Blog

Are you struggling to monetize a blog? Don’t fret. Whether running a personal blog or managing the official blog on your company’s website, monetizing your blog is achievable with the right know-how.

There’s no exact formula to start making money, but there are strategies you can start experimenting with to see what works best for your content, your business, and your audience. Below, we’ll dive into some of these ideas and get advice from HubSpot’s own blog leaders.

Don’t have a blog yet? No sweat. HubSpot’s free blog maker can get you started on your content journey with a custom blog in minutes.

Table of Contents

• How do blogs make money?
• How to Monetize a Blog

How do blogs make money?

Before we dive into the monetization strategies, you might wonder, “How will my blog make money?” Your blog can make money in several ways, including lead generation, affiliate marketing, brand partnerships, collaborations, or advertising.

Check out the video below for more blog monetization tips, examples, and a step-by-step guide.

Now that we know a few ways blogs can make money, let’s dive into the top monetization strategies for your blog.

1. Map blog posts to specific conversion points.

You can use your blog to drive leads and conversions as a company.

“Conversion is the foundation of blog monetization,” says AJ Beltis, senior marketing manager of content strategy and media conversion at HubSpot.

Beltis continues, “Whether it’s an e-commerce purchase, a demo request, or a content offer download, it’s imperative to have your blog posts point to an intentional, related next step in the buyer’s journey.”

So, you might be asking yourself, “How can I do that?”

Beltis’ advice is to ask yourself what somebody reading this specific blog post would want or need from your company. Then, you should create the required assets to make that conversion happen through website pages, forms, or content.

After that, you’ll naturally place your calls-to-action to that next step in the blog post so readers are reminded about your recommended next step.

“By placing these CTAs in appropriate blog sections, you’re more likely to capture readers’ attention with high intent. This process puts more readers on the path to becoming paying customers for your business,” Beltis adds.

2. Include information about your product or service in your blog posts — but do so sparingly and thoughtfully.

When you’re writing blog posts, it’s important that each post isn’t just a sales tactic. Your blog posts should provide value to everyone, not just your customers.

However, you should still mention your product or service.

“If you’re writing content about the best tools for X, and your product or service is a good solution to that user’s search query, I’d highly recommend including it in your total roundup of tools to increase exposure and, ideally, drive more leads and customers towards your product,” says Caroline Forsey, principal marketing manager on the blog team. 

“This is one of the most effective ways to monetize your blog for the long-term,” she says, “particularly since that same piece of content might provide your business with leads 3-5 years into the future.”

Again, this doesn’t mean you should always and only promote your product or service.

Forsey adds that you risk damaging your blog’s reputation if you do this too often or outside of the appropriate context.

“Readers don’t want to see a random ‘buy my product!’ CTA in a piece of content irrelevant to your product,” she says, “and, if they feel like your content is actually just a gimmick or hidden advertisement, they’ll distrust your brand as a whole.”

To avoid this, Forsey suggests only mentioning your product or service where it makes sense and in a list of other tools you’d recommend for businesses, so they feel you’re arming them with helpful information so they can make their own decision best suited for their needs.

“Trust me: if readers enjoy reading your content and feel your brand is genuinely helpful, they’ll give your product or service a second look,” she says.

3. Build a lead funnel for your product.

If you work at a B2B company or have a long sales cycle, reading a blog post is usually a customer’s first interaction with their purchase. It’s also the most crucial stage of the inbound funnel.

Attracting your audience’s attention with helpful educational content creates a larger pool of people to convert into leads and close customers. Your blog marks the start of a relationship with your customers.

Lestraundra Alfred, the managing editor of Marketing News, says, “If you’re looking to gain exposure from your blog, your content should help bridge the gap between the problem the reader is trying to solve, and your product, which can serve as a solution.

By creating content your ideal customer is searching for and interested in, you can build a solid community of readers who are a great fit for your product and, when nurtured, can turn into customers for your business.”

Ideally, you’ll want to craft compelling blog content that your audience can discover easily through a Google search or social media.

You can also pay to amplify your distribution on Facebook, which has the best targeting tools out of all the social media sites and is cost-effective, or through paid search, which can thrust you to the top of a high-volume Google SERP, although some keywords are expensive.

After people start reading your blog content more and want to read it consistently, they’ll sign up for your blog’s email subscription. Once strangers to your brand, they’re now regular visitors.

When these visitors read enough blog posts, you can entice them to download conversion offers, as Beltis mentioned. Then, you can then nurture qualified leads with more blog posts and lead generators through email or Facebook ads.

Consistently educating them and helping them solve their problems will build their trust, making it more likely they’ll move to the middle of your funnel when ready.

And once you see them researching your product or service by reading case studies, requesting a demo, or trying to contact sales, you can move them to the bottom of the funnel, where sales will qualify their fit as a customer.

Sales will close some of these leads into customers, and they’ll thank you when they do. Your blog introduced its customers to your brand.

4. Offer sponsored content opportunities to other brands.

Publishers like BuzzFeed and The Dodo produce content that floods social media daily. And they make money by helping other brands do it too.

Brands will collaborate with their video production, social media, and analytics teams to craft posts and videos that follow their formula for virality. Then, publishers distribute this sponsored content to their massive social media and website followings.

This content is similar to the publishers’ native content, so their audience will enjoy reading it, exposing their clients to a huge, engaged, new viewership and boosting their followings and audience engagement.

Suppose your blog generates a significant amount of traffic. In that case, you can leverage your editorial expertise and audience reach to help smaller brands tell captivating stories to a bigger and better viewership.

Doing sponsored content right can pay huge dividends for your brand. It creates another revenue stream, and partnering with other marketing minds can help your team unleash unprecedented creativity.

In fact, T Brand Studio, the New York Times native ad business, crafted paid posts that captured as much engagement as some of nytimes.com’s highest-performing articles.

5. Provide coaching services.

Image Source

Your blog posts can serve as a teaser for how much your readers can learn from you about a particular subject matter.

If you write about enhancing specific skills like selling, social savviness, sports, cooking, and music, your blog posts can only teach your readers so much. They need to practice these skills in real life to see substantial improvement.

But if your readers practice these skills independently, they’ll only get so much better. If they want to improve, training with a coach will guide them toward success faster than anything else.

Think about it. What would improve your basketball skills the most? Reading Michael Jordan’s book about shooting and practicing his tips by yourself? Or reading his book and then taking shooting lessons with him?

If you’re running a personal brand, as a coach, your blog is your most important marketing asset. It helps your potential clients improve themselves while giving them a glimpse into what life would be like if they achieved one of their life-long goals.

Your blog inspires readers to strive for their dreams. And when they’re more motivated to reach their potential, they’ll usually want an expert directing them toward greatness, not just themselves.

The above image shows coaching services offered by 1on1mixing, where people can learn to mix and master their songs.

6. Market your freelance writing skills.

If you’re a freelance blogger, you must show potential clients you can write compelling content. To do this, you could attract their attention with your previous work, but you usually don’t have control over those topics. So what if they don’t pique their interest?

The best way to show potential clients you can write compelling content is by engaging them with your content. When you start a blog, you have access to your post’s performance metrics and complete control over the topics you cover.

This allows you to write content you know your target audience will devour, attracting more and more potential clients to your blog.

And once they realize they rely on you for content marketing advice, they’ll know they can trust you to help them improve their content marketing.

For instance, Eddie Shleyner, a freelance copywriter and content marketer, markets his business, called VeryGoodCopy, by writing articles about copywriting, content marketing, and psychology.

His pieces are so engaging and insightful that organizations like The North Face, Geico, and Mercedes Benz hire him to write articles, eBooks, landing pages, website copy, and email campaigns.

7. Participate in affiliate marketing.

Image Source

Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to monetize a blog when you don’t sell a product or service. It’s a relatively simple process too.

First, you’ll partner with an e-commerce platform or businesses with affiliate programs and pick relevant products to promote on your blog.

Your partners will then send you custom links to their product pages that can track customers referred by your blog. And if someone clicks on the link and buys the product from one of your posts, you’ll earn a commission.

One of the most popular affiliate marketing programs is Amazon Associates. You can choose from over one million of Amazon’s e-commerce products to advertise on your blog and earn up to 10% commission.

Out of all the ways you can make money blogging, affiliate marketing requires the least time, money, and resources. You don’t have to build, market, or sell a product or service, and inserting affiliate links in your blog posts costs no money.

All you have to do is compel readers to buy something with your content writing skills.

8. Offer online courses.

Image Source

Similar to coaching, providing online courses is an excellent way to generate revenue while providing value to your readers. However, maybe you don’t have the bandwidth to provide one-on-one coaching services, or perhaps that’s just not your style.

Instead, channel your time and expertise into creating educational assets like videos and written content based on your blog and expertise.

Then, you can give readers a taste of what your course offers using your free content and entice them to purchase your course to learn more.

Been itching to learn how to grow mushrooms? Check out the online course example above from GroCyle.

9. Host webinars and live events.

Not everyone is ready to commit to a complete online course or coaching session, and that’s okay. However, you can still monetize your blog and provide educational value to your readers by hosting webinars and live events.

Webinars and live events may attract readers interested in your content and want to be involved in a community of like-minded individuals.

Webinars and live events are a great way to foster a sense of community among people in your field, all while keeping the action local to your brand and your assets.

Depending on your niche, consider hosting monthly or quarterly online events and charge admission for people to join in on the fun.

10. Create a membership or subscription program.

Image Source

A membership or subscription program is about offering a premium experience to readers of your blog.

A premium membership offering will be custom to your blog’s niche. However, the basic principles remain the same. You offer subscribers exclusive content, resources, and community access for a monthly fee.

You may be familiar with Patreon, where creators and personalities offer a membership experience to fans that gives them access to behind-the-scenes content and exclusive offerings.

You can undoubtedly use Patreon in conjunction with your blog. However, creating an in-house membership program means you don’t have to share the profits with anyone!

11. Sell advertising space.

Image Source

We’re partial to Inbound over here at HubSpot. However, selling advertising space is a classic outbound technique that you can use to monetize your blog.

Using tools like Google Adsense or other display network solutions, you can sell space on your website to be automatically populated with ads and get paid based on how often they are viewed/clicked.

If you’ve ever been on a website and saw an advertisement on the sidebar or banner, that’s a display ad. The more monthly website visitors your blog receives, the more money you’ll make with ads.

Of course, you’ll share some of that revenue with the display partner.

12. Start a podcast.

These days, everyone and their mother has a podcast. That’s because it’s easy to get started and simple to monetize.

If you have an existing blog, especially one with a decent amount of traction, you should consider starting a podcast to continue the conversation.

Of course, the viability of your podcast depends on your niche, but you can use your blog as a pipeline to turn readers into listeners.

In terms of monetization, the goal of a podcast is to sell ads. If you can drive a lot of traffic from your blog to your podcast and generate a listening base, advertisers will pay top dollar to have you discuss their products/services on air.

13. Write sponsored reviews or product roundups.

Image Source

Another way to monetize your blog is to write sponsored reviews and product roundups. This strategy works well if your niche is lifestyle or hobby-based and readers often research online before purchasing related items.

The example above is a product roundup blog post for the 15 Best Boxing Gloves of 2023, and it’s no mistake which products ended up on the list.

Product manufacturers will pay handsomely to have their offerings included in blog post reviews and product roundups because the extra eyes on their products translate to more sales (and more money in your pocket).

14. Utilize email marketing.

If you have a blog, then you more likely than not have an email list. If not, consider implementing custom sign-up forms on your site to gather that valuable info from your readers.

Email lists are crucial for alerting your readers of updates and new posts, but you can also leverage them for monetization.

For example, you can use your email list to support your affiliate marketing efforts and drive traffic back toward your blog to increase traffic and bolster any of the monetization strategies listed above.

You can use your email list as an advertising arm to promote products and services but remember to provide value to your readers above all else and never make them feel inundated with unhelpful promotional content.

15. Implement a paywall.

Image Source

We don’t recommend this strategy for most blogs, but you can monetize by charging people to read your content, period. The New York Times is a perfect example of this, with its classic paywall that pops up when you try to read an article without a membership.

If you expect people to pay up to read your content, they will expect exclusivity, impeccable content, and an exceptional reputation.

Most of the strategies in this article are based on offering free, valuable content to readers and offering monetization opportunities along the way.

However, suppose you have notable influence and prestige within your field. In that case, you may have the chance to charge people to read your posts because they know they can’t get the same quality content anywhere else.

Start Making Money with Your Blog

Choosing your monetization strategy will depend on the type of blog you’re running and the type of product or service you offer.

To up-level your blog, learn how to set yourself up for success and avoid the top blogging mistakes.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in March 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Determining your audience profile is a critical step in ensuring your campaign is successful.

An audience profile can help you personalize your campaign’s messaging to reach those most likely to convert, and limit the amount of spend you might’ve otherwise wasted on underperforming ads.

Here, we’ll explore the information you need to include in an audience profile, how to write an audience profile, and audience profile examples.

Table of Contents

What is an audience profile?

What information should I include in an audience profile?

How to Write an Audience Profile

Why is audience profiling important?

Audience Profile Examples

Media Audience Profiles

An audience profile is different than a target market, or buyer persona.

A target market includes every single prospective buyer for your product or service. For instance, perhaps you sell software that can be used for different use cases in different industries. In this case, a target market includes the prospects in each industry who could benefit from your product — all with different needs, goals, challenges, and beliefs.

An audience profile, on the other hand, is one fictitious person who you’re targeting with an upcoming campaign.

An audience profile also isn’t a buyer persona. A buyer persona is the final person who will ultimately purchase your product or service, but in many cases, you’ll want to market to anyone who can influence the final buyer.

For instance, your audience profile might be a social media manager, even though the buyer persona is a company’s CMO, since she’ll have final sign-off.

What information should I include in an audience profile?

When creating an audience profile, you’ll need to include the following:

• Demographic information: This includes personal attributes like geography, age, education, occupation, and income.
• Psychographic information: This includes attributes related to personality traits, interests, attitudes or beliefs, and lifestyle.
• Goals, challenges, or pain points: For this section, determine your audience’s goals, challenges, or pain points as it relates to your product or service. How can your product or service meet your audience’s needs? What search queries does your audience use to find your product or service? For instance, if you’re selling an 8-week mindfulness program, then your fictional character likely has a big challenge with focusing and finding time to ground himself in the present moment.
• Values: What does your target audience value? This includes bigger-picture values and motivators, such as “nature”, “socializing”, “a sense of belonging”, or “autonomy at work”.
• Preferred channels: What channel(s) does your audience spend the most time? This could be social channels, such as YouTube or Instagram, or search engines like Google. The preferred channel depends on the type of campaign you’re running. If you’re running a paid advertising campaign, for instance, you’ll want to determine if your audience spends most time on Facebook, Google, or somewhere else.
• Preferred content type(s): Once your audience finds your content, what format would they prefer it in? E-books, blog posts, or case studies? Or podcast? Video? Determining the format will help you best serve your audience.
• Buying behavior: Is your audience impulsive, or do they need weeks — if not months — before making a purchase? Are they open to your product or service anytime during the year, or only during a certain season? If you sell beach chairs, for instance, your target audience is likely relatively impulsive during the summer months, when a beach chair is most necessary.

Next, let’s dive into how you can write an audience profile.

How to Write an Audience Profile

1. Determine the goal(s) of your upcoming campaign.

Before writing your audience profile, you want to know who you’re targeting with your marketing campaign.

For instance, are you creating high-intent advertisements to target buyers with your products or services? Or, alternatively, are you hoping to increase attendees at an upcoming marketing event?

You’ll make a different audience profile depending on your goals. If you’re hoping to increase sales for your product via a social media advertising campaign, then your audience profile will look similar to your buyer persona.

If, instead, you’re hoping to increase views to your YouTube channel, then your audience profile will look like a fictional character based off your YouTube analytics to determine who enjoys watching your content.

2. Dive deep into analytics.

Once you’ve determined your campaign goal, use data and analytics to create a prototype of your persona.

Start with Google Analytics to explore demographic information related to your website visitors. Take note of age, gender, location, and types of device — additionally, figure out from which channels your audience arrives. Is it typically organic search, a social channel, email, or paid advertising?

You can also use CRM data to further explore what customers convert at the highest rate. For instance, you might use your CRM to determine which industries convert the most, or which pages have the highest conversion rate, to refine your audience profile depending on existing customers’ behavior.

Finally, use channel-specific metrics to fill in the missing pieces. If you’re planning on running a Google ads campaign, you might dive into past high-performing ads and who clicked on those ads.

Alternatively, if you’re running a Facebook campaign, you can use Facebook’s lookalike audience feature to reach people who are similar to your best existing customers.

3. Use qualitative metrics to determine your audience’s biggest challenges.

To fill out the challenges/goals/pain points section of your audience profile, it’s a good idea to take a look at customer reviews or focus group intel to determine the biggest challenges your prospects and customers face.

You can also use keyword research to find high-intent keywords related to your products or services, which might help you determine your audience’s biggest challenges, as well.

For instance, let’s say you’re creating a new advertising campaign related to a social media listening and scheduling tool.

You might first leverage Ahrefs or another keyword explorer tool to determine questions people ask related to a given search query. In this example, I searched “social media tools” to find similar questions related to the search keyword:

I also searched “social media tools” on Google and looked at the People Also Ask feature to dive deeper into questions, pain points, and challenges related to social media tools:

Combined with your qualitative, customer-focused research, you’ll be able to uncover the biggest challenges of your audience, and how you should tailor your campaign to target those pain points.  

4. Collect psychographic data using Google Trends or influencers in the industry.

If you work for a B2C company, consider consuming content from top influencers in a given industry to determine psychographic data for your audience profile.

For instance, if you’re selling fitness gear, take a look at the social profiles and blog posts of top fitness influencers. What do they care about? What do they value? What activities do they do in a given day? These characteristics can help you round-out your audience profile.

If you’re working for a B2B company, you might read industry case studies, reports, or join webinars to determine the interests, values, and behaviors of your target persona within a given industry.

An example of this might be reading “2020 Trends in Sales Management” if you’re hoping to target sales managers at your target companies.

Why is audience profiling important?

There’s a big difference between knowing your audience and assuming you know your audience.

When you truly know your audience, you can create effective campaigns that speak to (or solve for) their challenges, goals, and pain points. Audience profiling can help you get there.

Through audience profiling, you can:

• Create more personalized campaigns. It’s no secret that consumers want (and expect) personalized experiences. With audience profiling, you can build personalized campaigns that deliver relevant content, offers, and recommendations to specific customer segments.
• Optimize your strategies. Your marketing strategies should evolve with your customers’ changing needs, preferences, and behaviors. Audience profiling ensures that you’re meeting the right audience at the right time through the right channels.
• Drive more loyalty. By building targeted and relevant campaigns, marketers can create meaningful experiences for their customers. When you do this consistently, your customers will trust that you can meet their expectations, resulting in greater brand loyalty.
• Gain a competitive advantage. By knowing your customers better than your competitors do, you can tailor your products, services, and marketing strategies to meet customer needs and stand out from the crowd.
  

Ready to get started creating your own audience profiles? Let’s take a look at two examples you can use for inspiration before you create your own.

Audience Profile Examples

1. B2B Audience Profile Example: Marketing Maria

2. B2C Audience Profile Example: Athletic Andy

Media Audience Profile

Media planning and buying can’t happen without an audience profile.

For instance, media buying — buying campaign or advertising space on various channels, or sharing targeted campaigns and ads — can’t happen without media planning.

And media planning, at its core, is “determining how, when, where, and why your business shares media content with your audience. The process includes deciding what media will be shared on what channels to boost reach, engagements, conversions, ROI, and more.”

Ultimately, then, both media planning and media buying need pre-defined audiences to be successful. If you haven’t taken the time to create an audience profile before purchasing ad space, you risk wasting money and resources on audiences who ultimately won’t convert anyway.

An audience profile can affect where you place your advertisements. Once you’ve created an audience profile, for instance, you might find your audience persona spends most of her time on LinkedIn. LinkedIn advertising solutions, then, can help you best reach your target audience.

An audience profile also influences the design of your ad. You’ll want to design ad copy around your audience’s interests, pain points, and preferences — something you can only do once you’ve created an audience profile.

For instance, The Economist might’ve created an audience profile and determined their audience likes education and knowledge, but doesn’t like getting bogged down with too much negativity, particularly from news outlets. As a result, a simple tagline, “Brighter days ahead”, helps attract and convert the right audience through their ads.

Ultimately, your audience profile is a vital foundation for ensuring you’re effectively attracting and converting those best-suited for your brand.

However, an audience profile can vary depending on each individual campaign — so feel free to keep this post bookmarked for the next time you need to alter your audience profile for a new advertising or marketing campaign.

Brand colors shape how people perceive your business. Up to 80% of snap judgments about products are solely based on color alone. That’s right, 80%!

Think about McDonald’s for a moment. What pops into your mind? The yellow arches, right? McDonald’s has done a fantastic job of using its colors to establish a memorable brand identity that stays with you long after you’ve finished your burger and fries.

So why settle for a forgettable brand image that blends in with the crowd? Let’s sprinkle some color into our article and discover the powerful connection between colors and branding.

What are brand colors?

Why Brand Colors Matter

The Brand Color Formula

How to Choose Brand Colors

Color Psychology Tips

Brand Color Best Practices

Inspiration From 10 Brands That Get it Right

Why Brand Colors Matter

1. Colors establish brand identity and recognition.

Today’s market is overwhelmed. So, how can you find your top spot there? Using consistent brand colors is a great way to establish brand recognition and identity.

For example, let’s look at Coca-Cola. The company has been using its signature red and white colors since 1886.

Red represents excitement, passion, and energy, while white represents purity and simplicity. These colors have become synonymous with the brand and are instantly recognizable by people worldwide.

Image source

2. Brand colors evoke emotions and associations.

Let’s admit it. We’re all guilty of making purchases based on emotions. And since the colors can evoke certain feelings, this raises the question: “What does this mean for your brand?”

Picking the right color palette can be a game-changer in customers’ attraction, as 34.5% of purchases are driven by color influence.

Different colors evoke different emotions and associations. For example, green can signify growth, health, and nature, while red can symbolize passion, excitement, and urgency.

Facebook uses blue as its primary color in its branding. Blue is often a color of trust, security, and reliability, which aligns with Facebook’s mission to connect people and create a safe online community.

It also calms people, helping users feel more relaxed and comfortable while using the platform.

Image source

“Media giants are sneaky and use colors to create psychological impacts that grab our attention,” says Lindsay Braman, an illustrator, therapist, and visual translator.

Think of the fiery reds in fast-food logos that pump us up or the enigmatic blacks in luxury branding that intrigue us.

She also backs up her claims with an interesting study where college students who received test papers with red numbers performed worse due to its anxiety-inducing effect.

Image Source

3. Brand colors increase recall.

Using consistent brand colors can increase brand recall by up to 80%. When customers repeatedly see your brand colors in different contexts, their brains associate those colors with your brand.

So basically, brand recall can make or break your business.

Image Source

And let’s not forget about brand equity. The financial value added to your products and services by having a recognized brand. Qualtrics says 59% of consumers prefer to buy from trusted brands.

4. Brand colors create a competitive edge.

Colors are your brand’s signature, your statement to the world. Creating a memorable brand increases your chances of outshining competitors and gaining loyal customers.

Canva’s experts suggest analyzing your competitors’ color choices and then using the following questions to differentiate yourself:

• What brand colors do your competitors use? How do they reflect their brand identities?
• What are the audience perceptions of each competitor’s visual design and branding choices?
• What color palette choices do competitors use with specific content types?
• What makes your brand unique from each competitor?

They also suggest interviewing brand managers for valuable insight into the color-choosing process.

Image Source

The Brand Color Formula

A brand color formula is a set of predefined color codes representing a company’s visual identity. It translates into a cohesive look and feel that resonates with their target audience and strengthens brand recognition.

The following formulas outline how to select colors for one, two, three, and four color brands.

One-Color Brand

• Main color: This is the only color used in the brand.

Example: Nike’s brand color is black.

Image Source

Two-Color Brand

• Main color: The primary color used in the brand.
• Accent color: The secondary color used to complement the main color.

Example: T-Mobile’s main brand color is magenta and the accent color is white.

Image Source

Three-Color Brand

• Main color: The primary color used in the brand.
• Secondary color: The second most important color used in the brand.
• Accent color: The third color used to complement the main and secondary colors.

Example: FedEx’s main brand colors are purple and orange, with white as an accent color.

Image Source

Four-Color Brand

• Primary color: The main color used in the brand.
• Secondary color: The second most important color used in the brand.
• Accent color 1: A color used to complement the primary and secondary colors.
• Accent color 2: A second color used to complement the primary and secondary colors.

Example: Microsoft’s brand colors consist of a blue primary color and a green secondary color. Yellow is accent color 1 while red is accent color 2.

Image Source

How to Choose Brand Colors

1. Define Your Brand Personality and Values

Before thinking about brand colors, let’s take a step back. First, consider the soul of your brand — its personality and values:

• What’s its purpose and goal?
• What emotions do you want to awaken in your customers?
• Is it bold and daring or gentle and nurturing?
• Is it all about luxury and exclusivity or affordability and accessibility?
• What values do you offer?
• What’s your message?

Once you’ve nailed down your brand’s personality traits, you’ll have a solid foundation for choosing your colors.

2. Research Color Psychology

Color psychology delves into how colors can impact our mood, behavior, and how we perceive everything around us.

Once you’ve cracked the code of color psychology, you’ll have the power to tap into the undeniable influence of hues and make savvy decisions.

Read books and studies on color psychology.

Image Source

3. Pick Your Primary Color

Your primary color articulates your brand’s unique personality and values. Choose a hue that genuinely reflects your brand’s vibe and connects with your ideal audience to ensure a perfect match.

With color theory and psychology on your side, you’ll have all the tools to select a primary color and create a lasting impact.

4. Choose Your Secondary Colors

Secondary colors support your brand identity, adding depth and dimension to your overall color scheme. Use them to highlight accents, backgrounds, and typography and create a harmonious color palette that tells your brand’s unique story.

To create a seamless combo, select two to three colors that perfectly harmonize with your primary color.

5. Test Your Colors Across Platforms

Once you’ve selected your brand colors, it’s time to put them to the test and ensure they work properly across all platforms.

Try them on your website, social media channels, business cards, packaging, and other marketing materials to guarantee maximum consistency and visibility.

You can A/B test the buttons’ colors, backdrops, etc., to identify which brings in the most conversions.

Small changes in color and more straightforward communication through images led to a sales boost for Alpro, a Belgium company that markets plant-based milk products.

Image Source

Color Psychology Tips

Color Meanings and Associations

Colors have different meanings and associations. Red can signify passion and love. Conversely, it also symbolizes danger and warning.

Warm colors like red, orange, and yellow evoke emotions ranging from warmth to anger, explains Kendra Cherry, a Psychosocial Rehabilitation Specialist and author.

Conversely, cool colors like blue, purple, and green are often associated with calmness but can also evoke sadness or indifference.

Black and grey trigger high-quality and high-technology associations.

Pro tip: Choose your brand and product colors to stimulate a concrete action, feeling, or desire — hunger (= buying food), confidence, inspiration, trust, etc.

Color and Emotions

And did you know that people across 30 countries share similar associations between colors and feelings? A survey of over 4,500 participants from 30 countries found that people easily connect colors and emotions.

What we like: Most colors were linked to positive emotions, while brown, grey, and black were associated with negative emotions.

Fun fact: Participants whose languages and geographical locations were similar had more similar color-emotion associations.

Image Source

We also highly recommend you watch the video on color psychology by expert Mike Ploger.

Understanding the emotional connection between colors and individuals is crucial in visual branding. “Your favorite color likely came from positive experiences with that single color when you were growing up,” says Mike Ploger.

This highlights the importance of considering color psychology in brand building.

Gender and Color Preferences

Color preference can also be influenced by gender. Women generally lean towards warmer colors, purple (23%) and blue (35%). Men prefer blue (57%), black (9%), and green (14%).

But wait, there’s more!

Have you ever noticed the ubiquitous association between pink and girls and blue and boys? This gender-color stereotype has been deeply ingrained in Western societies, but what about in Chinese culture?

Researchers from several Chinese universities set out to investigate this phenomenon using a modified Stroop paradigm and event-related potential (ERP) signals.

In the experiment, Chinese college students received occupation words stereotypically associated with masculinity or femininity (displayed in either pink or blue). They were then asked to quickly and accurately classify the gender of the occupation.

The study revealed that pink stimuli associated with masculinity resulted in longer response times. In contrast, blue stimuli linked to masculinity did not cause the same delays in response time.

So what’s the conclusion? Pink is a “gendered” color, but blue is not. What a thought-provoking discovery.

However, color preferences in marketing still have a powerful impact on consumer behavior.

While some may argue that colors are insignificant when it comes to gender, it’s hard to ignore that pinky shades have become synonymous with the feminine market.

And we can see it everywhere, from Barbie’s iconic packaging to clothing brands that cater to women.

Image Source

On the other hand, darker shades like black and navy blue have traditionally been a symbol of masculinity and are often the go-to choice for male products.

Just think of the rugged and athletic look synonymous with Jack & Jones’ marketing campaigns.

Image Source

Color and Purchasing Decisions

Colors can affect purchasing decisions by evoking emotions and associations.

For example, red is often used in sales promotions because it creates a sense of urgency and can stimulate impulse buying. Sarah Levinger, Consumer Behavior Analyst, confirms that in one of her LinkedIn posts:

Image Source

Yellow is often used to grab attention and create a sense of excitement. That makes it a popular color for clearance sales and promotions. Unexpectedly, people associate orange, brown, and yellow with inexpensive products.

Context and Color Impact

The impact of colors depends on the context in which they are used. For example, black can represent elegance and sophistication in fashion but can be perceived as ominous in other contexts.

Also, yellow can signify caution and slowness in transportation. Yellow lights, yellow yield signs, and yellow caution tape indicate slowing down in traffic.

In a different setting, yellow may evoke positive feelings such as cheerfulness and assurance.

The crux lies in the context of its usage.

Furthermore, in finance, green is all about profitability and money.

In the context of food, orange has a connection with freshness and nutrition (reminding us of oranges and carrots). However, in the context of safety, orange is used to signify danger and caution.

According to licensed psychologist Steffanie Stecker, colors can influence our mood, performance, and even how people perceive us. She emphasizes the subjective nature of color perception.

Simply put, what one person perceives as calming may not be the same for another person.

Image Source

Brand Color Best Practices

1. Consider Cultural Differences

When choosing brand colors, remember to take into account cultural differences. Some colors can have different meanings and associations in different cultures.

For example, white symbolizes purity and innocence in Western cultures. But on the contrary, it has dark meanings, such as mourning and death in some Asian cultures.

In the 1950s, Pepsi decided to revamp the color in Southeast Asia. They swapped out the old and dull dark blue with a new, trendy, and icy blue shade that they believed would make their vending machines look fresh and inviting.

But nobody bothered to check the cultural significance of the color blue in that part of the world.

Image source

As it turns out, light blue means death and sorrow. So, needless to say, the new color scheme didn’t go down well with the locals. The result? A steep drop in Pepsi’s share price in the region.

Pro tip: When choosing colors for your brand, make sure you’re clued to their cultural connotations.

2. Use Colors to Differentiate Products

If your brand offers different products or services, you can use colors to differentiate them.

Google uses a clever strategy to help users easily differentiate between its products. The tech giant uses a distinct color scheme for each offering.

For instance, Google Drive has a tricolor look, while Google Docs has a fresh blue hue. Google Sheets is green, and Slides has a yellow appearance.

Pro tip: Choose a different color for each product or service to help customers easily identify and remember them.

Image Source

3. Use Colors to Reinforce Your Brand’s Personality

Colors can also communicate important messages and enhance brand storytelling. If you carefully select the hues that align with your brand’s values and narrative, you can create a much better brand experience for your customers.

For instance, let’s consider Adidas — what sets it apart from others?

Its bold and dynamic colors reflect the company’s athletic and competitive spirit. The iconic three-stripe logo is often black and white, lending a touch of sophistication and timelessness to the brand’s overall look.

However, Adidas also incorporates vivid and lively colors into its product designs, such as neon yellows and electric blues. That exudes a sense of enthusiasm and excitement.

Image source

4. The Importance of Visual Contrast in Branding

Adding visual contrast to your branding is another key to unlocking the door of perfect design. You don’t have to make it look like a neon sign from Vegas, though.

Pro tip: Use the right color combo to create contrast. You can then emphasize key elements and convey your message more effectively.

No matter the brand, an element of visual contrast is key to every color palette. Having contrast

doesn’t necessarily mean that a brand looks bold or loud. A sense of complementary harmony, be it through hue or value, allows all brand visuals to be clear and legible.

“At Switch, one process we use to ensure that the brand colors we’re planning for a brand have

enough contrast is to desaturate our chosen brand palette. By removing all hues from our colors, we guarantee that the color values are distinct enough and, therefore, work well together.

This is a reverse-engineered process from traditional ‘underpainting’ — where artists would plan their painting in monochrome, only using light and shade to tell the story,” Andrea Meli, Head of Design, Switch

Now, let’s recall the iconic Apple logo with the perfect contrast between black and white. This design showcases how even a simple logo can use visual contrast to make a lasting impression.

Image Source

5. Be Open to Change

Finally, don’t hesitate to change your brand colors if they aren’t connecting with your target audience or no longer match your brand’s personality and values. Stay open to making adjustments that can enhance your brand’s appeal.

And don’t consider that a bad thing. In fact, many mega-popular brands have done the same thing.

For instance, in 2014, Airbnb updated its brand colors and font. The company shifted from a blue and white color scheme to a more vibrant and diverse color palette.

Image Source

Likewise, Semrush, the leading SEO tool, rebranded in December 2020 to symbolize the creative spark that ignites the marketing engine and the company’s energetic, passionate, and innovative approach to work.

Semrush’s home page back in early 2020.

Image Source

Semrush’s home page of 2023.

Image Source

Inspiration From 10 Brands That Get It Right

Lastly, check out the list of 10 brands that expertly use colors to create a visually stunning and memorable identity.

• Instagram — Purple, pink, orange, and white
• LinkedIn — Blue and white
• Red Bull — Blue and red
• Spotify — Green and black
• Ferrari — Red and yellow
• Visa — Blue and gold
• Samsung — Blue and white
• Twitter — Blue and white
• Dropbox — Blue and white
• YouTube — Red and white

And if you’re looking for an answer to what are the best brand colors, sorry to burst your bubble, but they don’t exist. The trick is mixing and matching different colors to create a unique visual design that sets your brand apart.

Microsoft Excel’s versatility and sheer number of features make it one of the most complex software programs to master.

While you might want to learn every feature in Excel, you’ll likely need to know just a limited number to get the best from the software. Macros are small and simple programs that can make your work much easier and are favored by expert users.

The good thing is that learning how to enable macros is relatively easy, and in this article, we’ll show you how to enable macros in Excel, since they are disabled by default.

What are macros in Excel?

The Benefits of Using Macros in Excel

The Dangers of Using Macros in Excel

How to Enable Macros in Excel

How to Enable a Single Macro in Excel

How to Enable Macros in a Single Excel File

What are macros in Excel?

An Excel macro is a small program created in Excel that allows you to automate everyday tasks. It’s a precious tool in Excel that lets complicated instructions be carried out with just a command.

Macros are tremendous time-savers — you can create macros that can do almost anything you want in Excel and other Microsoft Office software.

For example, macros can let you insert company letterhead into an existing document in Word or add formatted tables to a spreadsheet in Excel — all with one command.

When you create a macro, you’re recording your mouse clicks and keystrokes. Using this feature, you can run a program to automate repetitive tasks.

The Benefits of Using Macros in Excel

Using macros in Excel offers the following benefits to users.

It saves time and effort.

This is perhaps the most apparent advantage of using macros in Excel. Since you can automate repetitive tasks, you can save time for yourself.

You can then use the extra time on your hands to handle other crucial tasks and responsibilities.

But the automation of macros does more than help you save time — it also helps you handle complex or tedious processes.

For instance, if you have an Excel spreadsheet with data, you can create a macro that searches through all the data, compiles essential information, and sends a copy to an email address.

Or imagine you usually create a monthly report for your accounting manager.

So, instead of spending time and energy plowing through data, formatting customer names, and identifying customers who are defaulting or overpaying, you could create a macro that does everything in a few minutes.

It helps you reduce errors.

Spending long hours manually entering data into a spreadsheet can be exhausting and tedious. Once exhausted and bored, it won’t be long before you start making mistakes.

When you use automated macros, you’d be able to avoid or reduce errors that might come about due to human fatigue.

It’s easy to set up macros in Excel.

You don’t need to be a coding expert before you can use macros in Excel. That way, no matter your profession, you can use macros to a reasonable extent by following the steps we offer in this guide.

The Danger of Using Macros in Excel

Although a default feature of Excel in the past, macros can cause some problems. For example, some people have used this powerful tool to create macro viruses, which can cause harmful results.

Several websites offer free macros that you can download to save time. While appealing, we strongly recommend that you avoid these.

If you’re not a technical user or unsure what a macro will do, you should avoid downloading or verifying its contents.

Because of these dangers, Microsoft disables macros by default. So while you can still use macros, you’ll need to enable them.

With that in mind, let’s now see how you can enable macros in Excel.

How to Enable Macros in Excel

Enabling macros is one of the simpler things to do in Excel. Here’s how to do it.

1. Click on File and then click on Options.
   
2. This takes you to the Excel Options window. On this page, click the Trust Center on the bottom left sidebar. 
   Once you click Trust Center, a new window opens. Click on Trust Center Settings. 
   
3. Within the Trust Center window, click on Macro Settings on the left sidebar.

To enable macros, tick the checkbox next to Enable Excel 4.0 macros.

Then click on OK at the bottom of the page to save your new settings. And with that, you’ve enabled macros in Excel.

Note that following the steps above will ensure all spreadsheets in Excel will run macros. You should only do this if you can deal with the risk of macro viruses.

What if you want to enable just one macro in Excel and not all macros? Then the following section will show you how.

How to Enable a Single Macro in an Excel File

You can easily enable the spreadsheet without going through any hoops if the spreadsheet has a macro.

Here’s how.

1. Open the file that contains the macro.
2. Due to Excel’s settings, macros are automatically disabled. If a spreadsheet with macros is opened, a yellow security warning message bar will appear, telling you that macros have been disabled.
3. To enable macros, you only need to click on Enable Content.

How to Enable Macros in a Single Excel File

Since March 2023, Microsoft has changed the default behavior of Office applications to block macros in files downloaded from the internet. So when users open a file that contains macros, they receive the following message:

However, you can enable macros by changing the properties of the file that contains macros. Just follow these steps:

1. Go to the file location of the Excel file.
2. Right-click and select Properties.
   3. Select the Unblock checkbox at the bottom of the General tab in Properties, then select OK.

Getting Started

You don’t have to be an accountant before you know how to use Excel. The steps we’ve listed above will help beginners learn how to enable macros in Excel.

Whether you want to work faster or improve your productivity, Excel has features like macros to help you.

Many companies have employee referral programs where referring someone who gets hired comes with a reward (typically a cash bonus).

This is the same principle of performance marketing: marketers set a performance goal (like driving conversions) and reward the partners/people who help them get those conversions.

Let’s dive deeper into how performance marketing works, how to create a performance marketing strategy, and the tools you can use to implement one.

Table of Contents

• What is performance marketing?
• How Performance Marketing Works
• How To Create a Performance Marketing Strategy
• How do you measure performance marketing?
• Top Performance Marketing Software
• Top Performance Marketing Verticals

What is performance marketing?

Performance marketing is a digital marketing strategy driven by results, where advertisers (like a brand or business) only pay once a goal is met, which can be anything from making a purchase to filling out a form on a landing page.

With a traditional ad campaign approach, there’s no guarantee you will get a return on your investment, and you can only monitor performance and make adjustments after it launches.

Even seasoned media buyers can have unsuccessful campaigns if there’s a misalignment between the campaign and the target audience.

Since you’ll only pay when your goals are met, you accomplish three things:

• Your campaign is less risky
• There’s a guaranteed return on investment (ROI)
• You have better control over your ad spend

Is affiliate marketing the same as performance marketing?

While somewhat related, affiliate marketing and performance marketing are different.

Affiliate marketing is a subset of performance marketing based on paying a commission after each sale or target goal/conversion.

Performance marketing has grown broader than just affiliate marketing, with the target goal of improving a company’s performance as a whole.

Types of Performance Marketing

There are various performance marketing partners/channels to consider for your campaigns:

• Affiliate marketing: A partner uses an affiliate code or link to promote an advertiser to their audience and is paid by tracking the conversions from their unique link.
• Influencer marketing: Brands work with creators and influencers that promote their offer to their unique audiences to inspire them to take action.

• Paid marketing and advertising: Businesses work with a publisher to display their ad (like on a webpage) and pay the publisher for actions like clicks, purchases after clicking, or the number of impressions from where they feature the ad.
• Search engine marketing (SEM): Advertisers feature advertisements in search results for business-related terms and pay the publisher if their ad is clicked.
• Native advertising: Advertisers create ads that blend in on the channels they’re on, and advertisers pay an affiliate or influencer based on their target conversion.
• Social media marketing: Creators and influencers advertise for partners on different social media channels.

How Performance Marketing Works

Executing a performance marketing strategy relies on three key players:

• The advertiser (like a retailer, merchant, brand, etc., who is looking to improve performance)
• A publisher or an affiliate partner (someone who promotes for an advertiser)
• An affiliate tracking network (a third-party system where advertisers and publishers connect and can track performance and receive payments).

Some advertisers may use an outsourced program management (OPM) firm or agency that takes over running the program.

How To Create a Performance Marketing Strategy

1. Define your goals.

With any digital marketing campaign, establishing your objectives is key.

What do you want to accomplish? It may be general brand awareness, sales for your new product line, more leads, or something else. For example, if your goal is to attract new leads, you might have a performance marketing goal of drawing in 500 new leads.

Once you define your goals, you can select the publisher/partner best suited to help you achieve them.

2. Identify your partners.

Finding the right publisher/partner takes research, but it’s the most important step because it’s how you inspire people to convert.

Today, influencers are some of the most popular partners because of the high level of trust they have with their audience. The influencer could be a YouTuber that adds an affiliate link in a video description or a blogger who adds a backlink to your landing page in their written content.

Once you’ve found your partner or preferred channel, you also outline a payment structure. For example, with SEM, you’d likely design a program where you pay Google for impressions or clicks, and with an influencer, you’d decide how and how much you’d pay them whenever your goal is met.

We’ll talk more about how to measure performance marketing below.

3. Generate and assign IDs.

The next step is to get your unique tracking links/URLs and codes ready.

This is crucial because the only way to attribute an action to your partner/publisher correctly is with a unique code, URL, or UTM parameter.

You may do this manually at first, but many people rely on automated tracking systems to ensure all conversion attributions are correct.

How do you measure performance marketing?

Overall, the metric you use determines what actions trigger a commission payment and the ROI of your efforts. The more actions you drive, the more successful your campaign.

Let’s say I’m an influencer partnered with Brandon Blackwood. I share a 10% discount code “MARTINA10” with my followers to use at checkout when purchasing an item from the brand. Whenever someone used my code to purchase, I would get a percentage of the sale. In this case, the tracked metric is unique sales from my code, which can be paid with a cost-per-acquisition model.

Some standard measurement and pricing structures for performance marketing are:

• Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)/Pay Per Sale – If your goal is to drive sales, you’d measure the success of your campaign by the number of sales and pay your partners every time someone buys a product that is directly traceable to them.
• Cost Per Click (CPC)/Pay Per Click – If your goal is to drive clicks to your page or offers, you’d pay each time your partner drives someone to click (which is why tracking URLs are crucial in distinguishing regular traffic from partner-inspired traffic).
• Cost Per Lead (CPL)/Pay Per Lead – You’d pay each time you get new information on a user (like after they fill out a form) because the partner inspired them to submit their information. You’d then further nurture the lead with the end goal of converting them into a customer.
• Cost Per Impression (CPM) – Also called cost per mille, you’d pay based on the number of impressions you get from an ad that a partner shares or that is displayed somewhere. CPM usually pays out every 1,000 impressions.

Top Performance Marketing Software

There are two main types of performance marketing software: those that focus on connecting advertisers with affiliate partners or publishers and those that monitor performance. Let’s go through some top tools in each category.

Performance Marketing Partnership Tools

1. PartnerStack

Price: Contact for pricing

If you’re a SaaS company looking to develop a robust partner program, consider PartnerStack.

Key Features

• Choose from a network of active partners, or recruit your preferred partners.
• Custom partner portal and automated onboarding to share relevant training resources.
• Campaign tracking to understand performance and initiate payments.

2. Partnerize

Price: Contact for pricing

Partnerize is a simple and easy-to-use dashboard to manage your partners.

Key Features

• Build an invite-only network of partners, or get automated partner recommendations from its partner ecosystem.
• Access to real-time campaign data to view partner performance.
• Custom commission structure for each partner and automate the payment and reward process.

3. Everflow

Price: $750/mo (Core plan), contact for custom pricing

Everflow helps you simplify partnership management to ensure you drive results.

Key Features

• Easy-to-use portal to onboard partners and manage your relationships.
• Track every referral and lead and accurately attribute conversion events to each partner.
• Design a custom payout structure to pay partners when they deliver on your goals.

One of the biggest struggles of working with affiliates is creating and tracking links and codes at scale. Below we’ll go over some helpful tools.

Performance Marketing Tracking Tools

1. LeadDyno

Price: $49/mo Starter), $129/mo (Plus), more advanced pricing for businesses with 15,000+ unique site visitors per month

LeadDyno gives brands tools to grow a successful affiliate program that aligns rewards to your target actions.

Key Features:

• Create links, codes, or assign specific URLs to each partner.
• Unique affiliate dashboard to ensure you attribute conversions correctly.
• Customize a payment structure based on your key metrics and seamlessly send payments.

2. AnyTrack.io

Price: 14-day free trial; $50/mo (Basic), $150/mo (Personal), $300/mo (Advanced)

With AnyTrack, attribution reporting is easier.

Key Features

• Assign a tag to each partner that automatically tracks, attributes, and syncs your conversions.
• Track every single engagement and sale to understand performance.
• Integrate your custom affiliate network.

3. Impact

Price: Contact for pricing

The Impact tool streamlines the partnership process from initial contact to payout.

Key Features

• Universal tracking tag helps you track the traffic your partners drive on all properties across any device.
• Create payment contracts and automatically pay partners when they bring results on your key metrics.
• Find partners that align with your needs or import your existing affiliate network.

Top Performance Marketing Verticals

Wondering which industries use performance marketing the most? According to a 2022 study by the Performance Marketing Association, advertisers in the retail sector spent the most on performance marketing – accounting for 76% of total spending. The financial sector followed with a steep drop to 12%, then the travel industry with 5%.

In terms of revenue, the sector with the highest revenue was retail at 84%, followed by travel at 10%. Industries like automotive, healthcare, and telecoms only accounted for 1% of the total performance marketing revenue.

However, despite having the biggest spending and highest revenue percentages, the retail industry didn’t offer the best ROAS. According to the report, the automotive industry offered the best return at $26, followed by travel at $21 and retail at $12.

Any industry can have success with performance marketing. It’s all about collaborating with the right partners and setting up a robust program to reach your marketing goals.

Since its launch in 2022, OpenAI’s ChatGPT has seen a massive boost in popularity. The conversational AI service amassed 1 million users in just five days, and 53% of marketers report using chatbots like ChatGPT in their role.

However, you’re probably curious to know if there are any ChatGPT alternatives that better suit your needs as a marketer. If so, you’ve come to the right blog. This article will explore different ChatGPT alternatives and their unique features.

Free ChatGPT Alternatives

If you’re looking for an economical alternative to ChatGPT, the following free AI alternatives fit you.

1. Bard

Google’s experimental conversational generative AI chatbot uses NLP and machine learning to respond quickly to various inquiries.

Bard boats a user-friendly interface and multiple handy features, including the ability to edit previous questions and restart conversations at any point.

The chatbot’s other features include the ability to:

• Generate texts,
• Translate languages,
• Answer questions,
• Generate creative content,
• Give thumbs-up or thumbs-down responses

And because Bard is a product of Google, the chatbot also includes Google Assistant and Alexa integration, and it can use Google’s search engine for the most up-to-date information.

Bear in mind, however, that Bard is still in its infancy and is not yet available worldwide. For now, it’s only available to U.S. and UK-based customers.

2. Bing AI

Google isn’t the only search engine dabbling in AI. Bing AI is an AI-powered search engine developed by Microsoft. Bing AI gathers answers from the web to answer users’ inquiries.

Unlike ChatGPT, Bing isn’t solely an AI language model, meaning it has internet access and can browse the web to find documents, videos, and more. Bing AI’s other capabilities include:

• Personalized recommendations
• Conversation style options: balanced, creative, and precise
• Able to be used natively on Apple and Android devices.

Bing AI is most helpful if you use the Microsoft Edge browser and want personalized search results. Furthermore, Bing Ai can be integrated with Microsoft Office and Microsoft Teams, making it an excellent tool for your business.

Image Source

3. YouChat

This AI-powered chatbot search engine is featured on You.com and answers queries via messaging. With natural language input, users can conversationally receive answers.

YouChat leverages a combination of language models and algorithms to provide accurate, relevant, and intuitive responses. Moreover, YouChat can provide more personalized results over time by learning from user input.

The AI chatbot is available via various platforms, such as the web and mobile. Furthermore, it can integrate with messenger apps like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp.

And if you’re conducting research, YouChat can provide citations for its answers so you can fact-check and verify your findings easily.

Image Source

4. Poe by Quora

A unique feature of Poe by Quora is its ability to give users access to multiple chatbots to generate the necessary answers and content. With Poe, users can access ChatGPT, Sage, Claude, GPT-4, and Dragonfly.

Each chatbot has its own perks and strengths, so you can try each to see which works best for you.

According to Quora, Poe is the fastest interface to ChatGPT, and it’s the only consumer product with access to Claude, a state-of-the-art language model.

Poe’s responses also include “Wikipedia-style links,” meaning users can click on phrases to learn more about topics the model mentions.

Another handy feature is Poe’s cross-platform sync which allows the AI to sync your chats in real-time across platforms, so you can start a conversation on a desktop and continue it on iOS.

If you’re looking for an AI writing assistant, you’ll most appreciate Poe’s access to Sage. Sage provides suggestions for improving grammar, syntax, and writing style. It also highlights words and texts for your to expand upon in your writing.

Image Source

5. HubSpot’s AI Tools

HubSpot has a few free AI tools available to marketers and business owners. For example, HubSpot’s Campaign Assistant can generate copy for landing pages, emails, and ads.

Just provide Campaign Assistant with key details from your campaign, and the assistant will generate copy for your preferred platform.

If you need help with the content ideation process, you’ll want to check out HubSpot’s content assistant. The tool utilizes OpenAI’s GPT model to help your team quickly ideate, create, and share content. HubSpot’s content assistant can:

• Generate blog ideas, outlines, and paragraphs
• Write prospecting emails
• Create marketing emails

Lastly, ChatSpot is HubSpot’s conversational CRM bot that sales, marketing, and service professionals can connect to HubSpot to boost their productivity.

With chat-based commands, you can use ChatSpot to send follow-up emails, pull reports, create new segments, and more.

Image Source

Get started with HubSpot’s AI tools

Best ChatGPT Alternatives

6. ChatSonic

ChatSonic is a chatbot part of WriteSonic’s suite of AI-powered writing tools.

Powered by CPT-4, ChatSonic uses natural language processing and algorithms to understand context and nuances at a higher level than the free version of ChatGPT.

The platform also suggests sentence structure, word choice, and tone to create excellent, well-crafted content. Moreover, ChatSonic can create digital artwork and take voice commands.

Even better, ChatSonic offers a wide array of templates to amplify your writing, and its Content Rephrase tool can recycle your content in a different tone or style, depending on your preference.

ChatSonic’s template library is especially handy for writing social media copy, website copy, and E-commerce content.

Cost: Plans start at $12.67 per month

Image Source

7. Megatron-Turing Natural Language Generation

NVIDIA and Microsoft collaborated to create Megatron-Turning Natual Language Generation — one of the largest language models with 530 billion parameters.

According to NVIDIA, this platform “demonstrates unmatched accuracy in a broad set of natural language tasks,” including:

• Completion prediction
• Reading comprehension,
• Commonsense reasoning,
• Natural language inferences,
• Word sense disambiguation

Image Source

Price: Megatron’s pricing structure is only accessible by submitting a request to NVIDIA’s Early Access Program.

8. Jasper AI

Jasper AI is a writing software that helps marketers, business owners, and brands write accurate SEO-friendly content quickly. Its feature, Jasper Chat, is especially helpful for those familiar with ChatGPT.

Jasper Chat allows users to generate content using natural dialogue. Jasper AI can generate content for ads, social media, email, blogging, website content, and more.

Additionally, Jaspers has over 50 AI-powered writing templates, supports more than 20 languages, and can generate digital art.

Price: Pricing starts at $49 per month

Image Source

9. Perplexity

Another free alternative to ChatGPT, Perplexity offers conversation responses and content generation.

The platform is powered by large models and collects information from places like Wikipedia, LinkedIn, and Amazon. It also cites its sources.

You’ll likely enjoy Perplexity’s simple interface; however, bear in mind that Perplexity is still in its beta phase and will sometimes display the information it finds as is.

If you decide to use Perplexity for research purposes, ideation, or content generation, be sure to do your due diligence to not use any plagiarized work.

Image Source

Price: Free while still in beta

10. OpenAI Playground

Though not intended for everyday users, OpenAI Playground functions a lot like ChatGPT and allows users to experiment with various language models.

OpenAi Playground is a great way to experiment with advanced functions found in ChatGPT, and it is known for its accuracy and speed.

Price: As mentioned above, OpenAI Playground is not for everyday users. The platform is free to use initially (if you have an account), but you’ll have to choose a premium subscription if you become a frequent user.

There is a token system for pricing. Click here to learn more.

Image source

There are many ChatGPT alternatives to choose from, all you need to do is assess your needs and find the platform with the tools to help you brainstorm, refine, and generate your content. You know some of your options.

Now you’re ready to start experimenting with AI or leverage it if you’re already familiar.

Every few years there’s a new buzzy fad in the wellness space that fuels industry growth. So far in 2023, Ozempic has taken the crown — and it has the potential to change marketing in the wellness industry.

What is Ozempic and how did it get so popular?

Ozempic, which was introduced in 2018, is a brand of semaglutide medication that was approved by the FDA for the treatment of type 2 diabetes. These injectable drugs promote insulin sensitivity to lower blood sugar levels and suppress appetite.

While it’s intended to help manage diabetes, many people who take it experience weight loss as a side effect. In 2022, the medication exploded in popularity when news of its weight-loss enablement went mainstream.

By August of last year, the FDA declared a shortage of the medication due to a surge in usage for weight loss. With supply unable to meet demand, some diabetes patients who took Ozempic for its intended purpose were unable to access the meds they needed.

Though Ozempic is often used as an umbrella term to describe semaglutide medications, there are other drugs on the market that offer similar effects.

Wegovy is another brand name for semaglutide that is approved specifically for weight loss, offering a higher dosage level than Ozempic. This medication has also experienced shortages due to popularity, causing the drug maker to limit distribution.

Factors that contributed to the drug shortage include:

• Publicized celebrity usage: celebrities such as Elon Musk and Chelsea Handler have admitted to using forms of semaglutide.
• Social media: Ozempic has become a trending topic on TikTok, with the hashtag surpassing 1.1 billion views.
• Telehealth: patients now have easier access to weight loss medication prescriptions without waiting for a doctor’s appointment.

…Speaking of Telehealth

Earlier this year, telehealth startup Ro ran a campaign of over 1,000 ads to promote its Body Program which offers a prescription to Wegovy along with weight loss coaching. The campaign included TV spots, influencer marketing, and signage at New York subway stations.

Image Source

Other players in the weight loss industry have also announced plans to add weight loss drug subscriptions to their suite of services.

Weight loss startup Noom recently announced the launch of Noom Med, a telehealth service that will offer prescriptions for drugs like Wegovy. Since its launch in 2016, Noom has predominantly focused on helping users lose weight through behavior changes. The shift to include weight loss drugs feels like a departure from the brand’s initial mission.

Similarly, WW (formerly known as Weight Watchers) acquired a telehealth service called Sequence which also offers prescriptions for popular injectable weight loss drugs. Prior to the acquisition WW was most commonly known for encouraging calorie-conscious diets and exercise to lose weight.

Both Noom and WW appear to be taking strides to remain relevant with a customer base that has expressed interest in prescribed weight loss support. As evidenced by the recent closure of Jenny Craig due to financial issues, weight loss companies that fail to evolve with the rapid pace of the wellness industry can put themselves at risk.

Though all Jenny Craig company stores are now closed, the company’s online operations have been acquired by Eucalyptus, an Australian-based digital health startup that also offers telehealth prescriptions to…you guessed it…injectible weight loss drugs.

How Ozempic’s Popularity Brought Back Marketing “Weight Loss” 

In the 2010s, marketing weight loss had lost its appeal. With movements such as body positivity and health and every size picking up steam, diet programs and products promising weight loss seemed to be on their way out. 

With a growing emphasis on self-care, people seemed to reach a point of dieting fatigue. On social media and beyond, conversations about anti-fat bias became more widespread and openly marketing or even discussing “weight loss” began to feel taboo. This led to a period of decline for companies like WW. During this time period wellness marketing began emphasizing terms like “strong” and “holistic” instead of “weight loss” or “dieting.”

So what changed?

Though conversations about anti-fat bias have been amplified over the past few years, the bias itself is alive and well. For those still interested in losing weight the effectiveness of these new weight loss drugs has been pretty convincing.

Behavioral approaches to weight loss typically result in a reduction of around 5% of an individual’s weight after six months, which is often gained back within two years.

Using injectable weight loss drugs, people lose around 15% of their body weight and can keep it off as long as they continue using medication (preliminary research suggests people tend to gain it back when they discontinue use).

The recent Ozempic craze is in part being fueled by the persuasive nature of diet culture, and weight loss companies that are eager to market these medications in hopes of cashing in after a period of decline.

You’ve heard this a million times by now: artificial intelligence is changing the marketing world and how brands advertise to consumers — and the trend isn’t stopping anytime soon.

In fact, the global market revenue of AI in marketing will likely grow from $27.4 billion in 2023 to $107.4 billion in 2028.

But is AI something your brand should leverage in its next advertising campaign? To help you make that decision, here’s what you need to know about AI advertising, including tips and examples.

First, let’s examine the pros and cons of leveraging AI in advertising.

Pros of AI in Advertising

Challenges of AI in Advertising

7 AI Advertising Examples

Pros of AI in Advertising

Here are some benefits of leveraging AI in advertising.

Effectively Target Ads Through Data

In advertising, data can predict consumer behavior to create more effective targeted ads.

Forbes reported that combining AI and Big Data can automate “almost 80% of all physical work, 70% of data processing, and 64% of data collection tasks.”

Big Data is a term for a large amount of newly available data resulting from the growth of digital technology.

It’s also worth noting that 72% of marketing and business professionals agree that AI tools can help them pull insights from data they otherwise wouldn’t be able to find, according to our State of AI Survey.

Reach More Customers

AI can help your brand quickly assess what is working and not in its advertising efforts. For example, Coca-Cola uses AI algorithms to analyze when, where, and how consumers talk about the brand on social media.

Specifically, the company studied 120,000 pieces of social media content to understand the demographics and behaviors of customers and users discussing its products.

As a result, the brand can adapt its content to meet the needs of consumers and expand its reach.

Save Time and Money

Of course, one of the biggest draws of AI is its ability to work and generate results quickly. AI can swiftly gather, analyze, and sort vast amounts of data.

It can then use its findings to spot trends allowing marketers to make informed advertising decisions.

This can also save your business money in advertising by taking out the guesswork and quickly spotting opportunities more likely to generate revenue.

Challenges of AI in Advertising

Here are some challenges brands may face when using AI in Advertising.

Possible Inaccuracies in Data

AI-generated results are only effective if the data inputs are accurate. The data must represent all aspects of the customers, their behavior, and their journey.

So, companies must invest in ways to verify the accuracy of the data being put into the AI models to ensure their effectiveness.

Lack of Creativity

AI can be an excellent tool for gathering data to inform ad campaigns; however, humans still need to brainstorm creative advertising content that generates buzz.

For instance, consumers often gravitate to social media advertising that shows the brand’s values and how it aligns with their own. Funny, trendy, and relatable ads are also popular among audiences.

Right now, only humans can spearhead advertising content that is relatable and touching. An advertising campaign that is too reliant on AI can result in dull and disconnected advertising.

However, it’s important to note that while AI tools cannot spearhead creative campaigns, they can still be helpful in the creative process.

For example, HubSpot’s Content Assistant AI feature can generate blog ideas, blog outlines, marketing emails, and more to help steer marketers toward their goals.

Image source

Data Privacy

As mentioned earlier, AI can collect data to create more personalized ads. However, there is also the concern that AI algorithms and models can inadvertently collect sensitive information about consumers.

Companies leveraging AI to collect data for advertising will have to mitigate the risk by deciding what consumer information to protect and how.

7 AI Advertising Examples

Here are some companies that have successfully leveraged AI in their advertising campaigns.

1. Whole Foods

In 2021, Whole Foods opened several Just Walk Out stores across the U.S., allowing customers to pick up their items and leave without stopping at a register. The items are instead charged to the customer via AI.

The AI’s purchase information can help identify patterns and predict future behaviors. The information allows Whole Foods to send personalized messages to customers.

For example, if a customer regularly purchases pasta sauce, basil, and pasta, Whole Foods could send promo codes and discounts for other Italian-related ingredients and foods.

What We Like: The Just Walk Out stores create a simple customer experience for shoppers while seamlessly gathering helpful information that can better serve them in the future.

2. Buzzfeed

Media company Buzzfeed is using OpenAI to deliver personalized content to consumers at a massive scale that wouldn’t be possible without automation.

Specifically, Buzzfeed CEO Jonah Peretti said AI will help ” enhance the quiz experience, inform our brainstorming, and personalize our content for our audience.”

Buzzfeed isn’t looking to replace its writers with AI. Instead, writers and creators are collaborating with the site’s AI creative assistant, “Buzzy the Robot.” Below is a quiz written by a writer with help from Buzzy.

Image source

What We Like: The quiz and its use of AI show how AI can generate unique content that is personalized based on the behaviors of individuals.

3. Best Western

Best Western collaborated with IBM Watson advertising to create AI-powered ads to reach and engage consumers who are actively planning to travel around peak holiday weekends.

IBM’s AI tool, Conversations, was used by Best Western because traveling is a personal experience, and the tool could offer personalized travel recommendations.

According to IBM, the device was “trained on Best Western information and used natural language processing to enable 1:1 dialogue to deliver a unique travel recommendation for each user.”

Conversations provided real-time advice, tips, and inspiration for travelers, allowing them to prepare for upcoming travels and innovatively interact with Best Western.

According to IBM, The ads result in a 48% lift in visits to Best Western Hotel and Resort locations.

Image source

What We Like: The ads weren’t just visually appealing to get consumers to click. The ads also provided actionable advice and use for customers along with a personalized experience.

4. Coca-Cola

The beverage company launched its own AI platform built by OpenAi and Bain & Company exclusively for the brand.

The platform is called “Create Real Magic” and combines GPT-4 and DALL-E. GPT-4 produces human-like text from search engine queries, and DALL-E converts text prompts into images.

According to our survey, 44% of marketers use visual AI tools like DALL-E.

Combining the program, Coca-Cola created a campaign in which fans can create their own digital artwork based on aspects of the brand, such as the iconic bottle and script logo.

Participants could then download their creations and submit them to appear on digital billboards in New York’s Time Square and London’s Piccadilly Circus.

Pro Tip: When leveraging AI in your advertising, look for opportunities to involve your consumers in the creative process.

5. Chase

Chase Bank has a 5-year partnership with Persado, a New York-based company that applies AI to creative marketing. Chase Bank uses Persado’s machine learning solutions to humanize the company’s marketing copy further.

For example, a digital ad by Chase read, “Access cash from the equity in your home.” Persado’s version read, “It’s true—You can unlock cash from the equity in your home.” Persado’s version was a bigger hit with customers.

Pro Tip: While some AI solutions can write excellent marketing copy, you should still look to seasoned writers and copy editors to review AI-generated content to ensure the copy is accurate and aligned with your brand’s voice.

6. Dept and Hello Monday

Digital agencies Dept and Hello Monday teamed up to create an AI-powered advertising campaign using vacant shopfronts. The campaigns involved an AI “Shoe Mirror” that turns empty stores into interactive ads that generate revenue.

The Shoe Mirror appears on empty storefronts and analyzes the clothes of passersby to find shoes that match their outfits. The mirror then “places” the shoes on the feet via augmented reality.

Furthermore, the Shoe Mirror provides a QR code allowing passersby to purchase the shoes from within the display.

Image source

What We Like: This AI advertising is personalized and revenue-generating. It doesn’t make consumers feel like they’re being explicitly advertised to. Instead, it comes across as helping consumers by finding items that complement their attire.

7. Heinz

Heinz partnered with Rethink Ideas, a creative agency, to create a series of AI-generated advertising visuals.

The campaign started the team at Rethink Ideas began playing around with AI image generator DALL-E 2 and noticed that prompts related to ketchup yielded images that looked almost exactly like Heinz ketchup.

The agency then asked consumers to share their AI prompts for ketchup images. The best prompts were featured on social media and in print ads.

Image source

What We Like: This use of AI allows consumers to have fun and participate in the creative process. Furthermore, it’s a clever way to show how well-known and trusted Heinz is among consumers.

The brand is so well-known that AI immediately “thinks” of Heinz when prompted about ketchup.

AI can be a powerful tool that provides ample opportunities for brands looking for innovative ways to reach their audience.

From generating images to writing copy to gathering data — there are many ways AI can be implemented to personalize the customer experience and boost revenue.

Now that you know the pros and cons of AI and how you can use it, you’re ready to decide if and how AI can push your brand forward.

If your brand has a business Facebook page, you’ll want to invest time in understanding your Facebook Insights dashboard. It holds important data that helps you understand how your page is performing and is key to growing it.

Features like weekly insight summaries and competitive data on other business pages make Facebook Insights a powerful tool that every marketer should leverage.

Let’s dive into what Facebook Insights is, how to access it, and how to interpret the metrics it tracks.

What is Facebook Insights?

Facebook Page Insights vs. Facebook Audience Insights

Where is Facebook Insights?

How to Use the Facebook Insights API

How to Export Facebook Insights Data

Top Facebook Insights Metrics

How to Interpret Facebook Insights

Facebook Page Insights vs. Facebook Audience Insights

Despite having similar names, Facebook Insights and Facebook Audience Insights have completely different functions.

Facebook Insights visualizes incoming data from your business page so you can learn how users are behaving on your page, what content they’re engaging with, and how your page matches up to competitors.

On the other hand, Facebook Audience Insights is used for ad campaigns and helps marketers understand Facebook audiences in general (which can also include those who follow your page).

The platform includes information on user demographics, such as location and relationship status as well as user behavior, including average ad clicks and comments.

Where is Facebook Insights?

To access Facebook Insights, you’ll need to have a business page. Then, follow the steps below:

1. Log into Facebook and go to your feed. From your feed, click “Pages” in the left menu. 

2. Go to your page.

3. Click on “Insights.”

You can track various metrics from there, such as engagement, view time, net followers, audience demographics, reach, and more! To learn the top Facebook Insights metrics you should track keep reading or click here. 

How to Use the Facebook Page Insights API

The Facebook Page Insights API lets you fetch ad data to track your performance.

The API is particularly useful because it allows marketers to pull the exact data they want to track, no matter how granular.

To fetch the data from the API, you must determine what data you want to pull and create an access token for that ad, so that only your team can access that information.

You’ll then need to determine where to import that data, like Google Sheets or HubSpot’s ads software within the Marketing Hub.

It allows you to pull your Insights API into the platform and match it against with data already in the CRM. This will provide a better understanding of the customer journey and give you a 360-degree view of how your ads are performing.

How to Export Facebook Insights Data

1. Go to your feed and click “Pages” in the left menu as you did before. Then go to your page.

2. Click on Meta Business Suite.

3. Then click “Insights” in the left menu.

4. From there you’ll see different tabs that allow you to export different insights depending on your preference. 

Top Facebook Insights Metrics

Your Facebook Insights dashboard displays top metrics about your business page. On any given day, you can get a snapshot of your page’s performance and adjust your strategy accordingly. Top metrics include:

• Reach – The number of users on Facebook who’ve seen your content.
• Engagement – How many people liked, shared, reacted, or commented on your content.
• Net Followers – 
• 3-second video views – The number of times a video was played for at least 3 seconds. 
• 1-minute video views – The number of times a video was played for at least one minute. 
• Page views – The number of times your page has been viewed by Facebook and non-Facebook users.
• Page likes – The number of Facebook users who like your business page.
• Actions on page – How many actions users take on your business page, such as to click on a website link or ask for directions to your store.

For tips on how to interpret your video insights, jump to this section.

How to Interpret Facebook Insights

Before you start analyzing your data, make sure you know what questions you want answered. This will help you narrow down which key metrics to focus on.

Once you know that, start looking through the data to identify patterns.

For instance, let’s say you notice that your how-to posts get shared at a much higher rate than your other content. This may indicate that this type of content resonates more with your audience and adds value to them and their community.

As such, you may want to double down on these posts if your goal is to get higher engagement.

Analyzing the data is one thing, but what’s more important is what you do next. As you notice trends, take note of them and conduct experiments to learn more about what your audience wants.

This will help you learn more about your audience and develop content that meets their needs.

If your team wants to focus on video insights, scroll down to the “Videos” tab on the left sidebar and click on it. Once there, you’ll see your top video metrics, such as watch time and top video performers.

For tips on how to understand your video insights, watch the video below. It dives into how to navigate your video insights dashboard and what your insights can tell you broken down by performance, loyalty, audience, and retention.

Your Facebook Insights dashboard holds so much information about your page’s performance and your audience. If you leverage that data, you can create better content and generate more revenue for your brand.

 

Right now, AI does what we want. But what if it gets to the point where it only does what it wants?

The current AI gold rush might leave many thinking about what AI might look like as it develops.

In this post, we’ll discuss sentient AI, what it could look like, and if we should be worried about a world where robots are conscious (with scientific insight, too).

What is sentient AI?

Sentient AI can feel and have experiences just as humans can. Sentient AI is emotionally intelligent, conscious and can perceive the world around it and turn those perceptions into emotions.

In short, sentient AI thinks, feels, and perceives like a person.

M3GAN, the robot from the movie of the same name, is a great example of sentient AI. She has emotions and can perceive and understand the feelings of those around her, so much so that she builds a friendship with a human girl and eventually becomes murderously protective of her.

Concerns About Sentient AI

Some of the main concerns and questions about sentient AI come from science fiction movies, books, and TV shows that paint the picture of a dystopia with super-intelligent machines that have autonomy and eventually build an AI-ruled society where humans become their compliant subjects. Many of these scenarios also involve these machines developing sentient abilities without human input.

Aside from that, the questions about sentient AI center around control, safety, and communication.

• Control – People can see the correlation between losing control of AI and other machine learning entities if they become sentient because they can think on their own, could ask questions about their autonomy, and eventually break free from the ‘control’ developers, scientists, and researchers currently have

• Safety – If humans lose control over sentient AI, will we be able to trust it once it has sentient abilities?

• Communication – Humans are ruled by emotion, while AI is logic-based. Will communication with sentient AI be challenging because of this difference?

Is AI sentient?

Current applications of AI, like language models (i.e., GPT and LaMDA), are not sentient.

Language models can seem sentient because of their conversational style, but the catch is they’re designed that way.

They’re meant to use natural language processing and natural language generation to replicate human speech, which can seem like a form of sentient cognition, but it’s not. They can’t experience, much less have, emotions.

What if AI becomes sentient? Will it ever?

AI has progressed rapidly in the last year, so it makes sense to think that sentient AI is right on the horizon. Most experts agree that we are nowhere near that happening, or if it will ever happen.

For one, scientists and researchers would first have to define consciousness, which has been a philosophical debate for centuries. They would also need to use that definition of consciousness and translate it into exact algorithms to program into AI systems. Human emotions, perceptions, etc., would have to be deeply understood in a way that makes it possible to give that knowledge to a computer system.

Nir Eisikovits, Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Applied Ethics Center at UMass Boston said people’s worries about sentient AI are groundless: “ChatGPT and similar technologies are sophisticated sentence completion applications – nothing more, nothing less. Their uncanny responses are a function of how predictable humans are if one has enough data about the ways in which we communicate.”

Eisikovits thinks people believe sentient AI is closer than it is because humans tend to anthropomorphize, giving human qualities to things that don’t have them, like naming a car or assigning objects pronouns.

Enzo Pasquale Scilingo, a bioengineer at the Research Center E. Piaggio at the University of Pisa in Italy, also said this. He says, “We attribute characteristics to machines that they do not and cannot have.”

He and his colleagues work with a robot, Abel, that emulates facial expressions. He says, “All these machines, Abel in this case, are designed to appear human, but I feel I can be peremptory in answering, ‘No, absolutely not. As intelligent as they are, they cannot feel emotions. They are programmed to be believable.’”

“If a machine claims to be afraid, and I believe it, that’s my problem!” he adds.

Sentient AI Is Part of the Not-So-Near Future.

It might be helpful to understand the far-off ness of sentient AI by understanding where it stands today. Out of the four types of AI, all systems today are part of the first two: reactive or limited memory AI.

The next type is theory of mind AI, a significant advancement where machines can understand human emotions and have social interactions based on this understanding.

Image Source

There are also three stages of AI, each defined by how closely it replicates human abilities. Despite how long the field has been around, AI is currently in stage one, narrow AI.

The next stage is AGI, which are systems with human-like intelligence that think abstractly, reason, and adapt to new situations. There is debate that language models are AGI, but some say that any indications of abstract thinking or reasoning are learned from its training data.

No existing system has grown beyond theory of mind AI or fully surpassed narrow AI, and there are a lot of lines to cross before it does.

Over to You

Any feelings that AI is sentient can be chalked up to algorithms doing what they’re programmed to do. But, that being said, it’s always important to stay on top of the trends, especially with technologies with short-term high growth.

To stay ahead of the curve, check out this helpful learning path with all you need to know about AI, from AI ethics to cool jobs created around AI (and to be the first to know when AI does become sentient).