Category Archives: B2B

If you spend time optimizing your blog or website’s content, headers, subheaders, and meta descriptions for search engines, the following image should alarm you:

The screenshot above is the first search engine results page (SERP) Google produces for the search term, “excel table examples.” Notice how, in addition to the “Images” tab at the top, Google pulls in a substantial pack of clickable images to the beginning of the main results page — before any organic text results are even visible.

Today, nearly 38% of Google’s SERPs show images — and that’s likely to increase. That means, despite your best SEO efforts, you could still be missing out on another source of organic traffic: your website’s images. How do you get in on this traffic source? Image alt text.

Whether or not you perform SEO for your business, optimizing your website’s image alt text is your ticket to creating a better user experience for your visitors, no matter how they first found you.

How to Add Alt Text to Your Images

In most content management systems (CMSs), clicking on an image in the body of a blog post produces an image optimization or rich text module, where you can create and change the image’s alt text.

Let’s walk through what the next steps are for CMS Hub and WordPress below.

How to Add Alt Text in the HubSpot CMS

In HubSpot, once you’ve clicked on an image and clicked the edit icon (which looks like a pencil), an image optimization pop-up box will appear.

Here’s what this image optimization window looks like in the CMS inside your HubSpot portal:

Your alt text is then automatically written into the webpage’s HTML source code, where you can edit the image’s alt text further if your CMS doesn’t have an easily editable alt text window. Here’s what that alt tag might look like in an article’s source code:

How to Add Alt Text in the WordPress CMS

In WordPress, clicking on an image will automatically open the Block tab in the sidebar. Under the section labelled “Image Settings,”add the alt text in the empty field.

When you’re ready, click Update from the toolbar at the top of your screen.

The most important rule of alt text? Be descriptive and specific. Keep in mind, however, that this alt text rule can lose its value if your alt text doesn’t also consider the image’s context. Alt text can miss the mark in three different ways. Consider the examples below.

3 Image Alt Text Examples (the Good and the Bad)

1. Keyword vs. Detail

Bad Alt Text

alt="HubSpot office wall Singapore inbound marketing workplace murals orange walls ship it"

What’s wrong with the line of alt text above? Too many references to HubSpot. Using alt text to stuff keywords into fragmented sentences adds too much fluff to the image and not enough context. Those keywords might be important to the publisher, but not to web crawlers.

In fact, the alt text above makes it hard for Google to understand how the image relates to the rest of the webpage or article it’s published on, preventing the image from ranking for the related longtail keywords that have higher levels of interest behind them.

Worst still, if you stuff too many keywords, then you may incur a Google penalty.

Good Alt Text

With the bad alt text (above) in mind, better alt text for this image might be:

alt="Orange mural that says 'ship it' on a wall at HubSpot's Singapore office"

2. Detail vs. Specificity

Image via Winslow Townson

Bad Alt Text

alt="Baseball player hitting a ball at a baseball field"

The line of alt text above technically follows the first rule of alt text — be descriptive — but it’s not being descriptive in the right way. Yes, the image above shows a baseball field and a player hitting a baseball. But this is also a picture of Fenway Park — and the Red Sox’s #34 David Ortiz clocking one over right field. These are important specifics Google would need to properly index the image if it’s on, say, a blog post about Boston sports.

Good Alt Text

With the bad alt text (above) in mind, better alt text for this image might be:

alt="David Ortiz of the Boston Red Sox batting from home plate at Fenway Park"

3. Specificity vs. Context

Image via UCLA

Both images above have clear context that can help us write good alt text — one is from a HubSpot office, and the other is Fenway Park. But what if your image doesn’t have official context (like a place name) by which to describe it?

This is where you’ll need to use the topic of the article or webpage to which you’re publishing the image. Here are some bad and good examples of alt text based on the reason you’re publishing it:

For an Article About Attending Business School

Bad Alt Text

alt="Woman pointing to a person's computer screen"

The line of alt text above would normally pass as decent alt text, but given that our goal is to publish this image with an article about going to business school, we’re missing out on some key word choices that could help Google associate the image with certain sections of the article.

Good Alt Text

With the bad alt text (above) in mind, better alt text for this image might be:

alt="Business school professor pointing to a student's computer screen"

For a Webpage on Education Software for Business School Teachers

Bad Alt Text

alt="Teacher pointing to a student's computer screen"

The line of alt text above is almost as descriptive and specific as the good alt text from the previous example, so why doesn’t it suffice for a webpage about education software? This example dives even deeper into the topic of business school, and specifies that the ideal audience for this webpage is teachers. Therefore, the image’s alt text needs to reflect that.

Good Alt Text

With the bad alt text (above) in mind, better alt text for this image might be:

alt="Professor using education software to instruct a business school student"

Image Alt Text Best Practices

Ultimately, image alt text needs to be specific but also representative of the topic of the webpage it’s supporting. Get the idea so far? Here are a few important keys to writing effective image alt text:

• Describe the image, and be specific. Use both the image’s subject and context to guide you.
• Add context that relates to the topic of the page. If the image doesn’t feature a recognizable place or person, then add context based on the content of the page. For example, the alt text for a stock image of a person typing on a computer could be “Woman optimizing WordPress website for SEO” or “Woman researching free blogging platforms,” depending on the topic of the webpage.
• Keep your alt text fewer than 125 characters. Screen-reading tools typically stop reading alt text at this point, cutting off long-winded alt text at awkward moments when verbalizing this description for the visually impaired.
• Don’t start alt text with “picture of…” or “Image of…” Jump right into the image’s description. Screen-reading tools (and Google, for that matter) will identify it as an image from the article’s HTML source code.
• Use your keywords, but sparingly. Only include your article’s target keyword if it’s easily included in your alt text. If not, consider semantic keywords, or just the most important terms within a longtail keyword. For example, if your article’s head keyword is “how to generate leads,” you might use “lead generation” in your alt text, since “how to” might be difficult to include in image alt text naturally.
• Don’t cram your keyword into every single image’s alt text. If your blog post contains a series of body images, include your keyword in at least one of those images. Identify the image you think is most representative of your topic, and assign it your keyword. Stick to more aesthetic descriptions in the surrounding media.
• Review for spelling errors. Misspelled words in image alt text could hurt the user experience or confuse search engines crawling your site. You should review alt text like you would any other content on the page.
• Don’t add alt text to every image. You should add alt text to most images on a webpage for the sake of SEO, UX, and accessibility — however, there are exceptions. Images that are purely decorative or are described in text nearby, for example, should have an empty alt attribute. For a more detailed breakdown of when to add alt text and when to not, check out this decision tree.

How Alt Text Affects SEO

According to Google, alt text is used — in combination along with computer vision algorithms and the contents of the page — to understand the subject matter of images.

Alt text therefore helps Google to better understand not only what the images are about, but what the webpage as a whole is about. This can help increase the chances of your images appearing in image search results.

When creating content on a topic, consider how your audience might prefer to find answers to their questions on that topic. In many cases, Google searchers don’t want the classic blue, hyperlinked search result — they want the image itself, embedded inside your webpage.

For example, a visitor looking up how to remove duplicates in excel might prefer a screenshot so they can understand how to complete the task at a glance.

Image Source

Because this image has optimized alt text, it appears in image search results for the longtail keyword “how to remove duplicates in excel.” Since the post also appears in the web search results for the same keyword, visitors could land on the blog post through these two different channels. 

Why is image alt text important?

We’ve already alluded to several reasons why image alt text is important: namely, accessibility, user experience, and image traffic. Understanding these reasons will help you write the best alt text possible for your images. Below we’ll take a closer look at the major reasons image alt text is important.

Accessibility

Back in 1999, W3C published its Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 in order to explain how to make content more accessible for users with disabilities. One of these guidelines was to “Provide equivalent alternatives to auditory and visual content.” That meant any webpages including images (or movies, sounds, applets, etc.) should include equivalent information to its visual or auditory content.

For example, say a web page contains an image of an upward arrow that links to a table of contents. A text equivalent might be “Go to table of contents.” This would allow a user with a screen reader or other assistive technology to understand the purpose of the image without seeing it.

In other words, alt text helps ensure your visual content is accessible to all users, including those with visual impairments.

User Experience

Alt text not only provides a better user experience to users with disabilities — it provides a better UX to all users. Say, a visitor has a low-bandwidth connection so the images on your webpage aren’t loading. Instead of just seeing a broken link icon, they’ll also see the alt text. This will allow them to glean what the image was meant to convey. 

For example, a user might be able to see the image on the left. If they can’t — due to a disability,  bandwidth issue, or another reason — then they will hear or see the alt text on the right. This will help provide a better user experience than if there were no alt text. 

Image Source

Image Traffic

One of the most important things image alt text can do for you is turn your images into hyperlinked search results that appear either in Google Images or as image packs. Image packs are special results displayed as a horizontal row of image links that can appear in any organic position (including the #1 spot on a SERP, as seen in the example in the intro).

Images that appear in either Google Images or image packs provide yet another way to receive organic visitors. This can result in thousands of more visitors — at least it did in HubSpot’s case. 

Beginning in 2018, the HubSpot Blog team implemented a new SEO strategy that, in part, focused more intently on optimizing image alt text. This helped to increase the blog’s image traffic by 779% in less than a year, which resulted in 160,000 more organic views. You can read more about the team’s success in this blog post.

Adding Image Alt Text to Your Website

So, where do you start when developing alt text for your blog posts and webpages? Consider performing a basic audit of your existing content to see where you can incorporate alt text into previously untagged pictures. Watch to see how your organic traffic changes among the pages that you give new alt tags.

The more images you optimize, the better your SEO strategy will be moving forward.

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

After years of iterating with our Publisher Management Platform and a year of preparation specific to this launch, NetLine is pleased to introduce the B2B Marketing world to our Lead Management Platform: A SaaS solution offering B2B Marketers centralized lead capture, qualification, routing, analytics, and companion content amplification campaign capabilities within one simple to use and self-service interface. 

The platform furthers NetLine’s goal of democratizing lead gen for all, enabling B2B Marketers to turn their current website traffic into revenue-based outcomes, streamlining their lead capture, lead management, and content amplification programs within one tool.  

How NetLine’s Lead Management Platform Works

Upon creating their account, Marketers will be able to take advantage of a number of distinct, NetLine-exclusive advantages. 

Unified and Predictive Login

If you didn’t need to type your name and other basic pieces of info into a form that you were eager to complete—and we mean zero typing, by the way—how much happier would you be? Well, considering that more than 70% of audiences are immediately recognized by our Predictive Forms, most users will only need to complete 5-7 fields—that’s a 60% reduction in typing vs. traditional and non-predictive forms. 

This innovation represents the industry’s only first-party user authentication solution.

After a user is recognized, our password-less and unified login registration tech goes to work and allows for a frictionless content registration experience and near-instant content accessibility. Users benefit from less typing and Marketers benefit by increasing their conversions. 

Advanced Reporting Capabilities

Real-time & interactive campaign reports offer insights into campaign performance, content resonance, and persona engagement. Interactive visualization tools, such as dynamic pivot tables, heatmaps, and custom configurations offer a new level of transparency into content consumption behavior that helps improve campaign performance, faster.  

Real-Time Connectors

Within minutes, Marketers can leverage thousands of 3rd party integration possibilities, including easy, ready-to-use connectors with Salesforce, ON24, HubSpot, and Marketo, to ensure that leads generated by their content can seamlessly enter the nurture path and/or sales cycle.  

On-demand Scale

Sometimes you need help. Sometimes you need epic reach beyond your own site. Sometimes you just need to reach the professionals in a very niche industry. Whatever your goals are, B2B Marketers can tap into incremental scale and amplify their content to reach their preferred target audiences—all within their own individual budgets—within a matter of minutes.

Open Auction CPL Pricing

As we introduced with our Open B2B Lead Gen Marketplace, NetLine equips B2B Marketers with immediate access to the largest volume of content-generated B2B buyer-level data on the web where more than 700k first-party leads are generated across more than 300 industries each month. 

With these additions to the platform, you’ll gain access to all of these features without ever needing any IOs, negotiations, or phone calls. Simply convert native content, add budget, and select your targeting.

Content Format Agnostic 

No matter what type of content you’re uploading to drive your campaigns, your users will only be served one common form across every type of gated content format—including webinars and virtual experiences.

Simplify and consolidate all legacy form solutions to a common experience for your audience, and more importantly a common data structure with far richer user profiles. Plus, the platform offers everything from basic themes to fully white-labeled user experiences emulating exact site templates. Whatever you need, the platform has a solution for every need.  

Flexible Plans for Every Marketer

Our Lead Management Platform was designed with democratization in mind. As such, we wanted to make sure that we offered plans that would accommodate as many Marketers as possible with plans ranging from Free to $199 per month depending on the needs of the Marketer.  

At a time when first-party data capture is a top priority for Marketers, we’re thrilled to be able to offer a platform not only focused on making this attainable for B2B organizations but also proud to be offering tremendous value at a competitive price point.

Why B2B Marketers Should Use the Lead Management Platform

Before opening the platform to Marketers, NetLine’s Lead Management Platform had been reserved exclusively for the best B2B media organizations in the world. What B2B Marketers should take comfort in knowing is that they will be instantly tapping into an established and proven product—one B2B Publishers have been reaping the benefits from for years.

Publishers regularly achieve some outstanding outcomes through the platform, including increasing conversions and generating richer first-party data as a means of accelerating Sales dialogue. Aside from seeing a strong return on your investment, the Lead Management Platform allows B2B Marketers to decrease their overall investment at the start. 

As our Chief Strategy Officer, David Fortino said, B2B Marketers needed at least a handful of technologies to run their lead gen programs before today. “They needed software to capture, enrich, scrub, filter, fulfill, report, within their own sites,” Fortino said, “and an entirely different suite of vendors to amplify their content beyond the reach of their inbound forms.”

With the help of the Lead Management Platform, B2B Marketers can now do all of this with one simple self-service interface. “Whether they want to centralize lead capture, or create a hub for qualification, routing, analytics, and companion content amplification campaigns,” Fortino said, “the platform does it all—allowing B2B Marketers to reduce their costs while simultaneously becoming more efficient in the process.” 

To learn more about the Lead Management Platform and how it could work for you, please visit the NetLine Portal.

It’s no secret that poor user experience (UX) isn’t going to keep your customers and target audience coming back to your website. Poor UX also negatively impacts your ability to rank on Google’s search engine results page (SERP).

To ensure your website has delightful UX for your visitors as well as one that meets Google’s standards for ranking, you’ll want to focus on Core Web Vitals.

Core Web Vitals

At a high level, Google’s Core Web Vitals exist to fix poor user experiences on your website — Google knows that poor UX leads to higher bounce rates and that’s why they take page performance into consideration when determining your page’s ranking.

Core Web Vitals are meant to be applied by all site owners on each of their web pages to ensure all three Vitals — which we’ll talk more about below — are measured.

HubSpot Core Web Vitals

HubSpot’s SEO audit tool reviews all three of Google’s Core Web Vitals metrics for you. Below, we’ll cover the ways in which HubSpot can help you prepare for Core Web Vitals.

How HubSpot Helps Users Prep for Core Web Vitals

Google’s Core Web Vitals metrics are part of the search engine’s page ranking algorithm. HubSpot’s SEO audit tool flags pages with unsatisfactory scores based on Google’s Core Web Vitals metrics. Specifically, HubSpot uses Google Lighthouse to automatically scan all pages that make up a website. The tool then flags pages that fail any of these metrics.

Three Core Web Vitals that HubSpot’s SEO audit tool flags:

Source

1. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

LCP is perceived page load speed. It refers to how quickly a page can load and render all of its visual elements to the screen.

2. Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

CLS is visual stability. It refers to how often users experience unexpected layout shifts on a web page.

3. First Input Delay (FID)

FID is load responsiveness. It’s a quantifiable measurement of how users feel when a page is unresponsive.

An alternative measurement for FID is Total Blocking Time (TBT). TBT is the quantifiable measurement of how much a non-interactive page is before becoming interactive. In other words, TBT measures the total amount of time that a page is blocked from responding to user input. HubSpot scans and flags web pages that have a TBT of over 300 milliseconds for you (because Google believes a good TBT is anything less than 300 milliseconds).

Who benefits from HubSpot’s SEO audit tool?

HubSpot can help you prepare for Core Web Vitals whether or not you’re a CMS Hub user — in fact, it’s available to those who are CMS Hub Professional and Enterprise users as well as Marketing Hub Professional and Enterprise users. You can use HubSpot’s SEO audit tool whether you’re on a HubSpot-hosted website or a website hosted by another platform.

Pro Tip: Get HubSpot CMS Hub or Marketing Hub to begin measuring your web pages’ UX against Google’s Core Web Vitals. 

Start Prepping For Core Web Vitals With HubSpot

With HubSpot, you’ll know if your web pages meet Google Core Web Vitals. As a result, you’ll be able to ensure your web pages are offering your visitors delightful UX. Additionally, you’ll know that your web pages have a significantly better chance at ranking for your keywords and phrases than they would if they didn’t meet Google’s criteria.

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

We live in a digital era, and people are still checking their emails daily, so strong email marketing strategies are essential, especially for Black-owned businesses.

When thinking about creating the best email marketing strategies, make sure you are authentic and tell your community your story.

Do a brain dump of your ideas if you need to find purpose and discover the expected outcome for each marketing strategy you are working to create.

The Black community supports you best when you’re honest, so they can empathize with you.

“The most effective email marketing campaigns we’ve launched have been those that are authentic, tell our story, and bring our audience along for the ride. In the early days before we launched our company, all we had was our story to draw people into our funnel,” THE MOST founder and CEO Dawn Myers told HubSpot.

Myers adds, “Be vulnerable. Show the ups and downs of entrepreneurship. Show that you identify with their pain points and how much you’ve sacrificed to be able to serve them. This tactic builds deep credibility and trust.”

Below, you can find five email strategies that have worked for Black business owners today.

Additionally, for additional email marketing resources, check out these blogs on how to create an outstanding marketing plan and how to craft successful email marketing plans, with downloadable templates included.

Successful Email Marketing Strategies for Black-Owned Businesses

1. Find out what else your audience cares about in correlation with your mission.

If someone subscribes to your email list, it’s safe to say they have already heard of your product or find it interesting, so it’s important to dig deeper beyond that.

Ariel Butler, founder and CEO of hair and skin products company Shea Adé, learned that people mainly care about when the company is emailing about sales when it comes to product-based businesses. It can also get daunting if emails are about the same products consumers have already heard about.

“I’d recommend brands find other topics to email their audience about (blog posts, free ebooks, etc.),” she said. “Everything outside of that should be emails about sales or new product releases as opposed to the emails that look like ‘Hey, don’t forget to buy this full-priced item that I’ve been bugging you about 4X a week!‘”

One strategy that works for Butler is sending daily affirmations to her customers. She started trying out this simple email tactic since her brand’s mission is all about not only healing hair but healing beyond the scalp.

“I want my customers to wake up every day and feel good about how they look,” Butler said. “Since I started sending out those emails, I have been completely blown away by how enjoyable daily affirmations have been for my customers. Some people have only been introduced to my brand because someone told them about our emails, and when they found out that Shea Adé is a hair company, they supported me because they resonated with my brand’s mission to heal.”

2. Connect with your customers weekly.

Every week, Raven Gibson, founder and CEO of Legendary Rootz, sends out a campaign that allows email subscribers to download a free personal digital wallpaper.

She says this is her best email marketing strategy, and she coined it “Wallpaper Wednesday.” Over the years, Gibson’s audience has expressed to her that while they want to support her business, they don’t have the funds to do so. She recognized this problem and came up with a free solution to still connect with her community.

“Typically, the design centers around celebrating Black culture or an important reminder of the day,” Gibson said. “This marketing strategy has allowed for our email list to grow, and given us the opportunity to connect with our community.”

Gibson runs a similar campaign on Tuesdays where she connects with her followers by highlighting their love for natural hair. She sees this as a way to share community and emphasize the importance of Black hair culture. Gibson also uses these emails to share exclusive deals and product restocks specifically for email subscribers.

These weekly email marketing campaigns have helped drive an excellent return on investment, Gibson said.

 “Investing in email marketing has allowed us to stretch our marketing dollars while making a meaningful connection with our community,” Gibson said.  

3. Launch an engaging outreach campaign.

Creating outreach campaigns can grab people’s attention while providing a more significant incentive beyond expecting folks to just read your emails.

Alvarez Mckendall, a serial entrepreneur and digital marketing strategist, is responsible for social media and email marketing at Real Estate Bees, a technology and marketing platform for the real estate industry. One of his most successful email marketing strategies is interviewing the professionals and business owners with which he’s trying to connect.

Mckendall said this strategy is most effective because it helps consumers understand what the business is offering and how potential customers can benefit from it based on what he learns in those interviews.

Mckendall transformed Real Estate Bees’ previous email questionnaire into an interview-style questionnaire and adjusted email templates and subject lines to indicate his company’s desire to interview the business owner or a key member instead of completing a boring questionnaire.

“Just like your friends and family members, business owners love to get attention and feel important,” Mckendall said. “Appealing to one’s ego is an extremely effective technique whenever you want to get their attention and start building a business relationship.”

When Mckendall launched the outreach campaign, Real Estate Bees’ email open rate was 25-27%, and the response rate was about 1%.

“I was constantly thinking about how we could improve it,” he said.

Based on this campaign, Real Estate Bees’ email open rate has improved to 42%, and the response rate increased by 3%. It’s essential to make your campaigns engaging by including hyperlinks, photos, videos, and whatever else makes sense for your brand.

4. Make allies with other businesses by doing press partnerships.

Networking and building partnerships can be handy for email marketing strategies, too. Francis Perdue, CEO of public relations firm Perdue Inc., suggests Black business owners team up to expand their following by promoting each other.

The free promotion exposes different audiences to new products and services, and it also helps build community by connecting various consumers.

“No money is exchanged, yet it does wonders for your businesses,” Perdue said. “Share each other’s audiences to support one another. Creating an e-blast for an event or cause for someone in exchange for the same will grow your reach and show that you are committed to the community while promoting unity.”

If you don’t know where to start, pick up your phone and see what emails you have in your contact list already. When Perdue launched her firm over a decade ago, she said she didn’t know many people in the industry, but she had a strong community of friends, old colleagues, and former classmates.

She did an e-blast to promote her new business, and right off the back, she got 200 subscribers. More than 2,500 people are subscribed to Perdue Inc.’s email list, all of which came from Perdue’s organic outreach via her network.

“People want to support you; you’d be surprised,” she said. “Get out and network. I own a restaurant, so I know the importance of repeat customers.”

5. Use tools, applications, and other digital resources.

Building email marketing strategies can be tedious and time-consuming, especially if you’re

releasing emails weekly. It’s okay to build out your campaigns yourself, but if you’re looking for something new or different, here are some tools, applications, and resources that Black business owners use to better connect with their audiences:

• “This may sound crazy, but I believe TikTok is an amazing way to drive customers to your brand and your email list.” — Butler.
• “Switching to Klaviyo for all email correspondence helped with increasing our abandoned cart click rate from 4% to 7%. I am so happy that I took the time to switch over from Shopify and set it up.” — Gibson.
• “We have been using the BuzzStream tool to send out emails and monitor all the analytics and stats.” — Mckendall.
•  “I love Adobe XD. It’s a prototyping application; however, I use it to craft all of our email marketing collateral. My favorite feature is the ability to duplicate and switch up the content in a split second. After creating specific templates for Wallpaper Wednesday or an exclusive email-only sale, I can reuse them again with just the click of a few buttons. I’ve found that using these templates allows me to streamline the process immensely.” — Gibson.
• “Some email marketing apps range from $0 to $100 a month. The good news is that usually, under 200 contacts are free. Use GoDaddy when you start your website to get coupons for marketing from their partners to cut costs as well.” — Perdue.
• “I love the website Really Good Emails. It is a gold mine for all things email. The site is very well-organized, and you can find just about any topic within the site. It’s almost like the Pinterest of email marketing.” — Gibson.

While branding can feel like a vague concept, it’s one of the most important elements of a marketing strategy.

Did you know that presenting a brand consistently across all platforms can increase revenue by up to 23%?

Plus, consistently presented brands are 3.5 times more likely to have excellent brand visibility than those with inconsistent branding.

In fact, 82% of investors say name recognition is an important factor guiding them in their investment decisions.

So, what does all this mean? Well, consistent branding leads to increased brand awareness which can then help gain investors and drive revenue to your business. Needless to say, branding is important for your business to succeed.

In this post, let’s review what brand salience is, how you can increase your brand visibility, and how to measure it.

If you have high brand salience, then you have a strong brand presence that consumers recognize and think about when they need a product. If you have low brand salience, then consumers might not know your brand exists and therefore won’t think of your brand when they need to make a purchase.

Essentially, brand salience is a similar metric as brand awareness except it’s focused on measuring awareness during the actual purchasing decision instead of overall brand visibility.

For example, when someone wants to get a cup of coffee and is driving around, what’s the first brand they think of? Probably Starbucks. When they want to buy tissues, they think of Kleenex. When they want to search for something online, they Google it.

All of these brands have transcended the perception of being a random company, and are now household names in their own right. Most people think of these brands and know of them whether they’ve been there or used those products before.

These brands have high brand salience. To have high brand salience, your customers need to think about your brand as the first solution to their wants or needs when they have to make a purchasing decision.

The concept of brand salience is actually psychological in nature. According to research done by Jenni Romaniuk and Byron Sharp, brand salience is “a brand’s propensity to be noticed or come to mind in buying situations.”

This means that you have to capture people’s attention and be memorable enough for consumers to recall your brand when they’re purchasing something.

For example, when a consumer has a choice of brands to purchase from, they’ll rely both on their memory and attention salience. This means they’ll recall brands they know and then see what captures their attention.

This process is actually scientific. People who have studied brand salience have studied the human brain — how do people recall information and how does a brand associate positive memory structure with their product?

To increase your brand salience, some of your marketing campaigns probably won’t even focus on persuading consumers to buy your product. The goal of many branding campaigns is to constantly reinforce positive associations with your brand. Familiarity is important. Constant marketing messages from a brand ensure that the brand is top-of-mind when a consumer is making a purchasing decision.

Brands create high brand salience by using distinctive brand assets that capture attention and create positive memories for their audience. This means your marketing assets promote positive storytelling and create a meaning associated with your brand. When you promote your values, you’re differentiating your brand from the competition and increasing brand salience.

To create campaigns that will improve brand salience, think about the emotional impact of your assets. Your campaigns should be meaningful, authentic, and portray your values as a company.

All of this will help customers create a positive association with your brand and remember your brand when it comes time to make a purchase.

For example, let’s say I want to buy some gum. When I think about gum, one of the first things I think of are the commercials for Extra. I’ve never forgotten those commercials because they were emotional and created a positive experience for me.

Now, when I think about gum, I usually buy Extra even though that brand has never been my favorite gum company (I used to buy Orbit). But since those commercials, I’ve leaned toward Extra because of the positive association and it’s one of the first brands I recall because of those commercials.

Ultimately, brand salience is a combination of brand awareness, familiarity, relevance, frequent communication, and emotional connections between brand and consumer.

Now, you might be thinking, “This all sounds great, but how can I measure this and prove its effectiveness to my managers?”

Let’s dive into that below.

How to Measure Brand Salience

Brand salience is rather conceptual in nature. Unfortunately, it’s not a mathematical metric that is easily measured. So, what do brands do?

Well, one of the only ways to measure brand salience is through surveys and focus groups. It’s important to ask your customers when they think of you, what they associate with your brand, and if they recall your company when making a purchasing decision.

You can ask customers whether they recall or notice your brand relative to competitors. Then, ask whether your brand is just thought of or sought after to determine how favorably your brand is judged.

Your survey can include descriptive assets to track your brand’s distinctive assets. For instance, what tone of voice, logo, color, or slogan comes to mind when users think of soda. They might say red, because they’ve associated Coca-Cola branding with soda in general.

To measure this, you can present survey respondents with a randomized list of cues and attributes by asking them which brands they associate with each statement. It could be questions like “when I want to eat something quick and healthy” or “I know I will not overpay there.”

Using a survey or focus group will help you determine how high your brand salience is compared to competitors.

Now, let’s look at the brand salience model that you can use to strategize your brand positioning.

Brand Salience Model

In his book, Strategic Brand Management: Building, Measuring, and Managing Brand Equity, Kevin Keller developed a model for brand salience that has become popular in digital marketing.

In the graphic below, Keller creates a pyramid of building blocks to pay attention to when you’re trying to increase your brand salience.

Image Source

This model focuses on increasing deep, broad brand awareness by creating an identity that customers remember. At the foundation of the pyramid is salience, which you can increase by defining your brand in detail, frequently communicating with your audience, and using creative assets to tell a story.

Then, you create meaning and authenticity to differentiate your brand from the competition. And then, you use frequent messages to create positive, accessible reactions in your customers. And then you create loyalty by building a relationship and emotional connection with your audience.

With this model, you can increase brand salience, drive revenue, and even attract investors. Although this isn’t the easiest metric to track, the science proves that focusing on branding will help your company become a household name for your customers.

Maybe you’ve been refreshing the Careers page at your dream company for months.

Alternatively, perhaps you’ve heard glowing reviews about a company from friends — but whenever you check, they’re still not hiring for any roles for which you’d qualify.

Whatever the case, if you feel a company’s culture could be a great fit for you, you might consider sending a cold email so hiring managers can keep you in-mind if a role becomes available.

But that’s easier said than done. If you sound too pushy, you risk alienating the hiring manager. A good cold email should be concise and focus on how you can add value to the team. When done correctly, a cold email is a good opportunity to network and get your name in front of the right people.

Fortunately, the folks at Resume.io put together an infographic, which details the 8 essential elements of a persuasive email you can use to apply at your dream company. Take a look now, and then check out How to Write a Letter of Interest in 2021 [Examples + Template].

 

In middle school, my best friend and I used to have a show on YouTube where we performed a dare from our audience each week.

We actually had some fans that would watch our videos and dare us to do something on a weekly basis.

While hosting these types of videos on YouTube made sense because they were for entertainment purposes, your business needs a platform with more features so you can create videos for marketing campaigns, sales pitches, and customer service knowledge base articles.

In this post, let’s review some of the best video hosting sites for your business.

Video Platforms

1. HubSpot

If you’re a HubSpot customer, you might already have access to HubSpot’s video hosting, creation, and management tool.

With this tool, you can host and manage video files inside the HubSpot platform and then embed those videos on your website pages, blog posts, social media channels, or knowledge base.

Using the same platform that you use for your marketing, sales, or service tool is a great idea because everything is all in one place. You can optimize your videos for SEO right in the tool.

This video hosting product also allows you to insert CTAs and forms into videos, trigger video workflows that provide targeted content to leads, and video analytics so you know which videos resonate with your audience.

For sales reps, you can use the video hosting tool to send video voicemails or record your screen during a sales call. You can also see if a prospect has watched the video in HubSpot’s tool.

Video can also be used for customer service. You can send video tutorials and record your screen right from a ticket to share it with customers for personalized and quick support. Or you can insert these videos into your knowledge base articles or FAQ page.

2. Twenty Three

Twenty Three is another great video hosting service for your business. You can host and embed videos on your site with Twenty Three’s 4K HD player. You can also directly clip and duplicate videos in the editor.

The best feature of this site is that you can publish and measure your videos across multiple platforms, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube.

Additionally, this hosting site connects with other tools you might be using for marketing software, including HubSpot or Marketo.

Plus, you can use analytics to better understand your marketing data.

Using video for your business can help engage your audience, create a branded experience, and drive results.

3. Cincopa

Cincopa is a video and podcast hosting platform for businesses. With this platform, you can create videos for marketing campaigns, sales prospects, or customer support. Additionally, this platform can host podcasts and images as well.

With this hosting site, you can also combine your media gallery to create a video course with images, video, or podcast files. I don’t know about you, but I’ve seen online courses become all the rage in recent years, so this is a great feature to consider.

You can embed these videos on your site, social media, email, and more.

4. Hippo Video

Hippo Video is a video hosting platform that you can use to personalize your video emails for messages, demos, sales pitches, marketing campaigns, and more.

Using videos in the sales cycle can actually get three times more prospect engagement.

With this tool, you can record and send videos right in your email inbox. Additionally, you can integrate this tool with your current stack, including with Slack, HubSpot, Salesforce, Zoom, Zendesk, and more.

5. SproutVideo

SproutVideo is a great option for a video hosting platform if you’re looking for a no-frills, affordable platform.

With this tool, you can create videos and collaborate with your team. You can share a secure internal video, or live stream a product launch. Whatever your video needs are, this is an excellent option to consider.

Free Video Hosting Sites

6. Vimeo

Vimeo is one of the most popular video hosting sites and for good reason. This simple tool can be used to create, manage, and share high-quality videos.

To create videos, you can use templates, license stock footage, record video messages, or live stream. When you’re editing your videos, you might be able to integrate Vimeo with your editor. Vimeo integrates with Adobe Premiere, Final Cut Pro, and others. Then, your videos will be hosted in one central, secure location so you can seamlessly share them with anyone.

You can even create a subscription streaming service for your videos on this platform.

The best part? Vimeo is free. You can upgrade to paid plans, but you’ll never have to pay for Vimeo if you don’t want or need to.

7. Vidyard

Vidyard is one of the only video hosting sites that is built directly with sales in mind. The idea is to build a great sales process to make remote selling easy, from prospecting to proposals, you can record and send videos that add a personal touch at all stages of the sales cycle.

With Vidyard, you can create your videos in just a few clicks, with no video expertise required (that’s great for tech-challenged people like me).

This tool is also free. You don’t ever have to pay unless you want to upgrade to a different plan with more features.

My favorite feature of this tool is that you can easily create videos, track who watches them, and distribute them an unlimited number of times (yes, even in the free version).

8. Wistia

Another great video hosting site is Wistia. You can host videos and even podcasts on this hosting platform for marketers.

On Wistia, you can upload, customize, and embed branded videos or podcasts on one platform. This also has a free plan that you can use, as long as you don’t need to create too many videos a month (three is the max on the free plan). However, if you need more, there are paid plans as well.

But my favorite feature of this tool is that it can integrate with your tech stack and send engagement data to your CRM, ad platforms, and marketing tools.

Video is only continuing to grow, as people spend more time watching video than reading text. As your business continues to evolve, it’s important to have a video hosting tool that can grow with you and help you use videos to drive results for all aspects of your business.

There’s a lot to like about well-designed infographics — whether it’s the beautiful typography, concise messaging, clever layouts, or bold graphics.

Not to mention that people retain 65% of information passed along with an image compared to only 10% when they listen to the same piece of information.

As the fourth most-used type of content marketing, infographics pop up all over the place — from social media posts to whitepapers. But don’t be fooled. They require just as much strategic thinking as a blog post or video.

Yet, as this list of the best infographic examples shows, the effort is worthwhile. Adding them to your marketing strategy can increase web traffic by 12% and help you stay competitive in the B2B crowd, where 65% of marketers use infographics.

Luckily, there are numerous resources to create beautiful infographics of your own.

To help inspire your next visual creation, here are a handful of stunning branded infographics to kickstart your creativity.

Best Infographic Examples to Get Inspired

Simple Infographic Examples

1. 10 Records You Can Break Working From Home, by ChairOffice

Although it’s essential to complete your tasks and remain productive while working from home, many employees often find themselves working too hard without any breaks.

This brilliant, yet straightforward infographic from ChairOffice contains 10 world records you can attempt as you take necessary breaks from work.

With vibrant colors, animated characters, and text, this infographic shares a simple message: take breaks. Who knows? You might be breaking a world record.

2. A Simple Guide to Shooting Video By Yourself, by Spielcreative

Although 86% of businesses use videos as part of their marketing strategy, only a few get it right.

Whether it’s background noises, poor lighting, or some other distraction, the videos don’t usually come out the right way.

This infographic from Spielcreative offers tips you’d need to create incredible videos all by yourself.

The use of simple graphics and arrow pointers makes the visualization easy to follow and understand. You also don’t have to strain your eyes to read the text, as it’s big enough to read from afar.

3. A Purposeful Life, by Studio Patten

This free infographic from Studio Patten collects different survey results concerning living a purposeful life and presents the data with visually appealing charts.

Although the topic of a purposeful life might be a deep one, this infographic does a great job of presenting the information simply.

There’s also a nice balance between the use of text and data visualization elements.

4. The Most and Least Bike-Friendly Cities In America, by Tower Electric Bikes

Knowing whether a city is bike-friendly or not is a factor cyclists consider when moving.

Naturally, questions about the city’s bike lanes, cyclist fatality rates, and the number of people using bikes would come up in a cyclist’s mind. Tower Electric Bikes answers these questions using this simple infographic.

To make sense of the infographic, Tower Electric Bikes used color gradation (going from green to red) to help its audience of cyclists understand how friendly the different cities in the United States are.

Cyclists can take a look and tell they’d need to avoid the Los Angeles areas if they want to enjoy sunny days out on their bikes.

5. How to Enjoy Studying, by IvyPanda

Studying doesn’t always have to be a chore. IvyPanda created this excellent infographic design to help students enjoy studying instead of feeling burned out or turning to social media because of boredom.

The use of bright colors and minimalist animated design is brilliant from IvyPanda.

Business Infographic Examples

6. How SMB Sales Teams Are Keeping Up in 2020, by Zendesk

We all know 2020 led to massive changes in the way we work, buy, and enjoy leisure time. But this infographic by Zendesk hones in on a specific group (SMB sales teams) to show how they keep up with the times.

Through research-backed data, clear visuals, and concise copy, the main point comes across crystal clear: Know customers’ expectations to meet them where they are.

This infographic does an excellent job following one theme, from start to finish. Readers can answer “What’s the point?” within the first few sentences — a best practice, according to CoSchedule.

This helps focus your infographic and avoids cramming too much information into one piece, which is why Zendesk flowed from the research and stats to how SMB sales teams adopt new technology to keep up.

It even includes the benefits of CRM technology, like a 52% increase in productivity from sales reps. Of course, the benefits align with the customer service software Zendesk offers, making the infographic a good sales tool for its team.

7. Content Marketing in Times of Uncertainty, by LinkedIn

More than eight out of 10 people want brands to act as a news source in uncertain times, foster a sense of community, and provide educational resources. Whew.

As a content marketer, those are significant expectations to live up to. LinkedIn realized the changing global landscape would alter customer expectations and, as a result, content marketing strategies. So the team put together this handy infographic to help marketers focus on what matters most.

This infographic example features several design elements from LinkedIn’s current brand. The graphics adhere to its primary and complementary color scheme, include diverse illustrations, and relate to the work-from-home times.

It also uses color block banners to add visual interest and break up chunks of text. But my favorite part? The ruler graphic on how to measure ROI and show why your efforts are worthwhile.

8. How to Be Productive While Working From Home, by Bannersnack

Working from home isn’t the pajama party many people (used to) imagine. As offices closed and millions turned dining tables into home office spaces, Bannersnack created this infographic to help its employees transition to a different way of working. As a freelancer working remotely for the past five years, I found it full of practical tips and valuable tools.

Beyond essential elements like brand colors, Bannersnack includes information people can immediately put to use. While it’s easy to stay planted on your couch all day, Bannersnack recommends finding multiple workspaces for different tasks — an inspirational spot for creative thinking and another for deep work and crunched deadlines.

Tips like this may seem small once you’ve been working remotely for a while, but for newcomers, it’s one less thing you have to learn while adjusting to a different routine.

9. 45 Slack Tricks That Will Impress Your Boss, by Net Credit

A tool as powerful as Slack has many features most people will never use, yet this infographic makes it easy to look like the cool “Slack-er” at the company even if you’ve only mastered the /giphy shortcut until now.

Net Credit starts with a handful of stats to inform readers and give an idea of Slack’s scope. Who knew people spend 50 million hours on the platform in one week? I’m intrigued and want to keep reading.

As you scroll down the graphic, you see a combination of direct headlines “Read Channel Highlight” followed by text instructions and visual cues. As a visual learner, I appreciate how these cues mirror the actual interface.

Each section is organized to help you find what you’re looking for, whether it’s “#channel” or “message” tips. Finance may be Net Credit’s bread and butter, but this infographic shows how its team is adaptable and helpful — exactly what you want in a financial partner.

10. How Bad Data Affects Businesses, TD Insights

A bad egg spoils the whole bunch, but what effect does bad data have on businesses? TD Insights answers that question with this excellent infographic design.

The use of contrast makes this infographic visually appealing. Any reader can quickly identify the main themes and points of the design because of the creative use of different fonts.

Timeline Infographic Examples

11. Tech’s Bizarre Beginnings & Lucrative Pivots, by Visual Capitalist

The beauty of infographics? They can be used by dozens of industries for hundreds of different purposes. But the best ones are often unexpected.

Take this graphic designed by Visual Capitalist. It reveals the wild origin stories of some of the biggest tech companies today. I had no idea YouTube began as a video dating site with the tagline “Tune In. Hook Up.”

As a growing online publication that focuses on data and technology news, Visual Capitalist’s audience is likely interested in stories around company pivots that led to success.

That information, coupled with a simple timeline structure, fun graphics, and hard-hitting metrics, makes it tough to look away from this infographic. Plus, we all need reminders that it’s not where you start but where you’re going.

12. Power Shifts, Studio Patten

The United States is a powerful nation, but that wasn’t the case centuries ago.

In this infographic, Studio Patten takes us on a journey through the years that show the most powerful nations at different times in history.

This infographic is simple, but it also uses creative images and text to provide a history lesson.

13. The Evolution of US Vaccines, by Janet Haniak

Humans have been fighting diseases and pandemics long before COVID-19. Here is one of the many infographics that make it easy to learn about past vaccines created to combat these diseases.

The use of real-life images instead of cartoon characters makes this infographic more believable. Instead of complicating the infographic, the designer made the timeline appear on a single line, with the notable event branching out of that line.

14. The Journey of Oprah Winfrey, by Blue Mail Media

Oprah Winfrey is one of the most powerful women alive today. But did you know she grew up in a poverty-stricken family and had a tough childhood?

This infographic from Blue Mail Media allows us to look into Oprah’s early life and how she grew to become who she is today.

Although this infographic has a prominent blue background, the other bright colors make engaging with it easy. The quote breaks also add personality to the infographic.

15. Apple History Timeline, by Viziononline

Apple is the subject of this creative infographic created by Viziononline, and why not? Apple is one of the largest corporations in the world. In fact, you’re likely reading this article on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac.

But was Apple always this big?

With one look, a reader can tell that this visualization is about Apple because of the different products that appear throughout the infographic.

Interactive Infographic Examples

16. Response to COVID-19, by the U.S Food and Drug Administration

It wouldn’t be a 2021 round-up without mentioning the global pandemic that kept many of us at home for months. The bright spot? There are infographics galore educating people on how to wash their hands and social distance properly.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) also relied on this visual medium to share how their regulatory department addressed COVID-19.

This infographic example made our list for several reasons. First, to show how infographics can highlight the impact, instead of sharing step-by-step instructions or research-oriented content.

The impact of each action is organized into separate columns and given a distinct color to help your eyes track from top to bottom. While this flow breaks the typical left-to-right reading pattern, it’s not distracting or difficult to follow.

The healthcare worker design at the top of the page nods to those on the frontlines, the colors align with the brand, actual numbers are easy to read, and the page isn’t crowded with text.

So the next time you need to explain the fruits of your labors to your boss, help win them over with an impact-driven infographic.

17. Pianeta Plastica, by Manuel Bortoletti for GEDI Gruppo

“Che bello” is the first thought that comes to mind for this design. The stunning data visualizations, oceanic color scheme, and easy-to-understand layout let the visuals do the talking. Visme explains how an infographic follows this essential best practice if it makes sense with all of the text removed.

That may seem impossible, but designer Manuel Bortoletti pulls it off with informative maps accompanied by clear keys and a bar graph that uses oil tankers to inform readers about how oil circulates the globe.

Even with my incredibly limited Italian, I understand that the main point of the piece is to inform readers about the impact of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. And since this infographic was designed for the Italian media outlet GEDI Gruppo, it stays on-brand with a more formal editorial tone.

18. How to Properly Wear a Mask, by John Hopkins Medicine

Education is the crux of an infographic. And when you have mere seconds to capture people’s increasingly narrow attention span, the information better be easy to learn.

That’s why one of the best infographic examples comes from John Hopkins Medicine. They designed an infographic to share tips on a crucial COVID-19 procedure: wearing a mask.

Is covering your nose important? You bet. What about wearing a bandana as a mask? No way. Hopkins uses a combination of straightforward graphics and copy to make the do’s and don’ts very clear.

As a renowned medical institution, Hopkins has the experience and authority to educate people on this topic, so it fits its brand and is helpful for everyone’s health — a true win-win.

19. The Sustainable Development Goals Report, by the United Nations

Infographics are a great way to add visual flavor to otherwise dry content, like annual reports and whitepapers.

What stands out in this infographic example is how it can be used as one visual or divided into 17 sections — one for each Sustainable Development Goal. This allows the content team to choose which type of content best fits the target audience.

If the UN is speaking to organizations that empower women and girls, they can share the “Gender Equality” graphic. But a non-profit that promotes all of the UN goals will likely be interested in the entire design.

While a lot of information is packed into each graphic, it’s never overwhelming. Each goal is separate from the other with bold headers and distinct colors, which are also used to differentiate the UN’s marketing efforts.

20. Ocean Pollution, by Stephanie Phung

Designer Stephanie Phung created this engaging visualization to make more people aware of the ocean’s current state of pollution.

This free infographic uses art to tell a story about the financial and environmental implications of ocean pollution. The designer also uses colors and design elements — the blue color for the sea — that people are already familiar with.

Ready to start designing stunning infographics?

Now that your creativity is sparked, it’s the perfect time to start creating your infographics.

While the infographics you create might be different from those on this list, ensure they’re colorful and engaging. And most importantly, that the infographics pass across information in a manner that’s easy to understand.

A while ago (as in 13 years ago) we created the first Website Grader. The goal was simple: help anyone with a website evaluate its effectiveness at attracting an audience of interested and relevant buyers.

We founded HubSpot in 2006 and created Website Grader in 2008 because we believed that the inbound methodology — building meaningful, lasting relationships with prospects and customers — was not only a more effective way to grow a business, it was the right way to grow a business. And we knew how important it was for people to leverage their websites to attract visitors and connect with customers to grow.

Fast forward to 2021, and websites do a whole lot more than attract visitors.

Your website is a sales rep, providing prospects with the features and pricing of your offering. And helping them book a meeting to learn more.

Your website is part of your customer service team, answering questions about your products and services through a knowledge base or chatbot.

Your website is a member of your HR team, sharing information about your company culture and open positions.

The list goes on…

To put it bluntly: your website is really freaking important! Today, 86% of people will find your business online. Your website is your first impression, your primary spokesperson, your around-the-clock inbound sales team — you get my point. It’s one of the most important assets to your business.

It’s no wonder we see businesses invest so much in their websites. In a recent HubSpot Research study, 63% of marketers indicated that they were going to upgrade their website this year.

Website upgrades can include:

• Performance: Page speed, load time, page requests, page size, and more
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Page index, meta descriptions, content plugins, and descriptive link text
• Design: Responsive design, legible font size, and tap targets
• Security: HTTPS and secure javascript libraries

Since 2008, we’ve graded over 1 million unique websites on the above four factors. With all this investment, are they actually getting better? Are businesses focusing on the right website upgrades? For example, are websites providing better security for their visitors. Are they offering faster load speeds for quick access? What about mobile accessibility and SEO best practices?

Let’s take a look at average performance in 2015 compared to this year to see what’s changed.

Website Performance Data (2015 vs 2021)

What surprises me the most about this data is that the improvements in technology over the past five years haven’t led to the same improvement in website performance. The overall grade average has only improved 17.1% in little over five years, and performance has actually decreased by 23.3%. The average website grade in 2020 is a D+ (69.1 out of 100). My mother wouldn’t be happy if I came home with that kind of grade.

We also found that only 3.8% of websites have an overall score of 90 or more. If your website scores above a 90, pat yourself on the back. Here are the percentile ranges from our data:

• 80 overall score: 82nd percentile
• 85 overall score: 91st percentile
• 90 overall score: 96th percentile

Here are some observations of the individual benchmark scores:

Website performance has decreased in the past half-decade.

Websites should load faster in 2021 than they did in 2015 — but the exact opposite is true. Performance was the only benchmark metric that decreased in five years. This includes testing for page size, page requests, page speed, and five additional tests that offer a holistic performance grading.

The result? Websites are slower today than they were in 2015.

This is a risk for businesses: the longer visitors wait for your page to load, the more likely they’ll leave your page.

For every second that your website takes to load, people are leaving your business. Good performance should be a priority when improving your website. How does your website’s performance compare?

Search engine optimization is the biggest winner.

In a 2020 survey, we found that 64% of marketers are actively investing in search engine optimization (SEO) and growing their organic presence.

Marketers care about SEO, and this has led to significant progress in the SEO benchmark since 2015 — a 51.9% improvement. Search engine optimization is essential to getting discovered online. It’s good that so many websites are following SEO best practices to improve the discovery of their business. How does your SEO compare?

Security had the second-biggest gain, but the total average falls short.

Our security benchmark shows that websites have improved their security by 142.3% over five years. This is a huge gain but there’s still a lot of room for improvement — the 2021 average score is only 6.3 out of 10.

Security is essential to have on your site to protect customer data. If your website isn’t secure, your visitors might lose trust in your business, especially when shopping on your site. We found that 85% of people won’t visit a site if it’s not secure.

Additionally, security improves discoverability. Starting in 2019, Google prioritized displaying websites with HTTPS in search results. Website Grader checks that your website uses HTTPS and has secure JavaScript libraries.

These two security factors are critical for delivering a secure experience for your visitors. How does your website security compare?

Mobile optimized websites improved marginally.

In the mid-2010s, it felt like every website was going responsive — that is, investing in mobile-first website design. It made sense.

Everywhere I looked, people were heads down on their phones, reading the latest Facebook post or watching a viral YouTube video. And, things haven’t changed much. Well, they have, but now people are scrolling through Instagram or browsing the latest TikTok dance challenge.

Responsiveness wasn’t just a trend — in the first quarter of 2021, mobile devices (excluding tablets) generated 54.8% of global website traffic. So how do websites stack up on small screens?

We found that our mobile design benchmark average improved by 8% over five years. Today, average websites score 21.6 out of 30 on mobile design. A great improvement, though I’d love to see that number go up even more.

Instagram, for example, is a website that does exceptionally well in how they design and optimize users’ mobile experience. It has a seamless mobile shopping feature for businesses to sell products directly through its mobile website or in-app.

Image Source

One study by Google found that 59% of shoppers surveyed said that shopping on mobile is important when deciding which brand or retailer to buy from.

That’s a huge portion of people looking at your website on mobile and making a decision of whether or not to buy from you. Mobile design will not only impact the experience that people have with your site, but also influences social media posts and your rankings in search engines.

Check your mobile design score on Website Grader.

Where do we go from here?

Our goal with the original Website Grader was to help anyone with a website —developer, marketer, or entrepreneur — to quickly grade their website’s performance. We’ve received good feedback from our users, but we are always growing and evolving.

So we asked ourselves, how could we make Website Grader better?

Our users’ comments had a common thread. They graded their site. They saw where their websites fell short. But we stopped short of teaching them how to improve:

• “More information about how to solve website problems”
• “Instructions on how to get better performance and SEO to get our score higher”
• “How about putting explanations and guidelines for beginners?”

Introducing the New Website Grader

You talked. We listened. Not only have we updated Website Grader’s grading system and foundational technology to get you a more accurate score, but we’ve also created a five-lesson video course that helps you improve your grade. All for free.

You can find the Website Optimization course inside Website Grader starting today.

One last question: How did HubSpot.com score?

HubSpot’s score has not historically been the best. At one point, we averaged 70-80 on Website Grader. Years of marketing updates had slowed things down over time.

Since then, we’ve worked hard to improve HubSpot.com’s design and performance over the last five years for our visitors and customers. Powered by HubSpot CMS Hub, our website now scores a 97 out of 100 on Website Grader — no kidding. It’s something we’re extremely proud of.

Your website is one of your most important assets in attracting business. A bad user experience could lose customer interest, but that doesn’t have to happen if you take the necessary steps to optimize it. If you’re curious to see how your site measures up, run it through our Website Grader and find out how you can make your site more delightful.

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

Data can be a scary word.

It shouldn’t be, but it is. Mostly because people struggle with how to manage it.

Many companies have reached the point where they have so much data, they don’t know where to go next. Others believe they are so small, there’s no need to invest in an enterprise data strategy.

The truth is, regardless of the size of your company and the current state of your data, you will benefit from implementing a data strategy.

To help you get started, we’ve enlisted the expertise of Zosia Kossowski, the group product manager for the business intelligence team at HubSpot (i.e. our in-house data strategy expert.)

By the time you finish reading this article, you’ll have a better idea of your company’s current data maturity level, what factors to consider before you build your strategy, and some steps to help along the way.

Despite popular belief, an enterprise data strategy isn’t solely for big companies with large volumes of data. In fact, small businesses can benefit from investing in a data strategy early on and set the foundation that will help them scale.

Benefits of an Enterprise Data Strategy

The common pitfall many organizations face is that while they are collecting a lot of data, every team is interpreting it in their own way. There’s no standard reporting method and each team might be reporting a different value for the same metric.

This means that everyone ends up with different data with no clear understanding of what’s accurate. When there’s no single source of truth, it becomes incredibly difficult to trust your data and pull valuable insights.

“Data doesn’t just exist in a silo,” said Kossowski. “The marketing team is not just going to use marketing-specific data that no other team has any influence over. They’re going to want to pull information from different areas as well.”

She continues, “And so, an element of governance and standardization and a common language is really important in making sure that those teams can communicate with one another.”

So, by implementing an EDS, you prevent information silos, allow for trust in the data, and enable decision making.

What To Consider When Building an Enterprise Data Strategy

1. Your Current Data Maturity Level

The first thing Kossowski recommends doing before building out your strategy is a self-assessment.

Ask yourself: Where does your company fall in the data maturity stage?

Dell has a widely used “Data Maturity Model” that helps companies determine how data-driven their company actually is. There are four stages:

• Data aware – Your company has not standardized its reporting system and there’s no integration between your systems, data sources, and databases. Plus, there’s a lack of trust in the data itself.
• Data proficient – There’s still a lack of trust in the data, specifically its quality. You may have invested in a data warehouse but there are still some pieces missing.
• Data savvy – Your company is empowered to make business decisions from your data. However, there are still some kinks to work out between business leaders and IT, as IT works to provide reliable data on demand.
• Data driven – IT and business are working closely together and are on the same page. Now, the focus is on scaling the data strategy because the foundation work (particularly integrating data sources) has already been successfully implemented.

What’s most important here is being realistic about where your company falls.

“I think the biggest pitfall that I see is not being really honest with yourself about where your company is in the data maturity stage,” said Kossowski.

She adds that it’s not enough to look at the feelings you have about how data driven you think your company is. Look at the facts.

Start by identifying the data problems your company currently faces, as that is a great indicator of where you stand.

2. Your Industry and Company Size

The industry you’re in and the size of your company will determine whether you take a centralized or distributed approach to your data strategy.

But before we break down those approaches, let’s talk about two data strategy frameworks: offense and defense.

During my conversation with Kossowski, she brought up how this framework (explained in detail here) has helped HubSpot develop its own strategy.

Data defense prioritizes things like data security, access, governance, and accuracy while data offense focuses on gaining insights that will enable decision making.

Every company needs a balance of offense and defense. However, some lean more on one end of the spectrum based on their industry.

A healthcare organization or financial institution, for instance, likely deals with highly sensitive data, where data privacy and security is paramount.

Getting real-time data and quick insights is likely not a top priority whereas providing guardrails for who can access data probably is. As such, they will lean more toward a defense framework.

On the flip side, you have tech companies, an industry that tends to move quickly and relies more heavily on a quick turnaround of data insights.

So, they lean more on offense. With that said, there are certainly departments within tech companies (and other fast-moving industries) that will focus more on defense, such as finance.

Now back to centralized and distributed strategies.

The framework you use will inform which strategy serves your company best.

In a centralized structure, you have a centralized reporting or business intelligence (BI) team that manages and prepares the data as well as the reports.

“That [structure] can work a lot better at a smaller organization, and especially in an organization that’s prioritizing defense because you’re going to move slower,” said Kossowski. “You’re going to be the bottleneck but you also have tight control over every piece of it.”

A distributed model, on the other hand, works better for larger teams who take the offensive approach. This way, each team can move quickly and is empowered to do work in a way that works for them.

In this model, BI simply is responsible for the platforms and setting the guardrails while the teams do the development work, Kossowski explains.

“If you think about an organization, as the company gets larger, with a more centralized team, it becomes more and more difficult to scale,” she said. “You end up having to just hire more and more people to be able to achieve that.”

“So I think at a certain size of the company, you’re going to end up moving more and more toward [a] decentralized [strategy] anyways.”

So, once you understand which framework works best for your industry and size, you can implement the appropriate strategy.

3. Your Data Management Team

Data science is the hot topic right now in data management, according to Kossowski. And she’s not wrong.

In 2012, Harvard Business Review named it the sexiest job of the 21st century. Nearly 10 years later, Glassdoor has named it the second best job in America.

But if you’re debating what role to add to your data management team, a data scientist shouldn’t be your first option.

Kossowski highlights that your data science is only going to be as good as the data that’s powering it. And if that data isn’t trustworthy, you’re not going to get valuable insights.

“Data science is not a magic wand that magically turns bad data into insights. Regardless, you’re still going to need that data foundation,” she adds. “So, jumping into doing something because it’s the next big thing, I think that’s a big concern.”

If you’re in the earlier stages of the data maturity model, Kossowski has a suggestion on where to focus your efforts.

“A data warehouse architect or even a data analyst who is experienced in writing SQL and building out SQL tables,” she says. “If you’re only going to hire one person and you don’t have that much data, that can be a really powerful hire because there’s a lot that one person can do when you’re at a smaller scale. They can wear many different hats and learn different things.”

When it comes to the more technical tasks, like ingesting data into the warehouse, there are third-party tools you can use to do that for you.

At this stage, what you really need is someone to help you with structuring your data.

1. Outline your data architecture.

The first thing you want to do is understand your data at a granular level.

Ask yourself these questions:

• Where will the data live?
• What type of data will you be collecting and from what sources?
• How will the data be organized?

The goal here is to understand the structure of your data.

If there’s no understanding of the structure, you can’t build a comprehensive plan on how to manage your data.

2. Define the relationship between BI and your teams.

When it comes to data strategy, one of the most important steps is defining the teams involved in the process and setting expectations for BI.

In a large organization that hasn’t thought about data strategy before, you’ll often find that every team follows a different model and has a different relationship with BI, making it hard for BI to operate in a streamlined and standard fashion.

It also blurs the lines between the roles of the data analyst and BI.

The data analyst should know the business logic that is specific to their team and the structure of the data being collected. BI, on the other hand, shouldn’t need to have specific knowledge on the operational area it is supporting, and should instead be focusing on the data source and managing the platform to support the analyst.

When BI is regularly adjusting its process to match the team’s specific business logic, it slows everything down and creates a constant need for relearning.

Kossowki’s suggestion? Strip the business logic out of the BI layer and work on things that are relevant to as many teams as possible.

In addition, come up with a standard analyst profile and a model for the relationship between BI and teams.

“There are still going to be some places where we’re working on data sets and not the whole platform,” said Kossowski, “but as much as we can, it’s cleaning up the base data, making it easy to join, but not actually doing those joins and the logic for them.”

3. Assign ownership.

After establishing the relationship between your teams and BI, the next step is defining who will own what.

It’s typical to have a different owner for each part of the data. For example, one person or team may own the operational data while another owns the reporting data.

You may also need to assign owners at different stages in the pipeline. The BI team may own the data at a particular stage then pass it on to the analysts.

Kossowski believes ownership starts with the teams who are producing the data.

“They need to feel some level of ownership over the data and have some level of accountability if something’s wrong,” she said. “Because if it’s wrong at the source, there’s very little that BI can do.”

She continues, “And if you try to put in patch patches at that level, you’re just going to run into more problems down the line, so that relationship is important as well.”

4. Establish data governance.

Data governance is a set of policies and regulations that inform how data will be collected and stored to ensure accuracy and quality.

In simple terms, data governance is saying “Hey, you want to use and be a part of this source of truth data we’ve created? Then you’ve got to meet this criteria.“

This can include meeting coding standards, having a certain number of reviewers, and following a specific documentation process.

“When we think about governance and adoption, it’s really about the mechanisms you can put into place toward adherence,” said Kossowski.

There are two pieces that you have to consider when it comes to governance: the cultural piece and the technological aspect.

From a cultural perspective, how do you get your teams to adopt these standards? And from a technical perspective, which processes can you automate so that everything does not require behavior modification?

As you think of these two pieces, you have to consider both the analyst side and the engineer (or source team) side.

Kossowski explains that for engineering teams, it can be hard to think about what data looks like when it comes into the warehouse because it’s not a core part of their product or responsibility.

They may not see the tangible benefits of the data unless it’s a data-driven organization that works tightly with its analysts. In this case, the analysts can relay that the data is powering X decision, so until the data means Y requirements, decisions can’t be made.

For analysts, it’s easier to see the benefits because they’re closer to the business and can see the direct impact. They can realize that following data governance standards means less reliance on BI, which makes things move more quickly.

“The insights from the data have to be powering decisions being made about the product because that’s the only way you’re going to get the product and engineering teams

bought into the value of data and thinking about their data as it is exported,” said Kossowski.

5. Reassess regularly.

Wherever you fall on the data maturity model, your data strategy will always need some tweaking.

“[At HubSpot], we have a three-year plan and all these ideas of what happens in each of those years,” said Kossowski. But I fully expect that a year from now, when we look at it, there are things we’re going to want to tweak based on how things have changed.”

For instance, say you introduce a new feature in your product or service and now are collecting more sensitive customer data. This may require taking a more defensive approach. If your company grows exponentially, you may need to shift toward a distributed strategy instead of a centralized one.

Even if there are no changes in how your company operates, you may still need to reassess. Here are two major indicators it’s time to review your data strategy:

• There is frustration with how long things are taking.
• There’s a lack of trust in the data.

Kossowski says finding the balance between those two is key.

“You don’t want BI doing everything because then it’s just going to take a long time,” she said, “but you also don’t want to have so much freedom in the analyst population that you can’t really rely on any data.”

A good rule of thumb is to review your strategy every six months to a year. Speak with business leaders, IT, and your teams to understand how everyone feels about your progress and determine what changes need to be made.

The process for building an EDS will vary from one company to the next, as your data maturity level, industry, and company size all play a role in the steps you take.

By taking stock of where your company currently stands, you can develop a strategy that meets the specific needs of your business.