research for Kids Online Safety. The goal of the campaign was to draw attention to the Kids Online Safety Act, which promotes safety on social media for young users. To support the bill, Dove produced a film called “Cost of Beauty” to highlight the impact social media beauty standards can have on young people’s mental health.

As we covered this fall, Dove also teamed up with Nike to launch the Body Confident Sport initiative, which encourages girls’ participation in youth sports during and after puberty. In addition to an educational toolkit for coaches and caregivers, the Body Confident Sport campaign included a series of YouTube videos depicting the benefits of girls’ participation in sports.

From cinema to social impact, 2023 had its fair share of effective campaigns. We look forward to seeing what marketers have in store for 2024.