Category Archives: B2B

Video adds value to your website, and the right videos can help drive increased traffic and conversion. As noted by Forbes, users retain 95% of the message when they watch videos compared to just 10 percent by text, making video a great starting point to streamline connection with prospective customers.

Your best bet for videos? YouTube. With more than two billion logged-in monthly users, YouTube videos now reach 74% of adults in the United States — so it’s no surprise that the platform is used by almost 90 percent of marketers to drive user interest. Ready to leverage video on your site and capture the growing YouTube marketplace? Here’s a step-by-step guide.

The Benefits of Adding Video to Your Website

Video rules the digital media marketplace, but popularity alone isn’t enough to drive widespread adoption. In practice, YouTube videos come with key benefits for your site, including:

Improved User Engagement

As noted above, visitors to your site retain more information when viewing videos than reading text. This makes it possible to drive improved user engagement by creating compelling content they’ll remember long after they leave your site — and will hopefully bring them back again. YouTube also incorporates features to increase engagement, like sharing options and playlists.

Reduced User Frustration

If users have to scroll through walls of text just to find the basics of your brand or understand your value proposition, chances are they won’t stay long. An embedded YouTube video provides a quick rundown of your site as soon as users arrive.

Simplified Storytelling

What’s your story? What sets you apart from the competition? This is what prospective customers want to know. While well-written text blurbs can give a general idea of what you’re about, they don’t have the same impact as video-driven stories that showcase your purpose and passion.

Increased Brand Connection

Organic marketing is now a critical part of business success. Buyers want to purchase products from brands and people they trust. Videos offer a way to connect with visitors face-to-face and help personalize and humanize your brand from the first moment visitors arrive.

Best Practices for Adding Videos to Your Website

While videos offer advantages in capturing and maintaining user interest, there are several best practices to keep in mind to ensure your videos deliver maximum impact.

Watch your file size.

When it comes to YouTube video viewing on your website, you’ve got two choices: link or embed. Linking to videos means that users must leave your page to view the content, while embedding allows users to watch the video on your site.

Although embedding is better for engagement, it’s worth considering your video’s file size — the larger your video file is, the more bandwidth it requires to display on user devices, which in turn can potentially slow down the user experience. Wherever possible, smaller and shorter is better.

View the whole video.

Whether you’re embedding a YouTube video you’ve made or one from another creator, make sure to watch the entire video before posting it on your site. If it contains information that’s not immediately relevant or actionable, consider linking to it rather than embedding.

Check the length.

Always check the length of your videos. Here’s why: If you embed anything longer than a few minutes on your home page, most users won’t stick around to watch the end. Either trim down the video and then embed it or link out to it with a small description for interested users.

Consider autoplay carefully.

It’s possible to have videos play automatically when visitors arrive on your site. This is a contentious issue — some users are vehemently opposed to autoplay and will immediately leave your site. Others don’t mind videos if they offer immediate and helpful information.

One option here is to create a small and silent autoplay video that provides basic brand information without demanding user attention. Worth noting? Autoplay consumes data without the visitor’s permission, which can be costly for mobile users. Choose carefully.

1. Find your video

First, head to YouTube and find the video you want to embed. In this case, we’re using the Introduction to HubSpot CRM video.

2. Click “Share”.

Next, click Share at the bottom right side of the screen, which will give you this pop-up menu:

Here, you can choose if you want the embedded video code or simply want to share the link on social media networks like Facebook or Twitter.

3. Select “Embed”.

Select the Embed option on the far left-hand side. You’ll be given a snippet of HTML code, which you’ll paste into your website page to embed the YouTube video.

4. Copy the HTML code.

Copy the displayed HTML and return to your website platform. To make things easier, YouTube offers a Copy button that will copy the code directly to your clipboard.

5. Paste the HTML code on your page.

Depending on your website hosting platform, the steps for pasting your HTML embed code will differ. If you’re using WordPress, for example, open the post or page where you want to embed the video and then select Text on the right-hand side.

Then, post your HTML code and select Update. When you navigate to the post or page again, you’ll see the embedded video.

If you’d rather not bother with HTML, you can also simply copy and paste the video’s URL into your visual WordPress editor. This process starts the same way as the HTML approach: Find your video on YouTube and click Share. Then, head to your WordPress page and paste your URL directly into the editor itself. WordPress will automatically convert the link to an embedded video.

Capturing Video Value

YouTube videos can add significant value to your website by making it easier for potential customers to find your content, retain key information, and better understand your brand.

The caveat? It’s not enough to simply post a video — to get the most value for your visual marketing efforts take the time to review and curate your content before posting to deliver maximum impact.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in May 2011 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Pageviews, unique pageviews, new visitors, and returning visitors — they all sound similar, but these metrics are not the same. If you don’t know the difference, you could be misinterpreting your website analytics and making some ill-informed decisions. Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen.

In this guide, we’ll be covering everything you need to know about web analytics, so you can truly understand which data points mean what, interpret your findings correctly, and make data-backed decisions for your website and business.

We’ll be covering the following points below — click on any of the jump links to skip to that section:

• what web analytics is and why it’s important
• web analytics examples
• web analytics best practices
• web analytics tools
• web analytics APIs

 

There are tons of data you can collect to understand how people interact with your website and identify opportunities for improvement. You can track overall traffic, bounce rate, traffic sources, new and returning visitors, time spent on site, and much more.

The amount of data can be overwhelming at first. That’s why it’s important to identify a few key metrics, particularly as you’re getting started. For example, you might start by focusing on the bounce rate for a few key pages on your site. If visitors are quickly bouncing from your homepage, then that indicates they’re not finding the information they’re looking for quickly or easily enough. From there, you can identify possible next steps, like redesigning your website navigation.

Let’s take a closer look at why web analytics is important below.

Importance Of Web Analytics

Web analytics is critical to the success of your business. It enables you to better understand your site visitors and use those insights to improve the experience on your site. For example, if you discover that the majority of users on your site are using a mobile device, then you can focus on making your website more mobile-friendly.

Web analytics can also shape your content and SEO strategy. Looking at your top viewed posts, you can begin to identify what types of content and topics perform best with your audience. If you notice how-to WordPress tutorials make up the majority of your top viewed posts, for example, then you might shift and narrow your focus from definition articles about anything web-related to how-to WordPress tutorials. Or maybe you look at your site’s traffic sources and notice that organic and email traffic are your top drivers and paid channels are your lowest. In that case, you might shift resources to invest more in your organic strategy than paid.

Now that we have an idea of what web analytics is and why it’s important, let’s look at some key metrics you might track to measure progress against — and eventually meet — overarching business objectives, like increasing website traffic, leads, and revenue.

 

Before you read on, it’s important to note that various analytics tools may have slightly different definitions of the following terms. It’s best to consult your particular tool’s documentation to understand exactly how each is calculated.

Pageviews

Pageviews are the total number of times a page was viewed on your site. A pageview (or view) is counted when a page on your site is loaded by a browser. So if a person were to view a page on your site and reload the page in their browser, that would count as two views. If a person viewed one page, viewed a second page on your website, and then returned to the original page, that would count as three views.

Pageviews can give you an idea of how popular a page on your site is, but it’s important to look at this number in context with other metrics — something a traffic analysis tool can help with. A page with a high number of views for a post isn’t necessarily popular since a small group of visitors could be responsible for a lot of those views. A high number may also indicate that a page was confusing and required visitors to return to it multiple times.

Unique Pageviews

Unique pageviews is the total number of times a page was viewed by users in a single session. In other words, a unique pageview aggregates pageviews that are generated by the same user during a session (which we’ll define below). So if a person viewed the same page twice (or more times) during an individual session, unique pageviews would only count that pageview once.

Since this metric discounts instances in which a user reloads or visits the same page in the same session, unique pageviews help you get a better understanding of how many visitors are viewing pages on your site and how popular individual pages are.

Sessions

A session is a group of interactions — including not only page views, but activities such as CTA clicks and events — that take place on your website within a given time frame.

The timeframe of a session varies by web analytics tool. For example, sessions in Google Analytics and HubSpot’s traffic analytics tools last 30 minutes by default. A session ends and a new session starts for a user when either A) there has been 30 minutes of inactivity and the user becomes active again, B) the clock strikes midnight, or C) a user arrives via one traffic source, leaves, and then comes back via a different source.

That means if a user lands on your site, leaves, and returns within 30 minutes, Google Analytics and HubSpot will count it as one session, not two. On the other hand, if a user is inactive on your site for 30 minutes or more but then clicks on a CTA or takes another action, Google Analytics and HubSpot will count it as two sessions, not one, even if the user never left your site.

New Visitors

New visitors — also termed new users, unique visitors, or new visitor sessions, depending on the web analytics tools — is the number of unique visitors on your website.

As the name implies, a new visitor is an individual who visits your site for the first time. Healthy websites will show a steady flow of new visitors over time to make up for those who lose interest.

These individuals are identified by a unique identifier. For example, when using HubSpot, the HubSpot tracking code is installed on your site. Then, visitors on your site are tracked by the cookie placed in their browser by this tracking code.

Two important notes to keep in mind: First, a single visitor can have multiple sessions and pageviews on your site. Second, unique visitors is not an entirely accurate metric. That’s because most web analytics tools use cookies to track visitors, which doesn’t always distinguish new visitors from returning ones (which we’ll define below). For example, if a person visits your site via their mobile phone and then on their personal computer, they’ll be counted as new visitors on both occasions.

Returning Visitors

Returning visitors (or users) is the number of visitors on your website who have visited before. Not all web analytics tools include this metric, but some — including Google Analytics — do. In Google Analytics’s Audience reports, you can look at behaviors to see the ratio of new to returning users on your site.

Looking at both new and returning visitors metrics are great for getting a sense of how well you’re retaining your visitors, and how effective you are in attracting net new visitors at the top of the funnel.

Your ratio of new to returning visitors will depend on several factors including your industry, how long you’ve been around, and whether you offer incentives to return to your site. But, if you’re an established website that’s seeing returning (or new) visitors top 80% of your traffic, attempt to balance this out by attracting more new visitors or retaining old ones.

Again, keep in mind that this metric won’t be completely accurate if the web analytics tool uses cookies to track visitors.

Traffic Sources

Traffic sources show where your site visitors are coming from. Like visitor information, this metric is usually collected via the tracking code on your site.

The number of traffic sources you can track will vary depending on the web analytics tool. HubSpot’s traffic analytics tools track multiple categories, including:

• Organic Search
• Referrals
• Organic Social
• Email Marketing
• Paid Search
• Paid Social
• Direct traffic

Ideally, you want to increase all sources of traffic. But, your biggest focus should be organic search, which is traffic that comes from non-paid search results in search engines like Google. This source has the potential to drive huge amounts of traffic to your site. Plus, improving this channel often improves other channels, like referrals and social.

Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors that leave your website after viewing a single page. You can look at bounce rate as a site-wide metric or a page-level metric. At the page level, bounce rate is the percentage of sessions that started on the page and did not move to another page on your site.

Generally, a bounce rate of 40% or lower is considered good, 40% to 70% is average, and anything above 70% is considered high.

If your site’s overall bounce rate is high, it might help to identify individual pages with high bounce rates. A high average page bounce rate might indicate there’s a problem with the page’s loading time, or that external links are not opening in a new tab or window, among other reasons.

To learn what actions you can take to reduce bounce rate, check out our 6 Steps to Reduce Your Bounce Rate.

Web Analytics Best Practices

Many aspects of web analytics are specific to your business: what metrics you track, how you build out reports, what tools you use. But there are some best practices to help anyone collect, analyze, and report website data more effectively. Let’s look at a few.

1. Pick metrics that align with your business objectives.

Focusing on only one or two metrics won’t provide enough insight into how visitors are interacting with your site — but tracking every single metric might provide too much information to be actionable.

To make sure you’re focusing on the right metrics, start by plotting your business objectives. Think about what the top priorities are for your website. Do you want to lower your site bounce rate? Are you looking to attract more new visitors, or better retain existing ones?

Once you have one or more objectives in mind, come up with specific strategies you’ll implement to achieve these objectives, such as fixing broken links and images, changing your site’s copy, or better optimizing for your mobile audience, which probably makes up around half of your traffic.

You’re now ready to narrow down what metrics will help you track your progress for achieving your goals and ultimately your business objectives.

2. Use data to drive decision-making.

After collecting your data, determining whether or not you met your goals is only the first step. The next — and arguably more important — step is using that data to test, experiment, and make changes on your site.

For example, say you identified some high-value content, like your Services and Pricing page, through user testing and feedback in your web design process. However, these pages aren’t getting much traffic.

In this case, you might move the navigation links for these pages to a more visible part of your site, or implement SEO measures on these pages to rank higher and capture more organic search traffic.

3. Don’t limit your focus to traffic.

Understanding and reporting traffic data — including pageviews, top traffic sources, and most viewed pages — is important. But it’s just one piece of your website performance. High traffic doesn’t necessarily mean success.

For example, if you’re getting millions of pageviews but no conversions, then you’re probably not meeting all your business objectives. Or, if new visitors consistently make up a high proportion of your traffic, consider why that might be and how you can attract return visitors more effectively.

4. Always pair data with insights.

If you report that your website received 1 million unique pageviews and 400,000 new visitors this month, that doesn’t mean all that much. Reporting only the numbers provides an incomplete picture of your website performance. For all we know, these numbers could indicate:

• an increase from last month.
• a decrease from last month.
• little to no change in pageviews or visitors month-over-month.
• an increase last month, but a major year-over-year decrease.

That’s why you must pair your data with insights. If you instead report that your website got 1 million unique pageviews, which exceeded last month’s unique pageviews by 20% and also showed a significant increase year over year, then the data is much more meaningful and actionable to you and fellow stakeholders.

5. Look at your data in context.

While collecting and analyzing data, think about it in context. What variables or larger forces could be impacting the numbers? For example, algorithm updates, seasonality, and bots can all have a major impact on your traffic and other metrics.

Imagine that a few pages on your site saw major spikes in traffic. These posts weren’t updated recently, so you look where this traffic came from. If the traffic mostly came from one country where you usually don’t see much traffic, this was likely malicious bot traffic, which accounts for a quarter of all internet traffic.

Viewing your data in context can help you better understand, analyze, gain insight, and make informed decisions with your data.

6. Share and ask for feedback from stakeholders.

As an analyst, you want to provide information to stakeholders in a way that is understandable and actionable. You also want to ask for information and ideas from these stakeholders. They can provide valuable feedback on how they use the data, what else they want to see or understand about their users or website, and how they think they can improve the user experience or other issues the data uncovers.

Web Analytics Tools

Measuring organizational success requires more than one metric — and more than one tool. Let’s take a look at three web analytics tools you could use together.

HubSpot Marketing Analytics & Dashboard Software

With HubSpot’s free marketing analytics and dashboard software, you can measure the performance of all your marketing assets — from website and landing pages, to emails, blog posts, social media accounts, calls-to-action, and more — from one dashboard.

You’re able to track your customers’ complete lifecycle, measure traffic overall or on a page-by-page basis, and add multiple reports to your dashboard so you’re tracking your most critical metrics in one easy-to-access place. You can even break down reports by user characteristics for more fine-grained analysis.

HubSpot’s free tool is ideal for anyone looking for built-in analytics, reports, and dashboards so they can make smarter, data-driven decisions.

What we like: Analytics is fully integrated into everything you do in HubSpot, ensuring you always have the right data available when you need it. There’s no more digging through spreadsheets or datastreams — with HubSpot, everything is accessible and actionable, whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned expert.

Google Analytics

Used by over 28 million websites, Google Analytics is the most popular web analytics tool. With it, you can track pageviews, unique pageviews, bounce rate, traffic channels, user retention, average session duration, sessions by country, sessions by device, and more. You can also build reports about your audience, acquisition channels, engagement, and conversions.

Understanding the value, flexibility, and popularity of Google Analytics, some platforms offer unique integrations with this tool. Analytics Amplifier, for example, is a HubSpot app that allows users to match HubSpot customer behaviors — including “hot leads” and “deal amount” — with real-time Google Analytics data.

If you want to learn more about this tool, check out our Ultimate Guide to Google Analytics. However, the sheer amount of metrics, reports, and integrations that can be tracked or created using Google Analytics might be overwhelming. Users without SEO or technical expertise, like content creators, may find it difficult and prefer a Google Analytics alternative.

What we like: Google Analytics is unmatched in popularity. It gives website owners an all-encompassing view of their site activity, and is relatively easy to set up and link to any live site. Plus, Google Analytics offers many powerful capabilities for free.

Crazy Egg

Used by over 300,000 users, Crazy Egg is a unique web analytics tool that provides heatmaps, scroll maps, and other visual reports to show you exactly how your visitors are interacting with your site. Thanks to Crazy Egg’s tracking code, you’ll be able to watch what visitors are hovering over and clicking on in real-time via heatmaps.

Crazy Egg also offers comprehensive A/B testing so you can test various content variables like color, copy, and content placement, to see how it affects the user experience and conversions. This makes Crazy Egg an ideal alternative or supplement to Google Analytics for users interested in conversion optimization.

What we like: Crazy Egg is a user-friendly tool for conducting heatmap and scroll map testing, A/B testing, and screen recordings of user interactions. These are great means to better understand users in qualitative and quantitative ways, and gain insights to improve the user experience on your site.

 

For example, Google Analytics offers several APIs that you can use to automate complex reporting and configuration tasks. One such API is the Google Analytics Reporting API. With this API, you can build custom dashboards to display your Google Analytics data, automate complex reporting tasks to save time (like getting data in two date ranges with a single request), and integrate your GA data with other business applications.

Another popular example is Chartbeat’s Real-Time API. This API consists of data that is updated every three seconds so you can see how your visitors are interacting with your content in real-time. You can use this data to improve audience engagement, inform editorial decisions, and increase readership, which is why Chartbeat is used by bigwig news organizations including The New York Times and The Washington Post.

To understand what APIs are and how they work, check out The Ultimate Guide to Accessing & Using APIs.

Using Web Analytics to Improve Your Website

Whether you’re a small business, ecommerce site, or enterprise company, web analytics can help you and your company grow. By collecting, reporting, and analyzing data about your website, you can improve the user experience on your site and meet larger business objectives like increasing online sales.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in July 2014 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Content managers build a company’s content strategy, create targeted and relevant content, and distribute marketing communications to audiences online. They are organized, well-versed in fostering a brand voice, and often know their way around a blog post.

You might just be learning about the content management role and want to know the basics. Or, maybe you know this is the job for you, but want to make sure you’re prepared to be successful.

Below, you’ll find everything you need to know about content managers, from what they do to how to become one. Let’s take a look.

What are content managers, and what do they do?

Content managers develop and distribute timely, relevant content for audiences. To do that, they have a deep understanding of their company’s brand voice and use it to communicate with customers.

In addition to creativity, being a content manager usually involves the management of projects and a content team. They also might collaborate across other teams for projects.

This role is not entry-level — content managers are generally expected to lead their team and foster growth, so it’s a job that’s filled by someone with a couple of years of experience in marketing, communications, and project management.

That was just an overview of content managers and the job role. Next, we’re going to talk about some specific duties of a content manager.

The role of a content manager can depend on company structure and size. For instance, a startup’s content manager might be their only marketer, while an enterprise company might have content managers assigned to multiple teams.

You might find a content manager taking the ownership over an editorial calendar, developing content topic strategy, compiling data reports, managing social media accounts, or writing long-form editorial pieces.

Alicia Collins, Global Brand Marketing Manager at HubSpot, says, “Content managers wear many hats. Their job consists of so many moving parts — managing blogs, managing social, managing offers … in some cases, they can be a one-person marketing team.”

Even so, there are common responsibilities that define a content manager. Let’s take a close look.

Content Manager Responsibilities

The responsibilities of a content manager include:

• Audit the existing content on the company’s website for brand voice, relevance, and optimization
• Research competitors to find content gaps and keyword gaps that your company hasn’t yet covered
• Create a new content strategy that can help your company reach its traffic goals
• Promote a consistent brand identity through the company’s social media profiles
• Create a long-term and short-term content publishing calendar and social media calendar
• Write the new content or manage a team of freelancers and writers to create the new content
• Monitor the performance of the content through online tools such as Google Analytics, Ahrefs, and Google Search Console

What sorts of skills do you need to carry out these responsibilities? We’ll dive into more detail up next.

So, you know what a content manager does. What about some of the skills you’ll need to exceed as one?

Content managers are brand advocates and know that the way stories are delivered reflect their company’s brand and audience preferences. We’ve lightly touched on a few of the skills you need to be a content manager, including creativity, writing, data interpretation, and organization.

But it’s also imperative to have working knowledge of a few other things.

1. SEO Copywriting and Blogging

Content managers need to have a general understanding of SEO. That way, you can effectively reach audiences through organic search. In addition, you’ll also have to know how to be a storyteller using the voice of a brand, and how to connect with customers using that brand voice.

Take it from Senior Podcast Producer Matt Brown, who says, “Empathizing with your audience and telling a story worth listening to is always the greatest skill a content manager should have.”

In order to deliver those stories, you’ll need to be familiar with copywriting and editing. Writing skills would be applied to writing marketing communications and blog posts. You’d also use them when editing the work of others.

If you’re worried about the grammar and comprehension front when it comes to writing, check out Hemingway Editor or Grammarly. Hemingway Editor is a free website that checks your writing for technical errors and readability, while Grammarly is software that analyzes your work, spell-checks it, and offers suggestions on how to improve sentence structure.

2. Data Analysis

As a content manager, you’ll spend some time analyzing datasets. Data from past campaigns, SEO research, and audience behavior are all helpful numbers to look at in order to execute job functions, because they inform leadership decisions and collaborative projects.

If you don’t analyze the results from your content performance, you won’t know if your messages are accurately connecting with your customers.

3. Basic Coding

By no means do you need to be a code whiz to become a content manager, but knowing some HTML and CSS can help you jump in when you don’t have a web developer on hand. As a content manager, you’ll be tinkering around with your website’s content management system. That may sometimes necessitate inserting a line or two of HTML and CSS code.

4. Content Management System Proficiency

On that note, you should know your way around popular content management systems such as CMS Hub and WordPress. You’ll be directly editing the content on your company’s website, so you’ll want to know how to use a CMS.

CMS Hub offers a 14-day trial that can help you get acquainted with a top-of-the-line content management system in an intuitive drag-and-drop environment. Once you learn CMS Hub, you can try your hand at a more complicated system such as WordPress.

You’ll also want to know your way around a few other tools. Generally, knowledge of one or two marketing tools for every facet of content production and management will cover your bases. This includes programs to enhance content as well, such as automatic grammar check software or graphic design tools.

It’s also a good idea to know about how social media is used as a business tool, and when that applies to marketing campaigns for your company. To help with social media management, knowing how to use a tool like HubSpot would be beneficial.

5. Strategic Planning

As a content manager, you’ll spend ample time strategizing how to deliver targeted messages to your audience. That means you won’t throw out messaging willy-nilly, but very carefully and strategically craft the messaging’s wording and timing.

Justin Champion, Principal Product Manager at HubSpot, says, “An effective content manager needs to have a vision of what story they’re trying to tell. This will help them create a cross-platform content strategy that will give the best experience possible to their audience.”

6. Time Management and Organization

As a content manager, you’ll be handling various content calendars and juggling a wide variety of responsibilities. That makes organization and time management skills a top quality of the best content managers out there.

Luckily, you don’t have to be innately organized or a strict time-keeper. You can use project management apps to keep everything going along smoothly. Remember, as a content manager, you’ll likely be the leader of a team and the go-to person for status reports. As such, you’ll want to be as organized as possible. That way, you’ll have access to the information you need when you need it.

7. Leadership

A good content manager has some leadership skills under their belt — but this doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to be an extrovert speaking at the front of the room. You can be a leader by keeping the content management projects progressing smoothly, sending reports before higher-ups ask for them, and launching new campaigns to keep your company top-of-mind for leads and customers.

In some cases, you may need to manage a team of content coordinators or writers. That’s where more traditional leadership skills come in, such as being a great people manager and adopting a leadership style that helps your team grow. Pay close attention to the wording in any job listing for a content manager. You could be the only person in your team or the leader in your team.

So, you know what it takes to be a content manager. But how do you get there? Time to find out.

How to Become a Content Manager

1. Take a content marketing certification course.

No matter your background or years of experience, if you’re shifting from another career into content management, you’ll want to re-learn the ropes of content marketing to ensure you’re up-to-date. Take a course to help you strengthen your content marketing skills. I recommend starting with our certification course. Upon completion, you’ll get a certificate that verifies your comprehension of content marketing (plus, you can add it to your LinkedIn profile).

2. Get familiar with SEO.

At countless firms, content marketing is synonymous with SEO, so you’ll want to have a firm grasp of the concept as you seek a content manager role. If you don’t know the rules of SEO, you might write content that’s not appropriately targeted or that doesn’t serve a purpose other than filling up your company’s blog.

You’ll need to know how to carry out keyword research and use the appropriate software to find “green space” for your company’s website. Green space refers to keywords with low competition and high potential for serving your audience’s needs.

3. Create a personal website.

There’s no better way to start content management than by building a personal website with content that you uploaded and wrote yourself. This website could be for your own personal brand, for a company idea you’ve had for a while, or simply for fun. Whatever it is that you create, you want to get familiar with creating a website from start to finish, so that when it’s time to manage your future employer’s site, you can do it easily.

You’ll learn a few things through this process, including how to upload content and media, how to manage that content once it’s been uploaded, and how to effectively structure your site. It’ll also teach you how to get around a content management system.

Use your learnings from this process to give thoughtful answers to your interviewers when you’re applying for content management roles.

4. Apply for an entry-level marketing role.

It’s time to search for a role. Unfortunately, content management is a mid-level role, meaning that most content managers have been in the marketing industry for a few years. If you’re just now getting started with marketing, you’ll want to start with an entry-level role first, then move up into content management.

Not all marketing roles are created equal. Look for the following words in the job posting to ensure you’re starting on the right foot:

• SEO
• Blogging
• Writing

If the job posting seems too general or if it seems to concern more traditional marketing methods, such as live event marketing or advertising, you’ll want to avoid it. Content managers work almost exclusively on the digital side of marketing.

5. Take on content management tasks within your role.

In your entry-level role, you’ll want to take on the duties of a content manager without yet being a content manager by name. For instance, if your team is missing a content calendar, could you volunteer to create one (without stepping on anyone’s toes)? What about volunteering to upload the week’s new content onto the CMS?

It’s important to continue expanding your technical and practical content management skill set as you gear up to apply to an actual content manager role.

6. Apply for a content manager role.

Once you have enough experience under your belt, it’s time to move into content management — either by becoming the manager of a content team or taking on more strategic roles within a marketing team.

Remember to use every piece of experience you’ve gathered thus far to show how well you can communicate with an audience and how well you’ve distributed content in the past. Lead with the results of your actions and measure them in numbers. Content reach, organic traffic, and other engagement metrics are just a few data points you can use to show how effective you can be as a content manager.

Start Sharpening Your Content Management Skills Today

If you’re looking to become a content manager, it’s critical to deepen your knowledge of content marketing and SEO. Refining your skill set ensures that you’re staying up-to-date as the industry changes. This is a must for content managers. If you don’t know how the industry is changing, you won’t be able to effectively connect to your audience — and connecting to your audience is what will make you an excellent content manager.

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

Emerging technologies always encourage scrutiny and critical analysis, and ad tech is no different.

This discipline has been around for a few years, but it’s only recently caught the attention of savvy ad tech agencies. In the era of big data, they’ve recognized having ad tech company relationships makes them more powerful and attractive to clients.

The age of social media has forced agencies to investigate innovative ways to interact with relevant users, rather than relying on typical broadcast or digital media buys. And the advantages for agencies investing in ad tech are plentiful. Global advertising is forecast to recover to 10.4% growth, reflecting a total spend of $634 billion

But there’s still one issue: many young ad agencies are still trying to figure out what exactly ad tech is — and how they can best use it to their advantage.

If you’ve ever scratched your head at the terms “programmatic” or “omnichannel,” you’ve likely already heard a little about what ad tech does (though you may not have even realized it). Programmatic advertising, for instance, buys target audiences instead of time slots: Think about buying ad space that reaches a particular demographic wherever it is instead of buying a prime time TV spot and hoping the right people are watching.

Omnichannel marketing reaches target consumers across all channels — mobile, video, desktop, and more — within the context of how they’ve interacted with a brand (those first seeing an ad will receive a different message from those who have engaged with that brand a number of times). Omnichannel and programmatic aren’t the only two tools within ad tech, but they are two of the most revolutionary.

That said, ad tech is designed to help advertisers make better use of their budgets. Ad tech methodologies deliver the right content at the right time to the right consumers, so there’s less wasteful spending.

Today, ad tech methods supported by influential data allow agencies to make wiser placements that effectively position advertisements when and where they are needed most. This helps reduce wasted efforts and gets ads to users at critical touchpoints, meaning it’s helpful for both brands and consumers.

Instead of the standard sort of placement buys, ad agencies can integrate their ads using high-level data and technology. It’s a logical next step toward seamless integration and high-impact, value-added placements. And it’s redefining how agency planning and strategy teams look at media.

The Benefits of Advertising Technology (AdTech)

Ad tech has plenty of moving parts, which means there are countless opportunities for agencies to set themselves apart. The diversity of ad tech data allows for more granular and relevant targeting and integration. It also necessitates leaning upon trusted ad tech solutions and platforms to get the most out of every ad campaign.

One major effect for agencies and their clients is a noticeable improvement in prospect interactions. Thanks to ad tech, brands can now connect all advertising channels. This means saying goodbye to clunky, unnatural advertising that irritates users and frustrates agencies and their clients. Instead, cross-platform uniformity ensures brands are reaching users consistently and logically.

Ad tech has also allowed retargeting to enjoy growing popularity — so much that it represents about 90% of all advertising costs. In other words, it’s not going away.

The problem is that it can be too intrusive, which leads to reduced effectiveness. By taking advantage of RTB options fueled by ad tech data, agencies can drill down and target only those audiences most likely to convert, without badgering those who aren’t.

Connecting the Dots Between Ad Tech Companies and Agencies

Knowing that they need each other to thrive, agencies and ad tech companies are on a joint mission to figure out how to forge long-lasting relationships. Deeper connections tend to occur naturally through regular communications, realistic expectations, and thoughtful customization.

Communication

Touching base regularly and working transparently between both parties is essential. There can no longer be a “set it and forget it” attitude in the online ad industry.

With new integrations between data, tech, and content, there needs to be consistent party involvement from start to finish. To this end, media publishers are having more discussions with their agency partners about content and other creative efforts than ever before. That makes it imperative for ad tech organizations and agencies to have an “open door” policy.

Expectations

Quick turnarounds are another key factor to keep an eye on in the relationship between agencies and ad tech pros. Everyone wants rapid turnarounds, but sometimes things can get lost when too much is happening at one time, and sometimes quality is compromised.

Do you want something mediocre that’s finished tomorrow or something impressive you have at the end of the week? You likely want the latter. Project management helps smooth out the flow between ad tech and agencies and ensures more successful campaigns.

Customization

Imagine you’re a consumer who just saw a mobile ad that piqued your interest. When you go to browse on your laptop, you see the same ad. Then you see the same next time you’re on YouTube, then again before your next Hulu binge session. Seeing the exact same content becomes annoying, and your interest inevitably lowers.

That said, there can’t be a repurposing of content and strategy across all channels — that’s a dinosaur-era approach destined to backfire. Agencies and brands are realizing that they need to customize creative assets for each channel and integration. It’s no longer acceptable to have a mentality of “matched luggage” when it comes to media. Agencies can work hand-in-hand with an ad tech partner to achieve exceptional outcomes through data interpretation.

Advertising Technology Trends

1. AI AdTech

Programmatic advertising has continued to grow and one of the evolutions of the process is using automated, artificial intelligence. AI can automate the ad purchasing process so advertisers can target more specific demographics.

As advertising technology becomes more complex, the demand for it to be automated will continue to grow. Not only does it make media buying easier, but AI can also make real-time adjustments across all channels.

2. Self-Service AdTech

One of the latest trends in ad tech is the adoption of new technologies that offer self-serve options. For example, with AdVendio users can significantly reduce operational costs and time needed to manage clients by providing a branded platform for end-to-end ad campaign management. This means low-budget advertisers can scale their business efforts.

This gives advertisers more control and makes it simpler for advertisers to set up and manage advertising campaigns.

3. Header Bidding

Header bidding is an automated auction technology, which allows publishers to sell their inventory to advertisers through many Demand Side Platforms (DSPs) while receiving bids from multiple advertisers simultaneously.

With header bidding, publishers can receive bids from multiple advertisers at the same time. We anticipate this becoming a bigger trend because it ensures that advertisers receive a reasonable demand base price for their ad inventory.

AdTech Solutions

Mobile AdTech

When it comes to finding ad tech solutions, you might consider breaking down what type of advertising you’re doing. For example, if you’re only going to be advertising on mobile devices, you can use mobile ad tech solutions.

One mobile ad tech solution is Basis. With this software, you can plan, buy, analyze, and streamline your mobile ad campaigns. This software has robust business intelligence, workflow automation, and is powered by artificial intelligence.

Another example of mobile ad tech is Celtra. With Celtra, marketing teams can design, approve, and deliver digital assets for their mobile advertising campaigns.

Online Advertising Technology

Online advertising technology is a solution that will help you advertise online, regardless of device type. A great example of this is AdRoll. With this ad tech solution, you can find more customers, build profitable relationships, protect your customer data, and improve your advertising results.

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Another example of online advertising technology is the Google Marketing Platform. You can manage all your campaigns, from search engine display advertising, to retargeting, to display and video campaigns.

Video Advertising Technology

When you’re creating your ad campaigns, it’s important to be creative and think beyond display search advertising. You can use video ad tech solutions such as Tik Tok Ads. With this solution, you can tap into unique engagement solutions and immersive formats to creatively and authentically connect with audiences around the world.

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Another example is StackAdapt. StackAdapt is a self-serve advertising platform that specializes in multi-channel solutions including native, display, video, connected TV, and audio ads.

Native Advertising Technology

Native advertising is when paid ads match the look, feel, and function of the media format in which they appear. One ad tech solution for native advertising is Taboola. With Taboola, you can reach new audiences and place your ads in a media format that’s similar to that of your ad.

Another example is Outbrain. This advertising platform helps global to emerging brands connect with consumers on the open web through engaging ad formats that inspire action.

Reaching Higher With Ad Tech

Ad tech has grown rapidly, and it’s showing zero signs of slowing down.

As it continues its spread, agencies will be able to take advantage of ad tech’s opportunities to develop more integrations, more data sharing, extended reach across all channels, and cleaner integrations against content.

When ad tech and agencies partner up, user experiences will be increasingly polished and positive, and agencies will get the reward for their commitment to embracing the benefits of a lasting relationship with ad tech providers.

One of the most frequent questions we get from aspiring and current inbound marketers is, “How do you manage all of that content?”

The answer: we rely on an editorial calendar in Google Calendar to stay keep our content organized.

There are a lot of great calendar tools out there you can choose from. In fact, for those of you who are HubSpot customers, there’s a marketing calendar built right into HubSpot’s software. But after trying a ton of other solutions, our team found that we really operated the best with just a simple Google Calendar. In fact, this has actually been the longest-running editorial calendar solution our team has ever seen.

Here’s how we set it up.

Follow Along With Free Editorial Calendar Templates

Download the Template for Free

1. Download HubSpot’s free editorial calendar templates.

First thing’s first: Download the calendar templates, above (they’re free.) By doing this, you’ll have three editorial calendar templates on your computer to use at your leisure: one for Google Calendar, one for Excel, and one for Google Sheets. In this blog post, we’ll be going over how to import the Excel template into Google Calendar.

2. Customize your template and prepare for import into Google Calendar.

By default, the publish dates on the templates you download will be stamped for the year 2016. Feel free to change them to the present year in the spreadsheet itself — you can also drag them to the dates of your choosing after you upload the file into Google Calendar.

Google Calendar makes it easy to load a calendar you might have pre-created in another program into Google. This includes Microsoft Excel. Here’s how to import the Excel calendar template you downloaded in the previous step into Google Calendar:

3. Open Google Calendar.

Once you’ve downloaded (or, for that matter, created) a calendar that opens in Microsoft Excel, it’s time to open Google Calendar. Just make sure you’re already logged into the Gmail account you want this calendar to give access to.

4. Use the lefthand dropdown menu to create a new calendar.

Now it’s time to set up your Google Calendar to accommodate the information in your Excel spreadsheet. First, go into your Google Calendar and click the plus sign to the right of “Other Calendars,” as shown in the screenshot below. In the dropdown menu that appears, select “Create new calendar.”

5. Fill out the details of your new calendar.

Fill out the fields that appear on the next screen. This includes a brief description of your calendar, as shown below, to give people proper context when you invite them into this calendar. When you’re done filling in the details, click “Create calendar.”

6. Import your XLS or CSV file from the same dropdown menu.

Using the same dropdown menu you used to create your editorial calendar, you’ll now import the Excel file itself into Google Calendar. Click that plus sign and select “Import.”

Click the upload box that reads “Select file from your computer,” and locate the file entitled “Blog Editorial Calendar – Excel” that was included in the ZIP file you downloaded in Step 1, above.

7. Select which calendar to add this file to.

In the second box below your imported file, click the “Add to calendar” dropdown. Be sure to choose the name of the calendar you just created from the dropdown menu, as shown below. Then, click “Import.”

8. Click Import.

Once you’ve uploaded your Excel file and selected the calendar you want to add this file to, click “Import.” You should see an Import calendar dialog box telling you that seven events were successfully imported. Click “Close.”

Now, if you didn’t change the dates of the first seven assignments in the original Excel document, you can now. Navigate to January 3, 2016, which is the start of your calendar. Be sure all of your other calendars are temporarily hidden by clicking the colored box to the left of the calendar name. On the week of January 3, 2016, you should just see one “Blog TBD” calendar event on each day from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m.

Use the edit window of each assignment to change the publish date. For example, if you’re satisfied with the 10 a.m. publish time, you can simply change the date from January X, 2016 to January X, 2021. Each assignment will then appear as event blocks in your 2021 monthly calendar view.

9. Determine your publishing schedule.

Now that you have your calendar created, it’s time to fill it in with assignments for the year. This is when you have to make some decisions about your blog’s publishing schedule.

While the Excel file you imported accounts for one blog post per day, this doesn’t mean you need to publish seven days a week. Maybe you want to publish every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Or perhaps you plan on publishing on just Thursdays. Remember, the key to successful blogging is quality over quantity.

Don’t overcommit to a blogging schedule if the quality of your content will take a hit. How often your company should blog will vary depending on your business goals and resources. 

If you decide to decrease the number of days you want to publish, click on the calendar event of that day and select “Delete.”

Even if you wanted to publish multiple times a day, updating this calendar is as easy as adding an event. Select a slot on your calendar to add another “Blog TBD” event and copy the default description from another one of the events you imported.

Next, it’s time for some minor adjustments. Currently, the “Blog TBD” events are set for 10 a.m. Feel free to move these events to whichever time your blog publishes during the day. 

10. Set up recurring events.

Now that you have your publish dates and times set, you can make these recurring events on your calendar. If you have a regular publishing schedule, like every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 10:00 a.m., then put that in as a recurring “slot” on your calendar. It’s okay if you don’t have a piece of completed content — or even a working title — to put there yet. It’s just a reminder that you want to publish something that day.

To add your recurring slot, click on your first “Blog TBD” event and click the pencil icon to edit your event. This will take you to the details of the post, where you can create a custom recurring schedule for each assignment, as shown in the screenshot below.

You can set the post up as a recurring post so it automatically appears every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 10:00 a.m. (or whatever days and times you want).

Once you’ve selected the recurring days, hit “Done” and “Save,” and you’ll have an editorial calendar framework to work with.

For now, keep the title of the event as “Blog TBD,” but feel free to customize the description with any extra details you want to be sure you include for each post. Wait to invite any guest, as we’ll use this to assign posts to an author once you begin filling in your topics. With everything complete, click “Save.”

If you don’t have a recurring schedule like this, you might not be in need of an editorial calendar just yet — but it is a good way to set goals for yourself. If you know you want to publish a certain number of posts each week, even if you don’t hit every single slot, it’s a good reminder for yourself and your team that this is something you should all be striving for.

11. Fill your publishing slots.

Now that you know all of the slots you want to fill, you gotta actually … you know … fill ’em. (If you don’t have topic ideas yet, check out this free topic idea generator. It’ll give you some good ideas for content to put in the calendar.)

Let’s say one of the posts you want to write is “10 Surprising Facts About Tapirs,” and one of the posts you’ve already written and want to publish later is “Think You’re Cut Out to Own a Tapir? Read This First.” Cool! Just add ’em both to the calendar by clicking on “Post – TBD” on the correct date, choosing “Edit Event,” and then changing the “Post – TBD” text to the actual title of the post.

Now, let’s say you don’t actually want to write “10 Surprising Facts About Tapirs,” and you want your colleague to write it instead. To assign the post an author, you’ll invite them to the event as a guest. To do this, click on the event, hit “Edit Event,” then invite that colleague to the post by typing his or her name or email address into the “Add guests” box, selecting “Add” when their name pops up, and hitting “Save” on the event once you’re done.

Now, anyone can see who is responsible for writing the post that’s going up in that time slot.

You can take it a step further by adding details to the “Description” box of the event, as shown in the large box in the screenshot above. You might include a quick synopsis, the keywords you plan to target the post for, the target audience you’re trying to reach, and the offer or CTA you will direct the reader to at the end of the post. Don’t forget a due date for the draft.

Before Google Calendar will let you save the event, you’ll see a dialog box asking if you would like to change just this event or all of the events in the series. Select “Only this event.”

Repeat these steps to assign each blog topic today and in the future.

12. Share your editorial calendar with others.

Now that you have your calendar set up, you can start to invite people to see it. I’d recommend you start with your immediate team and regular contributors — as well as anyone who regularly asks you about publishing content on your company blog.

To share this editorial calendar with people, simply find your editorial calendar under “My Calendars,” as shown below. Click the three dots next to the calendar name and then select “Settings and sharing” when it appears in the dropdown menu. You’ll be taken to the same screen we saw when you first filled out the details of your editorial calendar in Step 2.

Then, you can add in the names of people with whom you’d like to share the calendar and set the right permission levels for each invitee.

It’s wise to keep those with the permission settings to manage changes and sharing to a minimum so there aren’t too many cooks in the kitchen — but I recommend you let everyone see all event details so it’s clear exactly what content is going up in each slot.

Under the “Share with specific people” heading, enter the email addresses of those on your content team and decide if they have viewing, editing, or admin privileges. Save your updated settings.

Why Using Google Calendar as an Editorial Calendar Works

I mentioned earlier that we tried a lot of different editorial calendar solutions, and this is the only one that’s stuck for more than a couple of months. I think one reason for that is because we use Gmail for our corporate email, which means everyone on our team is already in Gmail (and their calendar, specifically) all day. As a result, it isn’t hard for people to form a habit of checking the editorial calendar, because it’s not difficult for them to find it.

Google Calendar also makes things really easy to move around and schedule because … well … it’s already a calendar. It has all the functionality you need to schedule stuff out and let the people who need to know about it know. When we were using other solutions for this, we were trying to hack a calendaring function instead of just relying on one that already existed.

Along those lines, adding people to view your calendar is simple, which makes it easy for multiple teams to collaborate, see what’s being published, and figure out when they might be able to launch content and campaigns.

Finally, this sets a precedent for other teams to coordinate with you in a really simple way. You can have a calendar for upcoming campaigns, offers, social media pushes, product launches — you name it. And you can all share those calendars with one another for a single-screen view of everything that’s going on so you can coordinate more easily.

Are there other solutions of there for maintaining an editorial calendar? Of course. But if you’re looking for a minimum viable product, and a free one at that, this ain’t too shabby. It’s kept our content team sane, agile, and transparent for quite some time — and I think it could do the same for you.

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

Imagine watching the Super Bowl without any commercials — or driving through a bustling city with blank billboards.

Now imagine watching YouTube without ads.

For some people, this is a reality. With YouTube Adblock, viewers can block ads from appearing in videos and on the webpage.

This begs the question: should video marketers worry about ad blocking?

Let’s learn more about YouTube Adblock, if consumers actually use it, and tips from real video marketers on how to get around them.

Ad blockers may feel like a marketer’s worst nightmare. But there is power in understanding why people use them.

Here are some quick stats: 48% of ad blocker users felt there were too many ads online. And 47% of users found these ads annoying or irrelevant.

Think of your own experience — have you ever been bombarded with pop-up ads while reading an article? Or watched a video ad that wasn’t relevant to your interests… at all?

This study signals a clear trend: Users want a less intrusive experience with digital ads. And they’re willing to guard their time and attention with ad blockers.

Do Consumers Use YouTube AdBlock?

We know the motivations behind using YouTube Adblock, but how many people actually use it? Take a look at HubSpot’s survey about ad blocker use on YouTube:

More than half (63%) of respondents do not use any type of ad blocking software on YouTube, whereas a slim 11% of respondents do.

Does this mean marketers can breathe a big sigh of relief? Not so fast.

While the adoption of ad blockers is low, it is slowly increasing year-over-year. It may not be an immediate threat to your digital marketing strategy, but this could change in the coming years.

And, if your target audience consists of millennials, you may feel the effects of ad blocking more. People in the 18-to-24 range are the highest users of ad block software, while people younger than 12, and 65 and older, are among the lowest.

Marketers must get creative to leverage YouTube without ad blockers getting in the way. Here are four tips from video marketers on how to get started.

4 Tips for Navigating YouTube AdBlock, According to Video Marketers

1. Keep it in perspective.

Don’t let the fear of ad blockers drive you away from YouTube entirely.

For Nicole Ondracek, marketing manager, paid advertising at HubSpot, advertising on YouTube still proves effective — even with pesky ad blockers.

“You’re still able to reach so many people on YouTube that [AdBlock] doesn’t really play a factor in our strategy.”

Ondracek adds, “For example, one of our audiences is a Custom affinity audience, which is a type of audience that targets people with interests in B2B CRM software. This segment alone can still reach 500 million to 1 billion impressions a week.”

While ad blockers “mute” a portion of your audience, YouTube still provides access to billions of users (2.1 billion to be exact), along with plenty of opportunities to reach them.

2. Diversify your ad channels.

It’s never a good idea to put all your eggs in one (marketing) basket.

For instance, if your digital marketing solely revolves around YouTube advertising, you may want to diversify your marketing strategy to include “ad blocker-proof” channels, such as social media or content marketing.

Jennifer Brault, channel promotions manager at HubSpot, tells me, “When running any sort of digital marketing campaign, it’s important to meet your audience where they are.”

Brault continues, “By diversifying your advertising spend across multiple channels, you’re not only reaching a variety of audiences, but you’re also learning more about what platforms your audience spends their time on, which can help inform future ad spend and organic efforts.”

3. Create a meaningful ad experience.

“Rather than trying to find ways around ad blockers, focus on finding ways to make advertising more meaningful and appealing to end users,” says Bernard May of National Positions.

As ad blocker usage slowly rises, video marketers must put their audience at the center of their video strategy. This means getting to the heart of customers’ interests, questions, and pain points — and then finding ways to address them.

Remember, consumers don’t hate advertising — they hate bad advertising.

4. Focus on targeting.

While we can’t necessarily get around ad blockers, we can focus on putting ads in front of the right people.

With Google AdWords (YouTube’s ad platform), video marketers can target people who already demonstrate an interest in specific topics or keywords relating to your business.

Affinity Audiences is an especially helpful targeting mechanism in Google Adwords. With Affinity Audiences, you can reach people based on their browsing history and place them in certain segments such as “bargain hunters” or “DIY.”

For example, a marketer selling outdoor sports equipment could target users who recently searched for “ice fishing” or “best hiking trails near me.”

Final Thoughts

Ad blocking technology isn’t going away soon. Fortunately, all isn’t lost for digital marketers who can still benefit from YouTube by auditing their current practices, diversifying their marketing channels, and identifying areas for innovation.

A conference website is a powerful way to generate buzz about your event, answer commonly asked questions, and boost ticket sales and attendance.

Since 2020, the majority of events have been hosted virtually — and this trend will likely continue in 2022 and beyond. In fact, the global virtual events industry is expected to grow 23.7% each year from 2021 to 2028, according to data from Grand View Research. 

In an increasingly digital-first world, a conference website is more important than ever. As many people’s first introduction to your event, it can influence whether someone buys a ticket, or abandons the page entirely. 

Below we’re going to explore over 20 of the coolest conference websites we’ve found. You can use these examples as inspiration when designing your own site.

Conference Website Design Best Practices

Before we dive into the examples we’ve collected, let’s explore some best practices to keep in mind when designing your own conference website.

A good conference website design should follow these best practices:

• Put your location and date above-the-fold: People should know immediately where, and when, your event is taking place. If they can’t find it easily, they could abandon your website. Before you dive into speakers or any other information, ensure your visitors know whether they can attend in the first place.
• Use interactive elements: Videos or animated graphics can go a long way towards making your website look sleek and professional. Plus, video is a good opportunity to showcase highlight reels from past events.
• Center the page around your visitor: What’s in it for them? Great speakers to inspire their work? A chance to network with industry leaders? Ensure your copy outlines — clearly and concisely — how your website visitor will benefit from your event.
• Have a clear call-to-action: Your page is ultimately meant to convert web visitors into event attendees — so make this easy to do. Create a bold “Register Here” or “Buy Tickets” button so your visitors can easily convert when they’re ready.
• Include fun visuals: One thing that’s apparent in all the conference web designs we chose is interesting, unique, fun visuals. Too much white space will likely bore visitors and not pique their interest enough to purchase a ticket. Use visuals to grab your visitor’s attention, and communicate through images what your event is all about.
• Create time-pressure by including a countdown feature: In a few of the websites we’ll look at below, you’ll see a countdown that outlines how many days, hours, or minutes visitors have left to sign up for the event. This is a fantastic way to create a sense of urgency and encourage visitors to sign up immediately — or risk missing out.
• Align with your brand identity: A conference is a great way to generate brand awareness to a much larger audience. With that goal in mind, you want to make sure your conference website aligns with your brand identity. Using the same or similar typography, color schemes, and logos can ensure you achieve a consistent look and feel across your marketing collateral. 

Now that we’ve covered some conference website best practices, let’s see how these 20+ conferences put those ideas into practice.

1. FloQast’s Take Control

Less than three months before Floqast’s annual user conference was scheduled to take place, it had to shift from in-person to virtual. Using CMS Hub, FloQast and its web design partner agency Aptitude8 was able to deliver a seamless conference experience and website.

FloQast’s Take Control conference website revamps its well-recognized green and navy blue colors in a unique color scheme, using brighter and more analogous colors. It also has two clear CTA buttons above-the-fold encouraging visitors to watch the event on demand. 

What we like: The website design is unique, but consistent with FloQast’s branding. 

Pro tip: Expand your color palette with analogous colors to provide your conference website with an enhanced look and feel. 

Great example of: Consistent brand identity

2. Leading Design Festival 

Color is an important factor to consider when designing any web page, and this homepage for the Leading Design Festival does a good job using complementary colors to evoke a sense of warmness. Additionally, you have everything you need at the top of the page — including a button to purchase tickets, the date of the festival, and what you’ll get for attending (a month of design leadership activities). This page proves that oftentimes, less is more.

What we like: This website clearly provides visitors with all the information they’re looking for about this year’s Leading Design Festival. 

Pro tip: Use one accent color to highlight important elements on the page, like the date of the conference and CTAs.

Great example of: Minimalist design

3. Canvas Conference 

To underscore the value of the Canvas Conference — insider stories from product people —  an image of people chatting and networking at a previous event serves as Canvas’ backdrop image for the 2021 conference homepage. Additionally, the page doesn’t shy away from bright, vibrant colors — like purples, greens, and blues — to attract the visitors’ attention.

Plus, the price is clearly stated front-and-center, which helps visitors know whether they can afford the event before exploring anything further.

What we like: Everything on Canvas Conference’s homepage — from the background image to the copy — emphasizes that the event is community-centric. 

Pro tip: Try to center your website around your event’s value proposition so everything from the layout to the copy is emphasizing the event’s benefits for attendees. 

Great example of: Copy that underscores the event’s value

4. UX Fest 

This scroll-triggered, interactive page is so fun, I scrolled it a few times. As you move down the page, you’re introduced to new information about the conference, with fun, unique design elements, like the “Stay Home and Level Up” image to the right of the first Conference box. Best of all, the page is incredibly simple, with plenty of blue space on either side, to evoke a sense of calmness as visitors learn about the conference.

What we like: UX Fest’s interactive website invites users to scroll and click on different CTAs to learn more about the speakers, masterclasses, and festival and purchase tickets.

Pro tip: Use animations and other interactive elements to guide the user down the page to the “Get Tickets” CTA button. 

Great example of: Interactive design

5. GOTOpia Chicago

One of the best features of this conference page is the “Early Bird Ends In…” countdown that appears above-the-fold as soon as a visitor enters the site. The sense of urgency encourages visitors to sign up immediately, or risk losing out on a good deal. The page also does a good job outlining all the critical information you need to know in just a few words — including “Engaging Talks”, “Keynotes”, and “Trivia + Happy Hours”.

Plus, who doesn’t love the bright vibrancy of a red-and-white color scheme?

What we like: The countdown timer shows how much time is left before early bird registration ends. It’s a subtle but effective way to generate ticket sales.

Pro tip: Use a countdown timer to encourage visitors to buy tickets as soon as possible, but keep the design simple and unobtrusive so it doesn’t seem overly promotional.

Great example of: Creating a sense of urgency

6. Consumer Technology Association

The CES conference page combines bold colors with interesting visuals to grab a visitor’s attention immediately, with a simple “Beyond the everyday” tagline. The page offers all necessary information, including date, location, and a CTA, from the very top of the page, ensuring CES-fans can sign up immediately.

What we like: Consumer Technology Association’s CES 2022 homepage provides users with an immediate event registration path. 

Pro tip: Make registering for your event as easy and quick as possible. 

Great example of: Signup flow

7. UX+ Conference

The UX+ Conference website is an excellent example of using interactive elements to engage and delight visitors. There’s a background animation and several text and hover animations that immediately grab visitors’ attention.

Combining past attendees’ testimonials with an animated speaker lineup, this is a powerful page that makes the most of its real estate to demonstrate why the UX+ Conference is a must-attend event for anyone in the UX industry.

What we like: The UX+ Conference home page uses interactive and visual elements to engage and impress the UX professionals visiting the site.

Pro tip: Create a website that will attract and delight your unique audience. 

Great example of: UX design

8. Chargebee User Conference

This sleek-looking homepage uses bold colors, typography, and animation to evoke a futuristic vibe. What I loved most about this conference website was the moving, interactive elements they’ve used to keep your interest as you scroll the page, including spinning visuals and continuously-moving text. This also reinforces the theme of the conference — “change is essential” — and its calls-to-action to adapt, evolve, and innovate.

Visit and scroll through the site yourself — it’s more entertaining than you might think.

What we like: Centered around the conference theme — “Change is essential” — Chargebee’s website is thoroughly dynamic and interactive.

Pro tip: Your theme should inform the color scheme, animations, CTAs, and every other part of your website design. 

Great example of: Theme-centric design

9. Circles Conference 

When attendees are choosing which conferences are worth their time and resources, one of the first questions they’ll ask is, “Why this conference over all others?”

This question is answered immediately on the Circles Conference homepage, and it’s answered using powerful, engaging text. For instance, the first sentence you’ll read in response to “Why Unmasked?” is “Shed layers of fear and doubt, and reveal your inner creativity” — convinced yet?

What we like: Circles Conference does an excellent job of persuading visitors to attend their 2022 event by clearly explaining this year’s theme and speaker lineup and displaying highlight reels from previous years and recordings of past sessions. 

Pro tip: Clearly explain why visitors should attend your specific event. 

Great example of: Answering “why this event?”

10. Collision Conference 

Seeing Seth Rogan at the top of the page is undoubtedly reason enough to pause on the site for anyone who’s a fan. Plus, “The Olympics of Tech”, a quote from Politico, does a good job demonstrating the value of the conference.

But what impressed me the most was the slider right below the hero image and “What Others Say” testimonials section. The slider displayed how many attendees, countries, startups, journalists, partners, and investors were represented in the event. For anyone whose unsure whether to attend, this is a compelling argument to not miss out.

What we like: Collision Conference uses a carousel slider to display impressive stats about its audience. 

Pro tip: Instead of telling website visitors how large your conference is, show them in terms of real numbers to persuade them that they can’t miss it.

Great example of: Creating FOMO

11. An Event Apart 

Consider standing out from the crowd by using in-house designs on your homepage, like An Event Apart does. The page is cheerful and colorful, and provides all critical information in only a few words. Before a visitor has even scrolled, they’ve learned where (online), when, and for whom the conference benefits.

For those that need more convincing, they can visit the “Why Attend?” page to see attendee testimonials (displayed as text messages), key reasons to attend, and answers to common objections.

What we like: An Event Apart clearly explains where, when, and who the event is for, and why UX and front-end designers should attend. 

Pro tip: Consider how to say more with less. 

Great example of: Concision

12. Startup Grind Global Conference 

Using a mixture of photography and unique design shapes works well in this case, and the bright purple, pink, and green colors you see at the top of the page contrasts well against a simple off-white backdrop. The page is sleek and uses three bold CTA buttons above the fold to provide all information a visitor will need to attend the event, either as a startup, “scale up” business, or individual attendee.  

What we like: Startup Grind Global Conference provides clear and distinct paths for different groups, including startups, scale-up businesses, and individuals, as soon as they land on the homepage.

Pro tip: Clearly explain how different segments of your audience can participate in your event. 

Great example of: CTAs

13. The Martech Summit Singapore 

If you’re hosting a conference in a unique or exciting location, consider using an image of that location as a compelling backdrop. In this case, The Martech Summit used an image of Singapore to remind website visitors of the other benefit they’ll get if traveling from another location for the conference — a trip to a vibrant city. Plus, the attendee count helps persuade hesitant buyers who likely don’t want to feel like they’re missing out.

What we like: The Martech Summit clearly emphasizes that its location is another benefit of attending the event. 

Pro tip: Identify what will excite attendees about your event and showcase it in your design and copy. 

Great example of: Emphasizing location as an event benefit

14. React Day New York 

First off — who doesn’t love hot dogs?

This React Day page does a great job using humor to stand out. Not only is there a big illustration of a hot dog — which hooked me immediately — but there are multiple mentions of hot dogs, including below Buy Tickets (“Psst: There will be hot dogs”), and used in response to “Why” to the right of the page.

What we like: Humorous illustrations and copy about hot dogs makes this conference website about a slightly intimidating topic — React — more accessible. 

Pro tip: Use humor on your own conference website to surprise and delight new audiences. 

Great example of: Humor

15. INBOUND

Okay, okay — I might be biased, but hear me out.

This INBOUND page does an excellent job of exciting visitors about INBOUND 2022, even thought INBOUND 2021 just happened. It shows a video outlining this year’s speakers to excite and impress visitors with the possibilities of similar popular speakers in 2022. This is a good idea if your conference has pulled in some big names in conferences’ past, to give visitors a sense for what they can expect at an upcoming conference if you haven’t officially released upcoming speakers.

The rest of the page also effectively outlines all necessary information, including prominent CTAs to view the 2021 Content Library and sign up for a newsletter to get the latest INBOUND announcements. 

What we like: HubSpot generates excitement for INBOUND every year by making past content and future announcements accessible to existing and prospective attendees.  

Pro tip: Add elements like a highlight reel, email opt-in form, and content library to get people exciting about next year’s event. 

Great example of: Generating excitement for an annual event

16. ProductCon 

One element that made this #ProductCon page, a conference held by the Product School, stand out to me was the easy-to-find “Get Free Ticket” box, which is front-and-center for new visitors. Particularly if your conference is online and free — which creates minimal barriers to entry — it’s a good idea to make it easy for prospects to sign up instantly.

What we like: Product School encourages prospective attendees to get their free tickets to #ProductCon as soon as they land on the homepage.

Pro tip: If pricing is a competitive differentiator of your conference, emphasize that in your design. 

Great example of: Emphasizing free admission as event benefit

17. NRF 2022: Retail’s Big Show

One of the cleaner, sleeker designs in this list, NRF’s Conference Website employs a bold background image and minimal text to simplify the user experience. You’ll find everything you need to know at the top of the page — including the theme of the conference, location, dates, and how to register.

If you need more convincing, then you can scroll to the “Why Attend NRF 2022” to learn four key reasons this event is so valuable for retailers and vendors to attend.

What we like: NRF’s conference is designed to “not just to help retail move forward, but speed ahead.” This idea is captured not only by the theme (“Accelerate”) and copy, but also by the graphics used throughout the website.

Pro tip: Pair powerful and concise language with visuals to tell new visitors what your conference is all about.

Great example of: Copy and visuals supporting the theme

18. AdWorld Conference

If you’re going to have some impressive companies attending or sponsoring your event — including Google, Facebook, and IBM — it’s a good idea to showcase them on your conference’s homepage, like AdWorld does in the example above. Plus, what really stands out about this example is the small videos of various speakers that move across the page, creating a dynamic and unique experience.

What we like: AdWorld Conference showcases its speakers in a completely unique way, displaying video thumbnails of speakers moving across the screen. 

Pro tip: Re-think how to display common sections of a conference website — like the speaker line-up or agenda — to create a unique user experience.

Great example of: Showcasing speakers

19. Growth Marketing Summit

One element I appreciated about this page was the clear, “No Risk. Order Can Be Cancelled Free of Charge…” text right below the CTA, which helps dissuade any visitors’ concerns over being unable to attend and losing money. The page effectively leverages bright colors and a futuristic-looking heart to grab visitors’ attention from the get-go.

What we like: Objection handling is a common term in the sales world and applies to conferences as well. The Growth Marketing Summit anticipates and resolves one common objection of prospective attendees — non-refundable tickets — immediately on the homepage. 

Pro tip: Identify and alleviate common concerns of your prospective attendees on your homepage. 

Great example of: Objection handling

20. Design Thinkers

Design Thinkers begins its DesignRethinkers conference home page with a fun, interactive section. If you click inside the hero image banner, you can add sticker elements to change words like “Define” and “Consider” to “Redefine” and “Reconsider.” The homepage is modern yet retro-looking, particularly with the black-and-white images and what looks like scrapbook materials in the corner. The unique combination of muted and neon colors also helps. 

What we like: Users are invited to re-examine and re-work parts of the website design by clicking and hovering over different elements on the page. 

Pro tip: Invite users to engage with your site by clicking on CTA buttons and other design elements, scrolling, and more.  

Great example of: User-centric design

21. From Business to Buttons

Since From Business to Buttons took place in a never-seen before digital platform, their website design had to strike a balance between distinctive and familiar. The website, which reminded me a little bit of a carnival ride, uses bright colors and an unusual typography to stand out. The page is fun and unique, and has a clean navigation menu at the top to help visitors find exactly what they’re looking for.

What we like: The website design is unusual but still user-friendly. 

Pro tip: Pair non-traditional typography and image overlays with traditional navigation menus and links to make your website one-of-a-kind but still easy to navigate and use. 

Great example of: Unique design to reflect uniqueness of event

22. Red Hat Summit

We round out this list with an incredibly simple yet sleek page from Red Hat Summit, which states the theme — “Open Your Perspective” — and a brief summary of the conference above-the-fold. The use of white space and minimal design elements helps to highlight this minimal copy, which piqued my interest in the conference. Plus, the “Register” button is clear and easy-to-find.

What we like: Red Hat Summit’s theme, “Open your perspective,” informs every part of the design, from the logo to the layout to the use of whitespace. 

Pro tip: Reflect your conference theme in your website’s design. 

Great example of: Conference logo

Conference Website Templates

Ready to create your own?

Fortunately, there are plenty of templates available to help you craft a compelling conference website.

1. WordPress Conference Templates

If your website is hosted on WordPress, for instance, you can use one of WordPress’s themes to create an inspiring, sleek, professional website to attract and convert event attendees.

Best of all, you can start with a pre-designed theme, and then use WordPress’s easy website builder to add unique features to make your conference stand out. WordPress offers a free version, and the Business plan is $25/month.  

Take a look at 21 Best Conference WordPress Themes of 2021 for more WordPress theme inspiration.

2. Wix Conference Templates 

Another great option is Wix, which has a large compilation of clean, interactive conferences and meetups website templates. Wix has a free option available, and the Professional version is relatively inexpensive at just $23/month.  

You can also edit your site for mobile, ensuring your mobile site visitors will want to attend your conference just as much as your desktop visitors.

3. Canva Conference Templates

Finally, take a look at Canva’s conference and event program templates. Canva is incredibly easy-to-use, with drag-and-drop features, color schemes, and high-quality stock photos, illustrations, and graphics.

Best of all, if you’re designing with your team, you can easily share your editable file from Canva and then place your colleagues’ suggestions right into Canva.

Building Your Conference Website

And there you have it! Now you’re ready to begin creating your own conference website to attract visitors and increase attendees to your own branded event. Who knows — maybe your company will make it on this list in the future. Good luck! 

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in April 2021 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Did you know that it takes 5 to 7 impressions for people to remember a brand? With branding, the goal is to continue making those positive impressions on an ongoing basis. One way to do that is through brand activations.

In this post, we’ll dive into what brand activations are, how to strategically plan a brand activation, and give you some ideas to inspire your own branding events.

While a brand activation is a singular event or campaign that is meant to elevate your brand it shouldn’t be confused with ongoing brand strategy. So, what does brand activation strategy look like? Let’s dive in now.

Brand Activation Strategy

Before you get started with planning different brand activation events, it’s important to understand the goal of each separate campaign.

The best way to plan a strategy is to identify your goals. It could be customer acquisition, user sign-ups, social media engagement, etc. Ultimately you’ll want to increase brand awareness, however, narrowing down your goal, even more, will make it measurable and attainable (hello SMART goals).

Once you know your goals, you can begin brainstorming various brand activation events or campaigns that you can do to achieve your goals.

For instance, let’s say your goal is user sign-ups. One brand activation for that goal could be going to a trade show. There you can talk to potential customers and then hopefully sign up users on the spot (depending on your offerings).

Once you have a list of ideas, goals, and metrics, it’s time to begin your brand activation plan. You should decide on one campaign or event to move forward, plan the logistics of that event, and use your brand playbook (with a clear vision, value propositions for key targets, brand personality, character, voice, and experiences). Keep in mind that brand activations don’t necessarily need to be events, but can be sampling campaigns, social media contests, or other digital marketing campaigns.

Now, let’s go over some ideas to help you come up with your own brand activation plan. Below, we’ll have the ideas separated by the goal to give you an idea of how to strategically brainstorm brand activations.

Brand Activation Ideas

Goal: User sign ups

• Experiential marketing event
• Trade show
• Digital marketing campaigns

Goal: Increased impressions/brand awareness

• Sampling campaign (giveaways)
• In-store/virtual events
• Digital marketing campaigns
• Influencer marketing

Goal: Customer acquisition

• Digital marketing campaigns like PPC, display advertising, etc.
• Interactive events
• Live demonstrations

Goal: Social media engagement

• Social media contest
• Social media movement
• Behind-the-Scenes series
• Influencer marketing

Now that we have some ideas, let’s look at some examples of brands that have run excellent brand activation events.

Brand Activation Examples

1. Vitamin Water | Brandon

Image Source

A colleague, Clifford Chi, uses this as a great example of brand activations. He usually doesn’t pay much attention to subway ads, but Vitamin Water’s “Brandon” was so funny, it made him laugh out loud. Then, a few weeks later, when Chi was walking around Boston, he strolled past Forbes’ Under 30 Summit and saw someone holding a sign that said, “Need Handshaking Tips?”.

That person was a part of Vitamin Water’s “Brandon” marketing campaign. There were also other members of the campaign, handing out Brandon’s business cards, some swag, and even bottles of Vitamin Water.

The funniest (and most impressive) part of the “Brandon” marketing campaign, though, was that the members acted like they actually worked for Brandon.

Vitamin Water’s “Brandon” campaign resonated with so many people because instead of just giving subway riders a quick laugh on their way to work, they made the extra effort to interact with their target audience and bring the ad to life. To make things even more personal, Brandon accepts all of his LinkedIn requests.

2. Revolve | Revolve Festival

Image Source

An excellent example of brand activation is the Revolve Festival that Revolve holds at Coachella each year (or at least has for several consecutive years). This is often known as the celebrity party of the year.

Revolve hand picks celebrities and influencers (macro or micro) to party while the music festival is occuring.

Revolve Fest trends on social media almost each year it happens because of the influencer marketing that the company focuses on. Influencer marketing helps the company bring in sales for its clothing line and more. In fact, influencers drive 70% of sales for the company.

Each of these festivals is a brand activation to bring in sales and drive awareness for the brand.

3. HBO | SXSWestworld

To promote the second season of their hit show Westworld, HBO built a miniature replica of the show’s Wild-West-themed amusement park in Austin, Texas for attendees of SXSW 2018 to explore.

With over 40 “hosts” who guided attendees on their own unique narrative within Sweetwater, the attendees felt like they were actually in an episode of Westworld, traversing a town full of trotting horses, troublemaking bandits, and money-hungry gamblers.

The park also contained clues of season two’s storyline and new characters, which helped generate a ton of suspense and anticipation for its upcoming premiere.

4. HubSpot | INBOUND

Each year HubSpot holds the INBOUND event. This brand activation is a way to drive brand awareness, customer sign ups, and ultimately help our customers in whatever way we can as a company.

INBOUND is an excellent example of brand activation because it’s a singular event each year that drives engagement and interactivity for HubSpot.

With INBOUND, we can provide an experience for our customers and any business that wants to learn from the best of the best.

5. Netflix | Altered Carbon at CES

At CES 2018, Netflix designed one of the most popular booths at the event. But it didn’t showcase the inner workings of their recommendations algorithm or their process for green-lighting shows. It actually spotlighted a concept their show Altered Carbon revolves around — immortality.

In their booth, fictional employees from Psychasec, the company that offers transfers of their clients’ consciousness to new bodies, or “sleeves”, in Altered Carbon, pitched the benefits of their service and even displayed some models of their sleeves.

Netflix deeply immersed CES’ attendees in the narrative of their hit sci-fi show, and it made them feel like they could actually live forever — if only Psychasec’s service was real.

6. CALM | Project 84

In the U.K., suicide is the number one cause of death of men aged 18 – 45. CALM, a suicide prevention charity, decided to spread awareness for the issue by creating 84 life-size sculptures of hooded men, which is the number of men who take their own lives every week in the U.K. and placing them on top of one of U.K.’s top TV network’s building.

Every sculpture is unique and tells the story of a real person who committed suicide. And to produce as much publicity for male suicide prevention as possible, ITV, the TV network CALM partnered with, agreed to air the campaign on their morning show and dedicate three days of programming to male suicide. The campaign also promoted a petition that urges the government to take suicide more seriously and take greater action to help solve the urgent issue.

Brand Activation Takeaways

Putting on a brand activation event or campaign can help you increase brand awareness, impressions, and ultimately bring in new customers. With tactics like experiential marketing, digital campaigns, influencer marketing, and in-person or virtual events, you can engage and interact with your audience in a personal way.

To succeed with brand activation, it’s important to focus on your audience, make your experiences shareable, and be creative.

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

Whether you’re just starting out with content marketing or you’ve been using the same approach for a while, it never hurts to revisit your content strategy plan and make sure it’s up-to-date, innovative, and engaging for your prospects and customers – no matter when or how they intend to buy.

If you’re having trouble planning for the upcoming year or need some fresh ideas to include in your plan, read on.

In this post, we’ll dive into what content strategy is, why your business needs a content marketing plan, and what steps you need to take to create your strategy. Plus, we’ll explore some examples of effective content marketing strategies for inspiration.

Say your business goals include increasing brand awareness. To achieve this, you might implement a content strategy that focuses on SEO to increase your website’s visibility on the search engine results pages (SERPs) and drive traffic to your products or services.

New business owners might assume a content strategy is a nice-to-have, but not necessary early on. However, producing high-quality content can be invaluable in building trust with new audiences and succeeding in the long haul.

In essence, a good content strategy is the foundation of your Attract and Delight stages in a buyer’s journey that follows the inbound marketing framework. Along with attracting prospects to your brand, you can leverage a content strategy for sales enablement and customer satisfaction.

Plus, with 70% of marketers actively investing in content marketing, it’s critical that you develop a good content strategy to compete in your industry.

When you develop a content strategy, there are a few questions to answer. Let’s dive into those, now.

1. Who will be reading your content?

Who’s the target audience for your content? For how many audiences are you creating content?

Just as your business might have more than one type of customer, your content strategy can cater to more than one type of user.

Using a variety of content types and channels will help you deliver content that’s tailored to each persona.

2. What problem will you be solving for your audience(s)?

Ideally, your product or service solves a problem you know your audience has. By the same token, your content coaches and educates your audience through this problem as they begin to identify and address it.

A sound content strategy supports people on both sides of your product: those who are still figuring out what their main challenges are, and those who are already using your product to overcome these challenges.

Your content reinforces the solution(s) you’re offering and helps you build credibility with your target audience.

3. What makes you unique?

Your competitors likely have a similar product as yours, which means your potential customers need to know what makes yours better — or, at least, different.

Maybe your main asset is that your company has been established for many years. Or perhaps you have a unique brand voice that makes you stand out from your competitors.

To prove why you’re worth buying from, you need to prove why you’re worth listening to. Once you figure that out, permeate that message in your content.

4. What content formats will you focus on?

To figure out what formats to focus on, you need to meet your audience where they are.

While you may to tempted to launch a podcast since it’s grown so much in the last few years, or launch a YouTube channel, find out first where your audience lives.

Otherwise, you may waste time creating content that either won’t reach your audience or capture their attention.

Once you identify the best formats, start creating a budget to assess what resources you can allocate to execute this strategy.

5. What channels will you publish on?

Just as you can create content in different formats, you’ll also have various channels you can publish to, from your website to social media.

This, again, will reflect where your audience lives. If your audience prefers long-form video content, you may opt to publish your content on YouTube. If you have a younger audience that likes quick content, you may opt for TikTok and Instagram.

We’ll talk more about social media content strategy in the step-by-step guide later in this article.

6. How will you manage content creation and publication?

Figuring out how you’ll create and publish all your content can be a daunting task.

Before you execute, it’s important to establish:

• Who’s creating what.
• Where it’s being published.
• When it’s going live.

In a small team, this may be easy enough as you may be the sole decision-maker. As your company grows, you may need to collaborate with several content teams to figure out an effective process.

Today’s content strategies prevent clutter by managing content from a topic standpoint — as explained in the video above. When planning a content editorial calendar around topics, you can easily visualize your company’s message and assert yourself as an authority in your market over time.

Why Marketers Need to Create a Content Marketing Strategy

Content marketing helps businesses prepare and plan for reliable and cost-effective sources of website traffic and new leads.

If you can create just one blog post that gets a steady amount of organic traffic, an embedded link to an e-book or free tool will continue generating leads for you as time goes on — long after you click “Publish.”

HubSpot’s blog team found this to be key to increasing traffic to the Sales Blog over time – read about our blog strategy here.

The reliable source of traffic and leads from your evergreen content will give you the flexibility to experiment with other marketing tactics to generate revenue, such as sponsored content, social media advertising, and distributed content.

Plus, your content won’t just help attract leads, it will also educate your prospects and generate awareness for your brand.

Now, let’s dive in to learn the specifics of how to create a content marketing plan. Curious how our former HubSpot Head of Content SEO Aja Frost put together our content strategy? Here it is.

1. Define your goal.

What’s your aim for developing a content marketing plan? Why do you want to produce content and create a content marketing plan?

Know your goals before you begin planning, and you’ll have an easier time determining what’s best for your strategy.

Download this goal planning template for help figuring out the right content goals.

2. Conduct persona research.

To develop a successful plan, you need to clearly define your content’s target audience — also known as your buyer persona.

This is especially important for those who are starting out or are new to marketing. By knowing your target audience, you can produce more relevant and valuable content that they’ll want to read and convert on.

If you’re an experienced marketer, your target may have changed. Do you want to target a new group of people or expand your current target market? Do you want to keep the same target audience? Revisiting your audience parameters by conducting market research each year is crucial to growing your audience.

Featured Tool: Buyer Persona Generator

3. Run a content audit.

Early on, most brands start with blog posts. If you want to venture out into different formats, you can run a content audit to assess your top-performing and lowest-performing content. Then, use that information to inform which direction you take next.

If you’ve been in business for a while, you should review your content marketing efforts and the results from it in the last year.

Figure out what you can do differently in the upcoming year and set new goals. Now is a great time to align your team’s goals with the rest of your organization’s goals.

Whatever stage you’re in, a content audit will help you determine what resonates best with your audience, identify gaps in your topic clusters, and brainstorm fresh content ideas.

4. Choose a content management system.

A few vital parts of content management include content creation, content publication, and content analytics.

You want to invest in a CMS to create, manage, and track your content in an easy and sustainable way.

With the HubSpot CMS, you can plan, produce, publish, and measure your results all in one place.

Another popular CMS is WordPress, to which you can add the HubSpot WordPress plugin for free web forms, live chat, CRM access, email marketing, and analytics.

5. Determine which type of content you want to create.

There are a variety of options out there for content you can create, from written content like ebooks and blog posts to audio content like podcasts.

In the next section, we’ll discuss some of the most popular content formats marketers are creating, including some tools and templates to get you started.

6. Brainstorm content ideas.

Now, it’s time to start coming up with ideas for your next content project.

Here are some tools to get the juices flowing.

1. Feedly

The Feedly RSS feed is a wonderful way to track trendy topics in your industry and find content ideas at the same time.

You start by telling the software what topics you’re most interested in and its AI tool will do the rest.

You won’t need to scour the internet to find new content ideas anymore. Instead, you can go through your curated list, compiled from news sites, newsletters, and social media. 

2. BuzzSumo

Want to discover popular content and content ideas? This company offers a number of market research tools, one of which uses social media shares to determine if a piece of content is popular and well-liked.

This information helps you see which content ideas would do well if you were to create content about them.

3. BlogAbout

Get your mind gears going with IMPACT’s blog title generator. This tool works a bit like Mad Libs, but instead of joke sentences, it shows you common headline formats with blanks where you can fill in the subject you have in mind.

This brainstorming technique helps you put general ideas in contexts that would be appealing to your target audience. Once you have a headline you like, BlogAbout lets you add it to your “Notebook” so you can save your best ideas.

4. CoSchedule Headline Analyzer

You can get blog post ideas for an entire year with HubSpot’s Blog Ideas Generator. All you need to do is enter general topics or terms you’d like to write about, and this content idea generator does all the work for you.

This tool analyzes headlines and titles and provides feedback on length, word choice, grammar, and keyword search volume.

If you have an idea in mind, run a few title options through the Headline Analyzer to see how you could make it stronger, and to move your idea further along in the brainstorming process.

5. HubSpot’s Website Grader

This is a great tool to use when you want to see where you’re at with your website and SEO efforts. The Website Grader grades you on vital areas of your website performance and sends you a detailed report to help you optimize.

With this tool, you can figure out how to make your website more SEO-friendly and discover areas of improvement.

7. Publish and manage your content.

Your marketing plan should go beyond the types of content you’ll create – it should also cover you’ll organize your content.

With the help of an editorial calendar, you’ll be on the right track for publishing a well-balanced and diverse content library on your website. Then, create a social media content calendar to promote and manage your content on other sites.

Featured Tool: Free Editorial Calendar Templates

Download for Free

Many of the ideas you think of will be evergreen (i.e.: just as relevant months or years from now as they are today). That being said, you shouldn’t ignore timely topics either. While they may not be the bulk of your editorial calendar, they can help you generate spikes of traffic.

Most people count on incorporating popular holidays, like New Year’s, in their marketing efforts, but you don’t have to limit yourself to these important marketing dates.

If there are niche holidays that might appeal to your audience, it could be worth publishing content on your blog or on social media. Check out this ultimate list of social media holidays — keep an eye on it when you’re planning your calendar.

Content Marketing Strategy Templates and Examples

To understand what a content strategy is, let’s explore some examples of real-life content strategies based on a few various business goals.

Let’s start with Evernote, a note-taking app, that developed an SEO-driven content strategy to attract new prospects to their website.

I’m a huge fan of Evernote’s blog, which offers a wealth of knowledge around the topic of productivity. The blog post, How To Stay Disciplined When Times Are Tough, made me laugh out loud – and incentivized me to grab a pen and write down some of the tips I liked best.

But why is a company that sells a note-taking app writing about discipline?

Because it’s how I found their website when I searched “How to stay disciplined” on Google.

People interested in reading content related to productivity are likely the same people interested in downloading Evernote’s note-taking product.

On the contrary, if Evernote’s marketing team simply created content for the sake of increasing traffic – like publishing “Our 10 Favorite Beyonce Songs” – it wouldn’t be considered a content strategy at all, it would just be content.

A strategy needs to align content with business goals. In Evernote’s case, the strategy aligns content (blog posts on productivity) with the business goal of attracting leads (people interested in note-taking) to their site.

Let’s take a look at another example to see how a good content strategy can help businesses with sales enablement.

Consider the following scenario: A prospect calls a sales representative at Wistia and asks questions related to Wistia’s video hosting service. As the Wistia sales rep speaks with her, he learns her business is using a few other tools to convert leads into sales, including Intercom.

Bingo.

Once the call ends, the sales rep sends the prospect a follow-up email with a blog post about Wistia’s integration with Intercom, which enables Intercom users to further personalize messages to prospects based on video-watching data they collect through Wistia.

This is a prime example of how you might use a content strategy as a sales enablement tool.

On the surface, it might seem odd that Wistia has dedicated content regarding another business’ tool. However, this content is a great resource for Wistia’s sales team, particularly when prospects have concerns regarding how Wistia’s product can integrate with their existing software or processes.

Now that we’ve explored a few examples of content strategies, let’s dive into the types of content marketing assets you can develop.

These are the eight most popular types of content marketing you can create for your readers and customers.

1. Blog Posts

If you haven’t already noticed, you’re currently reading a blog post. Blog posts live on a website and should be published regularly in order to attract new visitors.

Posts should provide valuable content for your audience that makes them inclined to share posts on social media and across other websites.

We recommend that blog posts be between 1,000 and 2,000 words in length, but you should experiment to see if your audience prefers longer or shorter reads.

Featured Tool: 6 Free Blog Post Templates

Check out our free blog post templates for writing great how-to, listicle, curation, SlideShare presentation, and newsjacking posts on your own blog.

2. Ebooks

Ebooks are lead generation tools that website visitors download after submitting a lead form with their contact information. They’re typically longer, more in-depth, and published less frequently than blog posts, which are written to attract visitors to a website.

But ebooks aren’t only effective for the top of the funnel.

As Nora Leary, Growth Director at Ironpaper, Inc., notes, “Ebooks serve different purposes at varying stages in the buyer’s journey.”

She told me, “Awareness-level ebooks help educate the prospect about a certain pain point and are an excellent lead capture tool. The content should remain introductory and informational.”

Leary adds, “Ebooks can convert leads in the funnel by offering them useful tools as prospects consider their needs more in-depth. An ebook here might dive deeper into a particular problem and solution options and include templates or calculators.

[Lastly,] ebooks further down the funnel should become more personalized and offer more sales content. Comparison guides or an ebook of case studies are beneficial for prospects at this stage.”

Ebooks are the next step in the inbound marketing process: After reading a blog post. such as this one, visitors might want more information.

This is where calls-to-action (CTAs) come into play, directing people to a landing page where they can submit their contact information and download an ebook to learn more valuable information for their business. In turn, the business producing the ebook has a new lead for the sales team to contact.

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3. Case Studies

A case study allows you to tell a customer story and build credibility in the process.

A case study is perhaps your most versatile type of content marketing because it can take many different forms — some of which are on this list. That’s right, case studies can take the form of a blog post, ebook, podcast, even an infographic.

The goal is to demonstrate how your product helped real-life companies succeed. Before choosing a customer for a case study, you should determine to which business area you’re trying to drive value.

Featured Tool: 3 Free Case Study Templates

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4. Templates

Templates are effective content marketing examples to try because they generate leads while offering tremendous value to your audience.

When you provide your audience with template tools to save them time and help them succeed, they’re more likely to engage with your content in the future.

5. Infographics

Infographics can organize and visualize data in a more compelling way than words alone.

These are great content formats to use if you’re trying to share a lot of data in a way that is clear and easy to understand.

Featured Tool: 15 Free Infographic Templates

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6. Videos

Videos are a highly engaging content medium and are shareable across social media platforms and websites alike.

Videos require a bigger investment of time and resources than written content, but as visual content continues to offer big ROI, it’s a medium worth exploring.

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7. Podcasts

Starting a podcast will help audiences find your brand if they don’t have time or interest in reading content every day.

The number of podcast listeners is growing — in 2021, there was a 10% year-over-year increase in U.S. podcast listeners.

If you have interesting people to interview or conversations to host, consider podcasting as another content format to experiment with.

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8. Social Media

Once you’ve been regularly publishing content on your own site for a while, start thinking about a social media strategy to distribute your content on social media.

In addition to sharing your content, you can also repurpose it into new formats and create original content specifically for each platform.

Posting on social media is pivotal to amplifying your brand’s reach and delivering your content to your customers where you know they spend their time. Popular social networks include:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Pinterest
• Snapchat
• YouTube

When launching a business account on any of the social networks above, adjust your content to the platform.

On Instagram, for example, users want aesthetically pleasing visuals. With feeds, IGTV, Stories, you have a lot of room to play with. TikTok, on the other hand, appeals to a younger demographic that wants trendy, funny, and creative short-form video.

Do some market research to discover which platforms your buyers are on, and mold your content to their expectations.

It takes time, organization, and creativity to grow a successful content marketing strategy. From building the foundation of your content marketing plan to adding tools to better manage your content, setting up your strategy for the new year won’t be a hassle if you follow the steps and explore the resources here.

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