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Google Ads is one of the most effective advertising tools to get more traffic to your website, and generate more leads. In fact, it’s estimated that for every $1 a business spends on an ad, generate $8 in profits.

To create better, more powerful ads on Google, it can be helpful to receive a Google Ads certificate. Additionally, it’s a great resume booster.

If you want a Google Ads certificate, you’ve come to the right place. Here, we‘ve created a guide that’ll explain why a Google Ads certification is helpful, and how you can prepare and get certified. And if you’re in a pinch, jump right to the information you need.

• What is a Google Adwords certification?
• Google Ads Certification Benefits
• How to Get Google Ads Certification
• Tips for Taking the Google Adwords Exam

Acquiring it demonstrates a strong understanding of the Google Ads platform and can enhance career prospects in digital marketing.

Why get a Google Ads certification?

Years ago when I was applying for work, I interviewed a couple dozen people who worked in the digital marketing industry to learn about their jobs and the application process. Many emphasized the importance of getting a digital marketing certificate and in particular Google Ads certification.

The truth is that many employers search for people with this certification on LinkedIn to find employees for their marketing team. Plus, the demand for marketers skilled in Google Ads is high, while the supply of qualifying candidates is relatively low.

To find qualified employees, then, many hiring managers use LinkedIn‘s search engine to find anyone with a Google Ads certification because it’s one of the few defining qualifications that can show proven knowledge and skill. The certification shows the hiring manager that you’re somewhat savvy about the industry.

Additionally, having an understanding of neighboring areas of marketing helps with your communication among team members, and empathy. Ultimately, having that certification under your tool belt will only make you look better to employers.

How to Get Google Adwords Certification

1. Get started in Google Skillshop.

Accessible via Google Skillshop, the home for all e-learning courses offered by Google product experts, professionals can access the materials to earn this certification.

Log in to your preferred email address, preferably one tied to your LinkedIn or business account to keep them all in one place.

2. Select the Google Ads certification.

Explore the topics that Skillshop has to offer or search for the “Google Ads” topic.

Click the Google Ads certification and choose the exact exam you wish to take for your career goals. There are broad exams you can choose but Google also offers:

• Google Ads Search Professional Certification
• AI-Powered Performance Ads Certification
• Google Ads Creative Certification
• Google Ads Search Certification

3. Prepare for the exam.

To better prepare yourself, familiarize yourself with the topics, take notes, and set aside the time necessary to naivagate that information.

Google Ads Exam Topics

There are Google Ads certifications for different topics, including video, mobile, display, and shopping advertising. The most important version is the search advertising exam since that’s the area marketers use most often on the platform. The second most applicable Google Ads test for marketers is likely Google Ads display certification.

Google Ads Certification Exam Duration

Each exam has a different time limit, but it‘s usually between 60 minutes and two hours. I’ve got a good sense for how long it actually takes since I‘ve sat in a classroom with a dozen people taking the exam and have seen how quickly people finish. It usually takes 50–75% of the allotted time. A small percentage of people will use up to all the time if they’re new or focused on learning from each question.

4. Pass the assessment and display your badge.

Google Ads Certification Badge

Once you‘ve passed the exam, you get a certification badge that you can show off on your LinkedIn profile. Adding this badge to your profile adds credibility and makes your profile more search-engine friendly. As mentioned, recruiters look for this certification and care about it, so you’ll be showing up more often when they search.

Google Adwords Exam Tips

1. Take notes.

Have printed notes on hand that you can consult quickly whenever you forget minor details here and there (don’t expect to rely on these for the entire exam, though). These notes are useful in case Google decides to implement restrictive browsing limits for exam takers in the future.

2. Plan for plenty of battery.

Make sure your computer is plugged in so it doesn‘t run out of battery life while you’re taking the exam. This tip may seem obvious, but you don’t want to find yourself in that painful situation.

3. Pace yourself, while answering.

Take your time with each question. Most people end up with extra time. Remember — it‘s a marathon, not a sprint. You’ll be answering multiple-choice questions for at least an hour.

4. Practice self-care, pre-test.

Hydrate. Get enough sleep. Some people overlook simple things, like making sure you have enough water and food before the exam, which can affect brain performance. Foods high in omega-3 are great for brain power.

Ultimately, getting a Google Ads certification is a worthwhile investment for your career growth. Digital marketing employers look for any valid evidence that you’re above entry-level applicants.

5. Don’t rush through without understanding the topics.

While it‘s possible to pass the exam without understanding many of the principles, you’ll be doing yourself a disservice in the long run. Treat the exam as a learning process and an opportunity to shore up your knowledge and application of PPC terms and methodology because it’ll help you during the job interview, and in your career.

You don’t have to know everything about Google Ads since real-world experience can help you learn. But the knowledge you gain in preparing for this exam will give you a head start.

Build Your Knowledge with the Google Ads Certification

Treat the Google Ads exam as an opportunity to learn rather than a task to check-off a list. Your mindset shift will make all the difference because you’ll be learning from every question asked, while others rush through the exam just to finish it.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published January 2023 and has since been updated for comprehensiveness.

Part of my marketing job is to send emails and track their progress, so I know a lot about the most crucial elements of optimizing an email, common marketing email mistakes, and what inspirational email marketing looks like.

But at the end of the day, it doesn‘t matter how optimized my emails are if I can’t properly track my email analytics or if I’m unsure what metrics need my attention.

Fortunately, my experience sending email marketing materials, such as newsletters, has given me a wealth of knowledge I’m happy to pass on to other marketers and business owners.

Let’s explore eight crucial metrics and KPIs you should be tracking to assess the effectiveness of your email efforts.

1. Clickthrough Rate

Clickthrough rate (CTR) is likely the first answer you’ll get when you ask an email marketer what metrics they track.

In fact, I surveyed 190 marketers and found that the majority (33%) rank clickthrough rate among the top two metrics they track when sending and reporting marketing emails.

Your clickthrough rate is the percentage of email recipients who clicked on one or more links in a given email.

The formula I and other marketers use to calculate this metric is dividing total or unique clicks by the number of delivered emails. I then multiply that answer by 100.

Here’s how the formula looks:

(Total clicks OR unique clicks ÷ Number of delivered emails) * 100

For example, let’s say I sent out 10,000 delivered emails that amassed a total of 500 clicks. I would divide the 500 total clicks by the 10,000 delivered emails and multiply the answer by 100, yielding a 5% clickthrough rate.

The math would look like this:

500 total clicks ÷ 10,000 delivered emails * 100 = 5% clickthrough rate

Pro Tip: Using total or unique clicks in the calculation above works, as long as you consistently use the same approach.

I like to call CTR the “day-to-day” email marketing metric because it lets you quickly calculate performance for every email you send. From there, you can track how your CTR changes over time.

CTR is also frequently used for determining the results of A/B tests, as these tests are often designed to find new ways to get more clicks in your emails.

How valuable is a clickthrough rate?

In my experience, CTR is a crucial metric for all email marketers to track, as it gives direct insight into how many people on an email list are engaging with the content and interested in learning more about a brand or offer.

Read this blog post to know what a “good” clickthrough rate is, according to industry benchmarks. HubSpot customers can click here to learn how to set up click tracking in your emails using HubSpot quickly.

2. Open Rate

This is the percentage of email recipients who open a given email.

31% of marketers in our survey listed open rate among the top two metrics they track when sending and reporting marketing emails, placing it right behind clickthrough rate.

Most email marketers are still bent over backward, trying to optimize their subject lines for higher open rates.

While this can have a positive impact — and more opens are a great thing — experience has taught me that marketers should be focused on optimizing their clickthrough rates instead.

The fact is that the open rate is a very misleading metric for a few reasons. Most importantly, an email is only counted as “opened” if the recipient also receives the images embedded in that message.

And many of your email users likely have image-blocking enabled on their email clients.

This means that even if they open the email, they won’t be included in your open rate, making it an inaccurate and unreliable metric for marketers, as it underreports your actual numbers.

It’s also important to note that 22% of marketing professionals in our survey say Apple’s latest Email Privacy Protection feature impacts the reporting accuracy of open rates.

Fortunately, some marketers are finding workaround by creating opportunities for users to voluntarily give information via gates content such as webinar signups and virtual events.

How valuable is your email open rate?

You can get some value out of the open rate as a metric if you use it as a comparative metric.

For instance, comparing the open rates of this week‘s email sent to last week’s (both to the same lists) might give you some insight since the variables are somewhat controlled.

3. Conversion Rate

After an email recipient has clicked through on your email, the next goal is typically to get them to convert on your offer, in other words, to take the action your email has asked them to take.

So, if you‘re sending an email to offer your audience the chance to download a free ebook, you’d consider anyone who actually downloads that ebook to be a conversion.

Conversion rate is the percentage of email recipients who click on a link within an email and completes a desired action, such as filling out a lead generation form or purchasing a product.

To calculate the conversion rate, I divide the number of people who completed the desired action by the number of emails delivered and multiply the answer by 100. The formula looks like this:

(Number of people who completed the desired action ÷ Number of total emails delivered) * 100

Let‘s say I have 10,0000 total emails delivered, and 400 of the emails’ recipients completed the desired action. To get the conversion rate, I’d divide 400 by 10,000, which equals 0.04. Multiple that by 100, and the conversion rate is 4%.

I’ve found that conversion rate is one of the most important metrics for determining how my emails achieve my goals.

This is because the definition of a conversion is directly tied to the call-to-action in an email, and my call-to-action should be directly connected to the overall goal of my email marketing.

Pro Tip: To measure the conversion rate of your emails, you’ll need to integrate your email platform and web analytics.

You can do this by creating unique tracking URLs for your email links that identify the source of the click as coming from a specific email campaign.

How valuable is your conversion rate?

If your goal is to generate leads, conversion rates are significant as they show you how successful your newsletters are at actually generating prospects and leads.

4. Bounce Rate

There are two variations of this metric to track: “hard” and “soft.” Before we get into that, however, let’s discuss what a bounce rate is.

Bounce rate is the percentage of total emails sent that could not be successfully delivered to the recipient’s inbox. To calculate it, divide the number of bounced emails by the number of emails sent, and multiply by the answer by 100:

(Number of bounced emails ÷ Total number of emails sent) * 100

Example: 75 bounced emails ÷ 10,000 total emails sent * 100 = 0.75% bounce rate

There are two kinds of bounces to track: “hard” and “soft.”

I’ve found soft bounces result from a temporary problem with a valid email address, such as a full inbox or a problem with the recipient’s server.

The recipient’s server may hold these emails for delivery once the problem clears up, or you may try re-sending your email message to soft bounces.

Hard bounces result from an invalid, closed, or non-existent email address, and these emails will never be successfully delivered.

You should immediately remove complex bounce addresses from your email list because internet service providers (ISPs) use bounce rates to determine an email sender’s reputation.

How valuable is a bounce rate?

While a bounce rate doesn‘t directly link to your goals, you should still look at it to make sure there are no deep issues with your emails. I’ve learned the hard way that having too many hard bounces can make your company look like a spammer in the eyes of an ISP.

Read this blog post to learn more about hard and soft bounces.

5. List Growth Rate

Aside from the call-to-action metrics (CTR, conversion rates), I also suggest keeping tabs on list growth and loss. Of course, you should aim to grow your list to extend your reach, expand your audience, and position yourself as an industry thought leader.

Your list growth rate is the rate at which your email list grows. Here’s the formula to calculate it:

([(Number of new subscribers) minus (Number of unsubscribes + email/spam complaints)] ÷ Total number of email addresses on your list]) * 100

Example: (500 new subscribers – 100 unsubscribes and email/spam complaints) ÷ 10,000 email addresses on the list * 100 = 4% list growth rate

How valuable is your list growth rate?

Believe it or not, there’s a natural decay of your email marketing list, and it expires by about 22.71% every year — which means that it’s more important than ever to pay attention to growing your subscriber list and keeping it at a healthy size.

6. Email Sharing/Forwarding Rate

I used to think the rate at which my email recipients forward or share my emails with others was insignificant, but I‘ve since learned it’s arguably one of the most important metrics marketers should track.

Why? Because this is how you generate new contacts. The folks on your email list are already in your database. So, while conversion is still a primary focus, this doesn’t help you attract new leads.

The percentage of email recipients who clicked on a “share this” button to post email content to a social network and/or clicked on a “forward to a friend” button.

This formula for your email sharing/forwarding rate is:

(Number of clicks on a share and/or forward button ÷ Number of total delivered emails) * 100

For example: 100 clicks on a share/forward button ÷ 10,000 total delivered emails * 100 = 1% email sharing/forwarding rate

Encourage your readers to pass along your email to a friend or colleague if they found the content helpful, and start tracking how many new people you can add to your database this way. Read this blog post for tips on getting people to forward your emails.

Why Email Sharing and Forwarding Rates Are Valuable

Keep a careful eye on your sharing rates to discover which types of articles and offers tend to get shared the most, and use that insight when you plan email campaigns in the future.

7. Overall ROI

This metric is the overall return on investment for your email campaigns. In other words, total revenue is divided by real spend.

Below is the most basic formula to calculate ROI — but there are several ways to calculate the ROI of your email campaigns:

[($ in additional sales made minus $ invested in the campaign) ÷ $ invested in the campaign] * 100

Example: ($1,000 in additional sales – $100 invested in the campaign / $100 supported in the campaign) * 100 = a 900% return on investment for the campaign

Depending on your type of business, you might prefer a different one.

Pro Tip: As with every marketing channel, you should be able to determine the overall ROI of your email marketing. If you still need to, set up an SLA system whereby you assign different values to various types of leads based on their likelihood to generate revenue for your company.

How valuable is ROI?

How many of these types of leads did you generate via email marketing? How does this translate to potential revenue? Actual revenue?

These metrics will help you show your boss and sales team how valuable email marketing is as a channel that drives accurate, tangible results.

8. Unsubscribe Rate

The unsubscribe rate is the percentage of email recipients unsubscribe from your send list after opening a given email.

As with the open rate, the unsubscribe rate isn’t a reliable picture of the health of your email list. Many subscribers tired of receiving your brand’s email messages won’t bother to go through the formal unsubscribe process.

They’ll stop opening, reading, and clicking on your email messages.

That‘s why I’ve found measuring subscriber engagement by clickthrough and conversion rates is much more effective. From there, you can keep an eye out for unengaged subscribers so you can consider removing them at some point, as we went over earlier.

How valuable is an unsubscribe rate?

Although your unsubscribe rate doesn’t directly relate to your goals, checking it monthly helps calculate your overall list growth rate. So, do keep an eye on it every once in a while.

How to Know Which Email Metrics to Track, Based on Your Goals

The goal of your email marketing may differ from the goals of another company like yours and may even vary within your own company over time.

But again, you must determine precisely what you’re looking to achieve with your email marketing before you begin (or continue) to send and measure your emails.

Here’s how you can align your specific goal with critical metrics.

Subscriber List Growth Rate

If you focus on growing the top of your funnel — attracting more visitors to your site, signing up more blog subscribers, and getting more people to use your free tools, your goal is to grow your subscriber list.

Your emails will likely contain calls to action such as “Subscribe to Our Blog” or “Join Our Weekly Email List.” Of course, the most important metric you should be tracking for this goal is the growth rate of your subscriber list.

Unengaged Subscribers

Just as you want to track and grow your subscribers, it’s also essential to keep an eye on your unengaged subscribers — and consider removing them from your list altogether. Why?

Because sending emails to people who aren’t engaged with your emails (called “graymail”) can hurt the deliverability of your email overall.

Email clients might get tipped off by low engagement rates and deliver emails from known graymail senders straight to recipients’ “junk” folders, meaning your emails will technically get sent and delivered but won’t necessarily be seen.

Here at HubSpot, we deliberately unsubscribed 250,000 people from HubSpot’s Marketing Blog, including those who had opted in to receive emails about new content we published on the blog.

This subscriber purge brought our total subscriber count from 550,000 down to 300,000. Read this blog post to learn why and how we purged our subscriber list and why you might consider doing the same.

Number of New (or Total) Leads Generated

Instead of focusing on subscribers, you’d like to work on growing lead generation.

If this is the case, you should be sending emails that offer lead generation content — in other words, content that requires the viewer to fill out a lead capture form to access it.

If the goal of your email marketing is lead gen, you should be tracking how many leads you capture every day and every month. Depending on your priorities, you can focus on all leads generated or only new ones added to your database.

Lead-to-Customer Conversion Rate

Finally, let’s say you want to focus more on the middle/bottom of your marketing funnel and convert your existing leads into customers.

If this is your goal, your emails will likely provide content more closely related to your business and your product or service.

Your calls-to-action may include “Get a demo,” “Watch a Video of Our Product in Action,” or “Start a Free Trial.” If this is your goal, you should track your lead-to-customer conversion rate changes.

As obvious as this all seems, you‘d be surprised how many email marketers determine their goals and then don’t bother to track their progress against them.

Ensure you can follow how closely you‘re trending toward your goal at any point during the month and that you’re looking carefully at any changes in these metrics month over month.

And if you need assistance tracking the performance of your marketing emails, HubSpot‘s Email Marketing Tools are available to help you create, personalize, and optimize your email campaigns.

Even better, the tools also include email analytics to observe your emails’ effectiveness.

To help you with your email marketing goals, you can also leverage HubSpot’s AI tools like our Email Writer that can help you generate copy that suits your needs.

Navigating Email Marketing Metrics

The bottom line? Be smart about which metrics you’re tracking, and ensure you can effectively measure your individual email performance, the health of your email list, and your progress toward your overarching goals.

As long as you can determine each of those, you’re on the right track for more effective email marketing.

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

If it’s your first time using ChatGPT, your answers may sound stilted. The program doesn’t know your voice and is trying to learn what you want. If you want to get the best results, you’ll need to invest time in training the algorithm.

Think of ChatGPT like an intern. If it’s their first day, they won’t know exactly how to get the job done. However, with practice and clear instructions, you’ll be amazed by what they can accomplish.

Our guide on how to train ChatGPT will give you a step-by-step breakdown to customize ChatGPT based on your specific needs. In this article, we’ll show you how to turn ChatGPT into your personal marketing assistant with:

• 5 Amazing Marketing Use Cases for ChatGPT
• ChatGPT For Marketing: Key Advantages and Limitations to Know
• 5 Actionable Tips for Training ChatGPT for Marketing
• 10 Marketing Prompts to Help Train ChatGPT
• How to Train Your ChatGPT With Custom Data

5 Amazing Marketing Use Cases for ChatGPT

When ChatGPT first came into the spotlight, people asked it to write songs and solve complex mathematical questions.

Now, with a premium plan and hundreds of plugins to expand the tool’s capabilities, marketers have realized ChatGPT’s potential to become a high-functioning assistant to make life easy.

We found the top five marketing use cases you can explore (and prompts to use):

1. In-Depth Market Research

You can use ChatGPT to explore any industry or vertical in detail.

It’ll give you a clearer understanding of your competitors, target audience, and location-specific nuances.

The tool can study publicly available information and find granular insights about the market — demographics to target, buyer preferences, competitor landscape, and other useful details.

This can be a good starting point for creating a marketing strategy from scratch.

Prompt: I want to start an ecommerce store selling hand-made jewelry and accessories created from sustainable materials in Austin, Texas. Act as a market researcher and give me information on the demographics of people most likely to order these products in Austin — including age groups, income, education, gender, and specific location.

2. Find Ideas to Create Customer Surveys

All successful marketing campaigns have one thing in common: listening to customers.

You have to stay on top of customer expectations and preferences when planning or reviewing your marketing efforts.

ChatGPT can simplify this process.

You can get a pulse on your customers with surveys created using ChatGPT. You can also be more specific to get clear, on-point questions to be added to surveys.

You can add specific instructions about the type of questions to include, like multiple-choice, rating-based, etc.

Prompt: I run an agency to help businesses create + edit video content in multiple formats. Create a customer survey to help me collect their feedback once I complete a project. Write 10-12 objective, close-ended questions asking about their satisfaction levels. Add one subjective question for their overall feedback.

3. Create Blog Outlines and Edit Drafts

Using ChatGPT to make outlines for blog content is another great way to fast-track your marketing workflows.

You can create a template prompt with all the instructions for creating detailed outlines and use it whenever you want to write an article.

Not only that, once you’re done writing the content, you can also feed your draft to ChatGPT for proofreading. You can ask the tool to pinpoint errors and share language suggestions based on your defined tone of voice.

Prompt: Create a detailed outline on the topic “Customer marketing for SaaS” following the BLUF approach. Add a compelling title and include bullet points within each section to explain what to include in these sections. Write the headings in sentence case and use H3s and H4s wherever needed. Properly format this outline.

4. Generate Copy for Emails and Social Media

Don’t have the time to create some juicy copy for your next social media post? Or are you spending way too much time coming up with a good subject line for your emails?

You can use ChatGPT as your creative sidekick to write short-form copy and content in seconds.

Instead of wrecking your head thinking about the best copy, create a detailed prompt to let ChatGPT do the heavy lifting quickly.

Prompt: Create an email for our existing customers to introduce our latest feature, AI voiceover. This feature will let them add AI-generated audio in different voices, styles, and languages. They can download and transcribe this audio as well. Highlight our motivations for creating this feature and end with a CTA gently nudging them to try it.

TOV: Keep it friendly, conversational, and exciting.

You can go a notch above this to plan an entire campaign with HubSpot’s Campaign Assistant. The tool can help you plan and execute marketing campaigns from start to finish without the busywork.

Get Started With HubSpot’s Campaign Assistant

5. Repurposing Content for Different Channels

Create once, repurpose forever — that’s the mantra for most marketers these days.

But let’s face it, many marketers drop the ball here because repurposing content can be a pain. It takes too much time, and workflows are usually complicated.

You can cut all this hassle with ChatGPT. You can convert:

• A blog post into a shorter copy for social media.
• A short video script into a longer blog.
• A podcast into a blog or email.

The possibilities are endless.

You can also use ChatSpot, HubSpot’s AI-powered companion, to outline, draft, rewrite and repurpose content, create social media posts, generate images based on prompts, and more.

Get Started With HubSpot’s ChatSpot

ChatGPT for Marketing: Key Advantages and Limitations to Know

When used well, ChatGPT can truly be a game-changer for marketers. But it’s not without its flaws. Let’s look at ChatGPT’s main benefits and shortcomings.

Advantages of ChatGPT in Marketing

Here are a few major benefits of integrating ChatGPT into your marketing workflow:

1. Speed Up Creativity

One of the biggest wins ChatGPT gives marketers is driving efficiency in creative work.

Whether you’re planning a new campaign or writing some copy, you don’t have to spend hours to come up with just a handful of good ideas.

ChatGPT can flex those creative muscles for you and get the job done quickly.

2. Cost-Effective Assistant

The free version of the tool works pretty great for the most part. But if you want to level up and produce even better output at scale, you can upgrade at just $20 a month.

That’s a bargain when you think of all the work you can do in minutes.

3. Round-the-Clock Availability

Another huge benefit is that ChatGPT works on your time and terms.

Whether you’re an early riser or a night owl, working on a Monday or the weekend, the tool is available round-the-clock to support your work with the same quality of output.

4. Ease of Integration With Other Tools

You can also integrate ChatGPT with any tool using its API.

Add it to your website chatbot or inside your app; you can use it for any task to maximize efficiency. For example, you can use it to collect and qualify leads from your website or create emails in minutes.

Limitations of ChatGPT in Marketing

ChatGPT might not be ideal for some use cases; here’s why.

1. Prone to Poor Quality and Inaccurate Output

Users share the concern that the tool sometimes throws up low-quality and incorrect responses.

An article by the SF Chronicle explained how LLMs can generate false information based on training data without knowing real-world facts.

Here’s an example of inaccurate outputs by different AI models:

Image Source

2. Limited Contextual Understanding and Bias

ChatGPT also lacks the ability to understand and retain information based on context. That means you have to feed it the same instructions every time you want to prompt an output.

Its LLMs also develop biases present in the training data. So, the context of your output is not fully objective.

3. No Knowledge of Brand Identity

Unlike humans in your team, ChatGPT can’t develop an in-depth knowledge of your brand.

You must continuously share relevant details of your brand identity and values whenever you want to generate any output.

This often results in subpar results and is not fully aligned with your brand.

4. Technical Glitches

A fairly common issue with ChatGPT is the frequent outages when the tool becomes completely inoperative. These unanticipated glitches can hamper your productivity and throw you off schedule.

5 Actionable Tips for Training ChatGPT for Marketing

Now that we’ve covered the basics of how you can use ChatGPT for marketing, it’s time to get down to business: how to train ChatGPT.

While there are tons of marketing examples to inspire your training efforts, we’ve curated our top five tips for training the tool for customized outputs.

1. Document your brand guidelines.

Help ChatGPT understand your brand inside out with detailed brand guidelines.

This document should ideally include your vision, mission, values, personality characteristics, tone of voice, and visual elements.

You can input these guidelines in the Custom Instructions feature to align all your responses with these instructions.

The tool also gives you a few questions to answer to make these instructions work more effectively.

2. Templatize your instruction prompts.

Another best practice is to create templated instructions for every use case — whether you want to create a weekly newsletter, find ideas for social media, or make blog outlines.

These templates can fast-track your work and save you the struggle of writing detailed prompts from scratch every time. Simply pick a template and customize it for a specific request.

This can bring more consistency in the quality of output and set you up for repeatable success with the tool.

3. Share insights about your target audience.

From what we’ve learned, ChatGPT can develop biases based on its training data. As a result, it’ll produce ideas and responses that might not necessarily resonate with your target audience.

You can fix this problem by feeding the tool more information about your target audience.

Doing so can help the AI platform understand who it’s writing for, their pain points, and preferences.

This can train ChatGPT to think and speak like your customers instead of producing generic ideas or content.

4. Simulate marketing scenarios and use real examples.

You can give ChatGPT a better contextual understanding of your business and overall marketing efforts by:

• Simulating different scenarios of how you plan your marketing campaigns.
• Sharing real-life examples of how your customers interact and buy from you.

This way, you can transfer some of your marketing knowledge to AI and enhance its capability to create high-quality results.

5. Refine your training based on testing and user feedback.

Don’t forget to regularly review the effectiveness of your training by answering a few questions like:

• Is ChatGPT producing relevant ideas and writing brand-aligned content?
• Does your ChatGPT-generated content/copy match your brand’s tone of voice?
• Are customers enjoying the campaigns created with AI’s assistance?
• Has there been any decline in the quality graph?

You can also collect feedback for some ChatGPT-generated ideas or copy to fill the gaps in your training. For example, if users say the social media posts feel too salesy, you can add more instructions to improve the tone of voice.

10 Marketing Prompts to Help Train ChatGPT

Want to get to work but don’t have the time to train ChatGPT completely? No worries — we have a set of 10 prompts to train ChatGPT quickly. Save these for the future!

1. Create Buyer Personas

In the [industry name] industry, identify the key buyer segments. For each segment, provide a detailed outline of the potential opportunities for marketing. This should include demographic details, consumer needs, and any trends that may affect the segment.

2. Identify Pain Points

Identify the common challenges faced by the specified buyer persona. These challenges can range from daily inconveniences to major obstacles that influence their buying decisions.

3. Generate Snappy Ideas

Suggest email copy and design ideas to run a campaign for [occasion]. Stick to our brand guidelines and come up with intriguing ideas based on some pop-culture themes.

4. Repurpose Content

Here’s some text from a blog post about books: [add text]. Modify it to fit the character limit of [social platform]. Make sure to keep the main message and tonality intact, but feel free to use abbreviations and X-specific language.

5. Create Short-Form Content

Generate five different descriptions for our YouTube video on [topic]. Each description should be engaging and accurately reflect the content of the video. Optimize it for [keyword]. Keep the tone conversational and exciting.

6. Write Title Tags and Meta Descriptions

Write a title tag and meta description for the blog post about [subject]. The title tag should be attention-grabbing, and the meta description should provide a brief summary of the blog post.

7. Find Campaign Ideas

We want to conduct a webinar for our target audience: [specify personas]. Come up with 5-6 creative ideas for this webinar that would resonate with our audience. Align these with their pain points and our product/service. Add a basic overview with specific subtopics to cover.

8. Get Relevant Sources

Provide a list of reliable sources where I can learn more about [topic]. These can include books, articles, newsletters, thought leaders, or educational videos.

9. Edit and Proofread Content

Review this blog post (enter inserted text) and check for any spelling or grammar mistakes. Make the necessary edits to improve the text for readability, the flow of ideas, redundancies, logical arguments, and contextual relevance.

10. Create Memes

Create five memes around the idea of [explain your idea]. Make these memes relatable for [target audience] and suggest captions to make them more hilarious.

How to Train Your ChatGPT With Custom Data on Mac

Here’s your step-by-step guide to training your ChatGPT to produce tailored output for your needs:

Step 1. Install Python.

Check if you have Python 3.0+ installed. You need Python 3.0+ to train ChatGPT with custom data.

You can check which version of Python or whether Python is installed on your MacOS Terminal using the command:

python3 –version

If not, download the latest version of Python from the official website.

Step 2. Upgrade PIP.

PIP (standard package manager for Python) lets you install Python libraries. In our case, we need to install OpenAI, PyPDF2, and other libraries.

PIP comes pre-packaged with new Python versions. However, if you’re using an old installation, upgrade PIP to the latest version.

Here’s the command to upgrade PIP:

python3 -m pip install -U pip

Step 3. Install the essential libraries.

The next step is to install the following essential libraries (use the commands mentioned below their description to install them one-by-one):

• OpenAI library: to train and create your chatbot.

pip3 install openai

• PyPDF2: helps parse PDF files.

pip3 install PyPDF2

• GPT Index (LlamaIndex): to allow LLMs to connect with your knowledge base.

pip3 install gpt_index

• Gradio: create an interface for interacting with the chatbot.

pip3 install gradio

Now, we’re done installing the essential Python libraries.

Before we head over to the next step, make sure you have installed a code editor like Sublime Text or Notepad++.

Step 4. Generate your OpenAI key.

When you’re done with the setup, log into your OpenAI account (or create a new one).

This is the same account you’re using to access ChatGPT.

You’ll get three options for logging in. Choose the API option to get started.

Once you’re in, navigate to the top-right corner of your screen and click on Personal to open a drop-down menu with these options.

Here, you have to click on View API keys.

Click on Create a new secret key to generate a new API key and give it a name.

Then, you’ll get a key. Copy and paste it into a code editor.

Step 5. Prepare your custom data.

Now, you have to create a folder named ‘docs’ on your system.

Add all documents you want to use for training ChatGPT. These documents have to be in the TXT, PDF, CSV, or SQL formats.

Note: The more files you add for ChatGPT to feed, the more tokens will be used.

Step 6. Create the script.

Now we have everything in place.

In this step, we’ll create a Python script to train ChatGPT with your custom data.

This script will use the files inside the ‘docs’ folder we created in the previous step and generate a .json file.

Open your code editor and paste the following code into a file.

from gpt_index import SimpleDirectoryReader, GPTListIndex, GPTSimpleVectorIndex, LLMPredictor, PromptHelper from langchain import OpenAI import gradio as gr import sys import os os.environ[“OPENAI_API_KEY”] = ‘ ’ def construct_index(directory_path): max_input_size = 4096 num_outputs = 512 max_chunk_overlap = 20 chunk_size_limit = 600 prompt_helper = PromptHelper(max_input_size, num_outputs, max_chunk_overlap, chunk_size_limit=chunk_size_limit) llm_predictor = LLMPredictor(llm=OpenAI(temperature=0.7, model_name=“text-davinci-003”, max_tokens=num_outputs)) documents = SimpleDirectoryReader(directory_path).load_data() index = GPTSimpleVectorIndex(documents, llm_predictor=llm_predictor, prompt_helper=prompt_helper) index.save_to_disk(‘index.json’) return index def chatbot(input_text): index = GPTSimpleVectorIndex.load_from_disk(‘index.json’) response = index.query(input_text, response_mode=“compact”) return response.response iface = gr.Interface(fn=chatbot, inputs=gr.inputs.Textbox(lines=7, label=“Enter your text”), outputs=“text”, title=“My AI Chatbot”) index = construct_index(“docs”) iface.launch(share=True)

Make sure you replace the part that mentions OPENAI_API_KEY with the key you copied earlier (in Step IV).

Save this file in the same directory where the ‘docs’ directory is located. Name it ‘app.py’

Step 7. Run the script.

You’re all set to run the code in Terminal.

Head over to the directory where app.py and docs are located using the terminal.

Once you’re in the directory, run the following command:

python3 app.py

As soon as you do, it’ll start training your custom chatbot based on the data in the ‘docs’ folder. The time it’ll take will depend on the amount of data.

Once trained, it’ll generate a URL which you can head over to and access the chatbot. You can open this URL in your browser.

And we’re done. Your custom ChatGPT chatbot is ready for interaction!

Turn ChatGPT Into Your Marketing Sidekick

Now you know just how powerful ChatGPT can be for your marketing needs. You can train the AI tool to match your exact needs or create a customized version based on your data.

Remember that training ChatGPT isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it task. You have to constantly share more insights and guide the tool to create ideas and content aligned with your brand personality.

Get started today!

Here’s a little exercise for you: check the timestamps on the emails you’ve received in the past day. I noticed that most of my emails, especially my subscription emails, were sent between 9 AM – 12 PM or 12-3PM.

This isn’t a coincidence, either.

While the answer to “What’s the best time to send an email?” isn’t an exact science, there are some key findings we’ve discovered through heavy research, and the times listed above are right in line with what we found. Keep reading to find out the best time to send an email, according to marketing and advertising professionals.

Table of Contents

• When is the best time to send an email?
• Best Day To Send an Email
• Best Time To Send B2B Emails
• Best Time to Send B2C Emails
• Why Email Matters For Your Business
• How to Measure the Performance of Your Email Sends

The data reflects when most audiences begin their day and throughout the afternoon.

This data also aligns with my own experience. I usually check my email (personal and work) right as I start my day to catch up on anything I missed in the late afternoon and evening and see if there’s anything pressing I’ve received that will affect my upcoming work day or day in general.

If you’re sending emails that include a sale or promotion, I’d recommend sending them when you know your audience trends to take their lunch breaks because they may be more likely to check their emails at this time.

Best Days To Send an Email

If you want something more specific when it comes to what time and day you should send an email, here’s what you need to know:

Our survey asked marketers which day of the week their marketing emails get the most engagement. 27% of U.S. marketers said Tuesday, 19% said Monday, and 17% said Thursday. I’d caution against sending emails over the weekend, especially on Sundays.

If I cut that data by best days and best times, here’s what marketers say:

• The best time to send emails on Tuesday is 9 AM – 12 PM EST, then 12:01 PM – 3 PM EST. I’d stay away from sending your emails anytime after 6 PM EST.
• On Mondays, aim to send your emails between 6 AM and 9 AM EST, then 9 AM – 12 PM EST. You’ll get the least engagement between 6 PM and 9 PM EST

As marketers, we know the importance of using data to inform our decisions.

So, keeping your audience in mind when figuring out when to send your emails (instead of solely relying on the results above) is important. I’d recommend analyzing your historical engagement data to see when your emails generate the most interaction. Then, you can compare your unique insights with what other marketers say and decide the best days and times to appear in your subscribers’ inboxes.

Pro Tip: The last thing you want is to panic at 8:56 AM because you need to send your email at 9 AM, but it’s not ready. I’m not saying that scenario ever happened to me…but I do know that keeping track of when to send your emails is challenging, especially if you’re balancing other tasks.

HubSpot’s Marketing Automation Software was a helpful sidekick when I sent out Service Blog Email Newsletters. I created emails in advance and set up a workflow that would automatically send them at the exact right time, every single time.

Get Started with HubSpot’s Marketing Automation Software

To ensure you’re reaching your target audience, you’ll want to segment your B2B audience down even further — perhaps by job function or seniority — to accommodate different behaviors and modes of working with your email sends. You may even find that other times work better for your list.

Continue experimenting and seeing what works best with your audience. One way to do this is by using an automation tool like Seventh Sense which will fine-tune your email sends using artificial intelligence.

Why Email Matters For Your Business

Our survey found that 85.4% of marketers leverage automation as part of their email marketing strategy. If you aren’t leveraging automated email marketing, your competition probably is.

Automated email marketing allows you to improve sales conversions — maybe even by 14%. It’s a way to send customers unique offers — such as product sales or newsletter updates — with information your reader can’t get anywhere else.

Emails should contain content your customers want to see, allowing you to communicate with them instantly. Your emails should contain information your customers are interested in learning more about — such as discount offers, business updates, or product or service launches.

Pro tip: Having your emails pre-written and ready lets you take full advantage of automation. AI tools like HubSpot’sCampaign Assistantandemail writercan help you quickly write first drafts that you can further personalize with recipients’ unique information.

If you’re looking for a free email tool for creating your emails, HubSpot’s marketing email tool combines the key features you need, and it’s the best solution I can recommend. You can easily design your emails with its drag-and-drop editor, leverage the power of AI to create content, and set your scheduling preferences to send your emails at the right time.

How to Measure the Performance of Your Email Sends

There are a lot of metrics you can use to measure the success of your email marketing campaigns, but the one that matters most depends on the goal of your campaign.

For example, if I’m sending an email to advertise a new product, I’d be more interested in metrics that showed whether recipients were interested or not, like:

• Open rate, which could let me know if my subject line captured attention,
• And clickthrough rate, which would tell me if my email made people interested enough to click through to my website to learn more about the product.

A metric like replies wouldn’t tell me what I need to know about my audience’s feelings about my product.

Here is a breakdown of the most important email metrics:

Click-Through Rate

Click-through rate refers to the number of people who open a link or image in an email. This number will always be smaller than the total number of emails opened since some people will open your email but abandon it without engaging further.

It’s the most commonly tracked metric among the marketers we surveyed, and the three strategies they note are most effective in improving clickthrough rates are personalization (48.2%), crafting effective subject lines (36.5%), and providing value through marketing emails (38.2%).

Open Rate

Open rate is the percentage found from the number of subscribers who opened your email campaign. Emails that have great open rates have short, effective subject lines. Plus, they’re optimized for previews and preheader text.

Click-to-Open Rate

Click-to-open rate helps you identify the content in your email that resonates the most with your recipients by comparing the number of people who opened your email to those who clicked any links. To get it, divide your CTR by your open rate and multiply the result by 100. For example, if your email receives 200 clicks and 120 opens, your click-to-open rate is 60%.

Over to You

Email marketing can be a tricky process . There are so many industries taking advantage of it in their own way and making an impact.

Your subscribers are already interested in your content. They appreciate what you are offering as a company, and as long as you’re sending them emails that relate to that, you have a good chance of obtaining great metrics.

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

As an Etsy shop owner, I like to think my products alone are enough for customers to click “buy.” Yet, it could be my two-day shipping guarantee. Or my product videos on TikTok. Or the sustainable packaging.

My point is this: offering a great product is essential, but it’s not enough to move inventory. You need to build a positive shopping experience around your product. A big part of this is embracing the latest ecommerce trends.

In 2024, there’s a whole lineup of new trends that could kickstart major growth for your ecommerce company — and we’ve chosen the top 14 trends we think will change how people buy and sell online.

Let’s dive in.

1. Short-Form Video

Short-form video has taken the social media world by storm, and platforms like TikTok have become legitimate vehicles to promote your businesses

I recently took a stab at using TikTok to promote my Etsy store, and was surprisingly happy with the results. While my business account has a modest 62 followers, I was able to generate over a hundred likes on my first video.

If you decide to veer into TikTok territory, here’s a word from the wise: don’t be overtly promotional. TikTok users are pretty good at sniffing out a promotional video from an organic one.

Instead, adapt your content for the platform. This means jumping on trending music, effects, and video concepts, like in the example below:

2. Direct Messages (DMs) for Customer Service

Most of my customers message me directly on Etsy. However, I’ve noticed an increasing number are reaching out via Instagram. This mirrors a larger trend in the ecommerce world.

19% of consumers have reached out to customer service via DMs in the past 3 months, up 45% from 2022.

What does this mean for ecommerce store owners? For one, you’ll need a more diverse customer service strategy, one that spans multiple platforms. Ignoring or delaying responses on channels like Instagram or Twitter could result in lost sales or declining customer satisfaction.

If you run a larger operation, consider investing in customer relationship management (CRM) software that can manage multi-channel interactions. On top of that, make sure your customer service teams are trained to handle messages professionally on social media.

3. Social Commerce

Would you ever buy a product on Instagram or TikTok? Nearly half (47%) of social media users would.

What’s more, 42% trust social media platforms with their credit card information.

Social media is no longer just a tool for promotion — it’s a marketplace where you can sell products directly to consumers. Take Instagram Shops, for example. You can open a storefront, add products, and run ads to boost awareness, directly from the Instagram app.

(Image Source)

Social media is ushering in a new era for digital commerce. Those that leverage social media as a direct sales channel can access an enormous— and still growing— customer base.

4. Sustainable Shopping

Now, more than ever, consumers want to back companies that align with their core values. Case in point: 46% of consumers are more likely to purchase from a company that actively donates to charity.

In my ecommerce store, all materials are ethically sourced, which is a point I  mention in each of my product listings. This is a great way to let potential customers know about the ethical considerations that are central to my business.

Corporate responsibility isn’t just lip service; it’s actually influencing consumers’ purchasing decisions — and I predict more ecommerce stores will start prioritizing sustainable sourcing, packaging, and manufacturing in 2024.

(Image Source)

5. Same-Day or Next-Day Delivery

Amazon has opened nearly 45 shipping sites in the last four years, and is expected to grow this to 150 in the next several years.

When you consider 40% of U.S. consumers expect their online delivery to take two to three days to arrive, this play makes sense.

But the need for (delivery) speed isn’t just for big retail giants.

Just last week, I received a notification from Etsy that sellers could update their processing time to include weekends. Meaning, if you fulfill orders on Sundays, your customers will see faster delivery times. I’ve personally discovered that the quicker my processing times on Etsy, the more customers want to buy.

Consumers don’t just want fast delivery times, they expect it. In some cases, they even fork over more money for same-day or next-day delivery. If you don’t give consumers these options, they may turn to competitors who do.

6. Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality

When I moved into my apartment last year, I was on the hunt for the perfect couch. Nothing too bulky, or ornate, or mismatched with my existing decor.

The problem? As I was perusing Ikea’s website, it was hard to envision what each couch would look like in my space from the product photos alone.

Fortunately, Ikea offers an AR app that lets you place 3D products in your home. The products are true-to-scale, so you can see whether it will fit and how it’ll look in your room.

Augmented reality and virtual reality will continue to keep the pace in 2024. Eventually, it will become standard for companies to offer AR and VR options.

Ultimately, these added benefits are worth the initial investment in new technology. As ecommerce grows, consumers are going to buy from companies that allow them the option of visually testing out products before purchase.

7. Livestream Shopping

Ever wanted to sell your wares on QCV or HSN? Now you can do something similar on social media.

In 2019, Amazon launched its livestream shopping platform, Amazon Live. Two years later, TikTok began testing a live shopping function in the United States. YouTube and Shopify closely followed suit, expanding their live shopping partnership.

All of these investments signal a more immersive and interactive future for e-commerce, one that goes beyond scrolling through static images and reading product descriptions.

(Image Source)

8. Automation and Chatbots for Online Ordering

With 1.3 billion people on Facebook Messenger, it makes sense to take advantage of chatbots for marketing, customer service, and sales.

With ecommerce, you can take it a step further.

Domino’s uses its Messenger bot, Dom, for full-menu ordering. The implications of this are huge: when fast and simple are priorities for consumers, Domino’s will beat out all the competition.

Plus, chatbot ordering is an opportunity for Domino’s to cater to its audience in a new way, proving itself to be a helpful and forward-thinking company.

If it makes sense for your business, I’d suggest creating a chatbot like Dom while it’s still an open field. In a few years, this could become a mainstream way of ordering, and lose some of its current novelty power.

9. Mobile First, Desktop Second

When shopping online, roughly 75% of consumers prefer using their mobile devices, compared to 15% that prefer desktop and 6% that prefer tablet.

As mobile purchasing continues to grow, it’s important to create an ecommerce site that’s optimized for mobile.

Fingerprint and facial recognition technology, as well as one-click payments, will simplify mobile payments and further encourage consumers to switch from desktop to mobile. Mobile will soon become the preferred payment method for ecommerce transactions.

Starbucks created a Mobile Order and Pay app in 2015. By 2021, 26% of all Starbucks orders were paid via mobile. Starbucks said their Mobile Order and Pay app is so popular, it creates congestion in stores and extra-long wait lines, which they’re attempting to solve by hiring more baristas.

If mobile ordering leads to a larger pool of in-store consumers, I’m thinking it’s a worthwhile investment.

10. Image Search

Picture this: you’re in a store and see a beautiful couch but don’t feel like paying full price, so you take a picture of it and use eBay’s image search to find similar products for a better deal.

As ecommerce transitions to mobile, companies will begin offering options to visually search for products by using personal photos, or photos found online.

Since image search offers opportunities to find similar products at a cheaper price online, it could eventually drive consumers to shop online even if they started in a physical store.

A few ecommerce businesses have already successfully implemented image search functions into their online platforms. Pinterest, for example, has its own image search function. On Pinterest, you can zoom in on an object in a Pin image and find similar objects.

11. Voice Search

As Amazon Echo, Google Home, and other voice-activated devices grow in popularity, voice search will become the preferred method of search. Around 40% of U.S. internet users use a voice assistant at least monthly.

It’s critical to optimize your business for voice search in 2024, or you could lose the vast majority of consumers who choose to shop through voice-activated devices.

Walmart made it possible for consumers to order any of their items by voice on the Google Express, and in the future, they’re going to allow consumers to place in-store pickup orders via Google Home. Target, Costco, Kohl’s, Staples, Walgreens and many other stores are in the process of creating similar options for consumers.

Since voice search is 3x more likely to be local, it’s also important to ensure your business listing is updated on Google to reach those local searchers (with accurate hours, an up-to-date address, photos and reviews, etc.).

12. Product Videos

Even when consumers are online, they’re still going to have the same questions about a product’s functionality and design that they’d have in-store. To compete in ecommerce, you’re going to have to answer all their questions digitally, and one of the easiest ways to do that is through video.

A high-quality video addressing your product’s design and function is one of the best ways to sell your product. Your video can appeal to your consumer’s emotions, persuading them more convincingly than text.

Redsbaby, an Australian baby stroller company, does a great job of this. Their videos of baby strollers display actors using Redsbaby strollers throughout a “typical day,” so consumers can feel confident that they understand what they’re purchasing, despite having never seen it in-store.

13. ROPO (“Research Online, Purchase Offline”)

It can be tricky to track how your digital efforts translate to offline sales.

Luckily, ROPO (“research online, purchase offline”) is a tool that will become more advanced and reliable in the upcoming year, and can help retailers accurately measure how well their digital ads are contributing to in-store sales.

ROPO combines information from social media, mobile tracking/geolocation, mobile payments, in-store inventory, analytics tools, CRM systems, and more, to figure out which ads and site pages led consumers to in-store purchases.

This is invaluable information. By knowing which digital ads are most efficiently contributing to sales, ecommerce businesses can create higher-conversion, more targeted campaigns, and feel confident that what they’re doing online is meaningful to their consumers.

14. Machine Learning and AI

You come across machine learning and AI every day. You just might not realize it.

Take Netflix: rather than dividing viewers by age, location, or gender, Netflix created 1,300 “taste communities.” Netflix makes recommendations on similar movie or TV show preferences based on what’s most popular for the viewers in that community. This is the future of machine learning.

Other ecommerce platforms will soon see personal benefits from using machine learning and algorithms to uncover which content they should deliver to which audience. In the future, content will be divided by machine learning and AI, so consumers are fed only the content (or products), they’re most interested in.

Back to You

Nowadays, stores can’t compete without offering excellent ecommerce options. It isn’t enough to post product images to your site and hope your ideal customers will find them. By embracing some of these trends, you can meet your customers where they are and offer them a positive shopping experience.

As a social media-obsessed content creator, I am familiar with TikTok. I often create TikTok videos to promote my work, express an idea or opinion, or share funny anecdotes.

As much as I enjoy TikTok, creating content consistently for the platform can feel overwhelming.

TikTok suggests posting content at least 1-4 times per day to boost views and followers. When you’re a marketer creating content for several other social media platforms and planning campaigns — posting 1-4 TikToks a day is a huge ask.

So, how can marketers and creators like myself streamline the process and create more videos? One answer is to use AI.

In the past, I’ve interviewed several content creators who say using AI cuts their workload down significantly and completes hours of tasks in just minutes.

With that in mind, I will create a TikTok video using AI and take you along for the journey. Let’s get started.

How I Made a TikTok Using Only AI

Let’s make a short TikTok video about healthy food facts.

It‘s possible to use AI tools such as ChatGPT or HubSpot’s Content Assistant to generate ideas for you, but sometimes inspiration strikes (or I‘m hungry) — so we’ll roll with it and make a TikTok about healthy food facts.

Using AI to Find Keywords

First, I want to know what trending keywords are associated with healthy food facts, so I’ll go to VidIQ and use its AI keyword generator to see what it comes up with.

VidIQ is an AI platform specifically designed to create YouTube videos and scripts.

Still, it has a free AI keyword generator that helps find keywords to optimize your videos and attract viewers regardless if you’re creating videos for YouTube or another platform like TikTok.

I typed “healthy food facts” into VidIQ’s generator and found related keywords such as:

• Nutrition tips
• Superfood benefits
• Facts about organic food

Now I know what keywords to use to optimize my video, so it’s time to write the script.

Using ChatGPT to Generate a Video Script

Let‘s try ChatGPT. After experimenting with it for other content, I’m familiar with the platform, but this is my first time using it to generate a script.

Here‘s the prompt I’m using to create the script using ChatGPT:

Generate a 30-second script for a TikTok video giving fun facts about healthy food. Include keywords “nutrition tips,” “facts about organic food,” and “superfood benefits.”

Here’s what ChatGPT generated:

Host (standing in a vibrant kitchen, holding a bowl of colorful salad): Hey there, TikTok fam! Want some quick nutrition tips, facts about organic food, and superfood benefits? Well, here we go in 3, 2, 1!

[Text on the screen: “🌱 Healthy Food Fun Facts 🌱”]

Host: (Energetic) Nutrition tips are essential! Did you know that a balanced diet can boost your energy levels and improve your mood? Eating healthy is a mood lifter!

[Text on the screen: “Organic Goodness”]

Host: (Excited) Facts about organic food! Organic veggies and fruits contain fewer pesticides and more antioxidants. Better for you and the planet!

[Text on the screen: “Superfood Magic”]

Host: (Enthusiastic) Superfood benefits are fantastic! Foods like kale, berries, and quinoa are packed with vitamins and antioxidants, keeping your body strong and healthy!

[OUTRO]

Host: (Holding the salad bowl high) There you have it, some quick bites of nutrition tips, facts about organic food, and superfood benefits. Share this with your foodie friends, and let’s nourish our bodies together! 🥗🌟

[Upbeat Music Fades Out]

Pro-Tip: ChatGPT doesn‘t always pull the most up-to-date information for its copy, so it’s crucial to double-check its facts and statistics. You don’t want your content to be outdated or spread misinformation.

Fortunately, I researched the information in the script and updated it for accuracy.

The keywords are seamlessly incorporated into the script, and ChatGPT captures the upbeat, casual tone that suits TikTok.

Furthermore, I love how ChatGPT includes suggestions for the text appearing on the screen and specifies how the host should speak.

Generating a TikTok Video Using AI

Finally, it’s time to create the video. After researching different AI video tools, I found InVideo. This platform uses AI to generate videos for other channels, including social media.

Its AI Text to Video feature allows users to input their script and convert it to video in minutes.

The feature also includes a template labeled “Trendy Healthy Food Trends List Slideshow,” which perfectly matches my video‘s topic. So, let’s give it a try.

After choosing the healthy food template, I’m taken to InVideo’s virtual studio. That is not its official name, but that‘s what I’m calling it.

The studio allows AI to craft a script for you, but I already have one, thanks to ChatGPT. So, I’ll just enter the ChatGPT-generated script, remove the notes for the host, and click Create Scenes.

In seconds, InVideo generated a video using the script I entered and the selected template. Various tools are available for me to tweak the video to my liking, including the option to record a voiceover, add a logo, and select music.

I’m not in a quiet enough space to record a voiceover, but I’m curious enough to click on the voiceover option just to see what it entails.

As you can see in the screenshot below, the voiceover tab allows you to add a voice via automated text-to-speech, uploading a file, or recording your voice within the platform.

While I’m not doing a voiceover in this example, I want to adjust the music — so let’s look at our music options. InVideo categorizes its music by moods, such as playful, happy, inspirational, angry, or dark.

I want something upbeat, so I choose the Happy section music.

After adding music and adjusting the script to suit the video’s format better, I exported the video by clicking Download.

Disclaimer: InVideo is not a free service, and you must subscribe to one of its plans to download your content. Fortunately, I was able to use a friend’s subscription.

However, you can use many other AI video creation tools and platforms, and many offer free trials and plans.

With my video downloaded to my laptop, it‘s time to consider a caption and hashtags, so let’s revisit ChatGPT.

I told ChatGPT to generate a fun caption for a TikTok video about healthy food facts, and here’s what it came up with:

“🌱 Spice Up Your Life with Healthy Food Facts! 🥗💪 #FoodieFacts #EatBetterFeelBetter”

The caption is short and to the point. Even better, ChatGPT suggested hashtags with a lot of traction. For example, #EatBetterFeelBetter has more than 12 million views, according to the platform.

Works for me! After copying and pasting the text into the video’s caption, I clicked Upload. Now, you can watch my AI-generated TikTok below.

Not too bad for a robot, right? Obviously, the video is short and has a straightforward premise, but now you know tools are available to help you create TikTok videos in minutes.

Final Thoughts

Altogether, creating that one video took about 10 minutes. It would have taken less time if I had been more familiar with tools like InVideo.

While I don’t see myself using AI for every aspect of the creative process, I would do something like this again if I create short, bite-sized videos such as trivia videos, announcements, or product/service showcases.

It certainly makes creating 1-4 videos a day less daunting and more feasible as a marketer.

Welcome to Breaking the Blueprint — a blog series that dives into the unique business challenges and opportunities of underrepresented business owners and entrepreneurs. Learn how they’ve grown or scaled their businesses, explored entrepreneurial ventures within their companies, or created side hustles, and how their stories can inspire and inform your own success.

A single word can make or break a relationship, especially in its early stages. This includes relationships with sales prospects, clients, and co-workers.

Most of us were raised to think that language and action are two separate things. That words don’t really matter. That an issue involving language is “just semantics.”

 

But in more than two decades of researching how language actually works, I’ve learned that language is social action. In fact, every single thing you say or write can cause a relationship to improve or deteriorate.

By paying attention to our language and making sure we’re using the more inclusive version, we can avoid painful mistakes. Here are three ways you can make sure that your language makes people feel recognized, taken into consideration, and valued.

How To Be Mindful of Language in the Workplace

1. Pay attention to names.

A common type of problematic language is being careless or disrespectful of names. This is especially hard on people with low-frequency names. But with some effort, you can make people with “foreign” or “difficult” names feel respected and welcomed.

• Spell names correctly. Look at email signatures or other official sources and make sure you’ve got someone’s name right. If their name includes an accent, like in Renée, then use that accent.
• Say names correctly. When you meet someone with a low-frequency name, repeat it back to them to check that you’ve got it right. Don’t say something like, “I’m afraid I’m going to butcher this name.” Instead say something like, “Can you help me make sure I’m pronouncing your name right?”
• Create and use forms that accept a range of names. This includes very short family names, like Ng, and very long family names, like Barchas-Lichtenstein. It also includes names with a blank space in them, like Yi Shun. When people can’t register with your website using their name, and when they receive emails from you with their name wrong (like, “Hey, Yi!” instead of “Hey, Yi Shun!”) they will not think well of your company. And they may take to social media to complain about the disrespect.

2. Avoid assumptions about gender identity.

A common mistake that deeply harms relationships is misgendering someone. Here is how to avoid using language that doesn’t match a person’s gender identity or sexual orientation — which may not be obvious from how they look.

• Don’t assume you know someone’s gender. For example, instead of saying something like “a man like you” or “a woman like you,” switch to “a person like you.” Until you know for sure how someone identifies, it is best to keep it neutral.
• Don’t assume you know the gender of someone’s romantic interest. Instead of asking about someone’s boyfriend or wife, wait for them to tell you that person’s gender. Not everyone is straight! And not everyone fits in the gender binary.
• Use the correct pronouns to refer to someone. It can be difficult to get used to saying they or them to refer to a single known person. But with practice, it gets easier and easier. Referring to someone using incorrect pronouns can have powerfully negative effects.
• Use the correct honorifics to address someone. Have a standard way to determine if someone uses Ms., Mrs., Miss, Mr., Mx., Prof., Dr., or some other honorific title before their name. Then, use that honorific with them. Especially when we’re trying to show respect, it’s good to be respectful of the way someone prefers to be addressed.

3. Avoid male-specific and gender-binary language.

For most of us who were raised speaking English, our cultural programming taught us that male words could be used universally, to represent everyone. And that everyone fits in the gender binary. But neither of these things are true!

• Move to gender-neutral language. Male-specific words lead to male-specific models that distort reality and cause us to make faulty judgments. Move from mankind to humankind, from middleman to intermediary, and from manmade to synthetic. Words like these are more inclusive and will be better received by people who aren’t male and dislike being excluded.

• Move beyond the gender binary. Not everyone fits into the gender binary. So instead of Ladies and gentlemen, you can address a group more neutrally, like Esteemed guests. And instead of your husband or wife you can refer to your spouse or partner.

By paying attention to names, using language that doesn’t make assumptions about gender identity, and moving beyond male-specific and gender-binary words, you can improve and enhance your professional relationships.

If you fell off the bandwagon of sticking to your New Year’s Resolution to become a content creator, you’re not too late.

Fall is the best time of year to get started, so I want to walk you through my step-by-step process for planning out the next four months of content. This process is the same one I’ve used to grow my brand, Modern Millie — it’s helped me achieve over 350K subscribers on my YouTube channel, and over 140K followers on Instagram.

Whether you‘re a content creator or enterprise marketer, I have no doubt you’ll find something in this process that will work for you. Let’s jump in.

Why is the fall the best time of year to start creating?

There are two major reasons the fall (primarily September through November) is one of the best times of the year to create content:

1. During the summer, the sun is out longer, people go on vacation, and kids aren’t in school so you’ll often see a dip in engagement on social media since people are outdoors more.
   Going into the fall season, it starts to get darker sooner, people fall back into their routines, and they get back into consuming social media.
2. You’re able to use the holidays to your advantage.

Here’s Stephanie, as an example.

Last year, Stephanie was getting ready to give up on being a content creator, but instead through my coaching, she worked on this four-month content strategy. From September through December, this is what happened:

• She posted 61 Reels (one video every other day)
• 16 of them got over 100,000 views
• 7 of them hit over 1,000,000 views
• Her most watched video received 36,000,000 views and landed her on Good Morning America
• She grew from 8K to 75K followers

Now that you can see the power of increasing your content creation efforts in the fall, let’s jump into my process.

Step One: Pick Your Platform

While the example I used talked about Instagram, this strategy can work for any of the three social platforms: Instagram, YouTube and TikTok.

Pick one to start with at the beginning of your growth journey. This way you can put 100% energy into mastering the platform, as opposed to 33% energy into Instagram, 33% into YouTube, and 33% into TikTok (that would get you slower results).

Step Two: Pick Your Posting Frequency

This is going to be a schedule that you know you can realistically keep up with for the next three to four months. It has to be realistic for you, and something you can adapt into your current lifestyle. These are common frequencies that we see online:

➡️ YouTube: Once a week
➡️ Instagram: 3-5x per week
➡️ TikTok: Daily

Once you know how often you want to post, plug that into a calendar to see how many videos total you will be creating each month (see image for example). This is a number we will come back to in step 4.

Step Three: Get Clear On What Your Content Should Be

If your goal is growth or rapid growth online, it’s important to be intentional with every piece of content you create. Most businesses or creators will skip this step but it’s so critical to get clear on your vision, so that your content can be clear, as well.

To start, answer these three questions:

• What industry are you in?
• What section of that industry are you going to focus on?
• Who do you want to reach/who is your target audience?

Example:

What Industry are you in? Travel
What section of that industry are you going to focus on? San Diego Travel
Who do you want to reach/who is your target audience? San Diego Travel for Tourists

Knowing the answer to these questions will help you with our next step …

Step Four: Content Research

Before you even press record, you’ll want to do some research in your industry to see what people are currently looking for. The places I recommend to my students to do this research are these search engines:

• YouTube
• AnswerThePublic.com
• TikTok

What you’re going to do is type your industry or industry type into the search bar to see what results are suggested below.

Following our example from step three, as you can see in this screenshot from YouTube, people are searching for “San Diego Things To Do”, so I’m going to write that down as a video idea.

Same thing on TikTok. When I type in San Diego, some video ideas I can write down are “San Diego things to do”, “San Diego hidden gems”, and “San Diego food spots”:

You can repeat these steps by typing other words that have to do with your industry. For example, since my goal is to create “San Diego Travel for Tourists‘’ content, maybe I’ll type “tourists” into the search engine to see what’s recommended.

Once you have a list of video ideas, you’re ready for step five.

Step Five: Plug Into Your Calendar and Start Creating

In step two, you calculated how many videos you would need to create in a month.

For our example, it was 14 videos/month.

I like to mix up my content so that there is room for spontaneity.

70% of my videos will be “search-based” video ideas (ie. the list of video ideas we created utilizing search engines).

But for the other 30%, I will leave room to adapt to trends or even make videos just for fun!

So if you post 14 videos/month maybe your breakdown will look like this:

• 10 search-based videos (these are easy to batch film ahead of time so you can plan content in advance).
• Four spontaneous videos (this leaves room for creative freedom and spontaneity).

And that’s all there is to it. Now, it’s time to start your content research and begin your four-month content plan. And remember: You’ll want to iterate as you go. Once you begin identifying which types of content perform well (and which don’t), you’ll get better at choosing the specific topics best-suited for your brand over time. 

In the infinite digital cosmos, there exists a darkness where messages go to be lost forever.

The B2B Black Hole.

Like the very vacuum of space itself, this phenomenon absorbs every misplaced campaign, every forgotten ad, and every jettisoned content piece—threatening to push even the best marketing programs into the engagement-less void. 

What is the B2B Black Hole? 

In the B2B universe, the Black Hole is characterized by two things:

A lack of insight and a lack of action.

Lack of Action

• Like a spaceship without its navigational computer, B2B marketers like to operate on gut feel rather than tangible buyer behaviors and measurable, first-party engagement data. Because of this, they’re flying blind, left to flail around in the dark hoping to luck into success.
  

Lack of Action

• Similar to Apollo 13 losing its thrusters, marketers operating without insight find themselves in liminal space without any ability to propel themselves forward, lacking the insights to truly understand what’s working, what’s not, and how to drive greater results. Therefore, even when they’re doing “stuff”, they’re not actually doing anything

Why Do Marketers End Up in the B2B Black Hole? 

Fear makes us do a lot of things that are contrary to character.  

The actions of B2B professionals across the universe, misguided by fragmented visions, half-truths, and fear, have led them straight into the Black Hole…

But without understanding why you’ve not been heard, marketers remain adrift, trapped in the Black Hole’s gravitational pull. 

Like astronauts untethered from their spacecraft, they float, directionless.

In the B2B space, once you’re in the Black Hole, the silence is deafening.   

Your calls, clicks, and campaigns—they all fade into oblivion.

The Black Hole is one of the most frightening places that each of us has ever encountered. 

With the specter of Halloween upon us, we wanted to explore some of marketing’s darkest fears.

But be warned…they’re quite scary.  

5 of Marketing’s Greatest Fears 

Inside the Black Hole, no one can hear you.

That’s a fear in and of itself.

NetLine’s own research has found that B2B organizations only have transparency into 2% of their buyer’s journey.

This means that 98% of those prospects who would be interested have not seen your content. 

You don’t know who these people are. And they most certainly don’t know you. 

How can you expect to engage your buyers when you don’t even know who your buyers are? 

Let’s further explore this fear and four others. 

Fear #1: I Can’t Engage My Buyers! 

Your buyers are out there…but you can’t see or reach all of them.  

The Proof 

As we shared earlier, 98% of the buyer’s journey happens beyond your own content. This isn’t something you can control, but it certainly is something you can (and should) embrace. 

First-party data is the core of what we use to understand buyer engagements.  

But beyond leveraging first-party data from a platform like NetLine, how can sales and marketing teams action engagement data to create meaningful, personalized experiences for their buyers?

How to Escape

Actions speak louder than ICPs. And while you may have a profile of who your buyers are, being able to engage them is another challenge entirely.  

That’s where intent data comes into play—more specifically, buyer-level intent data.  

While account-level insights can provide some guidance to help your teams build lists and develop campaigns, they fail to get to the heart of what individual buyers within those accounts actually care about. 

Someone from marketing has different priorities than someone from sales, who has different priorities than someone from finance, operations, and so on. 

And so, to truly engage your buyers and make meaningful progress within an account, you also need to have the first-party buyer-level insights to deliver the right content, with the right message, at the right time. 

Fear #2: I Can’t Figure Out the Buyer’s Journey!

The buyer’s journey has become more fragmented and more complex than ever before.

The Proof 

Today’s purchase decisions have at least 6-10 decision-makers involved. 

Before we even get to that point, though, it’s taking between 25-27 touches per contact within an account just to book a meeting.  

It can certainly get to be quite tricky navigating such a complex buying journey, especially when each is unique and requires specific answers to one-of-a-kind questions.

How to Escape 

While there’s no silver bullet to “solve” the buyer’s journey, just like Shaggy and the gang, good things happen when we work together.  

We’re not always going to have the perfect answer, but by aligning sales and marketing through data to select, prioritize, and action, your organization will have a much greater picture of how to navigate the evolving needs of the buyer

Take it from Calen Holbrooks, VP Integrated Marketing, ZoomInfo; she knows a thing or two about getting collaboration across departments. 

“The ghost in your revenue machine? Misalignment between sales and marketing. Siloed teams face multiple problems, like inaccurate lead scoring and missed opportunities on target accounts. Strong intent signals that identify quality targets and generative AI that personalizes outreach will change the way you reach and convert customers.” –Calen Holbrooks

Fear #3: I’m Afraid I Won’t Be There When My Buyers Are Ready!

When your buyers are ready, it’s essential that your organization is there to answer the call. 

The Proof 

Research from McKinsey reveals that the best omnichannel experiences are yielding annual returns of at least 10% annually

Add in the fact that 70% of the buying process is done before your buyer ever engages with sales, you better be darn sure you’re ready whenever your buyers are. 

How to Escape 

While you may not be able to truly be “Everything, Everywhere, All At Once,” embracing an omnichannel approach can at least get you close.

For starters, diversifying your marketing mix to incorporate owned, earned, and paid channels can help ensure you have the right coverage for your marketing efforts. And pairing that with a well-coordinated sales enablement plan can ensure your sales teams are continuing the buyer’s journey vs. forcing your buyers start from level zero each and every time they raise their hand.

Lastly, an account-based approach can help ensure that you’re making the most of your time in front of your buyers. Here’s what Jill Brock, Sr. Director, Revenue Marketing, RollWorks has to say about that

“Marketing and sales alignment is a core tenant of any ABM strategy and is crucial for targeting high-value accounts effectively, maximizing revenue opportunities.  Streamlined operations lead to shorter sales cycles, improved lead quality, and better adaptation to changing trends, all contributing to measurable ROI and business scalability.’ – Jill Brock

Fear #4: We Don’t Know How to Action a Personalized Approach! 

We don’t have the tools/data to know or action a personalized approach. 

The Proof 

Personalization always feels tricky (and icky if it feels creepy).

While we as consumers crave and covet privacy, 71% of buyers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions.

To make it even more interesting, the same study found that 76% of buyers get frustrated when this doesn’t happen.

So… what do users want: Privacy or personalization

The answer is both, of course.

How to Escape 

To create personalized experiences, you must lean on first-party intent and engagement data to truly understand your current customers’ needs. This should also allow you to better anticipate what your buyers are looking for too, giving you the insights to craft more meaningful engagement strategies, compose stronger messaging, and create more relevant content and experiences.  

But while buyer-level intent and engagement data gives teams a valuable glimpse into a buyer’s journey, how you action that data is arguably even more important. Our friend Tessa Barron, ON24’s VP Marketing agrees. 

“The key to actually using engagement data is to have a plan for sales and marketing action and a workflow in place to operationalize that follow-up well before it’s even collected.   

For example, if you set a standard attendee survey question across experiences, for any prospect or customer that answers, it can trigger a sales alert, provide a templatized email to further personalize, and add that contact to a pre-defined marketing nurture segment.  

Essentially, the key to personalizing experiences is to know which actions you want to happen after and work back from there. “- Tessa Barron 

 Fear #5: My Buyers Are Hungry, and I Can’t Keep Up! 

Your buyers are hungrier than ever for quality content. 

In fact, they’re insatiable.

The Proof 

As we highlighted in our 2023 Consumption Report, buyer demand for quality B2B content has increased 18.8% in 2022 and 55% since 2019.

By the end of 2023, we expect total demand to have risen by an additional 14%.

How to Escape 

Content consumption is up, and we expect it to continue to rise in perpetuity. To keep up, your content cannot rely on “Us! Us! Us!”  

Instead, it must add value, offering insights, best practices, and tips to solve the specific challenges of your buyers.  

To do this, it’s essential that you leverage first-party engagement and intent data to truly get to the heart of what your buyers are researching and consuming. This will enable you to better understand the needs of your audiences while also allowing you to scale the impact of your content and your overall marketing effectiveness. 

Escape the Marketing Black Hole 

Just as every space odyssey has its heroes and every cosmic peril its escape routes, our horror tale of the B2B Black Hole is no different. 

In the cinematic drama of marketing, even when ensnared by the Black Hole’s relentless gravity, there’s always a flicker of hope—a wormhole leading out. 

Your voyage through the vast expanse of B2B marketing need not end in darkness.  

With a purposeful plan for collecting, analyzing, actioning, and cycling through your data, you can break free from the gravitational pull of common fears and forge a path lit by stars.

Everyone wants a personalized and custom experience online, so it’s no wonder that social commerce has taken over the online shopping world.

Channels like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, and WhatsApp already have thousands of businesses marketing on their platforms, and many have adopted shopping and payment functions that allow people to buy a product or service directly on the platforms.

Whether you’re looking for information to boost your social media shop or shape your online strategy, read on to discover social commerce stats that will help you understand the current market and learn best practices for attracting buyers and growing your business.

Social Commerce Stats for 2023

• General Social Commerce Stats
• Social Commerce Stats by Demographic
• Social Commerce Purchasing Stats
• Social Commerce Stats by Platform
• Social Commerce Stats for Business

General Social Commerce Stats

1. 27% of consumers prefer to discover new products through social media over any other channel. (HubSpot)

2. 41% of consumers have discovered a product on social media in the past three months, up 14% YoY. (HubSpot)
3. 67% of consumers have already bought through social media platforms. (Wunderman Thompson, 2023)
4. 53% of global consumers say they intend to shop more through social platforms in the future. (Wunderman Thompson, 2023)
5. Global sales through social media platforms were estimated at 992 billion U.S. dollars in 2022. (Statista, 2022)
6. Insider Intelligence predicts social commerce will be a $79 billion industry in the US by 2025. (Insider Intelligence, 2022)
7. Chinese consumers spent $352 Billion on all social commerce in 2021. (McKinsey, 2022)
8. Social commerce attracted investment from US companies at the start of the pandemic, in addition to online and mobile commerce. (Statista, 2021)
9. 47% of social media marketers say their brand sells directly within social media apps. (HubSpot, 2023)
10. Trust is a big factor for social shopping among social media users, as 54% are concerned that they companies selling on social media aren’t legitimate. (HubSpot, 2023)
11. Just 41% of social media users feel comfortable making purchases on social media platforms and only 37% trust social media platforms with their card information. (HubSpot)
12. 30% of eCommerce companies are already selling on social media, and 12% plan on selling through social media platforms in 2021. (Statista, 2021)

Social Commerce Stats by Demographic

1. Over 1 in 5 Gen Z, Millennial, and Gen X social media users bought a product directly in a social media app in the past 3 months. (HubSpot, 2023)
2. Consumers ages 18-54 prefer to discover new products on social media. (HubSpot, 2023)

3. TikTok is the most trusted platform for social shopping for Gen Z, but is the least trusted platform overall for all generations. (HubSpot, 2023)

4. eMarketer estimates there will be 107M social buyers in the US by the end of 2023. (Statista, 2023)

5. 85% of men who use Pinterest say that the platform feels personalized to them.(Pinterest, 2022)

6. 80% of men on Pinterest agree that shopping here leads them to something unexpected that surprises and delights them (Pinterest, 2022)

7. Thailand has the highest shares of social commerce buyers worldwide, followed by India and the United Arab Emirates. (Statista, 2022)
8. In the US, nearly 36% of internet users are social buyers, which is approximately 90.2 million people. (Insider Intelligence, 2021)
9. 41% of Gen Z and Millennials make an impulse purchase online every 2-3 weeks. (GWI, 2023)
10. 73% of Boomers responding to a recent survey said they’ve made a purchase on Facebook in the past three months. (HubSpot, 2023)
11. 51% of consumers in the US and UK use YouTube to research or find products to buy. (GWI, 2020)

Social Commerce Purchasing Stats

1. $86.21 was the average value of online orders referred through social media during Q2 of 2022. (Statista, 2021)
2. Nearly 27% of tablet visits to eCommerce websites resulted from social media platform referrals in Q1 of 2023. (Statista, 2023)
3. Annual social spend will increase by $419 per buyer in the US over the next three years. (Insider Intelligence, 2023)
4. People who have already made a social commerce purchase are 2X more likely to buy from a brand they’ve never heard of before than those who haven’t. (Accenture, 2022)
5. Apparel and accessories are the largest categories for social commerce. (Insider Intelligence, 2021)
6. People that use social media to access educational and inspirational content, like livestreams and stories, are eager to buy on social platforms. (GWI, 2020)
7. 13% of social networkers say a “buy” button is one of the top purchase drivers. (GWI, 2020)

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Social Commerce Stats by Platform

Facebook Social Commerce Stats

1. Facebook is the most trusted social shopping platform overall. (HubSpot, 2023)
2. Consumers say Facebook has the best in-platform shopping experience, and it’s the platform most consumers have used for in-app purchases in the past three months. (HubSpot, 2023)
3. With 63.5 million buyers, Facebook ranks as the top social commerce platform in the US. (Statista, 2022)
4. Facebook and Instagram are most used to learn about, discover, and buy fashion apparel products in the US. Over half of users said the content they see in their feeds results in a purchase. (Retail Dive, 2021)
5. By Q1 of 2021, there were one million active Facebook Shops with over 250 million active participants every month. (AdWeek, 2021)

Instagram Social Commerce Stats

1. Instagram is the third most-trusted social shopping platform, but consumers say ithas the second-best in-app shopping experience. (HubSpot, 2023)
2. One retail brand using Instagram Shopping, Jane, reported 80% of total social sales came from the platform between July 2020 and February 2021. (Instagram, 2021)
3. Instagram has 41M social buyers in the US. (Statista, 2022)
4. Over 36% of B2B decision-makers use Instagram to find out information on new products or services. (Hootsuite, 2020)

YouTube Social Commerce Stats

1. YouTube is the second-most trusted social shopping platform and consumers say it has the third-best in-app shopping experience. (HubSpot, 2023)
2. 31% of survey respondents discovered a new product via YouTube ads in the last three months. (HubSpot, 2023)
3. In Q3 of 2021, YouTube made its ads more shoppable by allowing video action campaigns on connected TVs. (Google, 2021)
4. 51% of consumers in the US and UK use YouTube to research or find products to buy. (GWI, 2020)

TikTok Social Commerce Stats

1. 45% of consumers have made a purchase within the TikTok app in the past three months. (HubSpot, 2023)
2. Overall, TikTok is the least trusted platform for in-app purchases among consumers, but Gen Z actually prefers it. (HubSpot, 2023)

Pinterest Social Commerce Stats

1. 27% of consumers have made a purchase within the pinterest app in the past three months. (HubSpot, 2023)
2. Advertisers using mobile deep links on Pinterest see a 235% lift in conversion rates and 35% lower cost-per-acquisition. (Pinterest, 2023)
3. Pinterest weekly users are willing to pay more—40% more per month in fact, than people on other social platforms. (Pinterest, 2023)

Social Commerce Stats for Business

1. 47% of social media marketers say their brand already sells directly within social media apps. (HubSpot, 2023)
2. 87% of sellers say that social selling has been effective for their business this year, and 56% say they’re making more sales through the channel this year compared to last. (HubSpot, 2023)SOCIAL MEDIA SALES AMOUNT IMAGE
3. Over 36% of B2B decision-makers use Instagram to find out information on new products or services. (Hootsuite, 2020)
4. 93% of US executives said their businesses are moving eCommerce efforts to social media. (Statista, 2021)
5. In a 2021 survey, 86% of marketers and agency professionals in the US reported they were enabling shopping functions in their influencer marketing campaigns. The most common function is linking to the brand’s own website. (Statista, 2021)
6. Advertisers anticipate spending $68 billion to promote their products on social networks in 2023. (Statista, 2023)
7. The top benefits of social selling are precise audience targeting, a frictionless shopping experience, and the ability for brands to build and engage with their community (HubSpot, 2023)
8. Around 80% of social media marketers say consumers will buy products directly within social apps more often than on brands’ websites or third-party websites like Amazon. (HubSpot)
9. Over half of businesses selling on social media have under 100 employees, and about 20% make under $100K in revenue. (HubSpot, 2023)