Category Archives: B2B

As any marketer knows, social media is an undeniably powerful tool to reach new audiences and connect with existing customers.

In fact, as of 2021, social media is now the #1 channel used by marketers.

But with all that Tweeting, Liking, Posting, and scrolling, it can be difficult to know which platforms give you the most bang for your buck.

Sure, it’s important to ensure your brand interacts on whichever platforms are most popular with your audience, but it’s equally critical you take the time to determine which platforms provide the best ROI for your business. This information can help you determine where to invest in paid advertising, as well as which channels you should use for lead generation.

However, social media usage can shift overnight. The platforms that provided marketers with the highest ROI five years ago likely don’t deliver the same results anymore. That’s why we conducted research to find out where marketers saw the highest ROI in 2021.

Here, we’ll explore which channels provided marketers with the highest ROI in 2021. We also reached out to experts at Talkwalker, Socialinsider, Casted, Brandfolder, LiveChat, Sprout Social, MarketingLabs, and HubSpot to determine how marketers can leverage certain tactics within those channels to increase engagement and drive sales. Let’s dive in.

Which social media channels have the best ROI?

 According to HubSpot’s 2021 State of Marketing report, Facebook is the social media channel that provides marketers with the highest ROI.

Over 40% of marketers cited Facebook as the most effective channel for their businesses, followed by the roughly 30% who saw the highest ROI from Instagram, which is another Facebook-owned social platform.

By comparison, the other social channels in the list — including LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, and Snapchat — all ranked much lower, with less than 10% citing each platform as the best channel for ROI.

Let’s dive into each of these platforms to uncover why the top 3 social media sites perform better than others when it comes to ROI — and how you can leverage them.

1. Facebook

With roughly 2.8 billion monthly active users as of 2021, Facebook has an undeniably impressive reach. It also offers advertising opportunities to more than 200 million businesses, making it one of the most popular advertising platforms.

With Facebook, marketers can advertise on a user’s News Feed, via Messenger or video, and more. Marketers can also leverage Facebook Lead Ads to encourage Facebook users to fill out a lead generation form without leaving the social platform.

One of the major benefits of Facebook’s advertising tools is its segmentation abilities. You can target your ads towards certain audiences depending on interests, demographics, behaviors, or even connection to your business — like whether they’ve attended one of your events, or have friends who’ve liked your Business Page. These targeting capabilities can help your business reach users who are most likely to purchase your product or service.

Nicole Ondracek, HubSpot’s Paid Advertising Marketing Manager, agrees that Facebook is an incredibly viable channel. She told me, “At HubSpot, Facebook is a valuable channel for us in driving return on ad spend. A main reason why is that we can provide our content to a relevant audience using Facebook’s audience targeting features. For instance, Facebook’s lookalike audiences allow us to go after people who look like our current customers.”

“Facebook’s algorithm is great at finding similar audiences who are likely to convert, which is why we see a positive return on investment going after these types of audiences.”

Take a look at HubSpot’s How to Run Facebook Ads: A Step-by-Step Guide to Advertising on Facebook to learn how to set up your own Facebook ads.

2. Instagram

With over one billion Instagram users, it’s unsurprising that Instagram is second in this list when it comes to ROI. Instagram offers marketers the ability to increase reach, engagement, and sales through a variety of methods, including Instagram Shoppable ads, Stories, branded content, Reels, and more.

The platform has proven a viable strategy for businesses. In fact, 90% of users follow a business on Instagram, and 50% of users are more interested in a brand after seeing ads for it on Instagram.

So … why doesn’t it surpass Facebook for generating ROI?

Most likely, Instagram falls short of producing strong ROI due to its more intangible metrics — such as brand awareness, reputation, loyalty, and consumer engagement.

For instance, an Instagram user might never click on one of your business’ ads directly from the platform. Instead, perhaps the ad simply increases a user’s awareness of your brand. Down the road, perhaps they click on your website after seeing a Google ad. Certain metrics are difficult to attribute to Instagram, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a good idea for your business.

3. LinkedIn

Despite only roughly 10% of marketers rating LinkedIn as their top channel for ROI, LinkedIn is an incredibly effective channel for lead generation and nurturing. Over 750 million professionals use LinkedIn for networking, career advancement, and more.

The platform offers a variety of tools designed to increase your business’ ROI, including Sponsored Content, Sponsored Messaging, Text or Video ads, and more.

To succeed on the platform, you’ll want to create valuable content that resonates with your LinkedIn audience. Conduct research to determine which types of content perform best on LinkedIn — and which content will perform best with your target audience — to ensure you’re hitting the mark here.

Additionally, try running experiments when you start using LinkedIn’s advertising tools. For instance, Cellular IoT Connectivity company Aeris set up an ad plan and tracker to determine which targeting combinations worked best for the brand, which failed, and which generated the highest-quality leads. As noted in this post, “It took rounds of testing and optimization to get to [the brand’s] 25% submission rates.”

Now that we’ve explored a few of 2021’s most popular social channels, let’s explore the strategies and best practices you can implement to increase your ROI across platforms, according to experts.

Which social media tactics or strategies have the best ROI? 

1. Conducting extensive research to understand your audience.

First and foremost, it’s vital you understand your audience before creating any social media campaign. If you don’t do your research, you risk spending time, money, and resources on the wrong channels — and missing out on more profitable connections elsewhere.

As Dan Seavers, Content Marketing Manager at Talkwalker, told me, “No matter the social media channel, the best way to increase your ROI is by improving your consumer intelligence. Get to know your customers better than your family, and understand what they’re saying about your products, and where they’re discussing them.”

“That way, when you launch a campaign, you’ll be hyper-relevant. Not a jarring ad that interrupts a customer’s life, but a well-timed, well-targeted experience that people will engage with instantly.”

2. Creating more video content — and testing out vertical videos.

People love videos – and yet, it seems most brands rely on images when advertising their products or services, and that’s a mistake.

Adina Jipa, co-founder of Socialinsider, told me, “The most underused social media post is video content, which boosts engagement across all social media platforms.”

“Facebook wants to become a video-first platform and favors pages with video content, but for most brands, it is [primarily] a photo-sharing platform.”

Jipa adds, “A recent study about Facebook video strategy shows that only roughly 15% of the content [on Facebook] is video, while photos represent 38.58%.”

To stand out and increase ROI, consider how you might incorporate video into your social media efforts.

Additionally, consider testing out different types of video formats across your channels. For instance, Facebook offers brands the opportunity to create vertical video ads for the mobile-friendly user.

As Jipa points out, “you can use vertical videos on ads to get more clicks. According to this poll, almost 69% of marketers say video ads outperform image and plain text ads on Facebook. 81% of Facebook users only access the platform via mobile devices, so using the vertical video format allows you to get more visibility and increase the chances of getting more clicks. Facebook videos ads can increase the CTR by 2-3X.”

3. Re-using content across channels.

Most social teams create content in silos. Perhaps they tell one message via an Instagram post, and then create entirely different materials for a YouTube video or Tweet.

This undoubtedly requires a lot of time, effort, and resources — which can become frustrating when you don’t see the ROI you need from these channels.

“Far too often, content is created for one-and-done campaigns or promotions,” Casted’s CEO and Co-founder Lindsay Tjepkema says. “This means marketers are working harder and harder to constantly produce more and more, yet ROI and ROE (return on effort) results are disappointing — and social is no exception.”

She continues, “To change this, we must stop creating content for content’s sake and start focusing instead on creating content that educates, entertains, and delights and can be broken down and amplified across all other channels — like social — not just once, but many times over. When you focus on creating engaging content that can be used in multiple ways across channels, you’ll see improved ROI and ROE (return on effort) across your campaigns — including your social activation.”

To repurpose your content across channels, perhaps you post snippets of a full YouTube video on Facebook or Instagram. Alternatively, maybe you take text from a blog post and re-post on your channels to add value from your existing content, repurpose user-generated content across channels.

There are countless ways to refresh and re-use content to appeal to new audiences in unique ways without exhausting your social team.

4. Setting clear goals and devising a social strategy that works for your brand.

It’s difficult to achieve results on social without taking the time to set clear goals for your team, and ensuring you’ve all discussed an appropriate strategy to get you there.

As Brandfolder’s Senior Digital Marketing Manager Amanda Turcotte told me, “In order to achieve a return on your social media investment, you must have clear goals set before any tactical planning takes place. Various social media tactics can be applied differently to each of the platforms, meaning they’ll produce different outcomes. So your goals need to be determined up front to ensure they’re aligned with your social strategy.”

Once you’ve determined your social goals, you’ll want to create a consistent posting strategy so your audience knows when, and how often, they can expect content from your brand. To make this easier, try using a social posting tool like HubSpot’s Social Inbox Tool or Later.

Turcotte told me, “In order to move your team from strategy to action and keep everyone on the same page, it’s crucial to develop a regular posting plan that documents your approach across each channel, located where all team members have access. “

Agnieszka Jaśkiewicz, Head of Social Media & Community at LiveChat, agrees that creating a strategy and using tools to support your team’s goals is critical for finding success on social channels.

As she puts it, “The greatest area of ‘untapped potential’ for most brands comes in the form of streamlining creative workflows to support the volume needed for quality social activity. Digital workspaces that allow creatives and marketers to collaborate from a central location to stage, revise, and produce content limits back-and-forth communication and unnecessary steps in production.”

Additionally, Jaśkiewicz says, “Digital templates for creative assets — set to the specifications of the organization’s core social media platforms — can also add agility to social media managers’ ability to publish, allowing teams to be more timely and quickly act on new opportunities.”

5. Allow your users to purchase your products or services on social media platforms.  

Over the past few years we’ve seen rise to a new trend: social commerce.

In essence, social commerce is the ability to purchase from a brand within a social platform without leaving the site. Examples include shoppable ads and chatbot checkout.

Rachael Samuels, Senior Manager of Social Media at Sprout Social, told me she sees social commerce as a great opportunity to increase ROI on social channels.

Samuels says, “Social media has quickly become a primary communication channel for brands and consumers alike. As a result, marketers must seek new ways to engage with audiences while keeping other goals, such as lead generation, top of mind.”

“One way we’re seeing this unfold is through offerings like social commerce, which not only provide more seamless buying experiences for customers, but equip marketers with the ability to show direct attribution and ROI as a result of their efforts.”

Samuels adds, “To maintain this momentum, marketers should ensure their tech stack enables them to integrate their CRM and social management tools so they can easily surface social insights with their broader sales and support teams.” 

6. Use UTM tags for tracking. 

One reason you might not be seeing the ROI you’re hoping for? Perhaps you’re just not tracking properly.

As Matt Janaway, CEO of MarketingLabs, told me: “Tracking is now more important than ever thanks to the complications of iOS privacy improvements, so to really yield the best ROI, you have to make sure you are using UTM tags on all links. This way, you can correctly track the performance of your campaigns in Analytics.”

Janaway adds, “This should give you the data you need to make decisions that can drive more engagement and ROI.”

7. Encouraging your employees to become brand ambassadors.

One area of major untapped potential? Your employees.

As Casted’s Tjepkema tells me, “Employee activation is a huge and mostly untapped resource for brands. As consumers, we’re far more driven to engage with user-generated content, yet so many brands spend too much time and money trying to only push content from their own brand instead of enabling their employees (and partners, brand fans, etc.) to amplify their content.”

“Rally your employees around the content you’re creating and encourage them to share it with captions that show their unique and personal perspectives. This is a great way to help each member of your team build their personal brand, while also amplifying your content to audiences in a more authentic way.”

LiveChat’s Jaśkiewicz agrees with this notion, saying, “[You should] give employee advocacy a bigger seat at the table in your social media strategy, especially when it comes to LinkedIn. It takes some time and effort to provide people with the knowledge and imply the ‘brand ambassadors’ mindset in the organization — however, employee engagement is a cost-effective way to increase your reach organically.”

HubSpot, for instance, created #HubSpotEmployeeTakeover on its HubSpot Life Instagram account. The campaign helps show audiences the faces behind the brand, and creates a sense of community and authenticity that you wouldn’t find with branded content alone.

Increasing ROI across your social channels won’t happen overnight — but by applying these strategies and remaining dedicated to iterating on your strategy as you collect audience insights over time, you’ll surely begin to see stronger results from your social efforts.

Happy posting!

When a user is on Google and searches for “athletic shoes,” companies like Nike and Skechers probably want their ads to continuously show up for those users online because they’re currently in the market for a product they sell.

But how could they do that when the user isn’t searching for them and perhaps doesn’t even know that their company sells athletic shoes?

That’s where search retargeting comes in. With this behavioral targeting, companies can have their ads show up on search engine results pages (SERPs) and social media sites after a user types in certain keywords.

This is a popular strategy among marketers. In fact, 68% of marketing agencies and 49% of brands have a dedicated budget for retargeting. Additionally, it’s also popular among online users — 25% of online viewers enjoy seeing retargeted ads.

In this post, let’s discuss what search retargeting is, how it works, and how you can use it to reach new audiences.

Continuing the example above, if a user searched for “athletic shoes,” they might go on Facebook a few days later and see an ad for Nike or Skechers. This would mean that the company has set up a digital campaign to retarget users who are searching for athletic shoes in search engines.

Now you might be wondering, “How does this work?” Let’s dive in below.

How does search retargeting work?

Essentially, search retargeting works through automation. Once a user searches for a keyword, certain display ads will begin to appear on their SERPs, social media, and other pages they visit online.

This works by creating a custom audience for your display ads. To do this, you’ll create a list of keywords that are relevant to your business. You can choose to retarget people who use broad, exact, or phrase-matched keywords.

Then, you’ll go to your search engine ads (whether on Google, Yahoo, or Bing) or any software you use to set up your display advertising and use their ecosystem to set up your campaign. The search engine or software will then use their data to retarget those users and display your ads to them online.

The idea is that a user will be searching for a product, see your company’s ad, and then hopefully either visit your site then or consider coming back to your site when they’re ready to make a purchase.

Before we dive too deep into search retargeting, right now you’re probably thinking about site retargeting and asking yourself, “Isn’t this the same thing?” The answer is no, but let’s expand below.

The great thing about search retargeting is that the user doesn’t even have to be aware your company exists. They’ll see your ads because they’re looking for a certain product or service, whether they know of your brand or not.

While site retargeting helps those in the consideration/decision phase of the purchasing process, search retargeting is for those who are in the awareness phase. The main difference is the type of consumer that is being targeted.

Benefits of Search Retargeting

1. Improve brand awareness.

Search retargeting is especially effective at improving brand awareness. So much so, that 70% of marketers turn to search retargeting primarily to increase brand awareness. This is because the audience you’re targeting doesn’t have to know who you are to see your ad. The more people who see your ad that hasn’t heard of your company, the greater your brand awareness.

2. Increase visitors to your site.

Of course, a huge benefit of doing search retargeting is increasing visitors to your site. You’ll be able to attract new visitors to your site that haven’t heard of your company and wouldn’t have otherwise shown up on your site through search retargeting. This is because you’re capturing visitors through the intent of their searches.

3. Convert more consumers.

At the end of the day, you run digital campaigns to increase your ROI (return on investment) and drive revenue. Search retargeting can help with that. In fact, retargeted search ads have higher conversion rates than regular display ads. And it ends up being more cost-effective.

Google Search Retargeting

While you might use a marketing automation tool to set up your search retargeting ads, those will most likely only use data collected from Yahoo and Bing. Google prefers to keep its data in-house, so you can use Google Ads to conduct your search retargeting campaigns on this search engine.

Within Google, this process is called keyword contextual targeting. You’ll use Google’s keyword tool to select your keywords, and you can even use negative keywords to make sure your ads don’t show up on irrelevant searches.

Reach New Audiences with Search Retargeting

Search retargeting is a great way to increase brand awareness and bring more engagement and visitors to your site. Not only does it work, but consumers prefer this type of advertising to other display ads.

When you think of online shopping destinations, Twitter may not be the first place that comes to mind. However, with ecommerce sales continuing to rise due in part to the COVID-19 pandemic, social platforms want in on the action.

On Instagram, business owners can add a “shop” feature to their profile, allowing users to make purchases directly from the profiles of their favorite brands. Similarly, TikTok teased an upcoming shop feature and integration with Shopify earlier this year. Now Twitter is testing new strategies to integrate online shopping experiences into the user experience.

The platform previously had a “Buy Now” button before retiring the feature in 2017 to focus on other avenues. Now Twitter appears to be circling back on this idea giving business account holders new tools for converting customers on the platform potentially turning Twitter into a space where buyers can discover new products while engaging in conversation with brands and communities.

Here’s what we know about Twitter’s commerce experiments so far.

Why Twitter Is Testing Ecommerce Features

In early 2021, Twitter executives announced their goal to double revenue to $7.5 billion and reach 315 million active users by the end of 2023.

Working towards such ambitious goals, Twitter is looking to introduce new revenue streams to help grow and monetize its user base – and one of those key streams is an ecommerce play designed to give businesses the tools they need to drive conversational sales.

During Twitter’s 2021 investor’s call Bruce Falck, Revenue Product Lead at Twitter said:

“We’re also starting to explore ways to better support commerce on Twitter. Our MAP (mobile application program) efforts help us understand how our users are transacting on the platform. Installing an app via an ad is in itself a form of commerce. We know people come to Twitter to interact with brands and discuss their favorite products.

In fact, you may have even noticed some businesses already developing creative ways to enable sales on our platform. This demand gives us confidence in the power of combining real-time conversation with an engaged and intentional audience.”

Essentially, the platform has aggressive business goals over the next two years and sees commerce as a viable way to increase engagement and revenue opportunities outside of traditional advertising.

Twitter’s Ecommerce Test

The Shop Module

In July 2021, Twitter rolled out a robust ecommerce test: The Shop Module.

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The Shop Module will allow brands to display products in a carousel format at the top of the profile. When a user visits a brand’s Twitter account, they will be able to scroll through a handful of products, have the ability to tap in to learn more about each product, and eventually purchase.

This initial test is designed to determine the shopability of Twitter profiles. Though consumers typically visit Twitter to connect directly with brands for questions and customer service inquiries, Twitter is looking to understand what in-app behavior can drive users to make a purchase. As more data is collected, it will be interesting to see if Twitter can see a clear link between conversation topics and sales of related products through the platform.

Twitter has rolled out this feature to a small number of brands across industries based in the United States, and Twitter users based in the U.S. who use the English app on iOS devices are currently able to see it live.

With the feature being deployed to business profiles offering vastly different products, Twitter is also testing which product verticals sell from the platform. See The Shop Module in action below.

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Shoppable Twitter Cards

In March 2021, Twitter also began testing commerce features for organic tweets. Essentially, tweets that feature a direct link to a shopping page or product can generate a new Twitter card with a “shop” button and auto-populated product details.

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When a user clicks the shop button, they would be taken directly to the product page of the account’s website. The shoppable Twitter card appears very similar to promoted tweets. With this feature, Twitter is testing the viability of commerce through organic shares.

At the time of publication, this feature is still an experiment and hasn’t been rolled out to all Twitter users. It has been reported the shoppable Twitter card has been seen by international users and on Android devices.

How Brands Could Leverage Social Commerce on Twitter

Even if your company profile hasn’t been granted access to these new features, now is the perfect time to put a strategy in place so you can be ready to use Twitter’s commerce tools to your advantage.

1. Create organic conversation around products and services.

Consumers engage with brands on Twitter to ask questions and surface customer service inquiries. Start organically aligning your content on Twitter with products and services you’d like to highlight in the space to prepare your audience for what’s ahead with these new commerce features.

For example, a skincare company could start a conversation with its audience on Twitter about creating the ideal skincare routine. The company’s profile could start a thread with educational tweets about each essential step of an effective skincare routine and why each step is beneficial.

The audience would likely join the conversation sharing steps of their skincare routine and asking for product recommendations, creating space for the brand to share more information about its products to an engaged audience.

By continuing to prime the audience with these types of interactions, once the skincare brand gains access to Twitter’s commerce features, they can begin featuring the products discussed and measuring the audience’s response (through clicks and purchases).

2. Select a variety of products to feature on The Shop Module.

If your company profile is granted access to The Shop Module, use it as an opportunity to conduct research on what products best resonate with your Twitter audience. Try incorporating a variety of products at different price points, and regularly assess which products are getting the most click-throughs and purchases.

3. Take an experimental approach.

In the initial stages, don’t rely too heavily on using these new features to drive more sales. Instead, take a more experimental approach to gauge performance with your audience then refine your strategy when you have a more robust set of data.

When rolling out these new features, Twitter has clearly stated it is testing things out to better understand user behavior. Marketers should take the same approach to learn what resonates with their unique audiences.

With social media platforms giving brands more opportunities to sell through their platforms, marketers can find innovative ways to organically connect consumers to products and services they’ll love.

“Your company is one viral moment away from a potential shutdown.”

Yes, you read that correctly.

Imagine your company is fortunate enough to appear for a few minutes on a national TV show with millions of viewers. You can hardly contain your excitement. All eyes are on you. There’s no turning back. 

Your excitement soon turns to horror, however, when you realize your company isn’t ready for this type of attention. Suddenly, a surge in traffic to your company’s website causes it to crash. Team members quit from the stress of performing under pressure. Vendors threaten to sue you for late payments. Customers are angry because their orders are either incorrect or weren’t provided on-time.

What took you years to build has effectively been destroyed overnight. 

How can a successful organization good enough to land a coveted spot on a TV show succumb so quickly? The answer lies in Marketing vs. Operations.

The Paradigm Shift from Not Enough Customers to Too Many 

When an organization officially opens its doors for business, marketing-related activities tend to be the primary focus. And it makes sense. After all, if no one knows about your product or service, you won’t be in business long. Those activities can include sales strategies, P.R. and social media campaigns, and digital ads that catalyze advancement from the startup to the growth stage of business. 

Eventually, if you have a great product or service that customers want, you’ll see a return on investment for those marketing activities. At this point, as an organization advances from the growth stage to the emerging and scaling stages of business, the need for Operations becomes paramount.

The reason is that this transition is usually accompanied by periods of unmanageable fast-growth – customer demand is greater than what your company can supply. It’s at this point that Operations-related activities like building the right teams, documenting and standardizing processes, and upgrading equipment and digital technologies becomes a higher priority.

If Operations is critical for scaling, why don’t more companies focus on it?

The answer depends. When it comes to Operations, leaders of small businesses fall in one of more of three categories:

• Unaware: They either don’t know about Operations or they’ve never been exposed to it.
• Uninterested: They believe that Operations isn’t “sexy.”
• Undiscovered: When they try to search for information to scale their organizations, they find the lion’s share is reserved for large enterprises or manufacturing companies.

Let’s unpack each of these.

1. Unaware

It’s no surprise that many founders and leaders (business savvy and technical acumen aside), are largely unaware of Operations – what it is and how it applies to their businesses.

With customers and cash being the lifeline of any organization, special attention is given to customer-facing activities that ensure their satisfaction. This is an anchor against which we can define Operations.

As the diagram below illustrates, Marketing represents highly visible activities that customers tend to interact with directly. It involves making some sort of promise or guarantee to customers who purchase your product or service. 

Conversely, Operations is like the stealthy cousin of Marketing. It represents those activities that ensure customer orders are fulfilled on time, within budget, and within specification.

As the heartbeat of an organization, day-to-day Operations are not necessarily seen by your customers, but they certainly experience the result of it.

Operations teams work behind the scenes to make sure a company can deliver on promises made.

A frustrated client in charge of Operations once told me, following a conversation with a Sales Manager, “They sell the dream while we deal with the nightmare!” It’s a humorous take on the historical divide between Marketing and Operations teams.

That’s why the Revenue Operations movement is so important — it breaks down these silos to encourage transparency while working toward the common goals of customer satisfaction and profitability.

2. Uninterested

Founders and CEOs are known for being big-picture, strategic visionaries. The thought of getting bogged down by details isn’t necessarily their strength or interest. It’s part of the reason why Operations can take a back seat to the more visible initiatives offered by the Marketing department.

But there’s another culprit — small business event planners. Attend any small business seminar, webinar, or conference, and your chances of seeing an Operations topic included is slim to none. This omission creates a knowledge gap for leaders of small businesses and causes disinterest.

Through personal conversations and informal surveys, I’ve learned that a shockingly high percentage of these event planners think, “Operations is boring.” I’ve also had many of them tell me that, “No one is interested.” And perhaps most egregiously that, gasp, “Operations just isn’t sexy.” This type of thinking is dangerous and does a disservice to those seeking resources to scale to the next level. 

Consider these stats from the U.S. Small Business Administration:

• 81% of businesses are sole-proprietorships
• 32% of small businesses fail within the first two years
• 51% of small businesses fail by year five
• 67% will fail by year 10

I’ve often argued that more businesses could graduate from sole-proprietorships if they had a better understanding of Operations. This means job creation which has a net positive effect on local communities and economies.

I also believe that more businesses can avoid failure if they had a solid Operations foundation. Yes, there are number of reasons why a business fails. But the reasons why they fail within the first five years versus years five through ten can vary significantly.

There are businesses that fail not from a lack of customers or poor cash flow, but because they have too many customers.

3. Undiscovered

When small business leaders proactively seek resources to scale, they often find that those resources are not written or formulated with them in mind. Plus, if they are lucky enough to find resources for small businesses, it’s usually for those selling tangible goods.

Where can service-based businesses go for guidance on scaling without failing? 

Learning about frameworks like Lean and Six Sigma can be intimidating and sometimes too “corporate” for a small business’ needs. Thankfully, there’s a growing faction within the Operations community who are actively working to make this information accessible to small businesses. 

Learn More about Operations for small businesses in HubSpot’s RevOps & Operations Community

 Dr. Jeffrey K. Liker is one of them and he was careful to be more inclusive in the second edition of his critically acclaimed book, The Toyota Way.

Listen to my interview with Dr. Liker to learn more:

Ignore Operations at Your Own Risk: Cautionary Tales

Perhaps Kyle Jepson, Senior Inbound Sales Professor at HubSpot, said it best: “Operational failures are dramatic and visible. Operational success is invisible.” 

He’s right. There’s no shortage of examples of companies that, to their detriment, chose to ignore the due diligence and rigor required for sustainable Operations and continued to focus on the outward appearances that great Marketing afforded them.

One example is Ample Hills Creamery. Once known as “Brooklyn’s most beloved” establishment, this local New York ice cream shop caught the attention of Disney’s CEO. Soon, they landed a contract with Disney World only to lose it all a couple of years later as they hemorrhaged money despite enjoying a steady flow of customers.

One of their investors, Greg O’Connell noted, “It was a fairy tale. They were kind of living in a dream world because their marketing was so great.” Their failure resulted in bankruptcy, but other more severe failures land leaders in jail.

 Elizabeth Holmes (Theranos), Adam Neumann (WeWork), Billy McFarland (Fyre Festival), and Trevor Milton (Nikola) are highly visible examples of leaders who, despite receiving warnings, continued to mislead and defraud investors and customers only to find themselves either incarcerated or facing serious allegations.

Examine the back office of any wildly successful company and you will find ironclad Operations: solid teams backed by standardized, streamlined, and efficient processes and technologies. Operations pairs with innovation, and both are imbued into the fabric of the companies that are both profitable and sustainable.

Achieving this balance with Marketing is critical. This is what marketing expert Andrea D. Smith and I talked about on an episode of the Business Infrastructure podcast:

Business is complicated. It requires a constant balancing of not just Marketing and Operations, but all aspects of business. Don’t silo or sacrifice one group for the other. Attracting a steady flow of customers is fruitless unless you can also guarantee customer satisfaction.

Join the quest to change the narrative about back-office activities. Operations is savvy, sophisticated, and smart. And that’s very sexy!

If you’re working in digital marketing for a business with an online presence (which, let’s be real, is most businesses these days), there’s a good chance that you live in dread of the infamous “Google algorithm update.”

Many marketers see this periodic switch-up in Google’s algorithm as a lurking nemesis out to slash their metrics and banish traffic.

The typical response? Every time Google comes out with an algorithm update, SEO specialists and thought leaders try to decode and decipher the algorithm’s secrets to find out what makes it tick. The idea is that, if you can figure it out, you can reorganize your SEO and content strategy to regain (or surpass) your pre-algorithm rankings.

This might seem like the best plan of attack. However, I believe this metrics-hungry, beat-the-algorithm mentality just ends up hurting companies in the long run. It’s inefficient, it distracts from the true purpose of SEO, and it ultimately wastes your company’s time and money.

My take? While algorithm updates shouldn’t be minimized (because they can negatively effect businesses), they also shouldn’t be feared. I believe we should work with the algorithms, not against them, ultimately creating a win-win: a better experience for users and a more successful web presence for deserving businesses.

Let’s explore how to do that next.

Algorithm Updates Improve User Experience

Because the digital landscape is constantly changing, businesses have to accept that these algorithm updates aren’t going anywhere. They are happening, and will continue to happen, indefinitely. And that is okay … and what we, as search engine customers, should want too!

The first step in working with Google algorithm updates is to understand why they happen in the first place. These updates are designed to create a better internet experience for both businesses and consumers.

The idea is to make browsers “smarter” so that internet users are able to find what they’re looking for faster, and with less effort.

Sounds great in theory, right? Under this model, businesses find the right customers and vice versa. If it’s an improvement for the user, it should be an improvement for you.

The problems start when we begin to analyze and crunch numbers after a post-algorithm-update …  

Don’t Get Caught Up In The Metrics Game

For many SEO managers, numbers are everything — total organic clicks, bounce rates, keyword rankings, impressions, the list goes on. And for good reason! This data helps us to understand what’s going on on the other side of the screen.

However, when this data becomes the end goal, we get into trouble. A lot of times, from an SEO standpoint, there’s a tunnel-vision focus on metrics and traffic, which leads to tilted strategies purely bent on maximizing the wrong numbers.

But, here’s the thing — higher rankings on Google aren’t necessarily great for business. Yes, they look great on a quarterly report. Yes, they’re easy to track. But do impressions necessarily convert to leads? No. These numbers turn into a sort of meaningless trophy rather than a useful tool.

Let’s take a look at an example to highlight what I mean.

Lower Traffic Could Mean Higher Revenue

Over a period of time, I worked with a business that had two sides to their site: user-generated content, and professionally-generated content. The user-generated content was produced in higher volumes, but also tended to be lower quality.

Every time there was an algorithm update, the user-generated side of their business was impacted negatively. They lost significant chunks of their traffic, time and time again. However, the company’s overall revenue simultaneously increased.

Why? Because the other side of their business was benefiting. The high-quality, professionally-generated content was favored by the algorithm because it was closer to what internet users were actually looking for. Therefore, it benefitted when its lower-quality competitors were demoted.

To me, this is the perfect argument for why businesses should spend time creating a great product rather than putting a laser-focus on SEO hacks or metrics. If you create an effective website with relevant content, the clicks will come organically.  

Stay Focused on the User

Ultimately, the solution sounds too good to be true — stay focused on who the user is and what the user wants to find on your site.

Rather than asking yourself, “Do we deserve to be #1 because we have the most keywords or the best backlinks?”, ask yourself, “Are we the best solution for what the user would want? Do we deserve to be #3 from a user standpoint?”

The way Google algorithms are headed, I believe that focusing on the actual service or product over the minutiae of SEO is the secret to creating a successful business.

This is what I termed “Product-Led SEO” in my book with the same name. This approach upends the whole premise of marketing the product to promote adoption.

Instead, the shift focuses on getting a great product into the hands of users who get excited enough to become marketing agents on the product’s behalf. In this paradigm, there may also be innate triggers within the product that encourage sharing, thereby forcing the hand of the user.

Algorithm Updates Aren’t Your Enemy

In the end, Google Algorithm updates are a fact of life. The sooner everyone can accept this and learn to work with the updates, not against them, the sooner they will find successful strategies.

The key to “going with the flow” is to take a good, long look at which direction the water is going. And, from everything I’ve seen, the proverbial algorithmic river is flowing straight towards the direction of Product-Led SEO. In my opinion, every good SEO strategy will follow.

Start by talking to users. Get in touch with what your customers want. What are they looking for? What do they like? What makes them click on a CTA? What cues do they use to navigate a site? Once you have a good handle on the needs of the user, you can begin to create a site that naturally rises above the algorithmic chopping block.

When your site becomes more effective, and you are able to connect with the right customers, everyone wins. This is the whole point of algorithms, and finding the harmony between the two will help ease a lot of stress and boost business.

Have you been tasked with the job of creating a request for proposal, or an RFP?

Whether you have no idea what that is or haven’t written one in awhile, today’s guide can help.

We’re diving into the specifics of what an RFP actually is, why you might need one, and how to create your very first one today.

To start, you should understand what all these letters even mean.

 

When your company has a new (often large) project, or one that’s more complex and requires a bit of outsourcing, an RFP can help you get the job done right the first time.

The RFP doc becomes a way for you to quickly uncover the strengths and weaknesses of potential vendors in relation to your project without having to spend too much of your time hunting for them yourself.

RFPs can also give you a sneak peek into different strategies you may not have considered since each vendor will include their own unique action plan along with their bid.

And you’ll have this information before you ever have to commit to the vendor.

Keep in mind, this should not be confused with an RFQ.

RFP vs. RFQ

An RFQ, or request for quotation, is slightly different than an RFP since it’s just the quote itself. Here, companies solicit multiple price quotes from various vendors to compare services based on price alone. While an RFP includes a price quote (along with several other specifics), an RFQ does not detail anything other than price.

As opposed to an RFP, an RFQ is a request for quote or quotation.

Here’s how to understand the difference:

While you’re technically receiving a quote in an RFP, you’re also getting information like the action plan, timeline of completion, deliverable schedule, and the list of services provided as well.

But with an RFQ, you’re only receiving the quote itself for the service or products you’re interested in purchasing.

In most cases, simply comparing quotes is not enough to see if a potential vendor is the right fit for your company, which is why an RFP is more appropriate in these situations.

What is an RFP in marketing? 

In Marketing, an RFP is often used to outsource any marketing activities that could help your brand increase reach. These activities include anything related to marketing that you can’t do internally. 

For instance, if you work at a small startup, you might create an RFP to find a full-service communications and marketing firm to create an integrated marketing plan for your business. If this is the case, you’d outline in your RFP that you’re looking for a firm to help you “increase SEO presence” or “attract social media followers”, etc. 

On the flip side, if you work for a marketing agency, you’ll want to keep an eye out for RFPs in your area related to services you offer. For instance, if you work for a web design company, you’ll want to look for businesses that have created RFPs for web design services. 

What is an RFP in sales?

In sales, an RFP is often created when a business is looking to purchase a product or service to suit its needs. For instance, if an enterprise company is looking for a new CRM software, the business might release an RFP that outlines what it’s looking for, and what it’s hoping to achieve with new CRM software. 

For this reason, RFPs can play a critical role in the enterprise sales cycle. Enterprise companies that issue RFPs are often looking for businesses that can provide them with IT support, security, onboarding and training, and other additional services. To close these larger accounts, it’s vital your sales team is prepared with an RFP response process, and is able to efficiently respond to these large companies within the time allotted. 

The RFP Process Explained

Before potential bidders can submit their proposals, an RFP must be drafted by the company requesting the work. (P.S. We’ll show you how to do this later in this guide)

This gives potential contractors a better idea of what your company is looking for.

Once your RFP is sent out, contractors or vendors can review it and submit their best bids to compete for the job.

In these proposals, vendors generally include the following items:

• An action plan of how they’re going to solve the issue
• A timeline of what you can expect
• Any necessary background information
• How much they expect the entire project to cost

In certain cases, bidders may come back and say specific components of the RFP need to be adjusted based on their experience in the industry.

At this point, you can either review their feedback and create a new RFP to adjust for the changes, or you can leave the original as is and keep it in mind while considering the other submitted bids.

Once you receive all the proposals, it will be almost effortless to compare each one and determine which vendor is the best fit for your company.

Out of the stack of bidders, you’ll want to narrow this down to a handful of your top three, five, or 10 favorites to consider, depending on how many you receive or are interested in.

From here, you’ll want to spend time vetting potential vendors further to determine who’s really the ideal fit for the job.

Some companies may request one more best and final offer from their top vendors after they’ve started this negotiation process to ensure they’re not only getting the right person or company for the job, but at the right price, too.

While this may sound like an extra step, it’s one that may save you money, time, and headaches down the road.

But this also leads us to a big question: Is all of this really necessary?

Can’t you just spend time reviewing two or three vendors on your own?

As you’ll see next, that route is definitely not in your best interest.

Why Issue a Request for Proposal?

Let’s briefly compare these two scenarios:

• Option #1: Spend time finding the perfect vendor on your own.
• Option #2: Use an RFP to get potential vendors to come to you.

Choose the first route, and you’ll probably use your coworkers, friends, and networking groups to help solicit possible referrals for the job.

Or you might perform a Google search to check out the top vendors in your area.

After you review the website of a possible candidate for the job, you’ll craft the perfect message to reach out and learn if they can even help.

Then, you’ll have to explain the specifics of your project and you may or may not ask them to submit a proposal before deciding to choose them for your project.

It’s not a complicated process, but did we mention you have to repeat it for every promising referral or vendor you come across?

Imagine how long that’s going to take!

Now, what if these potential contractors already knew your project details and they came back with their best plan of action and a formal bid for you to review?

So instead of having to explain your needs each time, you would simply outline it once, and send it out to the masses.

And to save you even more time, it would be up to potential contractors — not you — to reach out.

The RFP route also gives you a sneak peek into each vendor’s real plan of action, not the one they talk you into over the phone or in person.

Since potential candidates have to submit a formal bid, they’ll need to spend time outlining the solution and really working through the problem at hand.

And if they don’t, you have an easy way to weed out vendors and cut through the stack of options fairly quickly.

But, to get to this point, you can’t make this next mistake.

Here’s What Not To Do With an RFP

If you want to find the right vendor, you need your RFP to be specific.

Only asking “yes” or “no” questions won’t get you anywhere.

That’s why you must create specific questions that require thoughtful answers.

Try to use sentences similar to these:

• Can you share an example of how you’ve solved this problem or a similar one for another company? Did you encounter any unforeseen roadblocks? What would you do the same or differently this time?

• With your proposed redesign, how long would it take a non-tech savvy person to complete the new registration form? How much time do you estimate this could save?

With these tips in mind, you’re ready to draft your first RFP.

How to Write an RFP

Here’s the basic structure of an RFP and what to include in yours:

1. Project Overview

Before you go into the specifics of your company, you should give a brief introduction to the project itself so vendors know right away if it’s something worth bidding on.

2. Your Company Background

This shouldn’t be a long history of your company. Rather, it should give contractors a better idea of what your company does and who you serve as a target market.

3. The Goals of Your Project

Clearly identify what you hope to accomplish with this project and what you see as a “win” so everyone is on the same page.

4. Project Scope

The details of the project are essential in an RFP. In the same way you don’t want to use vague questions, a vague project scope won’t help you find the right vendor either.

Spend time really detailing your project scope so there’s no surprises later on.

5. Target Deliverable Schedule

Even if your deadlines aren’t super tight, you should still have a target deliverable schedule in mind. This needs to be included in your RFP so potential vendors can properly gauge if they have the resources and bandwidth to complete the job on time.

6. Possible Roadblocks

Don’t hide your existing or potential issues under the proverbial rug if you want them to disappear. A successful RFP is explicitly clear about any technical issues or possible roadblocks, such as: Are you dealing with custom coding or an outdated platform? Does your team have limited resources?

By explaining these up front, potential vendors will know exactly what they’re getting into.

You’ll also naturally weed out contractors who can’t handle the task due to those constraints.

But you’ll also connect with companies that know how to work around these common issues with skill and finesse.

Remember, it’s far better to find this out now than after you’ve accepted the bid and started work.

7. Budget Constraints

It’s also important to be upfront with your budget too. The more you can eliminate surprises, the better for all parties involved.

8. What You’re Looking For in Potential Vendors

Another way to reduce or eliminate surprises is to explain exactly what you’re looking for in potential contractors.

All you have to do is outline what matters most to your project (i.e., time, solution, budget, etc.) and show how you’ll be evaluating their proposals based on that.

We’ll show you how this is done soon, but before we do, there’s one more thing to add here: an RFP cover letter.

Just like a cover letter for a resume, an RFP cover letter creates a professional image for your brand and sets the tone for prospective vendors. It signals that they should take the proposal and the project seriously.

The good news is there are a number of tools to make creating RFPs easier and less stressful than you’re imagining.

Sample Responses to RFPs

If you’ve issued an RFP and are collecting responses, you might be wondering what you should look for in effective RFP responses. Here, let’s look at a few examples of impressive RFP sample responses. 

Example One: General RFP Response for Web Design Services

Dear [author of RFP]:

Regarding your request for proposal (RFP), [our company] is thrilled about the opportunity to provide you web design services. Having worked with [brief list of past clients], we believe a partnership with [company you’re writing to] would have a tremendous impact on your customer satisfaction and bottom line.

As one of [client’s industry] leading providers of [client’s main service], you know just how critical this time of year can be for your customers. On average, the cost to deliver is $[xxxx.xx], and [client name] is committed to “[client’s mission statement].”

As these challenges become more common, it is increasingly important to provide customers with a powerful, SEO-optimized website to atttract new leads. With this in mind, [our company] intends to help [client’s name]:

• Create a sleek, impressive website that is clean, user-friendly and mobile responsive to work on all devices, so web viewers have a strong first impression of your brand regardless of the device they use to find you. 

• Help you strengthen brand identity through a new logo and a new, cohesive color palette. 

• Ensure each of your web pages are SEO-optimized to rank quickly, which will attract new customers to your website and demonstrate your leadership in the industry. 

As stated in the executive summary, [our company] intends to help [client’s name] [brief allusion to client benefits outlined in executive summary]. To do this, our team has outlined a proposed set of deliverables, an order of operations, division of labor, and expected dates of completion to ensure the partnership between [your company] and [client’s name] is successful.

[Your company] can’t wait to work with you to help [client’s name] in addressing [client’s challenges described in Executive Summary]. To recap, please see below a brief overview of the services included in this partnership.

This sample response clearly and succinctly explains how the vendor’s service will solve the buyer’s critical pain points when it comes to creating a strong website. By outlining the key benefits, you’re showing the client how you’ll put them first and focus on their needs to get the job done. 

Example Two: Video Production Company Offering Its Services

When responding to an RFP from Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Paul Horton Visuals chose to create a full webpage dedicated to their RFP response. The webpage format enabled the team at Paul Horton to create a full sample video treatment and process to show Anthem what they’d be able to deliver if Anthem chose them. The page also includes an embedded video to highlight the strengths of Paul Horton: video production. 

Proposal Software Tools to Help You Manage RFPs

In this article, we outlined 10 tools to help you manage and create professional looking proposals in less time.

For today’s purposes, the following five tools are great places to get started:

1. RFPIO

RFPIO Solves the problem of responding to RFPs, from project management to collaboration, to integrating with other software.  Their solution includes reporting dashboards, auto-response features, and automated generation of proactive proposals from within your CRM. RFPIO also includes an intelligent answer library that turns previous RFP responses into on-demand intelligence that empowers revenue teams with enterprise content at their fingertips wherever the work. 

And what’s better? RFPIO has an integration with HubSpot that will automatically sync your RFP with your portal, making it easy to share information with your team. 

2. PandaDoc

To create customized RFPs with your own branding, consider using the proposal software PandaDoc.

Here you can set up your first RFP within minutes and even collaborate with team members using real-time updates within the document itself.

3. Nusii

Similar to other proposal software on the market, Nusii uses a drag and drop editor that makes building RFPs a breeze — especially for beginners.

Thanks to its clean, modern, simple design, it’s also really easy to figure out too.

One of the most helpful features of Nusii is using it for re-working existing RFPs to save you time. Just copy the content from an RFP you like and edit information to fit your new request.

4. Loopio

How do you plan on organizing all the responses to your RFPs?

One standout feature with Loopio is its RFP response library, which gives you instant access to all your answers from previous RFPs. This saves you the hassle of digging around to find what you need in a crowded inbox.

Their magic feature will even help you auto-populate a response if it appears similar to one you’ve already done.

Plus, you can manage your entire RFP process — including sending automated responses — and collaborate with your team all in one place with their intuitive dashboard.

And if proposal tools are out of the budget right now, or if you’d like to try your hand at creating your own first, use this template as a starting point.

5. RFP360

RFP360 streamlines your approach to RFP response management. Their intuitive knowledge management, workflow and collaboration features make it easy to create, review, update and approve compelling responses in a single library. Proposal automation and answer intelligence (AI) capabilities accelerate your ability to answer questions, suggesting the best possible responses and automatically completing them in bulk.

You can also import RFPs in various formats and generate polished final proposals, and integrated extensions allow anyone across your organization to use content from your knowledge library in Microsoft Office files, online questionnaires and forms — without leaving those applications.

Free and Editable RFP Template

Download a free, editable RFP template.

To use this template, simply download it here or fill out the form below. You can remove sections or pieces of information that don’t pertain to your project and add whatever else you need for your RFPs.

Today, most marketing teams are focused on driving traffic toward websites in hopes that this traffic then converts into qualified leads for sale reps to close. But that’s only half the battle.

Getting more out of existing traffic and leads (versus entirely new traffic) can propel companies toward long-term, sustainable growth. That’s where conversion rate optimization (CRO) comes in. In this guide, you’ll learn about the power of CRO, why your business should focus on improving your conversion rate, and how to get get started.

What is a conversion rate?

A conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who complete a desired action, like completing a web form, signing up for a service, or purchasing a product.

A high conversion rate means your website is well-designed, formatted effectively, and appealing to your target audience. A low conversion rate could be the result of a variety of factors related to either website performance or design. Slow load times, a broken form, or copy that doesn’t convey the value of the offer are common reasons for a poor conversion rate. 

What is a good conversion rate?

A “good” conversion rate depends on your industry, niche, goals, traffic channel, and audience demographics, among other factors. For example, the average conversion rate of ecommerce sites globally was 2.17% in the third quarter of 2020, which was down from 2.37% the previous year. The ecommerce conversion rate in the US was higher, however, at 2.57%.

The average not only differs by year and by country — it also differs by niche. For example, the average conversion rate of ecommerce sites in the food and beverage sector is 5.5% whereas the average in the haircare sector is 3.5%. 

If your conversion rate is lower than you’d like — maybe it’s below average in your industry, or lower than your top competitors, or simply underperforming against your own goals — then it’s time to optimize. 

What is CRO?

Conversion rate optimization, or CRO, is the process of enhancing your website and content to boost conversions. 

The process of optimizing for conversions allows you to boost your number of highly-qualified leads, increase revenue, lower acquisition costs, obtain greater value from your current leads and customers, and, simply, grow better.

Conversions can happen all over your website: on your homepage, pricing page, blog, landing pages, and more. To maximize the potential of converting website visitors into paying customers, you should optimize each location. 

Before we take a look at the benefits of CRO, let’s walk through how to calculate your site’s conversion rate. That way, you’ll have a better understanding of how much time and resources to invest in a CRO strategy. 

How to Calculate Conversion Rate 

Conversion rate is calculated by dividing the number of conversions by the number of visitors and multiplying that number by 100 to get a percentage.

As long as you know how you’re defining a conversion, then calculating your conversion rate is easy. You just plug in two values and multiply by 100. 

Let’s say you’re defining a conversion as a newsletter opt-in, and you have an opt-in form on every single page of your website. In that case, you’d divide the total number of newsletter form submissions by the total number of website visitors and multiply it by 100. So if you had 500 submissions and 20,000 visitors last quarter, then your conversion rate would be 2.5%. 

You can repeat this process for every conversion opportunity on your site. Just make sure to only count the number of visitors on the webpages where the offer is listed. For example, if you want to calculate the conversion rate of your ebook offer, then you’d divide the total number of downloads by the number of people who visited webpages where the ebook offer is listed. 

Alternatively, you can calculate your website’s overall conversion rate by dividing the total number of conversions for every conversion opportunity on your site by the total number of visitors on your site.

How Websites Benefit From CRO

Here are four areas of your website that have the potential to largely benefit from conversion rate optimization.

1. Homepage

Homepages are prime candidates for CRO. In addition to making a first impression on visitors, the homepage is also an opportunity to retain those visitors and guide them further into your website.

You can do this by emphasizing links to product information, offering a free signup button, or even incorporating a chatbot that solicits questions from visitors at any point during their browsing experience.

2. Pricing Page

A website’s pricing page can be the make-or-break point for many website visitors. CRO can help a pricing page convert visitors into customers by modifying the pricing intervals (e.g. price-per-year vs. price-per-month), describing the product features associated with each price, including a phone number for visitors to call for a price quote, or adding a simple pop-up form. 

Hotjar, for example, added a simple email opt-in popup form on its pricing page and got over 400 new leads in just three weeks.

3. Blog

A blog is a massive conversion opportunity for a website. In addition to publishing thoughtful and helpful content about your industry, a blog can use CRO to convert readers into leads.

This process often includes adding calls-to-action (CTA) throughout an article or inviting readers to learn more about a topic by submitting their email address in exchange for an ebook or industry report.

4. Landing Pages

Since landing pages are inherently designed for people to take an action, it makes sense that they have the highest average conversion rate of all signup forms at 24%. An event landing page, for example, can be optimized with a video of last year’s event to encourage visitors to register this year. A landing page that’s offering a free resource can be optimized with preview content from that resource to encourage visitors to download it.

Now that you know where you can optimize for conversions, you may be wondering how you know when your business is ready to start the process.

When is CRO right for your business?

The short answer: CRO is important for any business online. That’s because, no matter how established or large your company is, you want to convert your website visitors into qualified leads, customers, and brand advocates — and you want to do so in the most effective, impactful, and reliable way.

With conversion rate optimization, you’ll get more out of your existing website traffic while ensuring you’re targeting qualified leads.

Although this is a straightforward concept, setting a conversion goal isn’t as easy as saying, “This page converted 50 people this month, so we want to convert 100 people next month.”

You don’t just want 50 more conversions from a webpage. Instead, you want 50 more conversions for every X amount of people who visit it. (This is your conversion rate — the percentage of people who convert on your website based on how many people have touched it).

To provide a better understanding of where you stand at any point in time in regards to conversion rate, here are three commonly-used formulas your business can use to understand, analyze, and improve.

CRO Calculation 1: Conversion Rate

As we mentioned earlier, to calculate conversion rate, you must divide your number of conversions (or leads generated) by your number of visitors (or web traffic), and then multiply that number by 100 to get the percentage.

Leads Generated ÷ Website Traffic x 100 = Conversion Rate %

CRO Calculation 2: Number of Net New Customers

To calculate your number of net new customers, you’ll want to divide your net revenue goal by your average sales price.

New Revenue Goal ÷ Average Sales Price = Number of New Customers

CRO Calculation 3: Lead Goal

And lastly, to calculate your lead goal, take your number of new customers and divide it by your lead-to-customer close rate (which is your total number of leads divided by total number of customers) percentage.

Number of New Customers ÷ Lead-to-Customer Close Rate % = Lead Goal

Here’s an example of these formulas in action:

If your website has 10,000 visitors per month that generate 100 leads — and subsequently, 10 customers each month — the website visitor-to-lead conversion rate would be 1%.

What if you wanted to generate 20 customers each month?

You could try to get 20,000 visitors to your website and hope that the quality of your traffic doesn’t decrease — although, that’s a risk you’ll likely want to avoid. Rather, you could obtain more leads from your existing traffic by optimizing your conversion rate. This is less risky and is more likely to produce better results for your bottom line.

For instance, if you increase your conversion rate from 1% to 2%, you’d double your leads and your customers. The following table is proof of this — you can see the positive impact that results from increasing your website’s conversion rate:

Company	a	B	c
Monthly Site Traffic	10,000	10,000	10,000
Conversion Rate	1%	2%	3%
Leads Generated	100	200	300
New Customers	10	20	30

Notice the drastic increases in number of leads generated and net new customers when you boost your conversion rate.

Not only that, but it’s clear that generating more website traffic isn’t necessarily the right approach when trying to improve your conversion rate — in fact, this chart shows you that you can grow your business substantially without increasing traffic at all.

Hard to believe? Think about this way: Pretend you were trying to fill up a leaky bucket. If you pour more water into the bucket, you won’t fix the root cause of the issue — instead, you’ll end up with a lot of water that’s wasted (not to mention, a bucket that will never fill up all the way).

Are you ready to take the first steps toward CRO at your company? Review the strategies below and start experimenting.

CRO Marketing Strategies to Try

Here are some applicable conversion rate optimization marketing strategies to test and implement at your company.

1. Create text-based CTAs within blog posts.

While it’s considered a best practice to include CTAs in a blog post, they sometimes fail to entice visitors to take your desired course of action. Why?

Banner blindness is a real phenomenon related to people becoming accustomed to ignoring banner-like information on websites. This lack of attention coupled with the fact site visitors don’t always read all the way to the bottom of a blog post (rather, they “snack” on content), means a different approach is required.

That’s where the text-based CTA comes in handy. Here at HubSpot, we ran a test with text-based CTAs — a standalone line of text linked to a landing page and styled as an H3 or an H4 — to see if they would convert more traffic into leads than regular CTAs located at the bottom of a web page.

In HubSpot’s limited test of 10 blog posts, regular end-of-post banner CTAs contributed an average of just 6% of leads that the blog posts generated, whereas up to 93% of a post’s leads came from the anchor-text CTA alone.

2. Add lead flows on your blog.

A lead flow is another conversion rate optimization element you can include on your site. Lead flows are high-converting pop-ups designed to attract attention and offer value.

You can select from a slide-in box, drop-down banner, or pop-up box, depending on your offer. We experimented with the slide-in box on the HubSpot Blog back in 2016 and it achieved a 192% higher clickthrough rate and 27% more submissions than a regular CTA at the bottom of a blog post.

3. Run tests on your landing pages.

Landing pages are an important part of the modern marketer’s toolkit and, as mentioned earlier, integral to conversion rate optimization.

That’s because a landing page is where a website visitor becomes a lead or an existing lead engages more deeply with your brand. To optimize a landing page, run A/B tests to identify your best design and content features for audience members.

For instance, with A/B testing you can quickly and easily test different versions of your website copy, content offers, images, form questions, and web pages to determine what your target audience and leads respond to best.

Thanks to A/B testing, China Expat Health was able to increase their lead conversion rate by 79%. One of the most impactful changes was swapping out the headline “Health Insurance in China” for “Save Up to 32% on Your Health Insurance in China,” which immediately conveyed a value proposition to visitors. This proposition was then supported by customer testimonials.

Get everything you need to start effectively A/B Testing your website today.

4. Help leads to immediately become a marketing-qualified lead.

Sometimes visitors want to get right down to business, skip parts of the typical buyer’s journey, and immediately speak with a sales rep (rather than be nurtured).

There are specific actions you should encourage these high-intent visitors to complete so they can easily become marketing qualified leads (MQLs) — and they can take action through a combination of thoughtfully designed web pages, compelling and clear copy, and smart CTAs.

For instance, at HubSpot, we discovered that visitors who sign up for product demos convert at higher rates than visitors who sign up for free product trials. So, we optimized our website and conversion paths for people booking demos or meetings with a sales rep.

Admittedly, this depends on your product and sales process, but our best advice is to run a series of tests to find out what generates the most customers. Then, optimize for that process. The key here is to look for ways to remove friction from your sales process.

5. Build workflows to enable your team.

There are a number of automated workflows you can create to enable your team with the help of marketing automation software.

For example, with marketing automation, it’s possible to send automatic emails with workflows. Then, leads can book meetings with reps in one click. Meanwhile, reps receive notifications when leads take high-intent actions such as view the pricing page on your website.

Or, if you work in ecommerce, you can send an email to people who abandon their shopping cart as a reminder.  According to research from Moosend, abandoned cart emails can be very effective. They have a high open rate of 45%. Of the emails that are opened, 21% are clicked. Half of the people who clicked make a purchase.

Here’s an example of an abandoned cart email by the Dollar Shave Club. 

Image Source

6. Add messages to high-converting web pages.

Use live chat software to chat with your website visitors in real-time and offer support and guidance as needed. To increase conversions, add these messaging features to your high-performing web pages — such as your pricing and product pages — so leads get the information they want in real-time.

You can also make your messaging and chat bots action-based. For example, if someone has spent more than a minute on the page, you may want to automatically offer to help and answer any questions they may have (again, a live chat tool, like HubSpot, makes this easy).

7. Optimize high-performing blog posts.

Again, publishing blog articles opens the door to a big opportunity for conversions. Even more so if you already have existing blog content on your site — in fact, at HubSpot, the majority of our monthly blog views and leads come from posts published over a month ago.

To get started optimizing your blog content, identify your posts with the highest levels of web traffic but low conversion rates. (Possible causes of this issue may be related to SEO, the content offer you are promoting, or your CTA.)

In one instance, we at HubSpot added an inbound press release template offer to a blog post about press releases — as a result, we saw conversions for that post increase by 240%.

Additionally, look at your blog posts with high conversion rates. You want to drive more qualified website traffic to those posts and you can do so by optimizing the content for the search engine results page (SERP) or updating it as needed to ensure it’s fresh and relevant.

8. Leverage retargeting to re-engage website visitors.

It doesn’t matter what your key conversion metric is: The cold, hard truth is that most people on your website don’t take the action you want them to. By leveraging retargeting on Facebook and other platforms, you can re-engage people who left your website.

Retargeting works by tracking visitors to your website and serving them online ads as they visit other sites around the web. This is particularly impactful when you retarget people who visited your highest-converting web pages.

The normal inbound rules still apply here — you need well-crafted copy, engaging visuals, and a compelling offer for retargeting to work.

Take United’s retargeting campaign for example. Using insights from previous ad campaigns, United focused on reaching people who had viewed their ads and were already considering booking a vacation. To this select audience, they promoted a 15-second video ending in a call-to-action.

If viewers felt inspired enough to book their vacation, all they had to do was click on the CTA to be taken straight to the United website. This proved to be a huge success. In just one month, 52% of conversions attributed to YouTube were click-through conversions directly from the ad.

(If you’re a HubSpot customer, take a look at how the AdRoll integration can improve your conversion efforts.)

Now, let’s talk about how you can get started with CRO at your company.

How to Get Started with Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

Maybe you’re wondering, “Where do I start with CRO?”

Enter: PIE framework. Before starting a CRO project, prioritize your efforts by ranking each element on Potential, Importance, and Ease.

Use the PIE framework to answer the following questions for every strategy outlined in the previous section. Then, assign a score between one and 10 (one being the lowest and 10 being the highest) to each strategy.

• How much total improvement can this project offer?
• How valuable will this improvement be?
• How complicated or difficult will it be to implement this improvement?

Once you’ve assigned a score for each strategy, add up the numbers and divide the total by three — this gives a score that shows what project will have the greatest impact. Then, work on the projects with the highest scores first.

The PIE framework isn’t perfect, but it’s easy to understand, systematic, and offers a starting point for CRO collaboration and communication among colleagues.

Frequently Asked Questions About CRO 

We’ve covered a lot about conversion rate optimization, but not everything. If you still have questions, then check out the answers to some of the most frequently asked questions below. 

What is the purpose of a conversion rate optimization?

The purpose of conversion rate optimization (CRO) is to improve the likelihood of visitors taking a desired action on a webpage.

What is a CRO strategy?

A CRO strategy is designed to convert more of your visitors into paying customers. While each CRO strategy will vary company by company, the general steps will not. You have to identify key metrics and your target audience. Then you have to collect user feedback and other data to decide what you’re going to test. Finally, you’ll run A/B tests to improve different pages and parts of your site for conversion.

What are CRO tools?

CRO tools are designed to simplify or automate the process of optimizing your conversion rate. They might help with lead capture, research, analytics, mouse tracking and heat maps, feedback, or running experiments.

What is a CRO test?

A CRO test involves adding, re-arranging, and redesigning elements on your website in order to maximize your conversions. Different CRO tests might focus on optimizing the copy, design, or placement of your CTAs, or the length of your headlines, among other elements. 

Begin Using CRO

There are many “best practices” out there when it comes to CRO but, ultimately, you need to find out what your customers respond to, and what drives results for your business.

Keep these three follow-up actions in mind when getting started with CRO today:

• Use the three formulas to start the CRO conversation.
• Experiment with CRO strategies to discover what works for your business.
• Leverage the PIE framework to help prioritize your strategy.

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

If you want to curate others’ content from social media or just make your own visual social media content work harder for your overall content strategy, you need to know how to embed HTML code onto your blog or website.

But wait a second … before we get into the nitty-gritty of this tip, what the heck does “embed” mean? And what is HTML? If you don’t know how to code at all, no worries — embedding external content is extremely easy. Let’s take a second to break down the basics.

What does embed mean?

Embed means to integrate external content into another website or page. You embed something when you place a block of code — called an embed code — into the HTML editor of another website. When you hit ‘Save’ or ‘Publish,’ the media then renders on the published page.

Embedded content is referenced with HTML. HTML is one of the most basic languages used on the web to design and lay out web pages.

You often see this code when you’re in the “back end” of your blog post. There’s where you’ll add your embed code.

Most social and multimedia websites have an option to generate an embed code right in each individual post. Here’s an example of an embed code for a HubSpot YouTube video:

And here’s the embedded result.

Want to do the same thing on your blog posts and pages? Let’s go over how you can generate an embed code for the top social sites.

Below, we cover these steps in more detail for each platform. In general, you’ll want to:

1. Generate the embed code.
2. Access your content management system and paste the embed code in your HTML viewer.
3. Finished! You have embedded content into your website or blog.

Let’s dive into each step.

1. Generate the embed code.

Before embedding external content, you must first generate an embed code for the post or page you want to embed on your website.

We’ll go over how you can do that on most of the major social and content networks.

Embed a Facebook Post

To embed a Facebook post, do the following:

• Navigate to Facebook on your desktop browser and go to the post that you’d like to embed.
• Click on the three dots on the upper right-hand corner of the post.
• On the drop-down menu, click Embed.

• A pop-up will appear, where you have the option to include the full post and access advanced settings. For beginners, we recommend leaving the options as they are and simply clicking Copy Code.

• Finished! You’ve got your embed code.

Embed an Instagram Post

Want to embed an Instagram post? The process is similar to Facebook’s. Note that you can only embed posts from the desktop version and not the mobile app.

• Click the three dots in the upper right-hand corner of the post.
• A popup will come up with several options. Click Embed, the second-to-last option.

• A pop-up will come up with your embed code. You have the option of including or excluding the caption.
• After you’ve finished customizing your options, click Copy Embed Code.

• Complete! You’ve got your Instagram embed code.

Embed a YouTube Video

YouTube videos can take your blog posts to the next level, and the best part is that you can embed its wealth of content on your blog posts for free.

To do so, take the following steps:

• Navigate to the video that you’d like to embed on your website.
• Under the video, next to where the likes are located, click Share.

• A pop-up will come up with several options, including sharing the post to other social networks. Click Embed.

• YouTube will create an embed code, which you can customize. You can start the video at a certain point or hide the player controls.
• After choosing your options, click Copy on the lower right-hand corner of the pop-up.

• Complete! Your YouTube video is ready to get embedded.

Embed a Tweet

If you embed a Tweet on your website pages or blog, you can generate engagement for your Twitter profile without relying on your Twitter followers. Website visitors can engage with your Twitter content, too.

To embed a Twitter post, do the following:

• On a desktop browser, navigate to the post that you’d like to embed.
• Click on the three dots on the upper right-hand corner of the post.
• A drop-down menu will appear. Click Embed Tweet.

• Twitter will take you to an external page on publish.twitter.com, where you can then further customize the look of the Tweet before embedding it on your site. For instance, you can set it to dark mode and change the display language of the Tweet.

• Once you’ve customized it, click Update.
• Click Copy Code.
• Finished! The Tweet is ready to embed on your site.

There’s another way to generate an embed code for Twitter. Go to publish.twitter.com and insert the URL of the post that you’d like to embed. Twitter will then generate the embed code, and you can customize it using the same process as the last method.

Embed a Pinterest Post

Embedding a Pinterest post can lead website users back to your Pinterest profile and help you grow your Pinterest following. To get started, do the following:

• Navigate to the Pinterest post you’d like to embed.
• Click on the three dots right next to the image (or under the image, if you’re using the mobile website).
• On the drop-down menu, click Get Pin embed code.

• A pop-up will appear with the embed code. You have the option of creating a small, medium, large, or extra-large embedded pin.

• Once you customize the size, highlight the code and click Command + C or CTRL + C.
• Finished! Your Pin is ready to get embedded.

Embed a SlideShare Presentation

While SlideShare presentations are not as popular these days, they can still be a handy multimedia tool for spicing up blog posts and pages. Here’s how to embed a SlideShare presentation:

• Go to the SlideShare presentation you’d like to embed.
• Click Share under the presentation.
• In the same window where the presentation appears, you’ll see the option to share it via social channels. The embed code will be underneath that.

• Choose the size of the embed window and which slide you’d like the presentation to start on.
• Highlight the embed code and click Command + C or CTRL + C.
• Ready! You can now embed the SlideShare presentation in a web page or post.

Embed an External Webpage

Don’t want to embed a social post but rather a web page? You can embed an external web page using the iframe HTML tag.

All embed codes, including the ones for social sites, use iframe tags. This is what they look like:

You can use these same tags to embed an external webpage. Here’s how:

• Navigate to the webpage you’d like to embed into your site.
• Open up the notepad app on your computer. Paste the following code into it:

• Return to the webpage and copy the URL.
• Paste the entire URL where it says url in your iframe code. Don’t forget to include https:// at the beginning of your URL and to place the link inside the quote marks. Here’s what your code should look like:

• Change the width and height of the frame if desired.

• Copy the entire line of code. After, the webpage is ready to get embedded on your website.

2. Access your content management system and paste the embed code in your HTML viewer.

Although every CMS is different, you can probably find the HTML viewer with similar steps. We’ll go over how you can do it in CMS Hub and WordPress.

CMS Hub

In CMS Hub, you actually don’t need to add your embed content using the HTML editor (although you have the option to). Here’s how:

• In your HubSpot dashboard, navigate to Marketing > Website > Blog. If you’re planning to add the code to a website page, navigate to Marketing > Website > Website Pages.

• Find the post or page that you’d like to add the embed code to. Hover over it, then click Edit.

• Click into the module where you’d like to add the embed code. An options bar will appear near the top of the screen. In the right-hand side, click Insert.
• Choose Embed from the drop-down menu.

• A pop-up will appear. Paste the iframe code into the text bar.

• Click Insert.
• Finished! You can edit the width and height of the embed content to customize it further.

To access the HTML editor, complete steps 1-3 above. On the top options bar, click Advanced > Source Code. You can then paste your embed code manually. Note that the end result is the same.

WordPress

To paste an embed code into your WordPress website, use the following steps:

• Access your admin area and go to either Pages or Posts.
• Click the title of the post that you want to add the embed code to. This action will take you to the post editor.
• Click the Text tab on the upper right-hand corner of the text editor.

• Paste your embed code where you want the module to appear.

3. Finished! You have embedded content onto your website or blog.

Once you reload the page, your embedded social post will appear.

Add Embedded Content to Increase User Engagement

By embedding external content on your pages and posts, you can increase engagement on your website and get your site visitors to interact with the content you post on social media. The best part is that it’s easy to do — simply generate the embed code, paste it into your HTML editor, and watch your user engagement grow.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in September 2013 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

The best billboards demand your attention with bold fonts, in-your-face messages, and bright, eye-catching graphics. The best Facebook ads take the exact opposite approach.

If you want to reach and engage with potential customers on Facebook, you need to create ads that blend as seamlessly as possible into the rest of the content on their newsfeeds. This means focusing on simple, high-quality images, straightforward messages, and most importantly: minimal text.

Facebook has found that the best performing ads include images with little to no text. Formerly, they had a “20% rule,” which stated that in order to run an image-based ad on Facebook, your image must contain less than 20% text. It even created a text overlay tool to help advertisers determine whether their images had too many words.

The 20% rule is no longer a requirement, and the Facebook overlay tool is inactive. However, it’s still smart to follow the 20% rule and keep text to a minimum in your image-based ads.

It’s important to note that you should use the 20% rule only for the text contained within images in your ad. It does not include text on your ad outside of images, like the description copy or call-to-action button.

There are a few exceptions to the 20% rule, including images of book covers, album covers, event posters, video games, and some product images that contain text (e.g., a cereal box).

Text-based logos are not an exception to the 20% rule. You should count your logo when deciding how much text to include in your image.

So, why exactly did the Facebook 20% rule exist, and why is it still relevant today? It all comes down to what users want to see and engage with in their newsfeeds. Ads with less overlay text perform significantly better than images crowded with text, so sticking to the rule creates a better experience for both users and advertisers.

Facebook Text Overlay Tool

The Facebook text overlay tool is no longer active, but it’s still wise to carefully choose the text you’ll include in your images.

While you’re creating an ad, it can be tricky to evaluate the exact percentage of text covering your image. The following examples will show you some of the ways you can add text in a way that will naturally generate engagement.

Before designing your ad, be sure to review specs and sizes for your images and Facebook’s guidelines for image-based ads.

1. Ad With Acceptable Text Overlay

Your best approach when creating a Facebook ad is to use little to no text.

In this example of an ad image, there’s only a small text-based logo and no other copy. This image contains 4% text.

An ad with a simple image like this will blend more easily into users’ news feeds and is much more likely to gain exposure and engagement among your target audience.

The best part is that it might strike curiosity because it doesn’t share much; instead, viewers will have to read the description to find out what the ad is about.

2. Ad With Minimal Text Overlay

In this next example, there are two lines of text, bringing the text percentage to 12%. The logo has been removed from the corner.

It still works because the text doesn’t cover 20% of the image. The text also helps the viewer understand what the ad is about.

Nevertheless, consider adding the copy into the body of your ad instead of your image. Since the image and the description are visible at the same time, you can use the body only to describe your offering.

3. Ad With Excessive Text Overlay

This final example is exactly what Facebook does not want to see. It contains a whopping 44% text-to-image ratio.

While the copy is well-written and the offering is clear, this ad contains too much text over the image. The information displayed here could easily be incorporated into the body copy of your ad, creating a much cleaner look in users’ news feeds.

It might be tempting to throw important information onto your images like this, but you risk alienating users who are turned off by busy copy.

Now that you have an idea of what a good ad looks like, how can you put it into practice in your own ad? Let’s take a look.

Facebook Text Overlay Best Practices

The best way to capture users’ attention on Facebook is to use an eye-catching image with no text.

The 20% rule isn’t just an arbitrary recommendation — it helps advertisers reach their target audiences more effectively, and prevents users’ news feeds from becoming overwhelmed with disruptive advertisements.

If you do want to add text to your image, you should use the following best practices for overlaying text over your Facebook ads.

1. Choose the right font size.

Believe it or not, font size is even more important than the amount of text you overlay over your image.

Smaller font sizes naturally won’t take up as much space, reducing your text-to-image ratio. Bigger font sizes will make you exceed the 20% rule straight away, even if you’re only including two or three words. That said, you don’t want to make the text too small; otherwise, viewers will have to squint to read what it says.

The font size you choose will depend on the size of your image and whether you’re adding a heading or a whole sentence. For headings, try to stay under 42 pixels; for sentences, try to stay around 24 pixels. Play around with font sizes to find what best works for the image.

2. Include only a heading or one line of text.

There’s no reason to include more than one line of text in your Facebook ad. You have the body of the ad to include enough context and information for the viewer to click your link.

If you add text, consider only adding a heading — such as an offer, a call-to-action, or a discount. That’ll maximize the impact of the text and ensure viewers see something that will compel them to click.

For instance, “Buy 1 Get 1 Free,” “Apply Now,” and “30% Off” are all eye-catching phrases that will warrant a second look and don’t take up too much space. That brings us to the next point: Choose only the best and most eye-catching text to add to your image.

3. Choose eye-catching, impactful text.

When adding overlay text to your Facebook ad, be sure to choose a line of text that will 1) Catch your target audience’s attention and 2) Hint at the value they’ll extract if they click through to your offer.

In the body of the ad, you can go into greater detail about your product or offer. But in your image, include only the text that will help someone decide whether they want to read more.

4. Use an alternative text overlay tool to see your text-to-image ratio.

While Facebook’s text overlay tool is no longer available, you can use an alternative that mimics Facebook’s original tool. We recommend trying these:

• No Limit Creatives Text Overlay Tool
• Social Contests Text Overlay Tool

They’re virtually identical in functionality, so simply choose the one that’s most convenient for you and your browser.

To use them, upload your image and select the squares that have text. On the right-hand column, the tool will tell you whether you’re above or under the 20% text-to-image ratio. That way, you know for sure whether you’ve added too much text to the image.

5. Take advantage of a grid to align the text.

In a free tool such as Canva, you can typically overlay a grid over your design as you’re creating it. Simply go to Elements > Grid and scroll until you find a grid that best works for your design. (Be sure to lower the transparency of the grid so you can see your ad beyond it.)

Use the grid as a guiding tool for aligning your text and ensuring it doesn’t take up too many boxes. If your grid has nine boxes and one line of text takes three boxes horizontally, then you know that the text is too big. If it only takes up one box, it might be too small.

Without a grid, you might lean on gut feeling only — and while your gut feeling can be of great help, it’s best to approach text overlays with as much exactitude as possible.

The 20% Rule Will Help You Create Better Facebook Ads

While Facebook no longer requires advertisers to adhere to the 20% rule, it’s still a valuable guideline for adding text to your Facebook ads. Keep text to a minimum and you’ll ensure your Facebook ad packs as much impact as possible, significantly boosting your ROI and encouraging viewers to engage with your brand.

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