Category Archives: B2B

Let’s set the stage: I’m about to dig into the best darn pile of spaghetti and meatballs I’ve ever seen. Just as I twist my fork in the pasta, spear a mouth-watering meatball, and go in for my first savory bite…the phone rings. “May I speak to Lindsay Kow-low-witch?” asks the telemarketer on the other end. “This is an important message regarding your oven preferences.”

This frustrating interruption is why we’re here to discuss inbound lead generation — a solution that can save your business or organization from being that annoying, disruptive cold caller that is ruined by spaghetti night.

Let’s start with defining a lead, and then we’ll cover what online lead generation is, why you need lead generation, how you qualify someone as a lead, how to label lead types — such as sales qualified leads, how you generate leads, and why inbound lead generation is much more effective than simply buying leads.

What is a lead?

A lead is any person who indicates interest in a company’s product or service in some way, shape, or form.

Leads typically hear from a business or organization after opening communication (by submitting personal information for an offer, trial, or subscription) … instead of getting a random cold call from someone who purchased their contact information.

Let’s say you take an online survey to learn more about how to take care of your car. A day or so later, you receive an email from the auto company that created the survey about how they could help you take care of your car. This process would be far less intrusive than if they’d just called you out of the blue with no knowledge of whether you even care about car maintenance, right? This is what it’s like to be a lead.

And from a business perspective, the information the auto company collects about you from your survey responses helps them personalize that opening communication to address your existing problems — and not waste time calling leads who aren’t at all interested in auto services.

Leads are part of the broader lifecycle that consumers follow when they transition from visitor to customer. Not all leads are created equal (nor are they qualified the same). There are different types of leads based on how they are qualified and what lifecycle stage they’re in.

Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)

Marketing qualified leads are contacts who’ve engaged with your marketing team’s efforts but aren’t ready to receive a sales call. An example of an MQL is a contact who fills out a landing page form for an offer (like in our lead generation process scenario below).

Sales Qualified Lead (SQL)

Sales qualified leads are contacts who’ve taken actions that expressly indicate their interest in becoming a paying customer. An example of an SQL is a contact who fills out a form to ask a question about your product or service.

Product Qualified Lead (PQL)

Product qualified leads are contacts who’ve used your product and taken actions that indicate interest in becoming a paying customer. PQLs typically exist for companies who offer a product trial or a free or limited version of their product (like HubSpot!) with options to upgrade, which is where your sales team comes in. An example of a PQL is a customer who uses your free version but engages or asks about features that are only available upon payment.

Service Qualified Lead

Service qualified leads are contacts or customers who’ve indicated to your service team that they’re interested in becoming a paying customer. An example of an service qualified lead is a customer who tells their customer service representative that they’d like to upgrade their product subscription; at this time, the customer service representative would up-level this customer to the appropriate sales team or representative.

 

These lead generators are just a few examples of lead generation strategies you can use to attract potential customers and guide them towards your offers. (We talk about more strategies later.)

Whenever someone outside the marketing world asks me what I do, I can’t simply say, “I create content for lead generation.” It’d be totally lost on them, and I’d get some really confused looks.

So instead, I say, “I work on finding unique ways to attract people to my business. I want to provide them with enough goodies to get them naturally interested in my company so they eventually warm up to the brand enough to want to hear from us!”

That usually resonates better, and that’s exactly what lead generation is: It’s a way of warming up potential customers to your business and getting them on the path to eventually making a purchase.

Why do you need lead generation?

When a stranger initiates a relationship with you by showing an organic interest in your business, the transition from stranger to customer is much more natural.

Lead generation falls within the second stage of the inbound marketing methodology. It occurs after you’ve attracted an audience and are ready to convert those visitors into leads for your sales team (namely sales-qualified leads).

As you can see in the diagram below, generating leads is a fundamental point in an individual’s journey to becoming a delighted customer.

Lead Generation Process

Now that we understand how lead generation fits into the inbound marketing methodology, let’s walk through the steps of the lead generation process.

1. First, a visitor discovers your business through one of your marketing channels, such as your website, blog, or social media page.
2. That visitor then clicks on your call-to-action (CTA) — an image, button, or message that encourages website visitors to take some sort of action.
3. That CTA takes your visitor to a landing page, which is a web page that is designed to capture lead information in exchange for an offer.

   Note: An offer is the content or something of value that’s being “offered” on the landing page, like an ebook, a course, or a template. The offer must have enough perceived value to a visitor for them to provide their personal information in exchange for access to it.)

4. Once on the landing page, your visitor fills out a form in exchange for the offer. (Forms are typically hosted on landing pages, although they can technically be embedded anywhere on your site.) Voila! You have a new lead. That is, as long as you’re following lead-capture form best practices.

See how everything fits together?

To sum it up: Visitor clicks a CTA that takes them to a landing page where they fill out a form to get an offer, at which point they become a lead.

By the way, you should check out our free lead generation tool. It helps you create lead capture forms directly on your website. Plus, it’s really easy to set up.

Lead Generation Marketing

Once you put all of these elements together, you can use your various promotional channels to drive traffic to your landing page to start generating leads.

But what channels should you use to promote your landing page? Let’s talk about the front-end of lead generation — lead gen marketing.

If you’re a visual learner, this chart shows the flow from promotional marketing channels to a generated lead.

There are even more channels you can use to get visitors to become leads. Let’s go into depth on these and talk about a few others.

Content

Content is a great way to guide users to a landing page. Typically, you create content to provide visitors with useful, free information. You can include CTAs anywhere in your content — inline, bottom-of-post, in the hero, or even on the side panel. The more delighted a visitor is with your content, the more likely they are to click your call-to-action and move onto your landing page.

Featured Resource

• HubSpot Ebook Templates

Email

Email is a great place to reach the people who already know your brand and product or service. It’s much easier to ask them to take an action since they’ve previously subscribed to your list. Emails tend to be a bit cluttered, so use CTAs that have compelling copy and an eye-catching design to grab your subscriber’s attention.

Featured Resource

• The Beginner’s Guide to Email Marketing

Ads and Retargeting

The sole purpose of an ad is to get people to take an action. Otherwise, why spend the money? If you want people to convert, be sure that your landing page and offer match exactly what is promised in the ad, and that the action you want users to take is crystal clear.

Blog

The great thing about using your blog posts to promote an offer is that you can tailor the entire piece to the end goal. So, if your offer is an instructional video on setting up Google Search Console, then you can write a blog post about how to select your marketing metrics … which would make your CTA highly relevant and easy to click.

For a quick video overview on the HubSpot Blog’s expert lead generation tips, check out our video guide.

Featured Resource

• 6 Free Blog Post Templates

Social Media

Social media platforms make it easy to guide your followers to take action, from the swipe up option on Instagram stories to Facebook bio links to bitly URLs on Twitter. You can also promote your offerings on your social posts and include a call-to-action in your caption. Learn more about social media campaigns in this post.

Product Trials

You can break down a lot of barriers to a sale by offering trials of your product or service. Once a prospect is using your product, you can entice them with additional offers or resources to encourage them to buy. Another good practice is to include your branding in your free versions so you can capture other potential customers, too.

Referral Marketing

Referral, or word-of-mouth, marketing is useful for lead generation in a different way. That is, it gets your brand in front of more people, which, in turn, increases your chances of generating more leads.

Whatever channel you use to generate leads, you’ll want to guide users to your landing page. As long as you’ve built a landing page that converts, the rest will handle itself.

Why not just buy leads?

Marketers and salespeople alike want to fill their sales funnel — and they want to fill it quickly. Enter: The temptation to buy leads.

Buying leads, as opposed to organically generating them, is much easier and takes far less time and effort, despite being more expensive. But, you might be paying for advertising anyway … so, why not just buy leads?

First and foremost, any leads you’ve purchased don’t actually know you. Typically, they’ve “opted in” at some other site when signing up for something, and didn’t actually opt into receiving anything from your company.

The messages you send them are therefore unwanted messages, and sending unwanted messages is intrusive. (Remember that disruptive call I got when I was trying to eat my spaghetti? That’s how people feel when they receive emails and other messages from people they didn’t ask to hear from.)

If the prospect has never been to your website and indicated an interest in your products or services, then you’re interrupting them … plain and simple.

If they never opted in to receive messages specifically from you, then there’s a high chance they could flag your messages as spam, which is quite dangerous for you. Not only does this train to filter out emails from you, but it also indicates to their email provider which emails to filter out.

Once enough people flag your messages as spam, you go on a “blacklist,” which is then shared with other email providers. Once you get on the blacklist, it’s really, really hard to get back off of it. In addition, your email deliverability and IP reputation will likely be harmed.

It’s always, always, always better to generate leads organically rather than buy them. Read this blog post to learn how to grow an opt-in email list instead of buying one.

How to Qualify a Lead

As we covered in the first section, a lead is a person who has indicated interest in your company’s product or service. Now, let’s talk about the ways in which someone can actually show that interest.

Essentially, a sales lead is generated through information collection. That information collection could come as the result of a job seeker showing interest in a position by completing an application, a shopper sharing contact information in exchange for a coupon, or a person filling out a form to download an educational piece of content.

Gauging a Lead’s Level of Interest

Below are just a few of the many ways in which you could qualify someone as a lead. Each of these examples shows that the amount of collected information used to qualify a lead, as well as their level of interest, can vary.

Let’s assess each scenario:

• Job Application: An individual that fills out an application form is willing to share a lot of personal information because he/she wants to be considered for a position. Filling out that application shows their true interest in the job, therefore qualifying the person as a lead for the company’s recruiting team — not marketing or sales teams.
• Coupon: Unlike the job application, you probably know very little about someone who has stumbled upon one of your online coupons. But if they find the coupon valuable enough, they may be willing to provide their name and email address in exchange for it. Although it’s not a lot of information, it’s enough for a business to know that someone has interest in their company.
• Content: While the download of a coupon shows an individual has a direct interest in your product or service, content (like an educational ebook or webinar) does not. Therefore, to truly understand the nature of the person’s interest in your business, you’ll probably need to collect more information to determine whether the person is interested in your product or service and whether they’re a good fit.

These three general examples highlight how lead generation differs from company to company, and from person to person. You’ll need to collect enough information to gauge whether someone has a true, valid interest in your product or service — how much information is enough information will vary depending on your business.

Let’s look at Episerver, for example. They use web content reports for lead generation, collecting six pieces of information from prospective leads.

Episerver provides a great example for what to ask for in a lead gen form:

• Full Name: The most fundamental information needed to personalize your communication with each lead.
• Email: This serves as a unique identifier and is how you will contact your lead.
• Company: This will give you the ability to research your lead’s industry and company and how the lead might benefit from your product or service (mainly for B2B).
• Role: Understanding an individual’s role will help you understand how to communicate with them. Every brand stakeholder will have a different take and perspective on your offering (mainly for B2B).
• Country: Location information can help you segment your contact by region and time zone, and help you qualify the lead depending on your service.
• State: The more detailed information you can obtain without sacrificing conversions, the better. Knowing your leads state can help you further qualify them.

If you’d like to learn more intermediate-level tips on information collection and what you should ask for on your lead gen forms, read our post about it here.

Lead Scoring

Lead scoring is a way to qualify leads quantitatively. Using this technique, leads are assigned a numerical value (or score) to determine where they fall on the scale from “interested” to “ready for a sale”. The criteria for these actions is completely up to you, but it must be uniform across your marketing and sales department so that everyone is working on the same scale.

 

 

A lead’s score can be based on actions they’ve taken, information they’ve provided, their level of engagement with your brand, or other criteria that your sales team determines. For instance, you may score someone higher if they regularly engage with you on social media or if their demographic information matches your target audience.

Borrowing from the examples above, you might give a lead a higher score if they used one of your coupons — an action that would signify this person is interested in your product.

The higher a lead’s score, the closer they are to becoming a sales-qualified lead (SQL), which is only a step away from becoming a customer. The score and criteria is something you may need to tweak along the way until you find the formula that works, but once you do, you’ll transform your lead generation into customer generation.

Lead Generation Strategies

Online lead generation encompasses a wide range of tactics, campaigns, and strategies depending on the platform on which you wish to capture leads. We talked about lead capture best practices once you have a visitor on your site … but how can you get them there in the first place?

Let’s dive into lead generation strategies for a few popular platforms.

Facebook Lead Generation

Facebook has been a method for lead generation since its inception. Originally, companies could use outbound links in their posts and information in their bios to attract strangers to their websites. However, when Facebook Ads was launched in 2007, and its algorithm began to favor accounts that used paid advertising, there was a major shift in how businesses used the platform to capture leads. Facebook created Lead Ads for this purpose. Facebook also has a feature that lets you put a simple call-to-action button at the top of your Facebook Page, helping you send Facebook followers directly to your website.

Get some lead generation tips for Facebook.

Featured Resource

• 50 Facebook Ad Examples We Actually Clicked

Twitter Lead Generation

Twitter has Twitter Lead Gen Cards, which let you generate leads directly within a tweet without having to leave the site. A user’s name, email address, and Twitter username are automatically pulled into the card, and all they have to do is click “Submit” to become a lead. (Hint for HubSpot users: You can connect Twitter Lead Gen Cards to your HubSpot Forms. Learn how to do that here).

Learn some lead generation tips for Twitter.

Featured Resource

• How to Use Twitter for Business (+ Follower Tracking Template)

LinkedIn Lead Generation

LinkedIn has been increasing its stake in the advertising space since its early days. When it comes to lead generation, LinkedIn created Lead Gen Forms, which auto-populate with a users profile data when they click a CTA, making it easy to capture information.

Get tips from our experience using LinkedIn ads.

PPC Lead Generation

When we say pay-per-click (PPC), we’re referring to ads on search engine result pages (SERPs). Google gets 3.5 billion searches a day, making it prime real estate for any ad campaign, especially lead gen. The effectiveness of your PPC campaign relies heavily on a seamless user flow, as well as your budget, target keywords, and a few other factors.

Learn more about how to setup successful PPC ads.

B2B Lead Generation

B2B is a particular business model that requires a particular approach to lead generation.SmartInsights found that referrals are the top source for capturing business leads. Not to mention, effectiveness varies by channel.

Learn the B2B lead generation techniques for every channel.

Tips for Lead Generation Campaigns

In any given lead generation campaign, there can be a lot of moving parts. It can be difficult to tell which parts of your campaign are working and which need some fine-tuning. What exactly goes into a best-in-class lead generation engine? Here are a few tips when building lead gen campaigns.

Use the right lead generation tools.

As you saw in our data, the most successful marketing teams use a formal system to organize and store their leads. That’s where lead generation tools and lead generation software come into play.

How much do you know about the people visiting your website? Do you know their names or their email addresses? How about which pages they visited, how they’re navigating around, and what they do before and after filling out a lead conversion form?

If you don’t know the answers to these questions, chances are you’re having a hard time connecting with the people who are visiting your site. These are questions you should be able to answer — and you can with the right lead generation tools.

There are a few different tools and templates out there that’ll help you create different lead gen assets to use on your site:

• CTA Templates: 50+ free, customizable call-to-action (CTA) templates in PowerPoint that you can use to create clickable CTA buttons to use on your blog, landing pages, and elsewhere on your site.
• Lead Generation Software Tools: This free tool from HubSpot includes lead capture and contact insights features, which will scrape any pre-existing forms you have on your website and add those contacts to your existing contact database. It also lets you create pop-ups, hello bars, or slide-ins — called “lead flows” — that’ll help you turn website visitors into leads immediately.

Example of a slide-in lead flow.

• Visitor Tracking: Hotjar has a heatmap tool — a virtual tool which creates a color-coded representation of how a user navigates your site — that helps you understand what users want, care about, and do on your site. It records visitors and tells you where they spend the most time on your site. You can use it to gather information on your lead generation forms, feedback forms and surveys, and more.
• Form-Scraping Tool: A form scraping tool that collects submissions on your website’s existing forms helps you automatically consolidate all your leads into your contact database, regardless of which form visitors submitted on your website. HubSpot customers can create and embed forms using HubSpot, which automatically populate into your CMS. Non-HubSpot customers can use a form creation tool like Contact Form 7, JetPack, or Google Forms, and then use HubSpot’s free collected forms feature to automatically capture form submissions and input them to a contact database.

Create amazing offers for all different stages of the buying cycle.

Not all of your site visitors are ready to talk to your sales team or see a demo of your product. Someone at the beginning of the buyer’s journey might be interested in an informational piece like an ebook or a guide, whereas someone who’s more familiar with your company and near the bottom of the journey might be more interested in a free trial or demo.

Make sure you’re creating offers for each phase and offering CTAs for these offers throughout your site.

Yes, it takes time to create valuable content that teaches and nurtures your leads down the funnel, but if you don’t offer anything for visitors who aren’t ready to buy, then they may never come back to your website. From checklists to templates to free tools, here are 23 ideas for lead generation content to get you started.

If you want to take personalization a step further — which will help boost your conversion rate — try using smart CTAs. Smart CTAs detect where a person is in the buyer’s journey, whether they’re a new visitor, a lead, or a customer, and display CTAs accordingly. Personalized CTAs convert a whopping 202% better than basic calls-to-action.

Keep your messaging consistent and deliver on your promise.

The highest-converting lead gen campaigns are the ones that deliver on what they promise and create a seamless transition from ad copy and design to the deliverable itself. Make sure that you’re presenting a consistent message throughout the process and providing value to everyone that engages with your lead capture.

The aspects of your lead gen campaign should mirror everything else on your website, on your blog, and within the product that you will eventually try to sell. If not, you’ll have a difficult time getting your lead to the next lifecycle stage. Your campaign should be about more than just obtaining an email address — it should be about developing a new customer.

Link your CTA to a dedicated landing page.

This may seem obvious to you, but you’d be surprised how many marketers don’t create dedicated landing pages for their offers. CTAs are meant to send visitors to a landing page where they can receive a specific offer.

Don’t use CTAs to drive people to your homepage, for instance. Even if your CTA is about your brand or product (and perhaps not an offer like a download), you should still be sending them to a targeted landing page that’s relevant to what they are looking for and includes an opt-in form. If you have the opportunity to use a CTA, send them to a page that will convert them into a lead.

If you want to learn more about how to build and promote high-converting landing pages, then download our ebook on optimizing landing pages for conversions.

Get your sales team involved.

Remember when we talked about lead scoring? Well, it isn’t exactly doable without your sales team’s input. How will you know what qualifies a lead for sales without knowing if your defined SQLs are successfully sold? Your marketing and sales teams need to be aligned on the definitions and the process of moving a lead from MQL to SQL to opportunity before you even begin to capture leads.

Also, be open to evolving your relationship with sales and how you guide leads along your funnel. Your definitions will likely need to be refined over time; just make sure to keep everyone involved up-to-date.

Use social media strategically.

While marketers typically think of social media as best for top-of-the-funnel marketing, it can still be a helpful and low-cost source for lead generation as shared in the lead gen strategies above. The key is using social media strategically for lead generation.

Start by adding links directly to the landing pages of high-performing offers within your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media posts. Tell visitors that you’re sending them to a landing page. That way, you’re setting expectations. Here’s an example from one of our Twitter posts:

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You can also do a lead generation analysis of your blog to figure out which posts generate the most leads, and then make a point of regularly linking social media posts to them.

Another way to generate leads from social media is to run a contest. Contests are fun and engaging for your followers, and they can also teach you a ton about your audience. It’s a win-win. Read our step-by-step guide for growing your email list using social media contests, which covers everything from choosing a platform, to picking a winner, all the way to analyzing your results.

Remain flexible and constantly iterate.

Your lead generation strategy needs to be as dynamic as the people you’re targeting. Trends change, behaviors shift, opinions morph … so should your lead gen marketing. Use A/B split testing to see what CTAs perform best, which landing pages convert better, and which copy captures your target audience. Experiment with layout changes, design, UX, content, and advertising channels until you find what works.

Lead Generation Trends & Benchmarks

So … you’re getting web traffic and generating leads. But how are you doing compared to other companies in your industry? Read on to discover what other marketers are doing with lead generation in 2021, along with important stats to consider.

Lead generation is the top marketing priority.

HubSpot State of Marketing Report 2021 found that marketers report that their top marketing priorities for the next 12 months is generating more leads. Converting these leads to customers is another top priority, according to SmartInsights.

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Marketers are making use of digital automation tools for lead generation.

Digital lead generation spend is expected to reach 3.2 billion by the end of 2021. Forbes predicts that automation will play a large part in this increase, as automation will become a large part of lead generation strategies, specifically when it comes to streamlining the lead qualification and predictive scoring. If you’re looking to automate your processes, discover high-quality lead generation tools in this blog post.

Most B2B leads come from referrals.

B2B marketers say that 65% of their leads come from referrals, 38% from email, and 33% come from Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

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If you’re interested in getting in on this trend, it’s worth considering revamping your referral strategy and helping existing customers bring you new leads.

Content marketing helps drive leads.

Marketers also report that content marketing has helped themsuccessfully generate demand and leadsover the past 12 months. To get in on this trend, readthis helpful blog poston creating content for different stages of the buyer’s journey.

Grow Better with Lead Generation

There you have it, folks. Now that you know more about how to generate leads for your business, we recommend you try HubSpot’s free lead generation tool. Use it to add simple conversion assets to your site (or scrape your existing forms) to help you learn more about your site visitors and what content prompts them to convert.

The basics we’ve gone over in this blog post are just the beginning. Keep creating great offers, CTAs, landing pages, and forms — and promote them in multi-channel environments. Be in close touch with your sales team to make sure you’re handing off high-quality leads on a regular basis. Last but not least, never stop testing. The more you tweak and test every step of your inbound lead generation process, the more you’ll improve lead quality and increase revenue.

If your ecommerce business isn’t offering your customers multiple ways to make payments online, you’re leaving money on the table.

While there’s no way to escape some transaction fees and currency fees, there are ways to reduce payment processing costs and receive payments online for free.

In this post, we’ll talk about the software options available today for accepting free online payments as well as details about how to actually go about accepting those payments.

But first, let’s review some additional reasons you’d want to use a payment processing software.

Why should you use payment processing software?

Here’s a look at some of the advantages payment processing software will bring to your business.

1. Convenience

Convenience is one of the main factors that influence conversion rate. The more steps a customer has to take to make a payment, the more likely they are to abandon their purchase and go elsewhere.

2. Speed

Payment processors can transfer most payments between shoppers and sellers instantly. On the other hand, transfers to and from bank accounts can sometimes take 24 hours or more.

3. Trust

Many payment processors are brands that are globally recognized. If a customer already uses payment software, they’re more likely to trust your payment system.

4. Security

Payment processing companies add an extra layer of protection to online transactions. You can set limits, flags for activity on your account, and sometimes even a time frame to recall payments.

5. Record-Keeping

With payment processors, you’ll have access to your account online and can manage your contacts, recurring payments, and other account activity via desktop or mobile.

Top Online Payment Processing Providers

Once you’ve developed a strategy for accepting payments online, you’ll need to decide which payment processing provider to use. Here are seven of the most popular options:

1. PayPal

Price: 3.49% plus $0.49 per transaction (as of August, 2021).

PayPal is one of the most trusted and widely recognized payment processing companies. It’s free to join and they provide all the tools you’ll need to integrate PayPal payments into your website and set up a secure payment gateway for visitors. Additionally, comprehensive coverage makes the platform a good choice for international companies.

2. Stripe

Price: 2.9% plus $0.30 per transaction.

Stripe offers a wide range of options for online businesses such as customizable checkouts as well as subscription management and recurring payment features. Stripe supports all major credit cards, mobile paying apps, wallets, and more.

3. Square

Price: 2.9% plus $0.30 per transaction.

Square entered the payment processing space by introducing a dongle that sellers could insert into a mobile phone to accept credit card transactions.

They’ve since expanded their software to cover all the major payment processing options and have included some useful tools for online businesses as well as high-street stores.

You can even create a basic website for free and integrate all of their point-of-sale (POS) solutions at the same time. They also have paid options for a custom website.

4. Google Pay

Price: Google Pay doesn’t charge any fees — merchants only pay transaction fees as usual with credit/ debit sales.

Google Pay has a payment tool for businesses, websites, and apps. Google Pay’s APIs work to create a delightful checkout and payment experience for your customers.

If you use Google Pay on your website, you’ll gain secure and easy access to hundreds of millions of cards saved to Google Accounts worldwide so customers can pay for your products safely and at the touch of a button.

5. Apple Pay

Price: Apple Pay doesn’t charge any fees — merchants only pay transaction fees as usual with credit/ debit sales.

Apple Pay can be used on websites, in stores, by app, and via Business Chat or iMessage. It allows Apple users to quickly and safely input contact, payment, and shipping information during checkout.

Rather than having your ecommerce customers look around for their credit cards, Apple Pay allows them to checkout at the click of a button within apps and websites. On a website, an Apple users will simply click “Apple Pay” as their payment option, confirm the payment with one tap (via their iPhone, Apple Watch, etc.), and they’re good to go.

6. Venmo For Business

Price: 1.9% plus $0.10 of the payment.

Venmo For Business is a mobile payment software and app owned by PayPal. You can choose to allow users to pay via your mobile app or your website.

You can set up a business profile on Venmo so users can quickly find your profile on the app. And if you add Venmo to your website, it’ll appear as a payment option right next to where it’ll give customers the option to pay with PayPal.

Once a customer selects the Venmo option at checkout, they’ll be directed to their Venmo app to complete the transaction. The Venmo payment option can be added to any of the pages of your ecommerce site that would also show the option to pay with PayPal, including your product pages, shopping cart page, and checkout page.

7. Helcim

Price: 2.38% plus $0.25.

Helcim is an online payment solution for ecommerce businesses — you can choose to start an online store from scratch or add a payment solution to your current website.

The easy-to-use and secure online payment system integrates on your website, shopping cart, billing system, and/or app, thanks to Helcim’s API. In addition to in-app and via website, Helcim works over the phone, in person, and by invoice, and it integrates with your accounting tools to save you time when it comes to bookkeeping.

Next, let’s cover the steps involved in receiving payments online for free.

1. Create a secure online payment gateway.

There are a couple of ways you can approach creating a secure online payment gateway. You can hire an outside developer or use your website development team to create a bespoke gateway. Or, you can use third-party software.

Setting up a secure gateway is essential. You’re also putting automated processes in place, which will save time on manual processing, especially as you scale your business and handle more transactions.

The more payment methods you make available within your payment portal, the wider the audience, and the easier it’ll be for your customers to send you money.

2. Facilitate credit and debit card payments.

Although it may change as mobile payments become more prevalent, using debit/ credit cards is still the most popular way people pay for products and services online.

You can easily facilitate accepting card payments through established payment providers such as PayPal or Stripe. These will accept the most-used credit cards worldwide — Visa, MasterCard, and American Express.

3. Set up recurring billing.

If you offer subscription plans or ongoing monthly services, the most efficient and reliable way to invoice and receive payments is via recurring billing.

Most of the major payment processing software also includes recurring billing features. For example, Growth Marketing Pro built an SEO tool that charges subscribers on a monthly basis and they used Stripe to set this up.

Sites like Paysimple also offer a suite of tools to set up custom, automated recurring billing if you already have a payment processing system in place.

Using automation is essential. It removes most human error and the stress of keeping track of invoicing and payments.

Your customers can commit to recurring payments with just a few clicks, and you won’t have to worry about manually managing your customer base.

4. Accept mobile payments.

These days, people are often more likely to have their phones on hand than debit cards — plus, mobile payment apps are more convenient than ever.

For instance, Apple Pay has quickly become one of the most popular mobile payment systems in the United States. With an estimated 43.9 million users, you’d miss out if you didn’t accept Apple Pay.

Google Pay, Venmo, and PayPal also have mobile apps with a decent market share.

5. Accept cryptocurrency payments.

If you’re okay with handling cryptocurrencies, it’s a way you can extend your reach to a broader online audience.

Sites like Bitpay provide all the tools you need to accept crypto payments online, send invoices, request payments, and receive money on the go-through apps.

Because they’re a decentralized exchange, cryptocurrencies offer some unique benefits for businesses. You can accept payments from anywhere in the world without incurring currency exchange fees or bank handling fees. There’s also a reduced risk of fraud.

6. Use email invoicing.

Email invoicing is a proactive way to request payments. You can share a payment form through email or add a link redirecting the recipient to a payment portal.

However, there are a couple of issues with this method: Email isn’t the most reliable form of communication, and customers can have trust issues making payments via email.

Expect a failure rate, but it’s a vital part of payment processing for a lot of businesses.

7. Accept electronic checks (eChecks).

To accept eChecks for payment, you need a form where the user can input their information, which you can see using payment processing software.

It’s basically a way to pay by check online. It’s a quicker and more reliable way than sending a paper check through the post, so offering this to your customers will make the process run smoother.

Start Accepting Payments Online For Free

No matter which payment processing software you choose, the most important part is making it easy for the customer to pay. And the more ways they can pay, the more likely your customers will follow through on a purchase.

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

Google’s pretty good at surfacing relevant content based on your search query. But sometimes you need something so specific that a general keyword phrase doesn’t really do it for you, especially if you’re a marketer on the hunt for a particular piece of content.

That’s where a site search comes in handy.

A site search is performed on a search engine and allows you to search one domain – not the entire internet – for a term.

We’ll talk more about why site searches are helpful and how to perform them in the sections below.

How to Google Search Within a Website using Site Search

1. Go to Google.com.

2. In the search box, enter site:www.website.com with your search term.

Make sure you consider the domain and subdomain when performing a site search. For instance, if I search the term “SEO” on www.hubspot.com and www.blog.hubspot.com/marketing, I’ll get two different sets of results.

The first will show results that include all the subdomains while the latter will only show results pertaining to the blog subdomain.

The same goes for the path: www.hubspot.com/about will provide different results than www.hubspot.com/pricing.

With this in mind, it’s important to know where you’re looking for your search term.

3. Refine your search.

For instance, in Step 2, I searched our blog for a broad topic: SEO. Various subtopics came up, ranging from SEO blogging strategies to tips from SEO experts.

From there, I can filter my results by topic or even date.

In the example below, I added “2021” to my search time to refine my results and get more recent data.

Site Search Best Practices

When it comes to a site search, a good rule of thumb is to start wide and narrow down little by little.

This will make it easier to find what you’re looking for and avoid narrowing down too early. For instance, say you want to search a competitor’s site for SEO-related content.

Start by looking up SEO to see the range of subtopics they cover. From there, you can dive into each subtopic and examine which ones they cover more and which ones they don’t cover much.

This method will help you find ideas for your own content and get competitive on the SERP.

Now, say you’re on the opposite end – you have a website and want to make site searches easier for your visitors.

In ecommerce in particular, site searches are very important, as they help consumers find the products they’re interested in.

In this case, here are a few tips:

• Categorize your content on the backend to make search results more accurate.
• Use autocomplete and autocorrect to assist visitors when typing into the search box.
• If the query yields no results, offer related queries the user may be interested in or direct them to elsewhere.
• Optimize the terms on your site to reflect the language of your target consumers. For instance, say you sell baby items and your core audience resides in the UK, your website would likely use the term “cot” instead of “crib.”

How Site:Search Can Make Your Life Easier as a Marketer

There are many use cases for this tool, but here are the most common ones.

• Search for data – I like to use data to support and strengthen my content. With a site search, I can quickly find a stat I had read in an article weeks or months earlier. I can perform a search on our own blog or other sites I visit, like eMarketer, for instance.
• Search for new topic ideas – Let’s say you want to pitch an article idea and verify that your angle hasn’t been covered before on your site. You can do a site search and read all the articles relating to the topic. If you’re a freelance writer, you can also take this approach before you pitch a story to a publisher to make sure it’s original and aligns with their content strategy.
• Surface related content to link to – If you want to link to a piece of content within your own content, a site search is a great way to resurface it or even find some new pieces of content you didn’t know existed.
• Conduct competitive analysis – Reviewing your competitors’ content is plays a big role in developing your content strategy. A site search will allow you to see how your competitors are covering specific topics, from the angle to the length and use of media.

It’s rare that a smaller brand can go up against a big company like Amazon and win. But that’s what Square did when Amazon launched an almost identical card reader for a fraction of Square’s price.

Without undercutting the price of its biggest competitor, Square still went on to completely disrupt the digital payments and finance industry and earn 4.68 billion in revenue in Q2 2021.

Why? Its co-founder, Jim McKelvey attributes Square’s success to its “innovation stack.”

In HubSpot’s first episode of The Shake Up, Alexis Gay and Brianne Kimmel sat down with McKelvey to learn about how Square navigated its competition with Amazon and dive more into his book, The Innovation Stack: Building an Unbeatable Business One Crazy Idea at a Time.

How to Beat Competition Like Square Beat Amazon

Below, you’ll find just a few highlights from McKelvey as well as the podcast where you can listen to the full conversation.

What’s an innovation stack?

[20:13] Alexis Gay: Before we dive in a little bit, can you tell us what is the innovation stack?

[20:20] McKelvey: The innovation stack is this thing that I discovered while I was trying to answer a question that was plaguing me, which is how Square survived an attack by Amazon. … The Square was attacked by Amazon when we were a startup.

At the time, every company that had been attacked by Amazon, whether they were a startup or not died. There was a 100% mortality rate or it had been absorbed into Amazon, which I would also consider. … death or worse.

… We were looking at this very dire situation and we did some kind of crazy stuff and it worked and, and then after it worked, I thought, “Why  did it?” And I couldn’t answer that question.

… I’m a sort of nerdy engineer and I went on this research quest looking for other companies that had lived through similar situations. So I studied historical businesses. … Technology was not the major force, but there was this thing that kept showing up in my research and it was a thing that I labeled an innovation stack. And it’s just this very simple idea that invention is not one or two things. It’s usually this messy conglomeration of 10, 20, 30, 40 things.

Amazon takes on Square

[23:02] McKelvey: [In a board meeting], Jack [Dorsey] was dressed in all black and he announced that Amazon had copied our product and was going to undercut our price, which is what they always do. And he told the board what was happening — and we have very intelligent people on the board and we have a lot of experienced folks — and we were stopped.

… We started iterating through the questions of, “What could we do?” One of the most basic ones was Amazon was undercutting our price. We could lower our price and match Amazon. And then here’s the thing. Those are priced to be as low as it could be and still serve our customers.

… We didn’t actually even do anything. That was different, which was the amazing thing. We wanted to do something because if you’re being attacked, the hardest thing you can do is to not react or maybe not overreact.

[24:56] McKelvey: It was terrifying. And this made it even more interesting when we won for me to answer the question, “Why?” What the heck happened because I was so happy we won, but then I was like, “Why did we win?”

Square Beats Amazon

[27:02] Gay: So Jim, let’s talk a little bit about Halloween in 2015. You got some pretty big news on that day. Can you tell us a little bit, well, first actually, let me ask you this: Were you dressing in costume?

[27:16] McKelvey: I was dressed as the Joker. My wife was dressed as Catwoman and my son was dressed as Batman. The best treat I got that night was Amazon announcing that they were going to discontinue their competitor to Square. And not only that, they were going to mail one of the little white square readers. The thing that I designed.

Why Building an Innovation Stack is Uncomfortable

[34:43] McKelvey: The big insight of the book is that the process of innovation is fundamentally different and it feels different and here’s how it feels. What I tell my readers, or potential readers is, “Look, the reason you read the innovation stack is that at some point in your life, you are going to run up against the edge of human knowledge.”

… When you’re in the process of building an innovation stack, it is so darn uncomfortable. So I want people to have recognition. So first of all, recognize the boundaries. That’s hugely helpful. Secondly, understand when it’s appropriate to copy and when you need to.

[36:28] McKelvey: If you step across that line between the known and the unknown, it’s going to get unpleasant. It will not kill you. It might be really wonderful on the other side eventually, but … your focus is to figure out something that nobody else has figured out.

… How many pieces do you have to come up with before you’ve got an innovation stack that actually works? And by the way, there’s no guarantee that you’re ever going to reach that limit, but you do. And if you do. The world changes. Like it’s just amazingly powerful if you build [an innovation stack].

To hear the full interview, listen to the podcast embedded above, or click here for a full list of episodes.

When most businesses forecast their revenue goals, they first calculate their total addressable market, which is the total market demand for their industry’s products or services. Put simply, it’s the maximum amount of revenue a business could generate if they captured their entire market.

However, unless you’re a monopoly, you most likely can’t capture the total addressable market for your products or services. Even if you only have one competitor, it would still be extremely difficult to convince an entire market to only buy your products or services.

That’s why it’s crucial to calculate the maximum amount of revenue you can possibly generate by selling your products or services to the customers who would realistically benefit from buying your solutions.

This amount of potential revenue is called your market size or serviceable addressable market, and you can use it to accurately measure your business’ potential for growth.

Market Size Example

Let’s walk through an example to explore how you’d determine market size. 

A Startup Wine Company

Let’s say you wanted to start your wine company. Here’s how you would calculate market size: First, you’d want to determine how many liquor stores are in the United States — this helps you figure out the total market to which you could theoretically sell your product. 

After your research you determine there are 50,000 liquor stores in the United States. Of that total list, you only want to sell to the New England area — including Massachusetts, Maine, and Rhode Island.

You determine your target market includes the 1,000 liquor stores in the New England area. From here, you conduct research and speak with alcohol distributors to determine there’s a roughly 40% success rate for wine distribution.  

Using this as an example, we’d calculate market size using the following formula:

1,000 liquor stores x 40% = 400 liquor stores

Then, if you assume each liquor store will result in $20,000, you can figure out potential revenue using the following formula:

400 liquor stores x $20,000 = $8,000,000

This means you stand to make $8 million if you penetrate 40% of the total market in the New England area — however, this doesn’t take into account your competitors’ wine, or all the other liquors available in any liquor store. For this reason, you’ll want to remain conservative when guessing how much of the market size you’ll win. 

How to Use Estimated Market Size

Okay, you have your estimated market size — now what? 

Market size helps your business answer the following questions: 

• How much potential revenue can we earn from this particular market? In other words … is it even worth our time and energy?
• Is the market big enough to interest us? 
• Is the market growing? Will there still be opportunities to earn revenue from this market in 3, 5, 10 years? 

Market size is a critical number to know when you’re looking for funding. Investors are going to need to know how much money you have the potential to make from a given market. Additionally, it’s vital to recognize whether the potential revenue you can make outweighs your business’ costs. 

Once you have market size, you’ll also want to consider how saturated the market already is with your competitors’ products. Ultimately, you can’t capture the total addressable market (TAM) — some of those people will choose competitors’ products over yours. So you’ll need to determine whether you have a shot at earning enough consumers out of the TAM to make this a worthwhile venture.

Work events are really hit or miss. Let’s be honest: How many times have you found yourself anxiously fidgeting with a paper napkin in the corner of a stuffy networking happy hour?

Here’s the thing: It’s not the event itself that prevents you from coming back the following year. It’s the experience you remember having. In this blog post, we’ll look at some of the best experiences brands have ever offered their customers.

I have a big problem with generic trade shows and industry conferences. That’s why I was not only relieved, but surprised and delighted, when I attended a holiday party that featured a live, interactive version of an arcade game.

An entire room had been curated to look like a video game setting, and people were dressed up as characters from it. There was a giant, real-life scoreboard, boppy electronic music, and best of all, there was no tedious small talk.

It wasn’t just another tired work event … it was an experience. And in our line of work, that sort of thing has a name: experiential marketing.

While a surprising number of people haven’t heard of the concept, it’s kind of a big deal — there’s an entire three-day summit dedicated to it, and 65% of brands that use it say that it positively correlates with sales.

But what is it, exactly? And how has it been used effectively? We found 14 of the coolest experiential marketing campaigns that really break down how it works, and how you can apply those lessons to grow your business.

Experiential marketing (also known as xm marketing, engagement marketing, event marketing, on the ground marketing, live marketing, or participation marketing), might sound a bit like event marketing, which makes sense — experiential campaigns do tend to be event-centric. But there are also times when they have nothing to do with a specific event, as you’ll see from the examples we picked.

When an engagement marketing campaign is event-centric, it’s dedicated less to the type of event — like a concert, festival, conference, etc. — and more to interactions between the brand and the customer. (If you already have an event in the works, check out this guide to adding experiential elements to it.)

What do experiential marketers do?

An experiential marketer is in charge of creating and executing on the strategy for a client’s live, interactive marketing campaigns or in-person events.

An experiential marketer’s role is similar to a brand ambassador, event planner, or brand manager, and typically involves the following duties: 

• Brainstorm innovative experiential marketing campaigns to increase brand awareness, interact with the public, and create positive brand perception 
• Perform market research to understand what types of experiential marketing campaigns would perform best with a specific audience 
• Create events or live, interactive campaigns to help businesses effectively connect with its target audiences
• Lead events and take charge of logistics as it relates to event management 
• Track, analyze, and report on all experiential marketing campaign performance
• Work with cross-functional teams including brand, creative, digital, social, and public relations
• Travel to events as necessary to ensure vendor compliance and execution, sales support, and overall event success

Why Experiential Marketing Matters Today

According to Forbes, experiential marketing can bolster a lasting connection between customers and a brand. It can also allows you to collect vital data about participating consumers which can then help you improve your strategy. 

These campaigns can take an integrated approach. The primary purpose is to experience a brand in a tangible, offline way, but you’ll still want an online dialogue around it.

When you consider that 49% of folks create mobile video at branded events — 39% of which is shared on Twitter — it makes sense to incorporate a digital element. A branded hashtag, for example, can get people talking about the experience.

1. Refinery29: 29Rooms

For about three years now, lifestyle brand Refinery29 has hosted the 29Rooms event: What it calls “an interactive funhouse of style, culture, & technology.” As the name suggests, it consists of 29 individually branded and curated rooms — and attendees can experience something different in each one. The rooms are designed and created with brand partners, who range from personalities like artists and musicians, to consumer-facing companies like Dunkin’ Donuts, Dyson, and Cadillac.

Each year, 29Rooms has a different theme, with this year’s being “Turn It Into Art.” Attendees, it seems, are encouraged to enter each room and use the surroundings to create something — one room, for instance, invites participants to put on punching gloves and hit punching bags that each produce a different sound when contacted to create a symphony of sorts. A truly hands-on experience, indeed.

Takeaways for Marketers

• Go nuts, but keep it on-brand. An experience should be memorable, but relevant to the people attending.
• Partner with creators like artists and musicians to create experiences, especially if they are recognizable within the region where you’re trying to build or augment an audience.

2. Red Bull: Stratos

If you were online October 14, 2012, you probably came across a live stream of the “Stratos” jump.

Red Bull has been at the forefront of extreme sports coverage for almost as long as the brand has existed. But in 2012, the company brought its content marketing to new heights — a world-record height, actually.

Affectionately named Stratos, Red Bull’s superterrestrial marketing campaign featured Felix Baumgartner, a skydiver from Austria who partnered with Red Bull to set the world record for highest skydive.

That record: 128,000 feet, about 24 miles above Earth’s surface. Gulp.

To pull off this amazing stunt, Red Bull housed Felix in a small communication capsule and sent him up to the stratosphere using a large helium-filled balloon. And what’s truly remarkable is that his ascent and preparation to jump, alone, allowed him to break another record before landing safely back on Earth (spoiler alert): Red Bull streamed the entire event online, and saw the highest viewing traffic of any live stream ever broadcast on YouTube — at just over 8 million viewers.

Want to see that experience again? Check out Red Bull’s recap video below. I won’t lie, I indulged in a rewatching as I wrote this article.

Takeaways for Marketers

• Don’t underestimate the power of suspense when hosting an event your audience can own a piece of themselves. Being able to witness something new, and maybe a little scary, is such a personal experience. And the better the result, the longer your audience will remember and reminisce over it.
• Oh, and if you can put your brand in the record books while you’re at it, that’s pretty cool too.

3. Lean Cuisine: #WeighThis

It’s disconcerting how many commercials today tell women to change something about themselves. Sitting on the couch and watching TV for just two minutes, I had already lost count of the number of times that message came up.

That’s why it’s so refreshing to see brands like Lean Cuisine, whose marketing used to center solely on weight loss, stray from diet-centric messaging. And its #WeighThis campaign is a great example of just that.

As part of the campaign, Lean Cuisine curated a gallery of “scales” in New York’s Grand Central Station, and invited women to “weigh in.” But here’s the catch: The scales were actually small boards where women could write down how they really wanted to be weighed. And rather than focusing on their weight in pounds — or anything pertaining to body image — the women opted to be measured by things like being back in college at 55, caring for 200 homeless children each day, or being the sole provider to four sons.

What’s particularly cool about this experience is that none of the participants actually interact with a Lean Cuisine product. No one was interrupted, asked to sample something, or stopped to answer questions. In fact, no one was really asked to do anything — the display itself was enough to make people stop, observe, and then voluntarily interact.

Lean Cuisine figured out what message it wanted to send: “Sure, we make stuff that fits into a healthy lifestyle. But don’t forget about your accomplishments. That matters more than the number on the scale.” But instead of blatantly advertising that, it created an interactive experience around the message.

Still, the experience was clearly branded, to make sure people associated it with Lean Cuisine. The company’s Twitter handle and a branded hashtag were featured on the display in large text, which made it easy for people to share the experience on social media. And that definitely paid off — the entire #WeighThis campaign led to a 33% increase in positive brand perception, and earned a 6.5 million reach just during week one.

Takeaways for Marketers

• Don’t interrupt — especially if you’re trying to grab someone’s attention in New York City, like Lean Cuisine was. If you create an experience that provides value to the people who pass by it, they’re more likely to participate.
• Figure out the message you really want to your brand to send — that may or may not be directly tied to an actual product, and it might be something that your brand hasn’t said before. Then, build an experience around it.

4. M&M: Flavor Rooms

If you’ve ever had a peanut M&M versus regular M&M debate, you know people can get passionate about candy. So, when M&M needed to choose its next flavor, the company chose to do so with an immersive pop-up in New York City. 

The experience included “flavor rooms”, which were each complete with decor and fragrances unique to a certain flavor. The pop-up also included snack and drink lounges with M&M-themed cocktails — which, I’m willing to bet, we’re great opportunities for M&M to appear on different attendees’ social pages. 

Image Source

Takeaways for Marketers

• With every marketing campaign you launch, find the “fun” factor. It’s easy to get caught up in how much your brand helps solve your customer’s problem. But what about them, as people, would also bring them enjoyment?
• Consider how you might leverage your audience for key business decisions. If they’re the ones who will be buying and using your product, they’re also the ones best-equipped to tell you what’s working, and what isn’t. An experiential campaign is one good opportunity to connect directly with your consumers and create enjoyable experiences in which they can provide perspective. 

5. Benefit Cosmetics: ‘A Lashtastic Virtual-Media Campaign’ 

In today’s digital-first world, a good experience doesn’t have to be in-person. But traditionally, consumers still want to test out new makeup products before purchasing — which created a challenge for Benefit Cosmetics during the worldwide pandemic, in which most retail locations were closed. 

To draw attention to its new Magnet Extreme Lengthening Mascara, Benefit, working with Because Creative Experiences, chose to create an immersive experience in which users could collect tokens and exchange those tokens for discounts, mascaras, or virtual beauty consultations on Benefit’s website. Best of all, they used Augmented Reality to create a fun, unique experience for their users. 

Here’s how it worked: Once users signed into Benefit’s Virtual Reality platform, they were asked to drop their location. Next, thanks to Augmented Reality, the prospects could use their phones to find tokens in their physical space. 

The campaign proved incredibly effective — including a conversion rate of over 50%, a CTR of 39.4%, and an average gamification dwell time of 2 minutes and 22 seconds. 

Image Source

Takeaways for Marketers: 

• Even adults love games. Consider how you might gamify your own experience and provide unique challenges or contests to drive engagement. In this case, the experience is fun whether or not a user purchases the product — which is key towards creating a good user experience. 
• If an in-person experience isn’t feasible, get creative with technology, VR, or AR to create the next best thing. Nowadays, digital experiences can feel just as real as in-person. But to truly grab your audiences attention, you might need to think beyond traditional social campaigns.

6. Misereor: Charity Donation Billboard

When was the last time you used cash to pay for something?

Tough to remember, right? We’re kind of a species of “mindless swipers” — globally, an estimated 357 billion non-cash transactions are made each year. And knowing how often we whip out our cards, German relief NGO Misereor decided to put our bad habit to good use with its charitable giving billboard.

It was what they called SocialSwipe. Set up in airports, these digital posters would display images of some problems that Misereor works to resolve — hunger was depicted with a loaf of bread, for example.

But the screen was equipped with a card reader, and when someone went to swipe a card — for a small fee of 2€ — the image moved to make it look like the card was cutting a slice of bread.

Even cooler? On the user’s bank statement, there would be a thank-you note from Misereor, with a link to turn their one-time 2€ donation into a monthly one.

Needless to say, this experience required a lot of coordination — with banks, airports, and a mobile payment platform. Because of that, the experience couldn’t just be a one-time occurrence. The people who interacted with it were later reminded of it during a pretty common occurrence: receiving a bank statement.

Takeaways for Marketers

• Visually represent the impact of participating in the experience. People interacting with this display were shown exactly where their money was going — like slicing bread for a hungry family. (Infographics work nicely here, too — check out our templates.)
• Partner with another brand to create an even better experience. In this instance, Misereor worked with Stripe.com for the payment technology, and with financial institutions to get a branded message on users’ bank statements. (And stay tuned — we’ll talk more about the value of co-branding here later.)
• Don’t be afraid to nurture your leads. Even if you don’t use something like a branded hashtag to integrate the experience with an online element, find a way to remind someone that they participated.

7. Lululemon: Proud & Present

To celebrate Pride Month, Lululemon worked with MKG to create an immersive, thoughtful experience that combined an engaging social media campaign with real-life community-centered events. 

First, the athletic brand asked its own employees and ambassadors to reflect on topics relevant to the LGBTQ+ community. The brand shared their responses via images and video on Lululemon’s Instagram page throughout the month. 

Next, the brand created an art installation at Hudson River Park that reflected those same responses. This space, which stayed in the Park for two weeks, encouraged passersbys to read and reflect. That’s not all, though — Lululemon also created a community-focused yoga practice in the same park, which aimed to raise money for The Trevor Project. 

Image Source

Takeaways for Marketers

• Consider how you might create a cohesive experience to unit your online and offline presence. In this case, Lululemon leveraged its social accounts to reach its 3.7 million followers, but then created a few special, in-person experiences to drive the point home for its New York-based community. 
• An experiential marketing campaign shouldn’t just focus on selling a product or service — it oftentimes can, and should, focus on a larger issue. In this case, Lululemon’s dedication to Pride Month increased brand awareness and loyalty.

8. Häagen-Dazs: Strawberries & Cream with Wimbledon

To draw attention to its new, limited-edition ice cream flavor Strawberries & Cream, Häagen-Dazs worked with Wonderland to create a GIF photo booth at the tennis championship Wimbledon. 

The booth included a swing (playfully alluding to tennis), which encouraged famous tennis players, models, and influencers to take pictures to post on social media — a good opportunity to collect user-generated content and expand their reach quickly. 

Naming itself “the official ice cream of Wimbledon”, Häagen-Dazs created a commercial for the limited edition flavor, as well: 

Takeaways for Marketers 

•  Consider how you might create fun opportunities to encourage user-generated content. This doesn’t have to break the bank, either — there are plenty of budget-friendly options to create small booths at business conferences that still embrace that Instagram-worthy look. 

9. Facebook: Facebook IQ Live

Facebook — who also owns Instagram — has always understood how much data it has on how people use these platforms. For that reason, it created the Facebook IQ Live experience.

For this experience, that data was used to curate live scenes that depicted the data. Among them was the IQ Mart: A “retail” setting that represented the online shopper’s conversion path when using social media for buying decisions. There was also a quintessential Instagram cafe, chock full of millennial-esque photo opportunities and people snapping them — latte art and all.

The campaign wasn’t just memorable. It also proved to be really helpful — 93% of attendees (and there were over 1500 of them) said that the experience provided them with valuable insights on how to use Facebook for business.

But what makes those insights so valuable? Momentum Worldwide, the agency behind Facebook IQ Live, puts it perfectly: “When we understand what matters to people … we can be what matters to them.” In other words, we can shape our messaging around the things that are important to our target audiences.

And by creating this experience, Facebook was able to accomplish that for its own brand. In creating this experience, it also created a positive brand perception for a few audiences — including, for example, the people who might have been unsure of how to use the platform for business.

Takeaways for Marketers

• Build an experience for people who aren’t sure about how they would use your product or service. Find ways for them to interact with your brand in a way that creatively spells out how it can benefit them.
• Bring your data to life. We love numbers, but creating a live installment that illustrates them can help people understand exactly what they mean. And since 65% of people think that live events help them understand a product, this setting is a great place to do it.

10. Zappos: “Google Cupcake Ambush”

To help promote its new photo app, Google took to the streets of Austin, Texas, with a cupcake truck in tow. But people didn’t pay for the cupcakes with dollars — instead, the only accepted currency was a photo taken with said app.

And really, what’s better than a free-ish cupcake? We’ll tell you what: A free-ish watch or pair of shoes.

That was the answer from Zappos, anyway. That’s why the brand playfully “ambushed” Google’s food truck experience with one of its own: A box-on-feet — strategically placed right next to Google’s setup, of course — that, when fed a cupcake, would dispense a container with one of the aforementioned goodies.

In order to reap the rewards of the Zappos box, people had to have a cupcake. So while only one brand came away from the experience with an epic sugar high, both got plenty of exposure. And since 74% of consumers say a branded experience makes them more likely to buy the products being promoted, Google and Zappos both stood to gain new customers from this crowd.

But what we really like about this example is how much it shows the value of experiential co-branding. Because Google and Zappos pursue two different lines of business, they weren’t sabotaging each other, but rather they were promoting each other (which is what happens when you pick the right co-marketer).

Takeaways for Marketers

• Use experiential marketing as a co-branding opportunity.
• Pick a partner with an audience that would be interested in your brand, but might otherwise be difficult to reach.
• Make sure your partner would benefit from your audience, too — you want the experience to be a win-win-win: for you, your co-brand, and the consumer.
• When you do pick a marketing partner, build an experience that requires an “exchange” of each brand’s product or service. That way, the audience is more likely to interact with both of you.

11. Docker: Docker Dash

Docker is a software platform that allows developers to make and run apps on different operating systems — a technology known as “containerization.” By some standards, it’s not the sexiest product you can buy. By an enterprise’s standards, it’s not even the easiest product to understand. Enter: Docker Dash.

In partnership with Jack Morton, Docker used its developer conference, DockerCon 2017, to nurture its core enterprise market with a unique product demo called Docker Dash. What made it so unique? It wasn’t a demo — it was a game. And conference guests weren’t guests — they were players.

Docker Dash was a live video game-style simulation of Docker’s application platform, and it recruited 5,000 of its enterprise attendees to create an app together by solving a series of fun challenges inside the game. Each challenge presented in Docker Dash allowed the “players” to engage a feature of Docker’s product and ultimately complete their app. It was a fun, collaborative way to show enterprise software developers why Docker is invested in the containerization market and the value these people can get from Docker’s product.

Docker Dash got the attention of more than 3.6 million people — those who watched and posted about the event from social media, in addition to those who attended DockerCon in person.

Takeaways for Marketers

• Conference hosts thrive on attendees who network with one another. By creating opportunities for your attendees to collaborate and play together, you allow them to share their ideas — making for more educated customers as a result.
• “Gamify” your brand. Give people the ability to play and compete for something, and you’ll instill in them a sense of accomplishment that makes them more passionate about your industry.

12. Vans: House of Vans

Recently, Vans hosted House of Vans pop-up locations at skateparks within major cities like NYC and Chicago. This gave skateboarders a place to meet up, connect, listen to live music, and shred. 

Vans also used these skatepark-based popups to promote the launch of their new shoe line which honored David Bowie. 

With Vans being a leading shoe line of skateboarders, pop-ups in and near skateparks seem like a natural fit for an experiential marketing experience. 

Takeaways for Marketers

• Identify your audience’s hobbies and embrace them. In the example above, Vans knew that they had a big skateboarding audience, so they crafted an event to reward them while intriguing other skateboarders.
• Similarly, if you know you have audiences based in certain locations, go to where they are for your experiential campaign. This will provide less friction and make your audiences feel like you are literally meeting them where they are.

13. Rick & Morty: Rickmobile

To promote the return of the animated Adult Swim series Rick & Morty, Cartoon Network sent a car around the country shaped like Rick, a main character and mischievous time-traveling grandfather on the show. By marketing primarily on social media, the company was able to get the campaign to go viral. 

People began following where the Rickmobile was via a live destination page on the adult swim site.

When the Rickmobile hit major cities, people flocked to it to take a picture with Rick’s face and enter the mobile where they could purchase products related to the TV show.

Takeaways for Marketers

• It’s okay to embrace social media to create anticipation and excitement around your pop-up or experience, just as Adult Swim and Cartoon Network did. 
• Embracing weirdness, like that of a giant cartoon head driving around the country, can be a helpful way to make your event shareable or intriguing — even to people who might not follow the content or company that you’re promoting.
• If you can work in product sales, consider it. In this example, the network not only promoted the television show, but it also sold products related to it. So, essentially, people directly paid for aspects of a large scale ad.

14. Coca-Cola: FIFA World Cup VR Experience

In Zurich, during the FIFA World Cup, Coca-Cola placed a VR experience in front of a train station. With the experience, you could stand in front of a screen and see a popular soccer player next to you. You could then practice a soccer move with the athlete or compete in your own mini soccer tournament.

Takeaways for Marketers

While VR isn’t accessible to many marketers, this experience did have a few scaleable strategies associated with it.

• To give your attendees an experience of value, consider hosting an expert who can answer questions or give tips related to your marketing campaign.
• Embrace major events. If you know a city or area will be highly populated due to a game or another event, consider placing a pop-up there that somehow relates to that audience or the event itself.

Clearly, taking some very calculated risks worked out pretty well for these companies. So when it comes to creating an experience with your brand, don’t be afraid to think outside of the box — and don’t be afraid to work together on it with someone else.

Invest some time into thinking about the ways people could interact with you, even if it seems a little nutty. If it’s aligned with what you do and executed thoughtfully, people will be talking — in the best way possible.

LinkedIn is a highly valuable tool to network with like-minded professionals. But here’s something we don’t talk about as much as we should: LinkedIn is also a useful inbound marketing platform.

It might seem a little bit intimidating. You have enough on your plate … do you really need to figure out another way to create targeted content? Actually, yes. You have more power at your disposal with LinkedIn than you might realize.

That’s because LinkedIn has a powerful ads platform. If you’re already using pay-per-click (PPC) techniques to power your presence on Facebook, Twitter, or Google, consider yourself lucky — you can add LinkedIn to that list, too. This is especially easy to do if you’re using the HubSpot ads tool.

But if you’re new to LinkedIn Ads, fear not — we’ve put together a step-by-step guide to setting up your first LinkedIn ad campaign.

Before we dive in, let’s review the way in which LinkedIn Ads work:

In the above definition, we mentioned LinkedIn targeting options. Here’s some more information on how LinkedIn targeting actually works and what those targeting options are.

LinkedIn Targeting Options

Reviewing these options now will help you in step three below, where we review targeting on LinkedIn.

How does LinkedIn targeting work?

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Ad targeting in LinkedIn helps you run a successful advertising campaign — that’s because when you target the right people, it leads to greater engagement and more conversions.

With LinkedIn, the process of selecting the audience you’re going to target works the same way, no matter which type of ad you select.

When establishing who it is you’re going to target, LinkedIn provides over 20 different audience attributes and targeting categories that you can select from — examples include company name, company size, member groups, member interests, member schools, job title, job seniority, and skills.

Advertising on LinkedIn is a two-step process: 1) setting up your LinkedIn campaign, and 2) creating your LinkedIn ad(s).

In this section, we walk through how to set up a campaign and build your ad(s) — plus some best practices and tips for each.

1. Create your LinkedIn ad campaign.

Your LinkedIn advertising campaigns will live on a platform separate from the LinkedIn you see every day — the LinkedIn Marketing Solutions platform. Visit this page to get started with your campaign, and select Create Ad.

From there, you’ll be prompted to create a LinkedIn Campaign Manager account (if you haven’t yet). Make sure you enter your associated LinkedIn Company Page if you have one.

Next, you’ll be taken to your member dashboard. If you haven’t entered your billing information, you’ll need to do so to unlock your account. (Don’t worry, you won’t be charged until your campaign is live — from there, you’ll be charged periodically for ad clicks and other engagements.)

On your dashboard — or “Campaign Manager,” as it’s formally called — you’ll see a call-to-action (CTA) to Create Campaign.

Click that button, and you’ll be redirected to a page where you can start setting up your campaign.

Note: As of 2019, LinkedIn introduced a “new objective-based campaign creation experience”. We’ll be covering that new process in this article — to learn more, check out this page.

First, indicate a Campaign Group and name your campaign. Campaign Groups help you organize your campaign. You can leave the Default Campaign Group as-is or create a new Group.

As for the campaign name, these are only visible internally, so we recommend you choose a highly informative name — especially if you have a few different folks working on the campaign.

For example, if I was running a test to determine the best type of demographic targeting, I might use the title, “Unicorn Food Ad Test — North America, 18 to 24, Female.”

That name describes exactly who I’m targeting, without having to view its details. Compare this to something like “Unicorn Food Test 1,” which doesn’t indicate anything about who the ad is targeting.

Once you choose your Campaign Group and name, you can start setting up your LinkedIn campaign.

2. Set your LinkedIn ad campaign objective.

Next, choose your campaign objective.

Your objective is what you want people to do when they see your ads. According to LinkedIn, choosing an objective helps them, “customize your campaign creation, deliver the best ROI for your stated goal, and show you relevant reporting.”

There are three overarching campaign themes: Awareness, Consideration, and Conversions. Under those themes, some available campaign objectives are:

• Website visits will drive traffic to your website and landing pages. According to LinkedIn, this type of campaign will also boost brand awareness (at least while that objective option remains unavailable).

• Engagement will increase engagement on your content and boost followers on your LinkedIn Company Page.

• Video views will increase the exposure of your videos to people who are likely to engage with them.

• Lead generation will show a LinkedIn lead generation form with pre-filled LinkedIn profile data to those LinkedIn users most likely to engage with the form.

3. Designate your LinkedIn ad audience.

Next, choose the parameters of your target audience. Targeting who sees your ad can help it fulfill its campaign objective — the more specific and relevant it is to your audience, the better it’ll perform.

LinkedIn allows you to target according to a few different categories — refer to our points on targeting options that we reviewed above.

You don’t have to use all of LinkedIn’s targeting options — but, the more specific the targeting criteria, the more relevant it’s likely to be to the audience you select. And, therefore, the more likely you are to have a better ROI.

4. Decide on your LinkedIn ad format.

Next, choose your ad format. In the next section, we unpack the different types of LinkedIn Ads you can create as part of your campaign.

When you toggle between the ad types, you’ll see that the Forecasted Results box on the right-hand side will change. This feature analyzes your campaign parameters (bid, budget, targeting, start/end dates, etc.) and takes into account similar campaigns and advertisers. It also stimulates the ad auction to generate the numbers displayed.

Keep an eye on this box as you choose your LinkedIn ad type. If you’re first starting out, deciding on which ad type you want to choose may come down to budget. Outline your priorities, and then you can decide which type works best for you.

Additionally, some ad types require you to link your LinkedIn Company Page and some tap into LinkedIn translation services.

5. Choose your LinkedIn ad placement.

Next, decide whether you want your ad to be displayed on the LinkedIn Audience Network, which gives your campaign more reach and exposure among LinkedIn’s third-party platforms and sites. Note: This option isn’t available for every ad type.

You can also choose to exclude or block certain categories, applications, and sites in the Network if you so choose.

6. Set your ad budget and schedule.

Next, set up the budget, scheduling, and bidding options that work best for you.

Budget

Set a daily budget for what works best for your company’s marketing spending. Before investing a lot into one campaign, test and measure the success of each campaign and ad variation. You don’t want to put thousands of dollars, for example, into an ad that doesn’t resonate with your target audience.

Let’s say you’re the VP of Marketing at a high-end floral company. You assume that most of your target market is made up of soon-to-be brides, so you direct your LinkedIn Ads to bridal groups. But after spending thousands of dollars, you only generate 10% of the leads you were hoping for.

Your subsequent research shows this was the wrong move, and you later learn that people near your store who are on LinkedIn are actually looking for flowers for corporate events. It would have been nice to know that before spending a large amount of your budget on LinkedIn Ads, right?

That said, because of its extensive targeting opportunities, LinkedIn Ads can successfully target niche markets. But the cautionary experimentation is crucial to do early on — if you observe a campaign performing well, then you can put a larger budget toward it.

Schedule

Choose a date for your campaign to start. You can indicate for your campaign to be shown continuously or ‘til an end date.

Bid Type

In this section, the three options you have are:

• Automated bid, which allows LinkedIn to determine what amount will maximize your campaign objective and whatever option you choose (clicks, impressions, or conversions).

• Maximum cost-per-click (CPC) bid, where you’ll be charged each time someone clicks on your ad. LinkedIn will suggest a bid range depending on your budget and the competition for your ads — the more advertisers bidding on a similar campaign, the higher your bid will need to be. This bid is the maximum you will be charged. If the current rate is lower than your max bid, you will only be charged the current rate.

• Maximum pay-per-1,000 Impressions (CPM) bid, where you’ll be charged a certain amount each time your ad is viewed by every 1,000 people on LinkedIn. This option is unavailable if you’re using the LinkedIn Audience Network option.

Deciding on the best maximum bid can be tricky. When deciding between CPC and CPM, think about your end goal. Are you trying to get as many people as possible to see your ad to help with something like a branding campaign? If so, CPM might be your best option.

On the other hand, if you want more people to click on your ads to drive traffic to your website or generate new leads, CPC might be better for you.

As for your optimal maximum bid, some trial and error might be necessary. LinkedIn will give you a suggested bid, which is a good place to start.

Then, think about when your audience is most likely online. You’ll want to bid higher during that particular time to be sure that your ads are the ones being seen. And make sure LinkedIn is actually the best place to reach them, too — play around with your bids and see when you get the most return for your dollars spent.

7. Don’t forget conversion tracking.

Lastly, you have the option to set up conversion tracking for your LinkedIn campaign, which will track and measure the actions people take after clicking on your ads.

Conversion tracking is an optional part of setting up your LinkedIn advertising campaign but is highly valuable for your business.

If you choose to set up conversion tracking, click + Add conversions.

A new window will pop up, where you’ll name your conversion, choose your conversion settings, and decide how you’ll track the conversions.

Note: The information on the right-hand side of the window is super helpful — it’ll answer any questions you have and walk you through the process. And for more help implementing and managing your LinkedIn Conversions, visit this help page.

Bravo! You’ll officially set up your LinkedIn advertising campaign … but you’re not done yet. When you’re ready to move on, click “Save.” Beware: Your objective and ad format cannot be changed once you save, so be sure about your choices before moving forward.

8. Build your LinkedIn ad.

This section corresponds to what type of LinkedIn ad you chose for your campaign.

Once you establish the basic parameters for your ad in step one, you’ll be prompted to start building it and choose how LinkedIn will display and rotate your ad variations — if you create more than one.

To get started, click Create new ad.

A screen will pop up with the title “Create a new [Your chosen ad type] for this campaign,” on which you’ll create the copy for your ad, pair it with an image, and preview the different layout options.

Of course, there are a few guidelines around the copy that we suggest:

• Ad image, which is the artwork or graphic that your audience will see for your ad. It must be 100×100 pixels and uploaded as a .jpg or .png file that is 2MB or smaller.

• Ad headline, which is the main message your audience will see. It cannot be more than 25 characters.

• Ad description, which is the body of your ad. It can be up to 75 characters long and should be relevant both to the person viewing the ad and the offer or page to which you’re sending them.

• Destination URL, which is where your audience will go when they click your ad. Double check that the URL is accurate.

Once you input this information, you’ll see it reflected in the Preview box to the right.

Once you click Create, you’ll be directed back to the previous Campaign Manager screen. From there, you can create more ads and, eventually, review and submit your order.

Note: LinkedIn does review every submitted campaign order, so don’t expect to see your ads published right away.

To see the best results for your ads, consider creating a different ad for each of your buyer personas and tweak the copy accordingly.

For example, when promoting a book to college professors, leading the title with the words “College Professor’s Guide to …” may generate a higher CTR than generic, un-targeted headlines and copy.

Here are a few of our best copywriting tips for LinkedIn Ads.

CTA

Including an actionable CTA within your ad copy will also help you improve your ad’s click-through rate (CTR). Consider asking people to “Download your e-book now,” or “Click now for free samples” instead of writing copy that’s devoid of actionable next steps.

Value

Incorporate your value proposition into your ad copy — this can make people more likely to click on your ad. By boasting something like “20% off your first purchase” or “Clearance sale ends today — Shop now,” you’re sending a clear signal of what someone will specifically gain when he or she clicks your ad.

Testing

Don’t be afraid to test your ad copy. You can create multiple variations of your ad in each campaign, which allow you to test different images and copy within ads to find what works best for your audience.

As we said above, deciding on what type of LinkedIn ad is best for your campaign can come down to many factors: budget, audience, campaign objective — just to name a few.

When building your LinkedIn Ads, you have four main types from which to choose. Within those formats, you can choose different formats based on your ad content and purpose.

1. Sponsored Content

Sponsored Content shows up in your audience’s news feed among organic LinkedIn content.

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These ads are similar to promoted posts that blend into social media feeds. Sponsored Content is available in three formats:

• Single image ads, which feature one image.

• Carousel ads, which feature two or more images.

• Video ads, which feature one video.

This type of LinkedIn ad typically has the highest average cost-per-click (CPC).

(Learn more about the advertising specifications for Sponsored Content according to LinkedIn.)

2. Message Ads

Message ads are delivered to your target audience’s LinkedIn inbox.

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With this type of LinkedIn ad, you can send your content directly to your audience from a personal account and better measure engagement based on recipient response and action.

(Learn more about the advertising specifications for Message Ads according to LinkedIn.)

3. Dynamic Ads

Dynamic Ads are personalized ads that change content based on which audience member is viewing them. This type of LinkedIn ad uses member personal data to tailor its creative content.

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(Each LinkedIn member sees his or her own personal data; data isn’t shared with other members.)

Dynamic Ads are available in three formats which are only available on the LinkedIn desktop platform:

• Follower ads, which promote your LinkedIn Company Page.

• Spotlight ads, which promote a special offering.

• Job ads, which promote open jobs.

(Learn more about advertising specifications for Dynamic Ads according to LinkedIn.)

4. Text Ads

Text Ads show up on the right column or top of the page on LinkedIn.

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They’re the simplest type of LinkedIn ad but are still effective for boosting awareness and reaching your audience. Pay per click or per impression for Text Ads.

(Learn more about advertising specifications for Text Ads according to LinkedIn.)

Social ad campaigns can always be improved. Remember, your audience and content are always changing — as well as the platform itself. Here are some best practices to optimize your LinkedIn ad campaign.

Before we dive in, here’s a quick tip: Set a reminder for yourself to analyze and optimize your campaigns each month.

1. Know your audience and the customer journey.

As your business grows, your audience also evolves and so does the customer journey. It’s crucial that you know and update your buyer personas and the customer journey map regularly — this will allow you to effectively target your personas at the right point in time (a.k.a. when they’re most likely to convert). You may do this on a quarterly basis.

To help with the process, check out your buyer persona guide, free buyer personas templates, free Make My Persona tool, customer journey map guide, and free customer journey map template.

You should also consider your customer journey when deciding on which type of ads (more on this best practice in step four, below) you’ll create and share — not every type of ad is ideal for every part of the customer journey.

For instance, you may use a sponsored ad for audience members who have already engaged with your brand/content before rather than that being their first touchpoint with you. 

2. Segment your customers.

On a similar token, segmenting your customers is a great way to prepare for effective and tailored ad targeting, whether on LinkedIn or any other platform. 

You can segment your customers so that you know exactly how you’re going to target specific audiences on LinkedIn in order to increase engagement and chances of conversion.

For instance, you might know that specific audience segments are going to need a certain type of LinkedIn Ad at a certain point in the buyer’s journey – having your customers ready in segments makes this part of the ad targeting process easy and efficient. 

3. Refer to your social ads on other platforms as well as your competitors’ LinkedIn Ads.

Getting some inspiration and gleaning information from your other social ads as well as the LinkedIn Ads of your competitors is a great way to help you navigate the process of creating and sharing your ads on LinkedIn.

Although LinkedIn is a unique platform and your audience may not be the same across social platforms, it’s still good to take some inspiration from and, at the very least, identify which ads perform best on other social platforms like Google and Facebook.

Not only can this be a good starting point when planning your LinkedIn Ads, but it can also help you save time — maybe you want to repurpose content that’s on a Google Ad already for LinkedIn. 

Additionally, you may not have the analytics to prove which of your competitors’ LinkedIn Ads are performing best, but you can at least identify which types of ads are getting a lot of engagement by looking at metrics like comments and reactions.

This is a helpful reference point when planning and creating your LinkedIn Ads since you’re likely going to have a similar audience on the platform as your competitors do. 

4. Carefully select the content you share based on the type of ad you’re creating.

As mentioned earlier, you’ll want to determine what content you’re sharing with audience members based on the type of ad you’re creating. Refer to your customer segments here to help you effectively tailor content to those audience members and where they are in the customer journey when working through this step. 

As a recap, here are the types of LinkedIn Ads you can create along with examples of the content you may include: 

• Sponsored content: Single image ads, video ads, carousel ads, and event ads; ideal for highly-engaged audiences in the LinkedIn Newsfeed. 
• Sponsored messaging: Conversation Ads, Message Ads; ideal for engaging audience members in LinkedIn Messaging. 
• Lead generation forms: Lead generation forms; ideal for creating pre-filled forms for LinkedIn ads.
• Text and dynamic ads: Text ads, spotlight ads, follower ads; ideal for running ads in the LinkedIn right rail.

5. Use eye-catching and attention-grabbing visuals and language.

This content you’re sharing should just be selected by ensuring it works with the type of ad you’re creating though — it also needs to bring your audience members in and make them want to engage with it (e.g. read/ watch more, click on it, open your gated offer, etc.).

Think about ad elements like: 

• Colors
• Font
• Language and text
• CTA placement and style 
• Images
• Videos
• GIFs

For more inspiration, take a look at
these great LinkedIn Ad examples. 

6. A/B test your LinkedIn Ads (and tweak one variable at a time).

Don’t be afraid to test different visuals, language, and text to determine what your unique audience on LinkedIn finds eye-catching and attention-grabbing. You can test different versions of the same ad to see what factor is contributing to or hindering its success.

For instance, change the copy in your headline, change your featured image, tweak the target audience attributes, or update your bids — just don’t do these all at the same time or you won’t know which one is the fix. A/B testing makes this process easy and ensures you’re just changing one factor at a time.

7. Create gated offers using LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms.

Gated offers are those that require some sort of information in return for that offer — for instance, an audience member gets a free template or an ebook in return for sharing their email address. To do this with your LinkedIn Ads, you’ll have to use their Lead Gen Forms. 

LinkedIn allows you to create Lead Gen Forms for both Sponsored Content and Message Ads. They come pre-filled with LinkedIn profile data so members are able to share their information with you in seconds.

Additionally, the forms allow you to track important metrics such as campaign cost per lead, lead form fill rate, and how many leads you get certain audience segments.

8. Keep your budget in mind when creating LinkedIn Ads. 

Like anything in business, you’re going to want to keep your budget in mind. LinkedIn uses objective-based pricing when it comes to advertising — meaning, you only pay to achieve the specific marketing goals you have. In other words, you’re charged based on your campaign objective. 

You’ll select the activity you want to pay for and then the campaign objective you picked will determine which ad formats, bidding strategies, and optimization goals you can focus on. 

9. Determine each campaign’s click-through rate (CTR).

Is one campaign outperforming the other(s)? If so, you may want to pause the less successful campaign(s).

LinkedIn will automatically display less successful campaigns with lower frequency, so it makes sense to minimize any resources spent on them. Instead, putting more resources into successful ad variations and campaigns is more likely to accomplish your marketing goals.

10. Measure and analyze your LinkedIn Ad campaign’s success.

LinkedIn makes it easy to track your progress in the Campaign Manager dashboard (under “Campaign Performance”), where you’ll see various charts that measure performance like clicks, expenditures, and CTR.

You can also keep track of conversions in the graphs toward the bottom of the dashboard.

When you finish setting up your first campaign, you’ll see a lot of “0”s at first. Don’t worry, that’s only because your campaign is new (and don’t forget that LinkedIn usually has to approve your ads before they go live).

LinkedIn Ads is available within all HubSpot Marketing Hub Professional and Enterprise accounts! Track visitor and contact engagement, run reports on closed-loop marketing, sync leads from LinkedIn lead generation forms, and MORE — all within your HubSpot account.

Ready to try a LinkedIn Ad strategy?

With the right amount of patience and strategy, LinkedIn ad campaigns can be a huge factor in your company’s marketing success. LinkedIn has a very powerful advertising platform; don’t leave this off your social campaign marketing list. A well-researched, optimized campaign has the potential to bring in thousands of new leads — and sales.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in January 2013 and has been updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

Influential leaders are a pillar of any organization.

They motivate employees, help them feel empowered in their skills, and, in turn, build strong teams that consistently meet business goals and contribute to overall business success.

Assuming a leadership role is often an end goal for many business people. If you’re hoping to get there one day and want to know how you can succeed, or you’re hoping to improve your skills, this post will explain what leadership skills are, outline how you can develop them, and learn how to display your skills on a resume to stand out amongst your competitors.

Leadership skills are essential for a business because they drive success. Strong leaders ensure that employees are equipped with the tools and resources to succeed, unify teams to create a culture of togetherness, and delegate and communicate responsibilities and wins to all involved stakeholders.

As an individual, leadership skills are important because they help you in all aspects of your career. You’ll know how to take ownership of your job responsibilities, communicate effectively, and work with others to reach a common goal. If you possess leadership skills but are not yet in a leadership role, demonstrating these skills will signal to employers that you can be a strong leader, which sets you apart from other applicants.

Examples of Leadership Skills

While not an exhaustive list, the skills below are examples of abilities that effective leaders have.

• Communication: A leader needs to communicate effectively and clearly with stakeholders, employees, and all involved teams. Additional skills that support effective communication are active listening, clarity, concision, and persuasion.
• Strategic thinking: Leaders must be strategic thinkers who can understand business goals and develop processes specifically to help meet them.
• People management: As leaders lead people, they must manage groups and help them succeed. People management skills can include communication, active listening, working collaboratively, team building, empathy, giving feedback, and delegating responsibility.
• Motivation: Leaders must be self-motivated when it comes to hitting targets and performing their job duties. You also must motivate your teams and help them feel empowered and able to achieve business goals. Commitment is a skill that strongly relates to motivation.
• Flexibility: Things can change quickly for a business, and leaders must be flexible and able to face changes in the market, employee turnover, or any issues that arise. Being able to think strategically is a skill that strongly relates to being flexible.
• Reliability: People look up to leaders, so they must be reliable. Your teams want to know and trust that you’re giving them the tools they need to succeed, and higher-ups want to trust that you will meet the goals set out for you. Additional skills related to reliability are trustworthiness, integrity, timeliness, and the ability to take the initiative.
• Ability to mentor and teach: One of the most important things for a leader to do is mentor and teach employees and help them develop their professional skills. Related skills include helpfulness, giving positive reinforcement, understanding employee differences, and providing constructive feedback.
• Decisiveness: Leaders must be able to confidently and decisively make informed decisions on critical business matters. Additional skills that support decisiveness are motivation, problem-solving, strategic thinking, and communication.
• Ability to give and receive feedback: People look to leaders for guidance, so it’s critical to be able to provide feedback to employees for their development and for you to be able to receive feedback from others.

Most Important Leadership Skills

Although various skills can make someone a successful leader, a few are more critical than others. We’ll discuss two of them below.

1. Communication

Edelman’s 2021 Trust Barometer found that employees ranked good communication as a critical skill for leaders. As such, communication is a vital leadership skill.

The skill relates to all aspects of your job performance, as you need to be able to communicate expectations to employees, delegate job duties, and provide feedback. You also need to communicate performance with stakeholders and higher-ups, so they understand the success of your processes.

A leader unable to effectively communicate will likely find themselves leading teams that are confused about expectations, unaware of their performance, and unsure about their day-to-day tasks. In addition, higher-ups will have difficulty understanding why you’re implementing your processes and how teams are performing concerning meeting targets.

2. Ability to Mentor and Teach

A key component of leadership is being able to lead.

This means mentoring teams, empowering them, and helping people develop the skills they need to succeed at their jobs. Dharmesh Shah, Founder and CTO of HubSpot, says that leadership isn’t necessarily dictated by a job title but how someone focuses on lifting up and empowering those around them.

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A leader that is a good mentor also creates an environment of trust and collaboration with their employees. This can make people feel more comfortable approaching you with questions or assistance when they need guidance.

Some additional skills that are strongly associated with being a good mentor and teacher are helpfulness, the ability to see different perspectives and level with your employees, patience, clear communication, and the ability to communicate instructions and provide actionable feedback.

How To Develop Leadership Skills

One of the best ways to develop leadership skills is through experience, whether it is on-the-job, external activities, or even in a position of leadership. Let’s go over some ways to develop these skills:

• Leverage resources like books, podcasts, and content from thought leaders and those with a history of leadership experience and a wealth of knowledge to share.
• Participate in courses, workshops, and training opportunities where experienced leaders teach leadership skills and share their expertise.
• Follow other leaders that you feel inspired by, study their practices, and implement some of their strategies into your day-to-day.
• Seek out leadership opportunities in all areas of your life. For example, if you’re part of a community group, consider taking a leadership role if the opportunity arises, or create a group and gain leadership experience through building it from the ground up.
• Recognize that it is a continuous process, and leaders are constantly learning and developing their skills. Therefore, be open to continuous learning, and seek out opportunities that allow you to build your skills.

How To Improve Leadership Skills

Whether you’re a seasoned leader or starting in your first leadership role, there is always room for improvement. Let’s go over some of the ways you can continue to build upon your leadership skills.

Have a mentor.

Having a mentor allows you to learn from someone that has more leadership experience than you. Some businesses have mentorship programs where you can shadow a leader at work and observe their practices, and bring their tips and tricks into your own day-to-day life. A mentor can also observe your performance and give you actionable feedback on how to improve.

Take the initiative.

It will be challenging to improve your skills if you’re not actively seeking opportunities to practice them. So, take the initiative in your current position and ask for additional responsibilities, or step into leadership roles as they become available.

For example, if your workplace creates a new employee group, offer to take the leadership role. You may feel a bit out of your comfort zone, but it will give you valuable hands-on experience that will help you perfect your skills. In addition, people you work with will likely be willing to provide feedback on your leadership, giving you additional growth opportunities.

Focus on specific skill areas.

If there are specific areas of leadership that you feel need improvement, focus on them. For example, you can request more responsibility in particular areas, so you have real-life practice with those skills.

Having a mentor can be helpful in this regard, as they can shadow you at work and monitor you to identify specific areas that may be causing you to struggle. For instance, if you’ve heard from employees that they’re sometimes confused about instructions, you may struggle with communication. A mentor could sit in on a conversation with a team member to get a sense of your conversation style and work with you to create a plan of action to improve.

Once you’ve worked to develop and improve your leadership skills, how do you share this when seeking out job opportunities? Your resume.

Leadership Skills on a Resume

Knowing how to leverage your leadership skills on a resume can be challenging. While you can certainly list the skills you have that make you a good leader, recruiters and hiring managers often want to see results that prove and support your abilities.

The most important thing to keep in mind when listing leadership skills on a resume is to ensure that you’re including skills relevant to the job description you’re applying for so it is explicitly clear to readers how you’ll succeed at the job.

Here are some ways to showcase your leadership skills on a resume:

1. List your skills.

The easiest thing to do is simply include a list of the leadership skills you have that are relevant to the role based on the job description. The image below is an example of a simple list of job-relevant skills on a resume.

Image Source

2. Demonstrate your leadership skills in action.

Another way to display your leadership skills on your resume is to show how you’ve used them to achieve results in your previous position. This can look like using quantifiable data and metrics that demonstrate how you’ve created success, and the image below is a great example of this.

Image Source

3. List awards and achievements.

Another way to showcase your leadership capabilities is to include a list of achievements, awards, or honors that you’ve received for being a strong leader. Here are two examples of what that could look like on a resume:

• Three-time recipient of [Your company name] Leadership Award.
• Nominated recipient of the Great Manager Award.

Everyone Can Be A Leader

There are no specifications as to who can and can’t become a leader — it’s possible for everyone. If you leverage the tips on this list to develop your own leadership abilities and actively seek out opportunities for growth, you’ll find yourself in a position to inspire others and help businesses succeed.

Nowadays, marketers put a lot of emphasis on webinars, video campaigns, and other new opportunities to reach their customers.

But your contemporary communication methods shouldn’t distract you from one of the oldest and yet most effective messaging channels — email.

You might be wondering if email is still a worthwhile marketing strategy. Well, it is.

In fact, email generates $42 for every $1 spent, which is an astounding 4,200% ROI, making it one of the most effective options available.

If you’re still hesitant, keep reading — we’ve cultivated a list of email marketing statistics for 2021 to demonstrate just how powerful email can be.

General Email Marketing Statistics and Best Practices

• The global e-mail marketing market was valued at $7.5 billion in 2020 and is projected to increase to $17.9 billion by 2027. (Statista, 2021)
• There are 4 billion daily email users. This number is expected to climb to 4.6 billion by 2025. (Statista, 2021)
• More than 306 billion emails are sent and received each day. (Statista, 2021)
• Active email accounts surpassed 5.6 billion in 2019. (Statista, 2019)
• 64% of small businesses use email marketing to reach customers. (Campaign Monitor, 2021)
• More than 40% of marketers saw budget cuts to email since the pandemic. (Litmus, 2020)
• Across all industries, the average email open rate is 19.8%, the click-through rate is 11.3%, and the bounce rate is 9.4%. (Constant Contact, 2021)
• Marketers who use segmented campaigns note as much as a 760% increase in revenue. (Campaign Monitor, 2019)
• 4 out of 5 marketers said they’d rather give up social media than email marketing. (Litmus, 2020)
• 35% of marketers send their customers 3-5 emails per week. (Not Another State of Marketing, 2020)
• 78% of marketers in 2020 said email is important to overall company success, compared to 71% in 2019. (Litmus, 2020)
• 78% of marketers have seen an increase in email engagement over the last 12 months (Not Another State of Marketing, 2020)
• 31% of B2B marketers say email newsletters are the best way to nurture leads. (Content Marketing Institute, 2020)
• The U.S. spent over 350 million dollars on email advertising in 2019. (Statista, 2019)
• Brands that always include an A/B test in their emails generate an ROI of 48:1. (Litmus, 2019)
• Globally, Fridays see the highest email open rates (nearly 19%), compared to the lowest open rates (17%) on Saturdays. (Campaign Monitor, 2021)
• 66% of marketers believe artificial intelligence is a way to optimize email send times. (Statista, 2019)
• 23% of brands have already experimented with interactive elements in email, an additional 32% are planning on trying it soon. (Not Another State of Marketing, 2020)

B2B Email Marketing Statistics

• 81% of B2B marketers say their most used form of content marketing is email newsletters. (Content Marketing Institute, 2020)
• 16% of all emails never make it into the inbox. (Email Tool Tester, 2019)
• On average, B2B companies send one email marketing campaign every 25 days. (SuperOffice, 2020)
• 31% of B2B marketers say email newsletters are the best way to nurture leads. (Content Marketing Institute, 2020)
• 87% of B2B marketers say email is one of their top free organic distribution channels. (Content Marketing Institute, 2020)
• 90% of content marketers say email engagement is the top metric they track to measure content performance. (Content Marketing Institute, 2020)
• 89% of all B2B email campaigns are sent from a company name. (SuperOffice, 2020)
• The second-most common technology B2B organizations use to assist with content marketing is mail marketing software. Roughly 85% of marketers say they work with these tools. (Content Marketing Institute, 2020)

Mobile Marketing Statistics

• Nearly 55% of global website traffic is generated from mobile devices, excluding tablets. (Statista, 2021)
• Apple iPhone’s native email app has the highest market share, followed by Gmail. (Litmus Labs, 2021)
• Nearly 1 in 5 email campaigns is not optimized for mobile devices. (SuperOffice, 2020)
• Launching a mobile-responsive email design can increase unique mobile clicks by 15%. (MailChimp, 2019)
• Mobile-friendly email is the second most-used tactic email marketers to improve their performance. (HubSpot, 2020)
• 9.3% of email clicks come from tablets, rather than smartphones or computers. (MailChimp, 2019)
• Although people primarily check email on iPhone devices, Gmail is still the most-used email service, with more than 1.5 billion users (CNBC, 2019)

B2C Email Marketing Statistics

• Your audience will reward you with higher open and click rates if you don’t send more than five newsletters a week. (GetResponse, 2020)
• 60% of retail, e-commerce, and consumer goods and services companies are personalizing emails based on past purchases, versus 38% in 2019. (Litmus, 2020)
• More than 8 out of 10 people will open a welcome email, generating 4x as many opens and 10x as many clicks as other email types. (GetResponse, 2020)
• The single message autoresponder email had an astonishing 98% open rate and a 37% click-through rate. (GetResponse, 2020)
• Nearly 22% of all email campaigns are opened within the first hour of sending. (GetResponse, 2020)
• 45% of internet users avoid opening emails from unknown addresses. (Statista, 2019)

Email Marketing Demographics 2021

• 99% of email users check their inbox every day, with some checking 20 times a day. Of those people, 58% of consumers check their email first thing in the morning. (OptinMonster, 2020)
• 40% of consumers say they have at least 50 unread emails in their inbox. (HubSpot, 2020)
• Emails sent by independent artists, writers, and performers have the highest open rate at 34.4%, followed by education (34.1%) and travel and tourism (32.6%). (Constant Contact, 2021)
• On average, the highest email click-through rate goes to the Consulting services industry at 25%, with Administrative and Business Support services in second at 20%, and Home and Building services in third at nearly 19%. (Constant Contact, 2021)
• 26% of retail emails bounce, putting it well above the 9% average bounce rate for all industries. (Constant Contact, 2021)
• 20% of retail, e-commerce, and consumer goods and services companies are personalizing emails based on gender, race, ethnicity, versus 11% in 2019. (Litmus, 2020)
• 59% of Millennials primarily use their smartphone to check email, while 67% of Generation Z scans their inbox on mobile. (Bluecore, 2021)
• 74% of Baby Boomers think email is the most personal channel to receive communications from brands, followed by 72% of Gen X, 64% of Millennials, and 60% of Gen Z. (Bluecore, 2021)
• 91% of women in the US use email, compared to 89% of men. (Statista, 2019)
• Asian Americans are the most popular email users in the US (92%), followed by white users (91%), African American users (88%), Hispanic users (85%), and American Indian or Alaskan Native users (83%). (Statista, 2019)

Apply Your Email Knowledge

Many of the data points will help you make the case for investing more time and money into your email marketing strategy. While you can refer back to this post at any time, you can also start applying them to your next campaign.

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

It’s ironic, but despite knowing how to sell products and services, so many marketers have a hard time selling themselves. It can often be difficult to turn the spotlight inward, but creating a standout resume is a skill all marketers need to perfect if they want to grow their career.

How to Write a Marketing Resume

If you’re a marketer whose resume could use a little polish, don’t worry. With just a few resources and some actionable tips from hiring managers themselves, we’ll help you create a truly impressive marketing resume that’s sure to stand out to recruiters.

1. Start with a template.

To make things easy and increase your effectiveness, don’t start from scratch. Resume templates give you a starting place for layout and formatting as well as inspiration for what to include.

Featured Resource: 12 Free Resume Templates

Download 12 free designed, formatted, and customizable resume templates here. Take a look at them, and then use the advice below to customize your resume and make it rise above the rest in the stack.

Alternatively, there are resume builder tools out there that can help as well.

2. Know your target audience.

You never start a marketing campaign without knowing who you want to reach. That’s because once you know your target audience, it’s easier for the other decisions to fall into place.

The same logic applies to your resume. If you know who will read it and what’s important to them, you can shape your message accordingly. To do this, you need to think about the type of job and company you’re hoping to work for.

Ask yourself questions like:

• Is the job purely in inbound marketing, or will it require both traditional and digital work?
• Will you be a specialist or a generalist?
• Who is the employer — an agency with a buzzing digital marketing team in place already, or a small company looking to leverage the power of social media to grow their sales? Or maybe it’s a marketing department within a large and established corporation?

Once you’ve outlined what’s most important to the company and job you’re applying for, you can carefully target your resume to them. You’ll know what skills or traits to highlight, what keywords to use, and which parts of your background will be most interesting to the hiring manager. (For clues about which skills different marketing roles typically require, read this blog post on marketing job descriptions. You can borrow phrasing from those for your own resume.)

3. Define your unique value proposition.

You have a unique blend of skills, characteristics, and experiences that make you different from every marketer. To create a truly effective resume, you need to define exactly what this unique blend is — we’ll call this your value proposition.

To develop your own value proposition, think about what separates you from other marketers. Is it your in-depth knowledge of marketing analytics? Your ability to write irresistible headlines? Perhaps it’s your talent for creating compelling videos? Or maybe you have an impressive record of using social media to drive sales growth? Whatever it is, you can use it to set your resume apart from the crowd.

To a large extent, your value proposition depends on the type of positions and companies you’re targeting. Large and small companies often look for completely different skill sets, as do companies in different industries. So as you think about what makes you uniquely valuable, and how that aligns with the jobs you’re applying to.

4. Describe impact, not features.

One of the oldest copywriting tricks in the book is FAB (features, advantages, benefits).

By selling benefits over features, you’re better able to resonate with your audience because you’re actually painting a picture of what life will be like with the product or service.

The same goes for your resume.

When writing your resume copy, summarizing your experience, or formulating your objective, don’t simply rely on what you’ve done. Instead of creating a list of duties (features) under each role, outline your accomplishments (benefits). These provide a clearer picture of who they’re hiring if they choose you.

For example, instead of “Monitored SEO campaigns,” the following makes a much stronger statement: “Increased organic traffic by 56% in one quarter.”

As a result, the hiring manager is challenged to wonder, “What would life look like if we benefitted from this impact?”

5. Determine your messaging strategy.

It’s crucial to determine your messaging strategy — before you write a single word of your resume. That’s what you do when you’re running a marketing campaign, isn’t it? Here are some of the things to think about:

• What is the best structure for your resume in order to highlight your value proposition?
• Which keywords will your ideal employer be looking for?
• How can you give real-world examples of your value proposition in action? (Think about campaigns you’ve run, social media successes, ideas you developed, etc.)
• What is the best layout and design to reinforce your message?

All these decisions should be made before you start writing, and they should all be made with your target audience in mind. That way you can be sure that when potential employers read your resume, it will immediately strike a chord.

If you want an example of great messaging in a resume, check out the example below. Look at the progression of roles and key accomplishments in those roles — it tells the applicant’s career story while also making them look exceptionally qualified.

6. Don’t overcomplicate things.

Just like the marketing adage says, “A confused mind says no.”

The best way to convey an idea is… simply. Even when the topic is complex.

With this in mind, consider what message you want to send and keep the copy clear and concise to support it.

Use the layout of your resume to help in this endeavor, and don’t be afraid to trim any unnecessary bits.

7. Make sure your resume gets seen.

If you don’t already have a connection at the company you’re applying to, you’ll most likely need to apply through a computer system. This process is what makes it so critical to upload it in a format that allows all recipients to read it as intended, like a PDF. That way, none of the original formatting or spacing is lost in translation, making it really yucky to read from a recruiter’s perspective. Although they’ll still have access to your resume, confusing formatting might distract them from the content.

Many common applications have similar save or export options that let you ultimately save as a PDF. The most common are Microsoft Word and iWork Pages:

• Microsoft Word: Choose File > Save as Adobe PDF
• iWork Pages: Choose File > Export to > PDF

Once you send in your resume, the computer service will do is scan it for relevant keywords that have been programmed in advance by the recruiter. Then, the system will either “pass” or “fail” you, depending on how many keywords and phrases are included in your resume that match what the recruiter’s looking for.

Don’t worry: Even if you “fail,” it doesn’t mean your resume won’t ever get seen by a real human. But it doesn’t look great, either — so try to foresee which keywords the recruiter will be looking for by making a note of all of the skills you have that are relevant to the job description.

Keywords to include might be the names of the social media sites you use, analytics or CRM systems you know, and software programs or SAAS systems you’re familiar with. Make sure you’ve included these terms as seamlessly as possible throughout your resume (where relevant), and add any outliers at the very bottom under a “Technical Skills” or “Digital Marketing Skills” section.

9 Things Hiring Managers Are Looking For in Your Marketing Resume

Sure, computers may be used in the initial screening process, but it’s humans — with real feelings, pet peeves, hobbies, relationships, experiences, and backgrounds — who are ultimately reading and evaluating our resumes.

They’re also the ones who get annoyed when we don’t put our employment record in chronological order; who just don’t feel like reading paragraph-long job descriptions; and who get excited when you went to the same college as them. So to get a sense of what really matters on a marketing resume, I asked some hiring experts what they actually care about when they scan resumes, and here’s the inside scoop on the tips they shared with me. (By the way, don’t miss out on what they said about cover letters at the end.)

• Length
• Formatting
• Writing Quality
• Location
• College/Graduate School and Major/Concentration
• Companies and Titles
• Top Few Bullet Points in Each Section
• Dates of Employment
• Interests and Hobbies

1. Length

Limit your resumes to one page if you can. It takes hiring managers six seconds to decide whether they like your resume or not. If they do, they’ll keep reading. If they don’t… well, it’s on to the next. So, chances are, they won’t even get to page two.

In some cases, bleeding onto another page is OK, especially if you have a lot of really relevant experience. But if you have to do that, just don’t exceed two pages. Remember, recruiters can always look at your LinkedIn profile for the full story. (Because you’ve completed your profile on LinkedIn, right?)

2. Formatting

Formatting speaks to the way candidates collect their thoughts and organize their ideas. As HubSpot’s VP of Sales Productivity and Enablement Andrew Quinn explains it, “A candidate’s resume is their ad to me. How are they structuring this ad so I get a clear picture of what they’re capable of?”

There’s a fine line, though, warns Marketing Team Operations & Strategy Manager Emily MacIntyre. “If you stray too far from normal formatting, it’s hard to read and understand your resume. Don’t get so creative that your resume becomes difficult to digest.”

Below is an example resume with great formatting that’s easy to read. If you like the format and want to use it as your own, you can find it among our free downloadable resume templates here.

The creatives among you might be asking, “What about infographic resumes?” Here’s the general consensus: Don’t make an infographic resume. Every hiring manager I spoke with advised sticking to the classic resume form instead of infographics or other formats.

“Infographic resumes are impossible to understand,” says MacIntyre. “We appreciate creativity, except when it’s overkill and hard to follow. Keep it simple. Everyone appreciates a simple resume. If you’re a designer, showcase your creativity with a cool portfolio website in addition to your simple resume.”

Below is an example of a creative format that’s still easy to read and understand. It was made using the Apple desktop app iWork Pages, which can be exported as a PDF so none of that beautiful formatting gets messed up in translation.

3. Writing Quality

Hiring managers throw away resumes with spelling errors — but writing quality goes beyond just simple spelling mistakes. Writing and presenting data in meaningful ways is a critical skill for any position, from blogging to engineering.

Are the details you want hiring managers to know about you easy to consume? Do you use concise sentences to convey your performance and accomplishments? Are your verb tenses consistent (except for current positions)? Is your language overflowing with buzzwords, or does it sound natural? Are you making sure to use first-person without using “I” or “my”? (See #11 in this blog post to understand why that’s not okay.)

“Formatting, spelling, syntax, and structure are all evidence of attention to detail,” Quinn told me. “This is important for any job, but especially if you’re applying to a job where attention to detail matters.” If you’re applying for a writing position, this is even more important.

4. Location

Hiring managers want to know if you’ll need to relocate. If you already live near the company’s office, great! If you would need to relocate, then it gets a little more complicated. Technically, hiring managers can’t legally ask you directly where you live — but omitting location will raise eyebrows. Even P.O. boxes are a little iffy.

If you do need to relocate, you should still include your current, out-of-town address on your resume, but be prepared to answer relocation status questions in an interview. If the company doesn’t offer relocation packages, will you be able to afford taking the job and moving anyway? If not, you may be wasting time.

5. College/Graduate School and Major/Concentration

Which is more important: Where you went to school, or what you studied?

It depends on the job you’re applying for. In most cases, your degree should make sense for the role. Hiring managers are looking for the tie-in; what’s relevant about what a candidate’s done in school. That doesn’t mean only marketing majors can apply to marketing jobs — marketing teams might hire someone who came out of creative studies like liberal arts, graphic design, or writing. An engineering team, on the other hand, probably won’t hire someone without a computer science degree.

It also depends on how successful you were at the school you attended. While there are some hiring managers who only give interviews to graduates of top-tier schools, most say it helps to go to a top-tier school, but it’s certainly not a deal-breaker if you went to a lower-tier school or community college. A community college graduate with a 4.0 GPA could be more attractive than an Ivy League graduate with a 2.0.

Speaking of GPA — when to take it off your resume is subjective. If your GPA was below a 3.0, consider removing it altogether. If it’s higher than that, Quinn says, “The benchmark is five to seven years after graduation, which is when candidates tend have a solid track record of employment. If you did well in school but had lackluster job prospects following graduation because of, say, a bad economy, you could definitely leave it on longer.”

It goes both ways, he explained: “If you had great jobs and accomplishments following graduation but didn’t have a good GPA, consider removing your GPA earlier.”

Three to five years after college or graduate school graduation, you can move your “Education” section to the bottom of your resume — unless you connected with someone through an alumni network or if you know an executive there also went to your school.

Want to take your marketing education to the next level and make your resume even more appealing to potential employers? Become a certified inbound marketing professional with HubSpot’s free marketing certification.

6. Companies and Titles

Hiring managers will look at where you’ve worked before (do they recognize the company names or know anyone who works there?) and your titles at those companies.

“If you’re applying for a sales position at a software company like HubSpot, we’re looking for experience selling software,” David Fernandez, former Recruiting Team Lead at HubSpot, told me. “If you’re applying for a services position, we’re looking for customer-facing experience.”

Yes, people tweak their titles at previous companies to more closely match the positions they’re applying for. If you do this, your “new” title should be close enough to what you really did that if someone were to call and check a reference, they wouldn’t be dumbfounded. Maybe “Clerk to the Surgical Waiting Room” becomes “Customer Service Clerk.” Also, make sure to change your titles on LinkedIn, too — hiring managers will check for consistency on LinkedIn, Fernandez said.

7. Top Few Bullet Points in Each Section

Each position you’ve had should be accompanied by no more than five to six bullet points. Remember, these hiring managers are scanning your resumes really quickly, so you want to make it easy for them to find and digest the relevant information by consolidating the most important points and putting them first. Paragraphs are a big no-no.

Luckily, you work in a profession where everything can be measured and analyzed, which means it’s relatively easy to tell an impressive story of success. Think about all the ways your work can be quantified through hard data and then fill your resume with action-packed bullet points that convey the value you’ve added.

Focus on accomplishments first before responsibilities and duties. If you had a senior management role, include the number of people you managed. If you built a program from the ground up, call that out.

Also, include goals and metrics that hiring managers can use to compare you against other candidates, and make sure those metrics make sense so you don’t confuse the hiring manager. Run the metrics by your mom. I’m serious. If they make sense to her, then they’re all set. If not, then you weren’t clear enough and you need to tweak the language.

Examples might be increasing social media engagement, improving SEO ROI, driving increased web traffic, reducing bounce rates, boosting landing page conversions, etc. Once you have a list of your results, choose the best four or five and turn these into bullet points like these:

• Drove 37% improvement in newsletter clickthrough rates by rewriting sales copy.
• Grew ecommerce sales 23% in just 6 months by redesigning and A/B testing all landing pages.

8. Dates of Employment

Hiring managers look for job hopping and large gaps in employment, which are both red flags. Job hopping is a sign of failure to commit, a quality no one wants at their company. A word of advice: You should try to stay at every job for at least a year, preferably two or more years. Otherwise, it’s a red flag.

And if you took longer than six months off of work, MacIntyre suggests you explain the gap on your resume. If it’s something like teaching or the Peace Corps that you can describe like a job, then you can insert it into your resume just as you would any other position:

If it’s something like traveling abroad or taking time off for family or personal reasons, you can simply add it in italics of parenthesis. “Travelled abroad.” “Took time off for family.” “Took time off for personal reasons.” Hiring managers just want to see a rational explanation — that you were doing something productive with your time.

9. Interests and Hobbies

Whether you include interests and hobbies on your resume depends on the company and the job. If you’re applying for a creative role, hobbies like photography and painting could be interesting to an employer. If you’re hiring for an accounting role, then a hobby like skydiving wouldn’t be good to include — hiring managers might categorize you as a risk-taker, and do they really want a risk-taker managing their money?

“Think about the conclusions someone could draw from your hobbies relative to the role you’re hiring for,” Quinn advises. “Do they enhance or detract from the image you’re trying to convey? If you know the culture embraces unique individuals that have a broad background and set of interests, then it could be useful information. But conservative organizations probably don’t care what you do in your free time — in fact, they could interpret outside hobbies as distractions.”

Companies with cultures like HubSpot’s want their employees to have some personality and invest in outside interests. So if you’re applying to join that kind of culture, an “Interests” or “Hobbies” section could benefit you. “They’re great conversation starters,” says MacIntyre. “‘You’re a skier? Me too! Which mountain do you go to?’ It creates common ground for conversation and helps us assess culture fit.”

Before including or omitting this section on your resume, gain some intelligence about the company’s environment and culture. (And check out HubSpot’s culture code if you haven’t already.)

Spend Less Time on These…

Personal Statements/Objectives

In fact, we recommend skipping these altogether. Frankly, they’re irrelevant — not to mention way too easy to screw up. I’ve spoken with HubSpot recruiters about numerous times where candidates put the name of another local company on there — huge mistake.

Instead, replace it with a “Skills” or “Key Skills” section at the top of your resume, in column format, that highlights the top six to nine skills applicable to the role you’re applying for. Be sure to change these skills for each job and use the job description as a guideline.

Don’t plagiarize the job description by any means, but you can pull out key phrases. For example, in the example below, one of the listed skills is “Deep understanding of the consumer lifecycle.” That’s because the job description asked for exactly that: a deep understanding of the consumer lifecycle and customer journey.

Pro Tip: Although you should leave this section off your resume, you should have something in the ‘Summary’ section of your LinkedIn profile. Focus this section on specific skills and achievements. It’s a good place to put a link to your portfolio, blog, SlideShare presentations, or examples of work you’ve created like open-source code.

Use that space to talk about specific achievements from previous roles, awards you’ve won, or projects you’ve worked on. The information and skills on here should be applicable to where you’re headed in your career, not irrelevant past skills. (When I first heard this tip, I immediately took “emergency medicine” off of mine.)

Cover Letters

Cover letters vary in importance, depending on industry, and even on individual company. Here at HubSpot, we phased out requiring one — and instead ask candidates thoughtful questions during our application and interview process. Many companies that require you to write a cover letter will read it, but they’ll focus mostly on your resume.

With this in mind, include important details on your resume, like gaps in employment, rather than relying on your cover letter — which may never get read — to explain it. And reallocate those hours you plan to spend writing and perfecting your cover letter to writing and rewriting your resume. Your resume is the most important tool in the first stage of the application process, so spend a lot of time on it and ask multiple people to critique it.

Marketing Resume Examples

So here are some examples of marketer resumes done well:

1. Andrea Fitzgerald

Andrea Fitzgerald uses her page space effectively with listable items on the left and experience on the right. This gives the rest of the resume a little extra “skimmability” so hiring managers can easily find the information important to them.

She also summarizes her achievements in bite-sized sentences. This combined with the vertical format gives a lot of room to fully list out the depth of experience Fitzgerald has.

2. Sarah Casdorph

There’s an old saying out there for keeping resumes to one page, but for marketers with extensive experience, the one page isn’t always possible without compromising readability and design. At the same time, anything on the second page is at risk of being ignored.

Sarah Casdorph solves for this, putting top skills on the front page and pulling out “notable impacts” for each position. Not only is her two-pager easily navigable, but there’s a clear trail of achievement.

3. Jess Johnson

Jess Johnson applied to HubSpot with this resume, tailored to the job and company branding. By taking this unique approach, her goal was to stand out from other applicants. While her resume wasn’t the only factor in her landing the job, I imagine it gained a bit of attention. After all, a hiring manager is looking for applicants they can picture in the position.

4. Natalie Gullatt

Natalie Gullatt takes a more traditional approach with her resume, abandoning fancy frills in favor of hard-hitting copy. She expertly conveys her marketing impact with metrics (e.g. “decrease[d] costs by 61%” and “generated a $746k revenue pipeline”) so that anyone considering her for the role can ask themselves: “What if she could do that for us too?”

It’s Just Like Marketing

As a marketer, you have a talent for communication and a solid understanding of what makes people buy. The good news is that by applying this knowledge to your own resume, you can easily stand out from the crowd.

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