Category Archives: B2B

I run HubSpot’s Marketing Daily Newsletter, so I know quite a bit about email marketing and why an email marketing platform is one of the first additions to a marketer’s tool belt.

Email marketing is an effective way to engage and nurture leads into loyal customers. It’s also extremely cost-effective — some studies show an ROI of $40 for every $1 spent.

Leveraging email marketing can be difficult, especially if you’re trying to grow your list or manage the massive list you already have. Fortunately there are plenty of email marketing services available to help.

Here are 18 of the best ones I’ve found. I’ve even tested a few. Let’s dive in.

Why is an email marketing service important?

Today, email marketing services continue to be an integral, strategic tool for businesses of all sizes across all industries — it helps businesses build strong relationships with prospects and customers all while moving them through the buyer’s journey and maintaining strong communication throughout.

Not to mention, as ESPs continue to develop, features like A/B Testing, automation, and personalization have made the tools even more valuable to a marketer looking to engage with an increasingly fragmented audience.

 

What to Look for in an Email Marketing Service

1. Security: Email addresses are personal and sensitive customer data that you’re responsible for protecting. Your email marketing service provider should have robust precautions in place and use best practices to protect this data like DMARC email authentication standards.

2. Ease of Use: If you’re using email marketing to nurture and convert customers, it should be easy to create an email and send it to your audience. Look for drag-and-drop features and templated workflows in your email tool.

3. Audience Segmentation: Personalization is a key component of a successful email marketing strategy, and for this, you’ll need audience segmentation included in the tool you choose.

4. Automation: Automated workflows, triggered sends, and scheduled emails are all parts of email marketing automation that come in handy for small and large teams alike. Look for these automated features when choosing an email marketing service.

5. Third-Party Integrations: Odds are, you and your team aren’t handling your marketing tasks manually. A great email marketing provider will be able to integrate with many of the other tools you use, especially a CRM.

6. Data Analytics: Keep track of open rates, bounce backs, and CTR with data analytics weaved right into your next email marketing tool

7. Customer Support: Even after learning your new email marketing service tool through and through, you’ll need help from the support team at some point. Make sure the provider you choose has a helpful and accessible customer support team that you can lean on when you need help.

Now let’s look at some of the best email marketing services today — one of which you might choose to implement at your company. (And psst: If you need help writing your emails once you’ve found the right provider, this video can help you do so seamlessly.) 

For each of the following services, I’ve listed notable features and pricing details. I also tested the ones I had access to so you’ll have greater details.

1. HubSpot Email Marketing Software

Best for: Email marketing that’s powered by CRM data.

Okay, so I might be a bit biased; however, I’m being honest when I say HubSpot’s free email marketing software is secure and easy to use, has an extremely high deliverability rate, and includes all the bells and whistles you’d expect to see within an ESP.

HubSpot Email Marketing Software Features

I use HubSpot Email Marketing Software to create and distribute the marketing email newsletter, so I am quite familiar with the software’s features.

So, here’s a walkthrough.

When creating an email, I can choose from one of many drag-and-drop templates or craft a custom template tailored to my brand. Once I’ve got my template, incorporating content is simple and intuitive.

I can also personalize and preview my emails for different recipients based on device type, country, or list inclusion — or use a simple personalization token to ensure that each email includes content specific to each recipient.

When it comes time to send an email, I can use the smart send feature to ensure recipients receive my messages at an ideal time.

Additionally, I can run A/B tests to compare different versions of an email to understand which one resonates the most with your audience.

Furthermore, I won’t have to worry about deliverability—HubSpot maintains a 99% deliverability rate across the network for all marketing email sends.

Outside of the email marketing functionality, HubSpot offers a wide range of reports on my emails’ performances, letting me judge what’s resonating with my audience so I can optimize my strategy accordingly.

In their email marketing software guide, Venture Harbour put it like this:

“By connecting the dots between your marketing, website, and sales activity, HubSpot is able to attribute which campaigns influence your sales — which means you can invest more in what works and less in what doesn’t.”

For instance, users can report on something as broad as their overall email performance in Q1, or they get granular and see how one particular lead is interacting with their emails.

Users can also leverage tools like HubSpot’s Email Writer and Campaign Assistant to create email marketing campaigns.

Lastly, HubSpot’s automation platform makes it easy to scale my email marketing strategy, which will help me quickly turn leads into loyal customers.

And if I want help tracking my emails’ open rates and other insights, I can leverage our Marketing Analytics & Dashboard Software in tandem.

HubSpot Email Marketing Software Price

Hubspot’s Email Marketing Software (and CRM for small to enterprise companies, for that matter) is free forever. However, if you need enhanced capabilities, paying for one of the upgraded Marketing Hub plans may be worth it.

2. Sender Email Marketing Software

Best for: Affordable email marketing platforms with high inbox deliverability.

Sender is an all-in-one marketing automation platform that goes beyond just offering a basic email marketing service.

Sender Features

After testing Sender, I’ve found that it’s a powerful yet affordable email marketing service and provider with accessible, premium features.

I can use the automation builder module with powerful conditional flows to build a series of email and SMS steps that can fire based on quickly definable trigger conditions such as cart abandonment, product purchase, link clicks, email opens and more.

Its Segmentation feature allows me to group my subscribers based on powerful considerations such as basic information, engagement, and custom fields.

Along with emailing, I can choose from a range of solid and highly responsive popups or embeddable forms, customize them with my brand, and offer and deploy it on my landing pages and website in no time.

With Sender’s SMS capabilities, I can sync my emails and SMSes as immediate, one-off broadcasts or schedule them together for a later date and time easily in just a few clicks.

Sender Price

I love that Sender’s pricing plans are wallet-friendly at every price point. Its Free Forever plan comes with all the top premium features.

The features include automation and segmentation, apart from the ability to maintain 2,500 contacts and send a maximum of 15,000 emails every month.

Its paid plans start at just $15.83 per month for the ability to send up to 60,000 emails a month. 

3. Moosend Email Marketing Software

Best for: Creating automation and sending personalized emails.

Moosend is an email marketing and marketing automation platform that offers a variety of features at an affordable price.

Moosend Features

By testing Moosend’s platform, I found out it allows me to quickly craft email newsletter campaigns, landing pages, and subscription forms to capture, nurture, and convert my audience.

With the drag-and-drop editor, I can either create an email newsletter from scratch, using interactive elements like videos, or use one of the responsive email templates.

I can also use advanced automation features to build specific campaigns for segments of my audience or create custom workflows, such as welcome, engagement, or abandoned cart sequences.

The real-time reporting and analytics tools give you measurable results about campaign performance and user engagement, enabling me to make informed, data-backed decisions.

Then, I can use the A/B Testing feature to find the best element variations for my target audience to optimize my email marketing strategy for better results.

I especially appreciate that Moosend simplifies every aspect of building and testing a campaign into steps and provides accessible resources for new users.

Moosend Price

Moosend’s pricing model is subscriber-based and consists of three pricing tiers. The 30-day free trial includes most features and allows users to send unlimited email campaigns.

The Pro plan starts at $9 per month and allows subscribers to send unlimited emails, create automation workflows, forms, and landing pages, and send transactional campaigns to up to 500 contacts.

The Enterprise plan is based on custom pricing and offers more advanced functionality and additional support.

4. EngageBay Email Marketing Software

Best for: Account-based email marketing and social media marketing.

EngageBay is an all-in-one marketing, sales, and customer support software designed specifically for small businesses.

EngageBay Features

With EngageBay’s powerful platform, I can launch personalized email campaigns, design stunning landing pages, capture leads through forms, and quickly close deals.

The visual multistep automation builder helps me automate the most complex tasks without writing a single line of code.

I can choose from various triggers that can launch workflows and create custom workflows for various scenarios, including drip campaigns, cart abandonment alerts, welcome emails, and birthday wishes.

Social media is a powerful channel for lead generation.

With EngageBay’s social media management, I can engage with my social audience with a single tool. Manage your Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts, and use streams to keep track of retweets, mentions, posts, and events.

I can also utilize social listening to find out what is trending and what your audience is talking about. To post ahead of time, users can schedule their posts smartly for the best conversion rates.

EngageBay Price

EngageBay offers four plans. The Free plan includes essential features to help small businesses get started. The Pro plan starts at $101.99 for unlimited contacts and offers account-based marketing, advanced automation, traffic analytics, and other pro tools to help you scale your business effectively.

5. Omnisend Email Marketing Software

Best for: Creating custom workflows.

Omnisend is an easy-to-use platform that offers automation workflows for any stage of the customer journey.

Omnisend Features

What I believe separates Omnisend from other email marketing tools is the omnichannel functionalities, which offer greater control over how and where users connect with their audience.

While testing the automation workflow, I found I can add email, SMS, push notifications, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and more.

Let’s say I’m trying to reach a specific audience that might not respond well to traditional email communication. In such a case, using a tool like Omnisend can help me build and manage more customized, targeted communication workflows.

This would not only help me better connect with my audience but also provide a less disruptive, more personalized experience for my contacts.

Omnichannel features combined with user-friendly segmentation mean I can send the right message to the right person at the right time on the right channel.

Omnisend also offers templates for email capture, campaigns, and automation workflows so I can get started quickly.

Omnisend Price

Omnisend has three pricing plans — one of which is free with very limited capabilities as well as a customizable pro plan. Its plans come with a free trial so you can experiment with the service to determine what works best for you.

6. Mailmodo Email Marketing Software

Best for: Creating and sending AMP emails.

Mailmodo is a complete email marketing software that helps marketers create app-like experiences in email without coding. 

Mailmodo Features

By testing Mailmodo, I found that it could help email marketers like myself build and scale their email automation engine with an intuitive visual builder that has drag-and-drop workflows to automate time-based drip series.

It makes checking responsiveness for different devices easy and has an in-built open rate suggestions feature to fix errors in an email before sending it.

I especially love that Mailmodo’s AMP technology allows me to add calendars, forms, surveys, live ratings, reviews, polls, and widgets to gamify emails like spin the wheel, quizzes, etc., inside the email to reduce redirections and boost engagement. 

Mailmodo Price

Its Lite plan starts from $39 and lets users send emails to 2,500 contacts and 20,000 email sending credits. Its Pro plan costs $99, allowing users to send emails to 2,500 contacts with a monthly limit of 25,000 sends.

Finally, its Max plan is priced at $249 and lets subscribers send emails to 2,500 contacts with a monthly limit of 37,500 sends. If you want to try Mailmodo before buying, its pricing plans include a free trial period. 

7. Pabbly Email Marketing Software

Best for: Delivering bulk emails.

Pabbly Email Marketing is an email marketing software that enables you to send bulk emails either by connecting via SMTP or external SMTP.

Pabbly Email Marketing Features

Pabbly provides access to SMTP routing, workflow automation, email scheduling, and much more without any restrictions.

With the help of marketing automation and autoresponders included in the tool, I found I can schedule emails in advance and create triggers to avoid manual follow-up responses.

Additionally, Pabbly offers responsive email templates and a drag-and-drop email editor for easy customization.

The email tracking feature allows me to track data such as bounce rate, open rate, and click-through rate so I can improve upon my email marketing and campaigns.

Pabbly Email Marketing Price

Pabbly offers multiple plans based on your number of subscribers. Its free plan allows you to send unlimited emails to up to 100 subscribers, and an advanced plan is tailored to websites with large audiences.

8. Brevo

Best for: Sending automated nurturing and text message campaigns.

Brevo is an email marketing platform that helps customers send a total of over 30 million automated emails and text messages every day.

Brevo Features

My favorite Brevo feature is its forms tool that allows me to collect new leads, which I can then segment into specific lists and enter into email nurturing campaigns.

Let’s say I’m not sure how to kick off my email nurturing campaign. No problem. Brevo has workflows that provide access to a number of pre-made automation campaigns tailored to my specific goals.

If I want to run a more nuanced email nurturing campaign, I can always create a campaign from scratch to meet my specific business needs.

Brevo Price

Brevo has four main plans: one free, two between $9 and $18 per month, and one enterprise plan that requires a customized quote. The plans vary in cost based on the number of emails sent per day/ month.

9. SendX Email Marketing Software

Best for: Offering visual email marketing performance data.

SendX is an intuitive, affordable, and feature-rich email marketing software for marketers and business owners.

SendX Features

With SendX, I can send unlimited emails to opted-in subscribers across all pricing plans. Users get charged per subscriber – not per email sent – no matter how many lists, tags, or segments you have them in.

While testing, I discovered I could optimize my email campaigns based on 30+ parameters, including past open behavior, time zone, domain name, email client, ISP, etc.

I can automate my email marketing with a rule-based interface and send the right message to the right user using email drip sequences and audience segmentation.

SendX can also help users grow their email lists with forms and popups. Users even get pre-built email templates, which they can further design with the drag-and-drop email editor without HTML.

The tool also features a heatmap report for different types of campaigns to give you a quick visual overview of which CTAs are working and which links people are clicking.

SendX Price

SendX’s pricing is based on the number of subscribers you have. For 1,000 subscribers, plans start at $7.49 per month for the annual subscription (or $9.99 for a monthly subscription). They also offer a 14-day free trial.

10. Constant Contact Email Marketing Software

Best for: Creating email drip campaigns and easy-to-use templates.

Constant Contact is a popular email marketing service that works well for many industries.

Constant Contact Features

I appreciate that the service comes with over 100 email templates that I can either use as-is or customize. Once my email looks good, I can easily schedule it to send to my contacts at any time I choose.

In addition to drip email campaigns, I can also have emails go out at a regular cadence to celebrate specific events — for example, I could have a regular email go out on each customer’s birthday.

Once an email contact list is uploaded, bounces and unsubscribes are automatically updated. Constant Contact also has “Plus” features that allow me to execute specific types of campaigns, such as coupon offers, donation collections, or surveys.

Constant Contact Price

Constant Contact has three plans depending on the features you need that start at $12, $35, and $80 per month. The price differentiation is related to your number of contacts.

It offers a free trial, so you can experiment with the service prior to committing to it.

11. Campaign Monitor Email Marketing Software

Best for: building personalized emails.

Campaign Monitor prides itself on providing powerful, personalized email marketing tools that are simple and easy to use.

Campaign Monitor Features

Its drag-and-drop email editor is intuitive, and the included analytics make it simple to optimize my email strategy and create targeted customer segments.

Personalization is key for campaign monitoring.

It uses data to increase personalized content and inform my list segmentation, boosting my engagement. It also offers a visual marketing automation tool so I can create a unique customer journey at scale.

Not to mention, Campaign Monitor has an extensive library of resources available to help users become email marketing pros.

Campaign Monitor Price

There are three major plans you can choose from with Campaign Monitor ranging from €10 up to €149 per month.

You can choose to pay annually rather than monthly and take advantage of the option to pay per campaign if that schedule works better for your needs.

12. TargetBay Email Marketing Software

Best for: Shopify email marketing and SMS marketing

TargetBay is an all-in-one email marketing service with over 380 email templates, drag-and-drop functionality, pop-up builder, SMS marketing, coupon builder, email automation, A/B testing, advanced reports, sign-up forms, and more.

TargetBay Features

TargetBay’s innovative platform allows me to generate sales and will help me until the leads convert to customers.

After testing it, I suggest using its sign-ups to capture leads and designing attractive emails with over 380 pre-written content templates.

I also suggest segmenting your subscribers to send relevant and targeted emails that will have more chances to get opened or clicked and adding coupons with TargetBay’s very own coupon builder.

With TargetBay, I can set up email automation to keep communication with my subscribers going.

With TargetBay’s easy-to-use interface, I can also A/B test every element of my email to find the best working email for my subscriber list. This is done using accurate real-time data on the email campaign performance.

TargetBay’s Price

TargetBay has a forever free plan with a 2500 email limit per month and a 250 subscriber limit/per month. The basic paid plan starts from $10.

If you want to explore TargetBay before you make a decision, they provide a free 14-day trial period in its pricing plans

13. MailChimp Email Marketing Software

Best for: Actionable data insights to improve your email marketing strategy.

Over the years, MailChimp has added landing pages and various ad tools to its capabilities, but its email marketing service remains its claim to fame.

MailChimp Features

MailChimp has millions of customers in over 175 countries and it use the data it collects off those customers to provide users with actionable insights to improve their email strategy.

The tool is flexible enough for an enterprise company, yet simple enough for someone just getting started with their startup’s email marketing strategy.

Best of all, MailChimp has over 300 integrations that help you customize the tool to your business. By using these integrations to further personalize your marketing, you’ll get the most out of your email strategy.

MailChimp Price

MailChimp offers four plans, ranging from free to $350 per month. Aside from the free plan, your monthly payment increases with the number of contacts you have, depending on the option you choose.

14. Canary Mail Email Marketing Software

Best for: AI email management and advanced security.

Canary Mail is your go-to email client if you’re in pursuit of AI-powered productivity, advanced security, and a highly customizable email experience.

Canary Mail Features

Canary Mail offers a comprehensive email solution. I like that its AI Copilot helps me craft excellent content with eye-catching subject lines and persuasive email body copy.

The app’s AI categorization intelligently organizes my inbox, making sure that important responses and feedback from my campaigns are front and center.

Canary Mail’s SecureSend and PGP support ensure that sensitive campaign data and communications remain locked down.

When it comes to customization, the app offers various options: custom swipe and thread actions, custom snooze times, and a customizable interface with dark and light mode options.

Additionally, the read receipts feature helps me track when my campaign emails are opened, giving me real-time feedback on my content’s engagement. 

Canary Mail Price

Canary Mail offers a flexible pricing structure. The annual subscription for iOS, macOS, and Android is $20/year each. 

15. AWeber Email Marketing Software

Best for: Small businesses and entrepreneurs just starting to build their email lists.

Aweber is an email platform built specifically for small businesses and entrepreneurs.

AWeber Features

The goal of AWeber is to make it simple for those who are just getting started with email marketing to segment their contacts, design a professional email, and start nurturing leads.

Customers praise AWeber for its deliverability — AWeber’s deliverability team monitors their servers around the clock to ensure your campaign consistently reaches the inboxes of your recipients.

Aweber Price

AWeber offers multiple plans ranging from free to $899.

16. Ortto Email Marketing Software

Best for collaborative email marketing teams.

Ortto differentiates itself from its competitors with its visual marketing tools.

Ortto Features

I’m a fan of how everything from Ortto’s email editor to its automation tool is set up to work via a drag-and-drop interface, making the system intuitive and easy for me to use.

Ortto offers collaborative tools to help teams work together effectively — it allows me to quickly share my work with my team, ensuring everyone is on the same page before I launch a campaign.

And with the “annotate & collaborate” feature, I can quickly mark-up a customer journey and ask my team for feedback and assistance.

Ortto Price

Ortto offers three plans, which range in price between $509/m and $1699/m.

17. Ontraport Email Marketing Software

Best for creating detailed email marketing campaigns.

Ontraport offers a full suite of marketing automation tools including ecommerce functionality for businesses with online stores.

Ontraport Features

Ontraport’s visual campaign builder allows you to create detailed campaigns to engage your audience.

You can create a campaign from scratch or tap into the marketplace where they offer dozens of the most common marketing campaigns to choose from, including abandoned cart nurturing or webinar sign-up and follow-up.

The service also provides insight into detailed reports so you can gain insight into your pipeline, traffic sources, and conversion timelines.

Ontraport Price

Ontraport’s basic plan starts at $24 per month and its most expensive plan, Enterprise, starts at $249 per month.

Choose Your Email Marketing Service

During my time in email marketing, I’ve found that most email marketing tools offer the essentials needed to craft a basic email newsletter.

However, there are fewer options if I want a range of top-notch features such as complete customization, available support, and data analysis.

Furthermore, marketers like myself often prefer combining our email marketing service with a CRM to provide even greater functionality that can impact email marketing, sales, and service efforts.

But take it from me: The best email marketing tool for you depends on your team’s goals and particular needs. So review the options I provided and the services’ product and pricing pages to get started.

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

 

The words “marketing budget” might strike fear into the heart of any marketing leader, but it’s non-negotiable when creating a marketing strategy for your company. In fact, when budgeting season rolls around, I hunker down.

I know that the budget I set affects what my team can accomplish and our value to the company. Without the right funds, my team can’t capitalize on emerging trends or create high-quality content that our audience will love enough to eventually make a purchase.

In this post, I share tips on managing your marketing budget based on my experience. I’ll also share eight templates to help you get started.

Common marketing investments include advertising products to target customers, raising awareness of your brand, and building backed processes that support marketing at scale.

Advertising efforts may include paid online ads, email campaigns, and social media posts. Raising awareness centers around fostering customer connections by creating digital content that offers value, like informative blog posts or ebooks.

Finally, the backend marketing process may include business automation or software-as-a-service (SaaS) tools that help streamline operations and reduce manual efforts.

As a marketer, I need to account for all of these line items in my budget.

Marketing Budgets for Small Business

Marketing budgets are especially important for small businesses. Small business owners may lack experience in drawing up budgets. Moreover, it’s critical that these companies keep costs as low and lean as possible as they scale.

Ironically, you need marketing to scale. Without it, it‘s hard to sell your products and services. In addition to the budgeting templates provided below, check out some of our free offers and courses to mitigate your company’s marketing costs.

Yet, marketing budgets can be difficult to establish for companies of all sizes.

How much should a company spend on marketing?

Well, digital media makes up nearly 60% of both U.S. and global advertising spend. This includes initiatives that cater to audiences on desktop computers, search engines, video streaming platforms, social media, and mobile devices.

Given the success marketers have seen, you might consider planning to spend at least half of your marketing budget on some of these digital channels.

Let’s talk about other ways to allocate your marketing budget.

Marketing Cost Examples

As I build a budget, here are the items I make sure to remember.

1. Software

As a marketer, our tech stack is an essential part of getting my work done.

Even my friends who work in print media still leverage InDesign, Photoshop, and paid ad campaigns. That doesn’t even include those helpful tools like Grammarly and Getty Images, which are commonplace in marketing.

There’s a marketing tool for just about any task you can think of, but they are generally broken down into the following categories:

• Customer relationship management (CRM).
• Online advertising.
• Social media.
• Content creation and design.
• Event marketing.
• Lead capture and lead generation.
• Marketing automation.
• Data reporting and analytics.
• Digital asset management.
• Team collaboration.

Pro tip: The costs of these tools can quickly add up, so it’s worth it to try out the free options until you’re ready to commit to a tool your team loves.

2. Freelancers

When I’m in a pinch, I’ve often turned to freelancers for help. For example, I might want to film a video across the country from where I live. I can tap a freelance videographer to get the footage on my shot list.

If you have a temporary campaign or want to test out a new marketing strategy, you might want to hire a short-term freelancer before bringing on a full-timer.

Reach out to your network for recommendations or consider using a site like UpWork.

Freelancers typically charge an hourly rate, so be sure to examine your budget before hiring.

3. New Personnel

Not every role in marketing has to budget for new personnel.

I’ve made many budgets for projects and programs where staffing was handled by a separate department. However, your organization may need you to financially account for full-time employees.

When you do hire, you’ll want to include costs like the employee’s computer, technology, benefits, and onboarding-related needs. According to Zippia, the average cost of hiring a new employee is $4,425.

4. Advertising

When I make a budget, I don’t just need to account for making content. I also need to set aside money to promote what my team makes.

That’s where your ad budget comes in. Plan for how much money you’ll spend on paid opportunities such as physical ads, native ads, sponsored content, search engine ads, and social media promotions.

Most businesses will benefit from some form of online advertising whether via social media platforms, search engines, or native ads.

Statista estimates there are more than 5.4 billion internet users worldwide as of 2024. If you’re not advertising online, you’re missing out.

5. Content Creation

Content creation requires both resources (cameras, actors, software, etc. all cost money) and time (which, as the adage goes, is also money).

When I create content, including videos, photos, or even blog posts, I need to put paid time into it.

Content marketing brings in three times as many leads as traditional options, so it’s worth dedicating funds to this area.

Budget how much money will go into creating this content so you can adjust accordingly based on its return on investment.

Now that you know more about what to include in your budget, let’s look at how those funds are spent.

If you’re not sure where to start with budget allocation, a good guideline to follow is the 70-20-10 rule. Using this as a benchmark:

• 70% of your budget is allocated toward strategies you know work well.
• 20% of your budget is allocated toward new strategies aimed at helping you grow.
• 10% of your budget is allocated toward experimental strategies.

Marketing Cost Example

Let’s say your business has a marketing budget of $10,000. The budget allocation may look like this:

• $7,000 towards a CRM or other software you love, successful paid search campaigns, social media marketing.
• $2,000 towards marketing a new product, feature, or service you’re testing.
• $1,000 towards testing sponsored content.

Allocation by Channel

How you allocate your budget per channel depends on your company’s particular goals, so there is no hard and fast rule.

However, the chart below from Statista can give you a ballpark idea as it illustrates the share of marketing budgets from large companies across North America, the U.K., Germany, and France.

Image Source

Organized by channel, you can see that the top spots belong to social marketing, digital advertising, and search engine optimization (SEO).

Marketers are expected to spend more than $740 billion on ads in 2024. Let’s look at some examples of how these digital marketing costs apply to your budget.

Paid Search Advertising

You’re probably familiar with the ads at the top of a Google results page that show up above the list of search results. Those are forms of paid advertising called pay-per-click (PPC).

You can create and run ads on Google, and each time someone clicks, you pay. The cost-per-click (CPC) can range anywhere from a few cents to a few dollars. You can use Google’s keyword planner to help estimate costs.

With this method, you only pay for clicks you receive. So, even if you’ve set aside a budget of $2,000, your campaign may only generate $1,500 worth of clicks.

Social Media

Like Google Ads, social media platforms have advertising programs based on the PPC model but also charge by impressions.

The CPC of running a paid social campaign varies depending on the platform of choice. Prices range from a few cents to several dollars.

Some companies may opt to hire an agency to run their campaigns and to create a social media strategy. Outsourcing this function is more expensive and can cost anywhere from $2,000 to $20,000 per month.

Content Marketing

Having a brand blog is a great way to get into content marketing, especially if you have in-house staff tasked with keeping it updated.

Instead of a blog, you may be more interested in creating case studies, ebooks, videos, or guides. They’re all designed to promote your brand and attract new customers.

Content marketing costs vary widely based on your goals and area of focus. Hiring outside consultants or agencies to handle content marketing for you can range from $2,000 to $10,000 per month for small to medium-sized businesses.

While it isn’t cheap, paying an agency to handle this task will free up your team’s time to work on other projects and may yield better results than going solo.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is a must-have for businesses, especially online retailers.

With a customer acquisition rate 40X more effective than Facebook and Twitter combined, it’s no surprise why this tried and true method is a staple in most marketing budgets.

Email marketing also provides higher ROI as you’re connecting with people already interested in your brand.

Email marketing costs depend on the size of your business, your goals, and your chosen software or platform. Hiring an outside firm to handle these efforts will cost significantly more than doing it yourself.

Search Engine Optimization

SEO aids marketing efforts by improving your web pages so that they show up in search engines like Google. The more often your website comes up in search, the more potential customers will see it and hopefully visit your website.

If you don’t have staff to handle your SEO needs in-house you may need to work with an agency. Depending on what your business needs are, this can cost thousands per month.

While the marketing channel choices can seem endless, don’t feel pressured to use all of them. Every business is different, and you should prioritize putting funds toward the methods that best suit your needs.

Spreadsheet knowledge alone won‘t help you understand how you’ll spend your marketing money this year.

Creating a sound marketing budget starts with knowing what purpose this budget will serve and which marketing teams it will represent.

Here’s how I approach creating a marketing budget.

1. Know your buyer’s journey.

Your buyer‘s journey is the steps your audience takes as they “journey” from prospect to paying customer.

Knowing my buyer’s journey allows me to understand how my audience interacts with my marketing. I can then better set my goals and budget to reach my customers.

I always ask myself these questions as I define my buyer’s journey:

• How do leads and customers typically discover my products?
• What do they need to know before they make a purchase?
• How many site visits do I see per month?
• How many leads are we generating per month, and how many of these convert to paying customers?
• What is the cost of generating new leads and then converting them to customers?
• What’s the typical value/revenue of each lead?

This process should point out what marketing tactics are (and aren’t working), where I should alter my marketing goals, and where I can focus my marketing budget.

2. Align your budget with your marketing goals.

What you spend and where you spend it will depend on what you’re trying to accomplish.

So, when starting to create your marketing budget, make sure you’re only spending money on the things required by your current marketing goals — goals set based on your audience and their journey from prospect to customer.

These could include:

• Display ads to promote a new product you’re launching this year.
• Sponsored social media posts to generate followers on your new Facebook page.
• Paid search engine ads to drive traffic (and purchases) to a specific product page.
• Contract bloggers to get more organic search traffic to your company’s website.

Former Demand Generation Marketer at HubSpot and current Head of Marketing at Hummingbirds Jessica Webb Kennedy, says this about how your costs can change when focusing on lead generation vs. lead conversion.

“The majority of the money you spend on paid efforts is usually calculated based on the volume of clicks or impressions. Because of this, you’ll often want to put more budget toward campaigns with higher-volume offers and audiences,” Kennedy says.

For example, a tweet or Facebook ad promoting a lead generation offer that leans more top of the funnel will likely receive more clicks than something that falls more toward the middle or bottom of the funnel, she explains.

Your paid advertising costs will also change depending on how wide of an audience you are attempting to reach.

“You can look at Twitter advertising as an example,” Webb says. “You have the option to target your campaigns based on users’ interests or keywords searched for.”

She continues, “Interests are a much broader category, whereas smaller pockets of users are searching for any given keyword, therefore your interests-based audience is going to be much larger and require a larger budget.”

3. Beware of hidden marketing costs.

One of the great advantages to having and maintaining a budget spreadsheet is that it helps you avoid those end-of-the-quarter or end-of-the-year freak-outs when you realize, “Whoa … what did I spend all that money on?”

In many cases, unanticipated costs can force marketers to fork over cash that they didn’t plan on spending. Product marketing offers a perfect example.

According to Meghan Keaney Anderson, former HubSpot vice president of marketing and current head of product marketing and communications at Watershed, it’s easy to forget that successfully marketing your products and services requires more than just promotion.

“When people allocate a budget for product marketing, they tend to think in terms of product launches and promotional activities,” Anderson explains.

Anderson notes that teams should remember to set aside resources to conduct research and message testing long before the product ever goes to market.

“Having conversations with customers about the pain points your product will ultimately address is critical to shaping the messaging and having a successful launch,” Anderson says.

4. Remember where your priorities lie.

Marketing is overflowing with add-ons and extras, upsells, and “premium” versions. One of the best ways to assess what‘s nice to have versus what’s absolutely necessary is to (you guessed it) organize all of your expenses.

I keep tabs on where my budget is being allocated and cross-check that spending with the results I’m getting. This makes it much easier to figure out what should keep getting budget and what should get kicked to the curb.

For example, let‘s look at the world of public relations. In PR, there are countless tools to which you can allocate budget, which could leave you overspending where it doesn’t matter — and underspending where it does.

“Tools abound to help PR practitioners not only create and distribute great content and find and target key stakeholders, but to ultimately measure reach and effectiveness,” says Nathaniel Eberle, HubSpot’s former director of PR and brand and GoTo’s current vice president of global brand and creative management.

Eberle says teams need to laser focus on the audience they want to reach and influence. Then, teams can revisit their budgets and ensure that the spend supports initiatives that appeal to said audience.

“As the media and digital landscape evolves at breakneck speed, continually reassessing the tools, services, and programs you‘re employing is a great way to determine real-time ROI of your overall spend. Today’s measurement tool may be worthless to you tomorrow,” Eberle says.

5. Spend your budget smartly.

When you open up these budget templates and check out all the various expenses detailed in them, don‘t fret if you can’t tick every box. I’m not advocating for an “always spend more” approach to marketing.

I‘m advocating for an “always spend smart” approach. The expenses listed out aren’t mandatory — they‘re just meant to guide your thinking and to help ensure that you haven’t overlooked any hidden costs.

6. Prepare to measure ROI.

When I put a certain amount of money into a certain area, I want to determine if my budgeting helped or hurt me as I plan out future budgets. The best way to do this is by measuring ROI — or return on investment.

If the money I’ve spent on one item results in my company making more in return, I may want to increase the budget in the next year. If my money doesn’t end in returns, I re-examine my budget.

Marketing Budget Templates

Using a marketing budget template can be useful when you’re not sure how to split or track your marketing costs.

For instance, let’s say your company decided to invest in a website redesign to improve lead generation, and you’re responsible for managing the project.

Naturally, one of the first questions you ask is, “How much is this website redesign going to cost?”

The answer, of course, is “it depends.” Are you simply switching to a new template and adding some new CTAs, or are you migrating your entire website to a new platform?

If only there were a way to organize your answers to all of these questions — a place where you could enter in estimated costs for all of your line items and then compare your projected marketing budget to what you actually end up spending. Good news: Marketing budget templates can help.

Included in our eight marketing budget templates bundle is a template to manage your website redesign … as well as templates for both Excel and Google Sheets to help you track your content budget, paid advertising budget, event budget, and more.

With these templates, you’ll be able to manage all of the moving pieces of your budget at a monthly and quarterly level.

Use the Excel version of the templates to keep all of your budgets in one place.

When you download the zip file, you’ll find a separate file for each marketing team, as well as a Master Budget Template to maintain a high-level view of your overall expenses.

Interested in sharing your marketing budget across a larger team?

Try the Google Sheets version of our templates to share access with other Gmail users. For the Google Sheets templates, each team budget is found in a separate tab of the same Google Sheet.

No matter which version you choose, each budget is optimized with the same line items, tips, and graphs. Read on to learn how to use each budget template.

1. Master Marketing Budget Template

Download the Master Marketing Budget Template here.

While it‘s helpful to have individual budget templates for specific marketing departments and activities, it’s also nice to be able to take a step back and see the bigger picture.

The Master Marketing Budget Template lets you do just that: It’s the place where you can collect the totals from the other seven templates in the bundle and see all of your expenses in one place.

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Budget Overview from All Departments: In the first table, you get to see both your budget and actual spending from all marketing departments, including product marketing, content marketing, paid advertising, PR, branding and creative, and events.

Month-Over-Month Expense Summary: For a more bird’s eye view of all expenses, look at this table, where you can see the aggregated budget and actual spending for all marketing activities.

Marketing Budget vs. Actual Spend Chart: This chart allows you to pinpoint trends in spending and budgeting — where you came under and where you over-spent.

2. Product Marketing Budget Template

Download the Product Marketing Budget Template here.

This template will guide you step-by-step through the process of budgeting for a product launch.

From determining product/market fit, to running user testing sessions, to promoting your finished product, our Product Marketing Budget Template will help ensure you don’t overlook any important expenses.

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Budget & Spend per Product Marketing Activity: This table allows you to set a budget and track your spending for product marketing activities such as carrying out focus groups, hosting launch events, and creating white papers.

Year-to-Date Summary of Categorical Expenses: Here, you can see an aggregated summary of all expenses divided by category, such as product release spending and product testing. It will also automatically calculate the amount of money you have left.

Year-to-Date Summary Chart: This chart allows you to see a visual breakdown of where most of your funds are going, which is immensely helpful for figuring out where to scale back and where to invest more.

3. Content Budget Template

Download the Content Budget Template here.

The budget required for creating and promoting content can vary greatly from organization to organization.

For example, while some organizations keep most of their content operations in-house, others rely more heavily on freelancers and contractors.

And while some use many different software products, publishing tools, and services, others take a much simpler approach.

Our Content Budget Template is designed to cover as many content-related bases as possible. So, if you see any expenses listed that don‘t apply to your organization, go ahead and delete them.

(That’s the beauty of Excel spreadsheets: You can customize them to your specific needs.)

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Budget & Spend per Content Marketing Activity: This table allows you to set a budget and track spending for content marketing activities, such as purchasing design software, creating landing pages, and hiring freelance writers.

Year-to-Date Summary of Categorical Expenses: Here, you can see an aggregated summary of all expenses divided by category, such as software purchases and freelancer costs. It will also automatically calculate the amount of money you have left.

Year-to-Date Summary Chart: This chart allows you to see a visual breakdown of where most of your funds are going, which is immensely helpful for figuring out where to scale back and where to invest more.

4. Paid Advertising Budget Template

Download the Paid Advertising Budget Template here.

Paid advertising: Does it really qualify as an inbound marketing tactic/channel? That is a loaded question, my friends, and one that I don’t have room to answer in-depth in this post.

What I can tell you for sure is that you can do paid advertising in an “inboundy” way — i.e. by targeting specific buyer personas and using paid advertising as a supplement to your organic efforts to help drive awareness and conversion opportunities.

Measuring the effectiveness of your paid advertising campaigns is also paramount to doing things the inbound way.

Using our Paid Advertising Budget Template, you can keep tabs on your monthly (and quarterly) ad spending and then cross-reference the amounts with your lead-generation metrics to determine your cost-per-lead.

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Budget & Spend per Paid Advertising Activity: This table allows you to set a budget and track spending for paid advertising activities, such as launching CPC campaigns, creating social media ads, and investing in a content discovery platform.

Year-to-Date Summary of Categorical Expenses: Here, you can see an aggregated summary of all expenses divided by category, such as search advertising and lead generation. It will also automatically calculate the amount of money you have left.

Year-to-Date Summary Chart: This chart allows you to see a visual breakdown of where most of your funds are going, which is immensely helpful for figuring out where to scale back and where to invest more.

5. Public Relations Budget Template

Download the Public Relations Budget Template here.

Public relations expenses amount to more than just paying for press releases.

From reputation monitoring software to traveling (e.g., to events and trade shows) to applying for awards, there are many PR costs that can be all too easy to overlook.

To ensure you‘re accounting for all of your organization’s PR-related expenses, check out our Public Relations Budget Template.

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Budget & Spend per Public Relations Activity: This table allows you to set a budget and track spending for PR activities, such as purchasing a press release service subscription, creating PR content, and hosting PR dinners.

Year-to-Date Summary of Categorical Expenses: Here, you can see an aggregated summary of all expenses divided by category, such as subscriptions, content, tradeshows, and media relations. It will also automatically calculate the amount of money you have left.

Year-to-Date Summary Chart: This chart allows you to see a visual breakdown of where most of your funds are going, which is immensely helpful for figuring out where to scale back and where to invest more.

6. Branding & Creative Budget Template

Download the Creative Budget Template here.

In order to produce high-quality, innovative graphics, videos, and other content, the branding and creative teams of today need more than just Photoshop … a lot more. One of the largest — and often most overlooked — expenses is storage.

If your organization is producing a lot of video, storage is especially important.

Because as it turns out, when budgeting for video storage, you shouldn’t be thinking on a megabyte (MB) or even a gigabyte (GB) scale, but on a terabyte (TB) scale. FYI: 1 terabyte = 1 trillion bytes.

You can keep track of all your storage costs (and other branding and creative costs) using our free template.

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Budget & Spend per Branding & Creative Activity: This table allows you to set a budget and track spending for branding and creative activities, such as purchasing creative software, investing in hardware, and renting equipment.

Year-to-Date Summary of Categorical Expenses: Here, you can see an aggregated summary of all expenses divided by category, such as software subscriptions, equipment rentals, and outsourcing costs. It will also automatically calculate the amount of money you have left.

Year-to-Date Summary Chart: This chart allows you to see a visual breakdown of where most of your funds are going, which is immensely helpful for figuring out where to scale back and where to invest more.

7. Website Redesign Budget Template

Download the Website Redesign Budget Template here.

Budgeting for a website redesign can be seriously tricky. With so many moving pieces to consider, there is a lot of room for underestimating or miscalculating costs.

We created our Website Redesign Budget Template so you can keep all of your redesign-related expenses in one convenient location.

Unsure if your current website is right for a redesign? Grade your website using this tool.

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Budget & Spend per Website Redesign Activity: This table allows you to set a budget and track spending for website redesign activities, such as purchasing a domain name, investing in CMS software, and creating wireframes.

Year-to-Date Summary of Categorical Expenses: Here, you can see an aggregated summary of all expenses divided by category, such as software, content and design, and content migration. It will also automatically calculate the amount of money you have left.

Website Redesign “Actual Cost by Category” Pie Chart: This chart allows you to see a percentage breakdown of where most of your funds are going, which is immensely helpful for figuring out where to scale back and where to invest more.

8. Event Budget Template

Download the Event Budget Template here.

When planning an event, the associated costs can seem obvious at first.

There‘s the venue to consider, of course. And the P.A. system and microphones.

And then, the costs associated with booking and bringing in presenters/performers.

That’s pretty much it, right?

Wrong.

For example, does the venue come with tables/chairs, or will you have to rent those separately? Do you want your attendees to wear name tags, and if so, will you be printing out the name tags ahead of time or will attendees be writing their own names on blank tags?

If the latter, have you factored in the pens or markers you’ll need to accommodate that? As you can see, planning for an event can lead you down many rabbit holes.

Use our Event Budget Template to stay organized.

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Budget & Spend per Event Hosting Activity: This table allows you to set a budget and track spending for event hosting activities, such as renting an event hall, purchasing food and drinks, and hiring presenters.

Year-to-Date Summary of Categorical Expenses: Here, you can see an aggregated summary of all expenses divided by category, such as revenue, refreshments, and promotion. It will also automatically calculate the amount of money you have left.

Event “Actual Cost by Category” Pie Chart: This chart allows you to see a percentage breakdown of where most of your funds are going, which is immensely helpful for figuring out where to scale back and where to invest more.

Sample Marketing Budget

With your chosen template downloaded, it‘s time to consider which digital channels to allot a budget for.

Hint: There’s no right answer — it’ll depend on the market research you do to figure out where your specific audience spends most of its time.

If you find your buyer prefers learning and consuming content in the form of video, for example, you might invest more of your money in YouTube advertising.

Advertising Budget Example

Here‘s a small sample budget for a quarter’s worth of expenses by a hypothetical company that has decided to invest heavily in video marketing.

This template was created using the Master Budget Template, the first template listed in the section above.

Based on the figures above, video advertising‘s total expenses for the quarter exceeded budget by $20, while full-time recruitment’s total expenses exceeded budget by $2,400. This means the company is trending over budget for the first three months of the year.

Why might this happen? Perhaps a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign on YouTube received more clicks by viewers than expected, and a sharp video-savvy job candidate negotiated a higher salary.

Based on the difference between this company’s planned spend and actual spend, their budget template produced the following graph:

What is an advertising budget?

Your advertising budget is a subset of your marketing budget. An advertising budget is the total amount you expect to spend on creating, testing, and running advertisements that (hopefully) engage consumers.

Advertising budgets also cover the cost of evaluating ad performance and making necessary changes if ads aren’t meeting expectations.

Marketing Budget vs. Advertising Budget

While marketing and advertising budgets aim to capture consumer interest and increase sales, marketing budgets encompass this process end-to-end. Advertising budgets focus on creating awareness and engaging customers.

As a result, advertising budgets fall under the larger purview of marketing budgets. While ad budgets often represent the largest portion of marketing budgets, ads are only effective when combined with larger marketing efforts such as audience targeting and customer follow-up when ads capture interest.

What to Include in an Ad Budget

Six costs form the core of effective ad budgets.

1. Internal Resources

Internal resources include both people and purchases.

The amount of time staff spend working on ad campaigns plus the total cost of their wages for this time gives your total people cost.

The longer it takes to create ads and the more people are required to make these ads, the higher your spending.

Purchases, meanwhile, may include software or hardware that staff need to create and manage great ads.

For example, you might spend on business process automation (BPA) solutions to streamline key proceeds, or new laptops for advertising teams so they can work on the go.

2. Market Research

If you don’t know the market, your ads will miss the mark. As a result, every ad budget should include the cost of both micro and macro market research.

From a macro perspective, it’s worth understanding trends at scale — what do customers want from ads, and what do they want to avoid?

On the micro side, businesses need to target specific segment behaviors. For example, what type of ads are most effective in engaging first-time viewers? Which advertisements connect with existing customers?

3. Third-Party Providers

Advertising agencies can help improve market targeting and create compelling ads. Opting for third-party providers also lets your team focus on current campaign management and long-term strategy development.

Services offered by ad agencies range from consulting to market testing to ongoing ad management, making them a key line item in any advertising budget.

4. Asset Creation

It’s also important to account for any asset creation costs as part of ad budgets. These costs could include graphic designers, web designers, freelance copywriters, video creators, or social media influencers.

5. Ad Space Spending

Advertisements won’t drive revenue if no one sees them. To get your ads noticed, you’ll need to spend on digital or physical space.

Examples of physical ads include bus benches, billboards, and magazine ads. Digital ads can appear on search pages, web pages, social media sites, or on mobile apps.

6. Performance Evaluation

Finally, part of your budget has to focus on performance evaluation.

Here, spending typically focuses on software tools capable of tracking and managing ad efficacy. Common metrics include the total number of ad views, actions taken by customers, and the overall impact of ads on sales volumes.

Total up the cost of these six components to get your potential ad budget. If this is your first year creating an ad budget, set budget caps slightly higher than you anticipate. If you have previous years’ data on ad performance, use this information to help determine expected costs.

It’s also worth noting that ad budgets rarely remain on target as the cost of digital advertising space increases and customer expectations evolve.

As a result, it’s worth building in some extra budget room in case ads don’t live up to expectations or high-performing campaigns can benefit by increasing their reach.

How to Set & Monitor Your Ad Budget

Advertising budgets aren’t static. Instead, they change over time in response to business goals and consumer expectations.

To make the most of your ad budget, it’s important to both set a baseline and monitor metrics over time. Here’s what this looks like in practice.

Setting An Ad Budget

Follow three steps to set your basic ad budget:

1. Decide on a strategy.

There’s no upper limit for ad spending. If you wanted to reach every possible member of your target audience, budgets would quickly balloon out of control.

As a result, it’s critical to select an advertising strategy before you assign a budget value.

For example, if your target audience primarily uses social media sites such as Instagram and Facebook, it may be worth focusing on this advertising avenue rather than casting a wider net.

Pro tip: Meet customers where they are, not where you want them to be. If current strategies aren’t working and data tells you that customers have moved on, pack your bags and make the change.

2. Select measurable goals.

If you can’t measure it, you can’t act on it.

Let’s say you’re running a new ad campaign and early results seem positive. Sales numbers are up, and engagement with the ad is steady, so you expand its reach.

Expected conversions fail to materialize, however, and spending now outpaces success.

So what happened? In this case, a deep dive into metrics would have revealed that seasonal buying trends led to the brief sales increase, and while engagement with ads was steady, customer perception of the campaign was negative.

To ensure ads perform as expected, set measurable goals. These might include X% sales increase over Y period of time. Monitor customer behavior and conduct engagement surveys to link causes and results.

Pro tip: Pick just a few metrics to start. While more data provides more insight, doing too much too quickly can lead to information overload, increasing the risk that actionable data gets lost in the shuffle.

3. Do your research.

The more you know, the better. Customer expectations are constantly evolving, which means the preferences of your target audience aren’t static.

By asking buyers what they want and what would influence them to make a purchase, companies are better prepared to create ads that have an impact.

Pro tip: Cast a wide net. Use a combination of in-person interactions, online reviews, digital surveys, and customer service histories to better understand what customers want — and if you’re providing it.

Equipped with strategies, goals, and data, you’re better positioned to create a realistic ad budget that lets you both target the ideal audience and capture their interest.

Monitoring Your Budget

Keep your budget on track by monitoring three key metrics:

1. Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)

ROAS helps determine if your ads are generating sales or losing money.

To find ROAS, divide sales tied to ads by the cost of those ads. For example, if your ads produced $1,000 worth of sales and cost $200, you divide $1,000 by $200 to get a ROAS of 5.

Higher ROAS values mean more performance for the cost. Values under 1 mean that ads cost more than the revenue they produce.

Pro tip: ROAS isn’t enough in isolation. While it tells you the total value of ads versus spend, it doesn’t tell you anything about customers themselves.

If your goal is to encourage repeat purchases, ROAS can show you that ads are working but can’t tell you if the same customers are coming back or if purchases are one-and-done.

2. Conversion Rate

Conversion rate measures how frequently customers take a specific action when they view an advertisement.

This action might be clicking on the ad to visit your website, clicking through to download a free ebook or other resource, or signing up for email newsletters.

To find the conversion rate of your ads (measured in a percentage), divide the total number of conversions by the total number of advertisement views, then multiply by 100.

Pro tip: Conversion rate is often the first metric to fall as advertisements lose efficacy. As a result, it’s worth measuring conversions on a weekly or bi-weekly basis to make ad changes as necessary.

3. Cost per Lead (CPL)

Cost per lead offers a per-person look at ad spending.

This value is calculated by dividing the total amount spent on an advertisement by the total number of leads attributed to this ad. While metrics like ROAS show sales in relation to ads, CPL shows the number of leads.

Consider a company that measures ad-attributed sales at $10,000 and ad spend at $1,000 for a stand-out ROAS of 10. The following month, however, sales plummeted. What’s going on?

CPL, meanwhile, shows just 20 leads for the ad, meaning that each lead cost $50 — and without repeat spending the following months, the ad underperformed. As a result, it’s critical to measure both ROAS and CPL to get the big picture.

Pro tip: Companies can reduce their CPL with A/B ad testing before campaigns go live. The concept is simple: Test out two (or more) ads in limited distribution to see which one gets the most interest and generates the most leads.

Create Marketing and Advertising Budgets That Prioritize Your Goals

A well-thought-out marketing budget serves as a roadmap to your team’s success. Revisit the buyer’s journey, flesh out your goals, and stay away from tempting add-ons that are not in line with your marketing priorities.

Go now and plan wisely — your marketing staff is counting on you.

Editor’s Note: This blog post was originally published in December 2015 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Consumer trends are changing all the time, reflecting the “never-sleeping” nature of markets and society.

From the rise of AI to the growing popularity of shopping on social media, heightened data privacy concerns and consumers tightening budgets due to recession fears, times are changing fast.

But one thing is certain — businesses need to track all these trends to avoid getting lost in the shuffle.

To help marketers keep up and stay ahead of the curve, we’ve run our biannual Consumer Trends Survey of 700+ U.S. adults. Keep a pulse on:

• What trends they’re following.
• How they spend their time online.
• How and where they prefer to shop.
• What standards they’re holding their favorite brands to.

Top Consumer Trends

Before jumping into all the trends, let’s highlight those that stand out in 2024:

• Trust in AI remains low despite its widespread use, calling for more transparency.
• Social media has transformed into shopping hubs, with influencers playing a big role in buying decisions.
• Newer social platforms gain popularity, while established ones see slower growth.
• Social search and AI shake up traditional engines, but people still trust them.
• Economic uncertainty prompts tightening budgets and job security worries.
• Data privacy becomes a basic right and demands clear rules and control.
• Brands standing for social issues and diversity earn consumer loyalty.
• Support for small businesses grows as consumers seek community connection.
• People prefer human support, social connections, and mobile searches.
• Flexible work arrangements become essential and strongly influence job decisions.
• Employees prioritize companies with inclusive cultures and positive environments.
• People love authentic and relatable video content.
• Consumer spending on non-essentials drops as people opt for quality over quantity.
• Gifting strategies and voice search opportunities gain traction.
• Metaverse pop-up shops and virtual stores are emerging as trends.
• Gen Z sets itself apart in shopping habits and social media usage.
• Consumers remain cautious about investing in Web3 and virtual currencies.

Digital Media Trends

1. Consumers don’t trust AI, but one-third still use it.

AI is hands down the top trend of 2024, with one in three consumers already using chatbots and platforms like ChatGPT.

But here’s the plot twist — only 33% of consumers actually trust content created with AI.

As businesses leverage AI, building trust and maintaining transparency are key to fostering consumer confidence in AI-driven experiences.

Regardless, 39% of full-time employees use AI at work, and 74% of them say it’s effective.

The top use cases for AI chatbots at work revolve around assisting people in their work rather than doing their job for them — helping with tasks like getting ideas or inspiration, summarizing text, and learning new things.

These are also among the most effective uses for AI in the workplace.

Workers are saying AI is most effective for analyzing and reporting data, learning new things, creating images/videos, getting ideas and inspiration, and conducting research.

Lastly, we asked consumers which AI they plan on using in the future.

Despite ChatGPT’s head start, almost half of consumers see themselves primarily using Google’s Gemini (formerly known as Bard) — followed by ChatGPT — with Bing in third place.

Discover how HubSpot AI can make your work easier, streamline processes, and generate great content effortlessly.

2. Social media is the future of shopping.

Social media is quickly becoming the future of ecommerce, with social shopping growing in popularity across all ages. Influencers are impacting more purchase decisions, while customers increasingly sliding into DMs for customer service.

Just in the past three months, 41% of consumers have discovered a product on social media.

In fact, Gen Z, Millennials, and Gen X prefer finding products on social media over any other channel.

When it comes to actually purchasing these products, 25% of social media users have bought something directly on a social media platform in the past three months, rising to 43% of both Gen Z and Millennials since our January update.

On top of that, 21% of social media users have bought a product based on an influencer’s recommendation in the past three months.

For Gen Z, 27% have bought a product thanks to an influencer in the past three months, and they say recommendations from influencers are more impactful to their purchase decisions than recommendations from their friends or family.

Of social media users, 17% have also sent DMs to get customer service in the past three months. Not only that, but 1 in 4 Gen Z, Millennials, and Gen X say DMs are how they prefer to get customer service from a company.

In past Consumer Trends pulse surveys, we continued to see that consumers don’t fully trust social shopping.

Today, they seem to be coming around.

While just 47% of social media users feel comfortable buying through social apps and only 45% trust social media platforms with their card information, both of these are improvements over last year’s numbers.

3. Younger social platforms gain steam as legacy apps stall.

Despite being the most used social media platforms, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram saw the least growth in users in our survey group year-over-year.

Facebook usage remained flat, Instagram usage dropped by 5%, and YouTube usage dropped by 2%. Meanwhile, BeReal grew 333%, Twitch grew (43%), and TikTok grew (21%).

(Note: We ran this survey just before Threads launched and expect it to be a big discussion point in our next bi-annual survey.)

Still, Facebook is the most popular social media app, used by 71% of consumers, followed by YouTube (61%), Instagram (42%), TikTok (37%), and X, Snapchat, and Pinterest (all at 23%).

Although LinkedIn is towards the bottom of the list, B2B marketers shouldn’t panic or count it out.

Although it saw a slight decrease in users year over year, the usage on this platform can vary (and even might be seasonal in response to how workplaces hire or promote).

For example, in our January 2023 update, we saw that LinkedIn had 20% more consumers who reported active usage.

Overall, this data aligns pretty closely with data we’ve seen from App Stores, platform analytics firms, and reports directly from the respective platforms.

4. Social search and generative AI are disrupting traditional search engines.

While there’s no denying search engines are still dominant, social search is growing in popularity, especially among Gen Z, Millennials, and Gen X.

Not only do 32% of consumers turn to social media to search for answers to their questions, but nearly one third of 18 to 54-year-olds prefer to search on social media over search engines.

Between search engines, social search, and AI, consumers still say search engines are the most effective way to get their questions answered.

Ultimately, while social search and generative AI are becoming more popular, traditional search isn’t going anywhere just yet.

Budgeting Trends

5. Consumers are tightening recession budgets.

Of consumers, 57% think the U.S. is currently in a recession, and 55% are tightening their budgets in response. About half (47%) of U.S. adults have taken steps to plan or prepare for a recession.

Additionally, 42% of consumers expect the recession to last for over a year.

6. Consumers continue to fear layoffs and recession impacts.

Although many companies will save thousands, or even millions, on reducing office space and facilities costs with hybrid and remote work, half of consumers are still rightly concerned about being laid off from their current jobs.

For marketers, earlier research from 2023 showed that their departments were already working with less resourcing, headcount, and budget than in past years. As some industries are still seeing the brunt of economic trends, this has likely continued.

Many also worry that AI — the very tool that streamlines their busy work — could take over their work entirely.

At HubSpot, we think AI should be used as a tool to help employees cut out busy work and drive results, not as a means to save money by cutting staff. And, heads of other AI platforms, like Jasper.AI, agree.

Still, it’s understandable to worry about what the combination of AI and economics could do to job security. After all, most employees we’ve surveyed compare AI to a modern-day Industrial Revolution.

If you’re concerned about your role, zone in on skills AI can’t replace — like critical thinking. Meanwhile, use AI to give you and your team more time to earn a high-performance track record.

This way, if your role does shift or dissolve, you’ll be able to pivot and adapt to change.

Data Privacy Trends

7. Data privacy as a human right.

Of consumers, 75% say data privacy is a human right. And it really is — especially nowadays when our personal information is more vulnerable and available than ever.

Thankfully, both legislation and tech are continually improving to ensure our data remains private and secure on the Internet.

8. Customers need trust.

Not only are 76% of consumers worried about how companies use their personal data, but 72% say they’re more likely to buy from companies they trust with it.

Also, 71% of people say their trust in a company impacts their decision to share personal information.

Pro tip: I recently watched a great YouTube video about consumer trends by Rabeea Hasan, ex-brand manager at P&G. Rabeea advises brands to use hyper-personalization in marketing and be transparent about data practices if they want to earn customer trust.

9. Customers want to have control over data.

We asked what would make consumers more comfortable sharing data with companies, and it comes down to transparency, security, and ownership.

Of consumers, 75% want to be in control of what’s happening with the information they provide — what data is collected, how it’s used, and with whom it’s shared.

10. “Pay to get my personal information.”

Of people surveyed, 37% strongly agree (+ 25% somewhat agree) that companies should pay for access to their data. On the other hand, only 3% of respondents completely disagree with that.

However, let’s consider that personal data like purchase history, browsing habits, and location can be incredibly valuable for ads, new products, and market research. Paying for such “golden info” apparently makes sense, right?

Overall, this is a complex issue with no easy answers. Every company should strive to find a balance between user privacy, data value, and fair compensation.

11. CEOs influencing customers’ decisions.

Of consumers, 48% say the owner/CEO of a company influences their decision to share data.

The CEO’s actions and statements can shape how the public perceives the company’s data practices. A CEO “popular” for privacy scandals could make people wary of sharing their information.

On the bright side, a CEO with a reputation for ethical business practices could inspire confidence.

12. No data sharing with third parties.

40% of customers do not want their data to be shared with third parties under any circumstances.

Also, nearly half (42%) of customers expect you to be able to delete their data entirely if they decide they no longer want you to have it.

13. 50% of consumers don’t allow data tracking.

Companies have a lot of work to do to build that trust, with half of U.S. adults saying they usually decline to have their personal data tracked.

Just 17% usually allow their data to be tracked, while 33% say it depends on the company.

Ultimately, embracing today’s privacy-first world will be positive for your brand perception — and most importantly — for customer trust and safety.

In a recent post, our CMO, Kipp Bodnar, explains why data privacy is far from just a passing fad:

14. Consumers increasingly support brands committed to social issues.

Companies taking a stance on social issues has grown more important and influential on consumers’ purchasing decisions, with 51% of U.S. adults saying brands should do more regarding social advocacy.

Affordable healthcare, income inequality, climate change, and racial justice are the most important issues respondents want to see companies take a stance on.

For Gen Z specifically, affordable healthcare, racial justice, and climate change are the most important issues.

Compared to last summer’s Consumer Trends results, respondents increasingly support brands committed to diversity and inclusion, as well as small businesses.

15. More consumers support small businesses.

52% of consumers say a product being made by a small business makes them more likely to purchase, while 46% have chosen to buy a product because it was made by a small business (both up 18% from last year).

Consumer Behavior Trends

16. Consumers still want human support.

There are two main ways customers prefer to get help — with a human agent or by themselves.

Interestingly, 72% of people still prefer talking to a real person when they need assistance. This shows a desire for the “human touch” in customer service.

On the other hand, 28% of consumers would rather solve problems on their own.

For instance, I prefer tackling challenges solo, especially when sites lay out clear instructions.

But when things get tricky, a human touch is the way to go.

17. People mainly use social media to stay connected with family & friends.

Even though we all hop on social media for fun, here’s a cool trend: About 61% of people mostly use it to stay connected with loved ones.

Meta definitely wins in this field with over one billion monthly active users on Facebook, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram.

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I really love this trend — it shows that, above all else, social media is all about keeping those personal connections strong.

18. Mobile phones remain a favorite for Googling.

When it comes to Googling, consumers clearly favor their mobile phones, with a whopping 63% choosing them over computers and tablets.

While only 26% opt for laptops or computers, Boomers emerge as the champions, with 41% still preferring desktop searching.

19. Many consumers consider themselves “creators.”

When looking at our survey results for the question, “Would you consider yourself a creator?” we found that 46% of 18- to 24-year-olds and 50% of 25- to 34-year-olds call themselves content creators.

What’s great for brands here? Your very own audiences might jump at the chance to create content for you, which could, in turn, help them build online influence.

But what exactly IS a “creator”? Check out this deep dive by Caroline Forsey to learn more: If Everyone’s a Content Creator, Is Anyone?

Consumer Buying Trends

20. Consumers mostly trust Facebook shopping.

Many social media users have made purchases directly within social media apps in the past three months.

For example, 46% of respondents have used Instagram for in-app purchases, 58% used Facebook, and 51% TikTok.

Also, a huge 47% of respondents said they feel comfortable making purchases directly on social media.

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When it comes to trust, Facebook leads the pack, with 37% of respondents expressing complete trust in it. Boomers are the biggest fans of Facebook shopping — 42% buy directly from the platform.

This trend showcases the increasing integration of shopping features within SM platforms, which is definitely great. Because, let’s be honest, we’ll all buy more stuff if we don’t need to leave the app (the laziest generation so far?).

21. Many consumers trust influencers.

About 21% of our 700 respondents are swiping their credit cards based on influencer recommendations — millennials are winners here, with 36% saying that influencers are really influencing their purchasing decisions.

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This is especially true for the influencers they really love, have followed for a long time, and trust.

I’ll be the first to admit guilt here because I simply can’t resist buying products recommended by my favorite SM personalities, such as Zach King. 😎

22. Stores and online retailers aren’t going away despite the growth of social commerce.

In January 2024, 64% of consumers preferred to purchase a product in-store, while 50% preferred to purchase through an online retailer selling a variety of brands (e.g., Amazon.com).

Take Pink Tag Boutique, for example. The Kentucky-based clothing and accessories business saw immense growth in Facebook shops.

They attribute $44,448 in incremental sales from the tool and have seen 66% greater average order value from social commerce buyers compared to those who bought directly from the company site.

For more examples of brands that are already excelling in social commerce, check out this post.

You can also find more shopping trend data in this follow-up report from Caroline Forsey: The Shopping Trends of 2024 & Beyond [State of Consumer Trends Data]

23. Consumers have high expectations that products will match descriptions/depictions.

When they buy stuff straight from social media, 53% of people believe that it will be just as described. This statistic shows how much trust we put in these shopping platforms.

That’s why sellers should be more careful when describing items and not make them look better than they actually are because 45% of shoppers expect a refund.

24. Consumers cut back on non-essential spending.

Of respondents, 45% are spending less money on non-essential items and focusing only on purchases critical for survival or well-being.

There’s also a big demand for long-lasting products. When people buy something, they want it to endure and not have to be replaced soon after.

“Here‘s a major cost of living crisis, and people value quality over quantity. They’re moving away from cheap, disposable products and looking for higher-quality, longer-lasting items, even if they’re slightly more expensive. Brands should focus on developing higher-quality products with timeless designs to attract customers.”

– Rabeea Hasan, Brand Manager

Consumer Work Trends

25. Many people will leave their jobs because the pay is not competitive enough.

The main reason most people are considering leaving their jobs is non-competitive pay.

Specifically, 38% of individuals are thinking about making a change, with Gen X leading the pack at 48%.

Honestly, I’m glad to see this trend increasing because people, more than ever, recognize the value of their work and, more importantly — the time they invest, which needs to be fairly paid.

26. Almost 50% of employees are not worried about losing their job.

A surprising trend has emerged in job security concerns.

Approximately 18% of full-time employees are very concerned about being laid off, while 33% are somewhat concerned.

But here’s something interesting — a good chunk, about 27%, aren’t very worried, and 22% aren’t worried at all.

This confidence might come from a strong skill set, high demand in their field, or feeling super secure in their company’s position.

27. People want flexible & remote work.

Our survey highlights how much remote work matters to people nowadays.

Can you believe that 11% of respondents said they’d think about leaving their jobs if remote work wasn’t on the table? It shows just how important flexibility and work–life balance are to folks.

What’s even more surprising is that the lack of flexible work options is immediately behind burnout as a reason to leave.

To the question “Would you consider leaving your job if your company made you go into the office 5 days a week?” 42% said yes!

It’s a clear sign that companies need to take flexible and remote work seriously.

28. Company culture matters.

Not only do consumers need to see flexibility to stay loyal to employers, but they also need to see efforts made to build a positive and healthy company culture.

A whopping 65% of employees say it’s important that the company they work for has a diverse and inclusive culture.

And it makes sense. As more people are asked to go back to the office, even part-time, they’re more heavily putting their work experiences into perspective.

After all, why would you want to return to an office associated with negativity, unnecessary stress, non-inclusive siloes, or lack of psychological safety?

If poor culture, flexible work, or other negative things like overwork, lack of upward motion, or poor recognition of good performance aren’t handled, teams may run into a trend some leaders fear — quiet quitting.

At this point, one-third of employees surveyed are actively doing it — still on par with our research from the past year.

Trends Discovered in January 2023

While the list above reflects data from our most recent consumer pulse checks in early 2024, below you’ll find highlights (which still could impact marketers) from an earlier survey one year prior.

1. Consumers are investing less money into virtual worlds, items, and currencies.

Despite the waning hype around the metaverse, attitudes haven‘t changed much over the past year. Both May and January’s surveys found only 8% of U.S. adults have ever visited a metaverse.

Public opinion on the metaverse has improved slightly over the past nine months. Of consumers, 36% now say the metaverse is the future of technology. And 33% say the metaverse is an extension of reality.

However, investments in virtual currencies have seen a decline. In fact, among those who‘ve ever visited a metaverse, only 50% reported buying cryptocurrency in January 2023 — which is a 35% decrease since May 2022.

Additionally, 60% of metaverse visitors reported buying NFTs in January 2023 … 13% lower than May’s respondents.

The decrease in purchasing virtual currencies might have to do with today‘s economic landscape. If people are generally more conservative with their spending, this could trickle into the virtual atmosphere, as well.

However, it’s important to take note of the decrease as a potential signifier that virtual currency isn’t as popular as it was in 2022.

2. Gen X and Boomers are warming up to social media product discovery.

In January 2023, we found that 46% of Gen X and 24% of Boomers had discovered a new product on social media in the past three months — that’s a 10% and 41% increase since May 2022, respectively.

All of which is to say: Continuing to invest in social media marketing as an opportunity for product discovery is a good idea to keep up in 2024.

3. Gen Z increasingly differentiates itself from others.

One of the most fascinating things to dig into when looking at survey results were the vast differences between Gen Z and other age groups — including their closest predecessor, Millennials.

When taking a deeper dive into our generation-by-generation data, we found that Gen Z:

• When it comes to shopping, generations are highly influenced by price, quality, and product reviews. Gen Z especially values brands that have active communities around them.
• TikTok and Instagram are the most used social media apps among Gen Z women, while men spend much more time on YouTube.
• Gen Z is all about YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. Not only for social networking and entertainment but also for discovering (and buying) products.

The findings above weren’t the only interesting points to call out. Our lead researcher and analyst, Maxwell Iskiev, explores the differences between how all age groups shop and discover products with this follow-up guide:

How Each Generation Shops in 2024 [New Data from Our State of Consumer Trends Report]

4. Some consumers are stepping into Web3, but most don’t even know what it is.

While some consumers, especially those in younger generations like Gen Z and Millennials, are ready to throw their whole wallet into the metaverse and cryptocurrency, most are still getting their first taste of the Web3 world.

While Web3 experts believe this technology will continue to grow in the coming years, businesses don’t need to pivot their whole strategy to get ahead of it right this second.

However, as the technology gets more prominent and accessible, it’s still helpful to learn about the potential opportunities and risks of the Web3 space.

That’s why Caroline Forsey interviewed a handful of Web3 experts to learn more about how it could impact how consumers use the world wide web in the future.

Here is a quick, overarching summary of what Web3 could mean for future internet usage from Anna Seacat, VP of Marketing and Web3 Community at Proxy:

While Web3 might be a new concept to many, expect to hear more about it as the technology becomes more accessible to consumers and businesses in the coming years.

For more expert predictions around this, hear what our CMO Kipp Bodnar and Kieran Flanagan, our SVP of Marketing, have to say about it in this episode of Marketing Against the Grain.

For more insights, check out these guides:

• How Web3 Technology Will Impact Consumer Trends [Expert Insights]
• How Businesses Could Shift in Web 3 [Executive Insights & Podcast]
• Everything Brands Need to Know About the Metaverse

5. Consumers crave video, and effective brands are taking notice.

By now, you know that video has played a powerful role in the lives of consumers.

Not only do consumers stream more video than ever, but year-over-year, HubSpot researchers find that most brands consider it to be their most effective type of marketing content.

But, not just any video will result in a conversion, purchase, or view. While you don‘t need a huge budget to woo your audiences, you will need to create content they’ll actually enjoy, keep their attention on, and be persuaded by.

In fact, 69% of our January 2023 respondents say it is more important that a marketing video be authentic and relatable than polished with high-quality video/audio.

This video interview and post from Wistia CEO, Chris Savage, goes into great detail on his tips for leveraging video to humanize your brand.

For more information on how marketers benefited from video in 2023, check out our 2023 Video Marketing Report.

What’s Next for Consumers, According to Trend Analysts

Now that you’ve read through the biggest findings of our Consumer Trends Report, you might also be asking, “What trends and themes could come in the next six months — or beyond?”

To give you a taste of just a few trends to keep on your radar, we reached out to Julia Janks of Trends.co to learn what she and her team of trend analysts will be focusing on. Here are three of the nine trends they’re keeping on their radar.

1. Gifting strategies could catch the eyes of consumers.

Forget loyalty points — gifting is the new customer retention strategy. As remote everything continues to rise, keeping connected to clients and loved ones will be key.

For instance, after starting a gifting program, &Open clients saw sales go up by as much as 20% from existing customers in just three months.

Also, when they gave thoughtful gifts to employees, HR leaders noticed that their Employee Engagement scores and customer satisfaction ratings improved a lot.

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2. Voice search and audio SEO opportunities will grow.

The world of podcasts is growing faster than the entire internet did in the early 2000s. Spotify alone now hosts 6 million+ podcasts!

3. Consumers will visit pop-up shops — in the metaverse.

Pop-up shops in the metaverse are a thing now. And, brands like Roblox & Walmart are already testing them out and gaining more and more popularity this way.

Walmart‘s new venture, Walmart Discovered, is shaking up the world of digital retail by selling real-world products in the Roblox metaverse.

This move is significant for three reasons — Walmart’s clout, Roblox‘s massive user base, and Walmart’s curated product selection tailored for the metaverse.

We could see the metaverse shopping industry continue to grow with consumer interest, as 30% of consumers HubSpot surveyed think more brands should consider virtual stores.

Dive Deeper Into Consumer Trends

In the post above, I gave just a few highlights of our State of Consumer Trends Survey, as well as predictions for what’s to come. To learn more interesting themes, check out these follow-up posts:

• The Way People Search the Web is Changing: 4 Findings to Know

• The Top Shopping Trends of 2023 [State of Consumer Trends Data]

• The Top Channels Consumers Use to Learn about Products [New Data]

• How Each Generation Shops in 2023 [State of Consumer Trends Data]

• 9 Things Our Trends Team Will be Following in the Next 6 Months & Beyond

• How Web3 Will Impact the Future of Consumer Trends [Expert Insights]

Want to see how data has changed since 2023? Click below to download the full findings of that survey in our State of Consumer Trends Report.

Consumer Trends Post Authors

I‘m going to be fully transparent here. As I write this blog post, I’m on a train to the other side of my state. If you’re a busy marketer or content creator like I am, chances are you’re always on the go for your next project (figuratively or literally).

You could probably use some tools to streamline or automate aspects of content marketing, saving you time and allowing you to move on to the next big thing on your to-do list.

67% of marketers say the biggest benefit of AI is its ability to create content faster. If this sounds enticing to you, then you’ve come to the right blog post.

I tested and reviewed five AI content generators to see how they work and whether they can benefit marketers and creators. Keep reading to learn about my experience and see if any of these generators could be an excellent assistant to your workflow. 

 

How I Tested the Best AI Content Generators

To test the best AI content generators I could find, I signed up for a free trial and played around with the available features. I then documented my experience and noted features I enjoyed and ones that could be improved.

Remember, I’m only sharing my personal experience using the tools, so I suggest trying them out for yourself to see if they can be a great assistant to your workflow.

To get the most out of the generators I review, it‘s always best to already have an excellent idea you want to bring to life.

If you’re having writer’s block or trouble coming up with an idea, consider using the HubSpot Blog Ideas Generator to generate content ideas.

Then, bring those ideas to the generators below.

The Best AI Content Generators

1. Craiyon

Craiyon is an easy and free AI image generator. Below, I tested it by asking it to create an AI image of a happy cat eating food. As you can see, it provides different options for the image’s style.

I can choose to have it look like art, a photograph, or a drawing.

Scroll the carousel below to see how each style came out.

Craiyon also allows users to tweak the generated images by removing the background, changing its color, or upscaling the quality of the image.

Pros: The platform is very straightforward and simple to use.

Cons: While the platform is free, users utilizing the free tier will have to watch 60 seconds of ads between each use. So, if you’re pressed for time or, like me, lack patience, this could be frustrating.

Best for: Quickly generating images to complement a marketing campaign.

Price: Paid tiers start at $5 per month billed annually.

2. Rytr

Rytr is an AI writing generator unlike any I’ve tested before. The platform has a free tier, is straightforward, and is user-friendly. I especially like that as 40 different use cases, users can choose from to get the content they need.

When I started my free Ryter account, I had to answer a few prompts about what kind of content I wanted to generate and what I hoped to get from the platform. Once I answered those questions, I was taken to a dashboard resembling ChatGPT.

The left side of the dashboard contains tools, settings, and options for use cases, tone, and language.

I asked Rytr to generate a blog idea and outline about marketing to Gen Z. Here’s what it generated:

Rytr also allowed me to download the outline via a Google Doc file or other file—super convenient!

Pro: Versatile use cases and intuitive, user-friendly design.

Cons: The free tier has very limited credits that can be used monthly. 

Best for: Generating written marketing materials such as emails, blog posts, outlines, headlines, or messages.

Price: Paid tiers start at $7.50 per month.

3. Simplified

I am blown away by Simplified’s number of AI tools and generators. The platform includes:

• An AI Designer to create Ads, thumbnails, and presentations
• AI Video generator to create videos and clips
• AI Writer to create branded written content
• Social Media AI to manage digital platforms
• AI Chatbot to create an AI assistant

I decided to try out its AI Thumbnail Maker because it seemed simple enough. All I needed to do was clarify what the video was about and select the thumbnail size.

From there, I can select a template or skip it to generate it immediately. Curious about the templates, I selected one before proceeding.

And then, I was told I needed to sign up for a plan to proceed, which was a little disappointing. I ran into a similar issue when I tried other AI tools on the platform. Only getting far enough to see how easy they are to use but not enough to see the results.

However, I was able to look at features that were free to me, and I can confirm Simplified’s AI Designer has plenty of templates and tools that make image generation a breeze.

Pros: Versatile AI tools that can be used to generate video, copy, thumbnails, and more

Cons: Many require a paid plan to use to their full potential

Best For: Streamlining content creation workflows such as copywriting and image generation

Price: Paid tiers start at $10 per month.

4. ChatGPT

Of course, I can‘t write about AI content generators without mentioning ChatGPT, right? If you don’t know what ChatGPT is, it’s an AI chatbot that uses natural language processing to generate content and answer queries.

I’ve tested ChatGPT several times for script writing, blog writing, headlines, and generating social media copy. To use it, you just need to sign up for a free account.

Let’s say I want to generate some headline ideas for a blog post about how to market to Gen Z.

I would simply type into ChatGPT, “Generate 5 headlines for a blog post about “How to Market to Gen Z.”

From there, the chatbot will generate five possible headlines for me to use.

Simple and straight to the point.

Pros: Easy to use, free, and widely available

Cons: Information generated by ChatGPT may not always be up to date. Plus, you will likely have to spend extra time tweaking the content to your liking.

Best for: Generating social media copy, blog outlines, metadata, and headlines.

5. Narrato

Narrato is an AI-powered content creation workspace that allows creators and marketers to to manage their entire content creation process on just one platform.

Narrato offers a few content creation tools, but the one that sticks out the most is its AI Content Genie.

The AI Content Genie automatically generates social or blog content based on the theme of your website. To use the tool, type in the URL of your website and enter keywords pertaining to your theme.

I have a website where I discuss anime, manga, and comics, so I entered the URL and keywords relevant to my topic.

I’m not exaggerating when I say I’ve never seen an AI content-generating tool like this. Less than a minute after entering the URL of my website, Narrato was able to scan its content and create relevant social media and blog posts within my niche.

In the screenshots below, the platform shows the draft of a post that mentions specific content on my site, such as a recent blog post I uploaded and my podcast, Nerds at Work.

I don’t know if I should be impressed or a little weirded out. Either way, I can definitely see busy content creators and marketers automating their social media marketing with this platform.

Of course, Narrato also allows users to edit, schedule, and publish the content if it’s up to par. The AI Content Genie and generate and schedule on your behalf on a weekly basis if you desire.

Pros: Narrato’s AI Content Genie is quick, intuitive, and impressively thorough. It can also generate and schedule content weeks in advance.

Cons: There is no free tier.

Best for: Automating your social media content posts

AI content generators are here, and they aren‘t going anywhere, but you don’t need to use AI if you feel it isn’t relevant to your business. That said, the AI tools I listed above are worth checking out if you want to save time and boost efficiency.

Okay, my train is about to pull in. Talk to you later!

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

Employers in today’s global marketplace want leaders who are adaptive, passionate, innovative, and critical thinkers.

The key for LGBTQ+ professionals is to not see their career growth as a daunting task where they have to become something they are not.

Instead, with a little bit of cultural self-esteem, individual rebranding, and Queer moxy, LGBTQ+ professionals can position themselves as the perfect candidates and catalysts for moving any organization forward.

How LGBTQ+ Leaders Can Market Themselves and Their Unique Assets

1. Build Cultural Self-Esteem

Before LGBTQ+ professionals can market themselves externally, we have to market ourselves internally to generate an enduring, unflappable, and healthy self-image of who we are as Queer people. To underline our strengths and create a positive self-concept as an LGBTQ+ person, we should do the following:

Release internalized Queerphobia.

Internalized phobia occurs when a group internalizes the negative messages and stigmatization it receives from society.

Unquestionably, the LGBTQ+ community has faced its share of bias…Yet, when we harbor internal messages that devalue our cultural pedigree and individual worth, it becomes difficult to achieve our goals when dynamic opportunities present themselves. For these reasons, we must protect our cultural image and boost our level of pride to market ourselves effectively.

Study LGBTQ+ history.

If we become students of history, we can find countless examples of “everyday” LGBTQ+ people who do miraculous things despite overwhelming odds.

The annals of history provide beautiful examples of how Queer historical figures have been resourceful, dogged, and creative in achieving everything from the miraculous to the mundane. When LGBTQ+ people look to Queer role models for inspiration and guidance, they will be motivated to market themselves in strategic and unabashed ways.

Honor the healing Journey.

In a world that still stigmatizes Queer culture, many LGBTQ+ people may find themselves negotiating trauma, emotional wounds, or a nagging sense of “unworthiness.”

However, the lasting legacy of the Queer community is not of pain or oppression but triumph over tragedy. As Queer people, we have the right to heal and forgo the pain of the past to reach our professional aspirations.

Before anyone else can afford us the opportunity to be self-actualized, we must give ourselves grace, freedom, and latitude to be great. Once we do that, we can engineer outcomes that align with our values and professional purpose.

2. Practice a Cultural Rebranding

Once we see our Queerness as a strength instead of a limitation, we can recognize LGBTQ+ cultural genius and use it to advance our careers.

CulturalGenius™ is the leadership acumen that minority groups acquire by virtue of their cultural pathway. Once LGBTQ+ people minimize internalized Queerphobia, honor their cultural legacy, and give themselves permission to be great, they can appreciate the gifts they’ve accumulated along the journey.

From my ethnographic research, I identified several superpowers that align with the needs of a complex and dynamic world. The following three examples illustrate how Queer people can market themselves more intentionally and showcase their Queerness as a strength as opposed to a liability.

• Creativity: Queer people exhibit creativity in everything from personal presentation and linguistics to art and social mapping. This proclivity speaks to a novel approach to problem-solving that can help organizations embrace innovation.

• Non-binary thinking: Queer people reject rigid norms related to gender, which also helps Queer people to be disruptive when organizations have difficulty letting go of outdated paradigmatic thinking. The Queer persona can help any enterprise think outside the box and employ new mental models for addressing organizational issues.

• Interconnectedness: As champions for diversity and inclusion and architects for community building, Queer people have a penchant for supporting multicultural environments and nurturing safe spaces. Studies show that employees are happier and more productive when they feel connected to their peers and workplaces. As a result, LGBTQ+ professionals have a competitive edge when they highlight their cultural ability to break down silos, enliven interpersonal engagement, and create a sense of belonging.

Over to You

This asset-based approach to LGBTQ+ professional development can transform Queer job seeking from one-sided affairs in which prospective employers have all the appeal to empowered campaigns where LGBTQ+ candidates reiterate their full self-worth.

As LGBTQ+ people, we can use this to highlight our leadership capability if we reframe how we see ourselves and re-fashion how others can leverage our skill sets. By seeing our cultural experience and journey as a proving ground for leadership development, LGBTQ+ people can market their unique talents, enhance their career opportunities, and accelerate their career growth.

Welcome to Creator Columns, where we bring expert HubSpot Creator voices to the Blogs that inspire and help you grow better.

Getting traffic to your website is a smart and valuable goal, but it can’t be the end of the line. When you’ve put in the work to get people through the digital door of your business, you need to have a plan for what happens next. You have a short amount of time to make a big impression. Otherwise, your visitors might bounce away, lurking and leaving your website in the dust.

Converting your website visitors into long-term customers starts with the end in mind! What do you want to happen after a visitor lands on your site? What next steps are you pointing them to? How do you optimize their experience and capture their information so that you can stay in touch with them? Getting thoughtful about your target customer’s perspective can help you lead them to see you as their solution.

Years ago, when I was building my first website, I sat down with my mom, excited to show her what I had built. I sat and watched her navigate my website, and I started to notice places where I had gaps or where my website was unclear. I’ve since coined that experiment “the mom test,” but if you haven’t sat and watched someone navigate your site to ensure it’s designed with the user in mind, here’s your invitation.

Since then, my website has transformed from a portfolio for a burgeoning wedding photographer to a hub for my digital marketing virtual course library. I went from shooting weddings around the Midwest to hosting one of the top-rated business podcasts in the world, Goal Digger. My website showcases me speaking, teaching, and creating solutions for millions of people. It’s where I wrote my very first blog post and where my NYTimes bestselling book lives. From a few clicks to millions of visitors every month, my website has gone through several dozen iterations. And through each small change or total redesign, I’ve learned what helps a website function as a powerful conversion tool for a business.

An important reminder: when a visitor lands on your website, there’s a reason they are there. They’re interested in or curious about who you are. They’re hoping you’re the answer. They’ve got a spark of inspiration from a glimpse of your work and want to see more.

You’ve accomplished the first (and often challenging) step of getting that introduction and growing your website traffic, so now you need a plan to convert those visitors into buyers, followers, subscribers, readers, and listeners. Let’s talk about five ways you can equip your website to captivate your visitors’ attention and convert them into real results for your business.

1. Get Smart with Your Pop-Up Strategy

Before you think that this strategy is ineffective or annoying, stick with me. Pop-ups aren’t just those annoying ads and auto-play videos that plague your blog scrolling. In fact, you’ve likely reconsidered a purchase or opted in for a freebie thanks to the perfect timing of a well-written pop-up.

According to BDOW’s pop-up data study, the average pop-up conversion rate is just over 3%, with some of their top-performing pop-ups averaging over 9% and the best reaching a conversion rate of over 50%! While 3% feels small, their research said that what helps a pop-up get up to that 40-50% conversion rate? Context!

The key to an effective pop-up is two-fold: subject and timing. First, make sure the subject of your pop-up is related to what your website visitor is already reading. In this example from my website, the blog post is an in-depth feature about a Goal Digger Podcast episode about growing email list subscribers.

Then when the reader goes to exit the page or search for a new topic, the pop-up displays an opportunity to join my free email list-building challenge. The subject is not only relevant to what they already spent time looking at, but it provides a solution that also means they become my email list subscriber!

That means you’ll want to be thoughtful about when your pop-ups show up on screen for your readers. Good timing depends on the subject of your pop-up! If you want to offer your visitors a discount before they shop, make sure the pop-up shows up early — before they contemplate their purchases. If you want to capture their attention before they leave your website, set the pop-up to show up when they’re scrolling away for the exit button.

Read more:

• 45 Website Pop-up Examples That Get Clicks

2. Design an Eye-Catching (and Helpful) Sidebar

When I was first becoming a wedding photographer, I also co-founded a Midwest wedding blog. I had been a bride planning my wedding (pre-Pinterest era) and noticed a gap in the wedding blog world and I decided to help fill it. As a blogger, I learned how valuable the real estate on your blog is.

The way that our wedding blog made any money (and it wasn’t much at the time) was through advertisers who would buy space on our sidebar. As my business and website changed, that space became a place to subtly showcase my offers without having to clutter up my website visitor’s screen.

You might’ve designed an amazing home page that spotlights all the amazing things you do, but consider how someone tends to find your website. They’re likely inbound from a link to a blog post, a freebie, a podcast episode, or your portfolio. If your website allows, You can boost user engagement by adding a curated sidebar alongside your main content. This gives you different ways to grab visitors’ attention and encourage them to click.

I know a lot of the traffic to my site is leading people to my blog posts and podcast articles, so I want to give my readers a sampler platter of other interesting freebies or offers to peruse. Just as other businesses use this space to advertise for partners, this can be a space where you advertise your offers.

The sidebar I’ve crafted changes over the seasons depending on our current offers, my featured favorites, and new freebies we’ve dropped that feel like a well-rounded entry for any visitor scrolling through the site. Think about your offers like a menu — what are the chef’s favorites (i.e. you are the chef)? What are the key experiences you would want anyone to know about when they’ve stumbled across a blog post?

As a powerful side effect, a sidebar is also a quick ‘credibility check’ for your reader to catch a glimpse of what you offer, and, therefore, what you know. It’s an easy way to show off ways you’re already equipped to serve them!

3. Turn Your Dead Ends into CTAs

When traffic lands on your blog posts and other fresh website content, they scroll through, reading every word, and eventually get to the end. Are you leaving them wondering, “What happens next?” I mean, Netflix sure doesn’t let you sit in that question long before they start rolling the next episode, so why do we leave people wondering where to go? That’s a bridge you need to build for them with a smart, relevant call to action (CTA).

Having a clear next step for your visitor to take means you’re not losing them right after you’ve hooked them. They might not organically look for a search bar, click on your more discreet back-links in your blog posts, or look into your website menu to find out what else you offer. Handpick a solution for them and offer it up right at the end of your content.

I aim to keep the CTAs on my blog posts and podcast articles easy to read and easy to take action on. The reader has just scrolled through a whole article, so I want to value their time with something quick and helpful! In this blog post about how to implement Pinterest strategies in your business, I point my reader to a free, virtual Pinterest masterclass at the end to keep their learning journey moving forward.

The main idea here is no dead ends. Converting your website traffic into not only buyers and subscribers but also real long-term results means you’re looking for your website’s holes and filling them. Your visitor appreciates when you do the work for them and connect them from one helpful tool to another. You’re essentially laying the groundwork for their success by placing the next best step on the path right in front of them.

4. Simplify Your Contact Form

When one of your primary goals is to get directly connected with visitors that you want to become paying clients (i.e. book you for a photo gig, speaking opportunity, or coaching slot), you need a contact form that makes doing so a breeze. A smart, thoughtful contact form relies on simplicity and smart website placement.

Keeping your contact form simple means you’re not asking them to put in a ton of work right up front. The more fields you throw into that form (even if they’re fun ones!) the less likely someone will take the time to actually get in touch with you. Keep the verbiage inviting and warm, because you don’t want your potential client to second-guess hitting send. Set expectations if it takes you extra time to get through your inquiries or if your books are only open at certain times of the year. Use this space to remind them they’re in the right place at the right time.

Consider where your contact form is placed and featured throughout your website. If a contact form is one of the main ways you’d like people to get in touch with you, make sure it’s not missable! If it currently lives at the bottom of your home page, bring it up much higher and make it clear that you want to hear from them! If it looks buried in your website menu, highlight the link amongst your list. A smart way to use a pop-up here would be to have an opportunity to contact you when a visitor goes to leave your “work with me” page or portfolio!

5. Build a Bridge to Your Other Channels

Your website exists as a home for your brand online, but it’s probably not the only place you build connections, share your work, serve your audience, and share content. So, your website should thoughtfully connect your visitors with opportunities to see you in different forms.

While your visitors might not be ready for your biggest paid offer, you can continue to warm up that lead by inviting them to listen to your podcast. Tell them why joining your Facebook community or Private Instagram account would be valuable to them. Share a part of your story in a YouTube video and embed it on your About page to encourage people to subscribe and watch the rest of the series.

Ultimately, linking your platforms strategically doesn’t just connect them to your other channels. It keeps engaging them with your brand. Much like the “no dead ends” rule applies to your website, it needs to apply to your other platforms! According to my experience (and data), your goal needs to be to get your visitors, listeners, and readers to become email list subscribers.

Every time I teach people how to get someone “off” their website, I am talking about getting them “on” to your email list. Rather than website views, followers, or viewership dictated by an algorithm, you’ve got a direct line to your customers that you own and control with an ROI 40x that of social media. So, make sure your website and other channels continually give everyone encountering your brand multiple opportunities to join your list!

Your Ultimate Goal? Thoughtfully Capture and Convert Your Traffic

I know a website can go from simple to overwhelming when you try too many conversion strategies all at once. (Cue thinking about trying to read a recipe blog online.) So, build thoughtfully with your dream customer in mind. After all, a ‘funnel’ doesn’t work if it’s all clogged up, right?

Think of it like this: When the world (and the internet) feels like the thrumming chaos of Times Square, could your website be the peaceful, elevated experience of walking into a beautiful hotel lobby? From there, imagine your customers understanding exactly where they need to go, who to talk to, and where to get the information they’re looking for.

Your website is a space to connect them to the specific, important solutions only you can offer. But if they have to hunt for those solutions on their own, they may never find them. These five simple website strategies aim to create a more thoughtful, intentional experience so that when your customers are on your website, they feel seen. They can click on anything that piques their interest and be led on a journey that is curated and streamlined, honoring their time and attention.

Ultimately, if you want your website to serve your visitors well, it should capture their information at any chance you get. Once your traffic becomes your audience (and ideally, your email list), it’s from there that you’re able to serve them in the long term. Visitors become returners. They go from passersby to residents of your online world. From mere metrics to real, powerful results for your business.

Shopping on social media has become increasingly popular over the past few years, as brands explore how to make money on these platforms.

In fact, one in three consumers report having discovered new products on social media in the past three months.

Consumers also report that some of their preferred methods of discovering products on social media are through short-form videos like TikToks or Instagram Reels (37%), ads or sponsored content (32%), and social media shops like Instagram Shop (29%).

This statistic may seem surprising, but as someone who purchases all of my skincare products and many clothing items based on Instagram ads, I can attest that social media shopping tools are effective.

TikTok user Bri Hofsass is in this boat. She told me, “Seeing an outfit via TikTok immediately puts the product in a reality I can see myself in. I don’t need to worry about how I will style it, or if it will look good on my frame. [Social media shopping] essentially helps you skip the fitting room stage.”

I can relate. When I’m shopping, I want to see the products being used, and I need immediacy.

Let’s look at three companies that have exemplified success using the product discovery methods listed above.

Three Brands That Leveraged Social Media Shopping Tools

1. TikTok and K18

With over 1 billion monthly users, TikTok is an undeniably powerful platform for reaching large audiences.

37% of consumers have used the app in the past three months (72% Gen Z, 51% Millennial, and 45% Gen X), and 30% of Gen Z consumers list TikTok as their favorite social media app.

Hofsass added, “TikTok Shop is the most convenient for in-app purchasing. Half the time, I don’t even realize I’m being served an ad or am on the TikTok Shop page.”

So, if your brand‘s target audience is Gen Zers like her, it makes sense to test out TikTok’s ad capabilities.

K18, a haircare brand rooted in science and biotech, launched its first paid campaign on TikTok when it had roughly 2K followers and 500K views.

K18 partnered with TikTok creators who created natural, before-and-after tutorial haircare videos. The brand ran these creatives using Spark Ads and targeted any users interested in hair care.

The month-long ad campaign resulted in a 70% lift in daily average sales. On top of this increase in sales, the brand also grew its TikTok presence. Its followers increased from 2K to 20K, and their ads saw 27M views.

2. Facebook and AlwaysHealthy

According to HubSpot blog research, 42% of consumers list Facebook as their favorite social media app, and 58% of consumers who’ve made a social media purchase in the last three months report that they did so on Facebook.

Facebook is a popular app for many reasons, but we can’t deny its trust across generations as a shopping tool.

AlwaysHealthy, an online-first Thai performance fashion brand, ran a campaign that paired ads that directed to Messenger with Shopee-powered shopping features.

This allowed customers to view the brand’s products in ads, learn more about the product and add items to their shopping cart in Messenger, and then click to the Shopee app or website to make the purchase.

The campaign ran from June to July 2023 and targeted women aged 17-50 in Thailand with ads promoting various products and special offers.

The campaign saw huge success; CEO Thanat Tippanusawat reports, “After connecting our Shopee catalog with Meta, we saw a 71% increase in return on ad spend.”

3. Instagram and Homesick

There is a lot of value in selling your products directly on social media platforms.

49% of consumers trust brands that sell directly on social media platforms like Instagram, and one in four consumers have bought a product on a social media app like Instagram Shop in the last three months.

Due to the growing popularity of social media in-app shopping, Homesick, a candle, home fragrance, and lifestyle brand, decided to add Advantage+ shopping campaigns to its ad strategy on Instagram.

Advantage+ shopping campaigns use AI and machine learning so advertisers can easily set up a single campaign and test up to 150 different combinations to optimize for the highest-performing ads.

Homesick paired its Advantage+ shopping campaigns with Shops ads, so paid traffic could be automatically diverted to either the brand’s website or its Instagram Shop.

The team tested out two campaign methods and concluded that there was a 27% higher return on ad spend when selecting “website and Shop” in the Advantage+ shopping campaigns versus “website” only.

Homesick reached more incremental buyers with Shop ads and created a more seamless shopping experience for buyers who prefer purchasing through social media shops.

Ultimately, the Shopping Tools you consider using will depend upon which platforms your target audience prefers, and which tools make the most sense for your business goals.

The above success stories teach us that there is an opportunity to leverage social media as a money-making tool.

Next, let’s look at eight ways you can monetize your social media presence.

How to Make Money on Social Media

There are several options for making money and growing your business on social media while remaining true to the heart of your brand.

How to Make Money on Social Media as a Brand

1. Partner with other brands.

Two heads are better than one, right? If you want to grow your brand presence on social media, one of the best ways to do so is by extending your reach to the reach of another brand.

For example, one of my favorite collabs I’ve seen recently is OOKIOH Says Gah!: a collab between independent, sustainable swimwear brand OOKIOH and women-owned independent clothing boutique Lisa Says Gah.

The brands joined forces to create a custom line of swimwear that was the best of both brands: swimwear made of OOKIOH’s regenerative materials in eye-catching Italian-cuisine-inspired patterns beloved by Lisa Says Gah fans (like me!).

While Lisa Says Gah boasts 614K Instagram followers, OOKIOH has 24.2K, so the brand partnership works doubly as hard to lift the latter’s social media presence and increase its ability to make sales.

When your network grows, you grow with it, so it’s a great idea to partner with brands that will lift your brand awareness and, thus, sales.

2. Collaborate with creators.

At Nickelodeon, I manage our international influencer marketing program.

I’m constantly searching for international creators who match our brand values, are relatable or aspirational to our target audiences, and are enthusiastic about being involved with Nickelodeon.

As mentioned earlier, 37% of consumers prefer discovering products on social media through short-form videos like TikToks or Instagram Reels.

Who knows short-form videos better than influencers who dedicate their lives to content creation?

I spoke with creative partnerships professional Rosston Tague, who cautioned that some paid sponsorships with influencers perform better than others.

“You have to be particular about your audience. When the product or service lines up with an influencer’s brand and audience, it feels more authentic, and that’s what you should funnel your dollars into.”

It may feel daunting to figure out how to find the best influencers to partner with for campaigns like this.

Before beginning any outreach, it’s important to know exactly what kinds of influencers you’re targeting for your Instagram influencer marketing campaign.

At work, I use Tagger, an influencer marketing tool, to discover influencers based on location, engagement rate, age, account mentions, and more.

Tools like this can help you weed through the crowd and find creators who will best understand and represent your brand.

3. Sell your products directly on social media.

25% of social media users have bought a product on social media directly in the app, such as on Instagram Shops.

As an avid social media user with a slight shopping addiction, I will admit I recently fell down a rabbit hole of summery tanks and sheer dresses elicited by an Urban Outfitters Instagram Shop post.

Selling your products directly on social media is a surefire way to reach social media users where they already are.

In contrast, your brand may only be reaching a niche audience specifically seeking out your products via your website or retail stores.

Social media opens up a new realm of consumers of various ages, locations, and interests. After all, 36% of consumers use the search feature on social media platforms specifically to find products and services to buy.

Also, it allows for much more DTC communication. You can directly speak with and answer questions from consumers in post comments and direct messages, which adds both efficiency and humanity to your customer interactions.

4. Promote giveaways and special offers.

Social media helps you spread the word quickly and widely.

An Instagram or Facebook giveaway is one of the best ways to draw new consumers to your brand and encourage them to try your products.

Sometimes you have to spend money to make money, and a giveaway is the perfect example of that.

For instance, the Nickelodeon France marketing team runs frequent product giveaways on their Instagram page, including this one for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles figurines.

These giveaways often draw in a high volume of comments, and thus, eyes on the brand.

You can also use social media to promote special offers, which do involve a purchase and directly help you make money.

Laneige, a Korean skincare and makeup brand, recently posted on Instagram and TikTok promoting its 25% off Friends & Family sale.

This is a great way to draw consumers from social media to your website if you don’t yet have a social media shop.

5. Implement social media management tools.

While all the above methods of making money on social media are actionable, you may be asking yourself, “How do I even get started?”

At times like this, it’s crucial to build a social media strategy that helps you leverage social platforms to target various audiences while staying within your budget. This will help you make money without overspending.

When building your strategy, you should always refer to the most current consumer trends and expert advice. Humans are ever-changing and adaptable, and the best way to make money is to target them how and with what they want.

After all, TikTok only launched in 2016 and has already amassed a cult-like following.

Lastly, consider scheduling your social media content in advance — from brand collabs to influencer-sponsored content to giveaways — so you can spread the wealth of content you want to share over a longer period.

It’s always best to have content in storage that can be utilized during future quiet periods.

If you don’t have a dedicated team to manage these organizational and planning processes, it’s worthwhile to invest in a social media management tool that does the job for you.

This gives you more time to focus on the most important things: brand and influencer outreach, content planning, and business management.

Though these are all great tips for companies to make money on social media, these platforms can be just as successful at monetization for individuals.

BookTok nano-creator Katie Zepf admitted, “The decision [to start a BookTok] definitely had something to do with making more money.”

If you’re looking to make money on social media as an influencer, consider these tips below.

How to Make Money on Social Media as a Creator

6. Join an affiliate marketing program.

Affiliate marketing is a performance-based marketing tactic in which a business pays another business or influencer a commission for sending traffic to its website or store and, ultimately, sales.

This is especially effective if the company’s products align with your brand and values.

There are tons of affiliate marketing programs, so it’s essential to select one that allows for mutual trust, transparency, and of course, a solid commission.

You want to ensure you’re promoting products and/or services that you truly believe in and would (or do) use, as followers can easily spot inauthenticity, as Tague mentioned earlier.

For example, if you are a health and wellness influencer, it would make sense to be an affiliate for brands in the fitness or food industries.

The ideal situation is a win-win-win: you make a commission from your followers’ purchases, the company makes money off sales of their products or services, and your followers get to try something new recommended by a trusted creator.

7. Work with brands on a post-by-post basis.

Not all brands have an affiliate marketing program, but that doesn’t mean you can’t work with them as a creator. There are other ways to partner with a brand, such as through paid ads and sponsored content.

Content creator Shompa Kabir agreed, telling me, “I have partnered with a variety of brands to do paid ads and sponsored posts. I like to do brand deals and sponsored posts because it generates a stream of revenue for myself.”

While I conduct international influencer research on behalf of Nickelodeon, many influencers have also reached out to express a desire to partner with us in some capacity.

This shows initiative and makes it abundantly clear there will be enthusiasm for the content they create.

You don’t need a macro following to make money on social media.

Kabir added, “My biggest tip would be that consistency is key. Consistency will help your following, and just because you don’t have a large following doesn’t mean you can’t get brand deals.”

Lastly, unlike affiliate marketing programs, you know you are guaranteed compensation upfront as part of the contract with the brand when you partner on a sponsored post.

You may only need to do as little as one post as part of the partnership, so this is a low-risk, high-reward situation.

8. Share and sell your products or services on social media.

It’s not just brands who can sell their products on platforms like Instagram. As an individual creator, you have the power to create content that makes your products or services appear highly lucrative.

For instance, I follow many crafty creators like @averp who knit and crochet beautiful sweaters, blankets, and more. What may have begun as a skilled hobby can easily transform into a business using social media.

Posting tutorials and GRWM (“Get Ready With Me”) videos featuring your hand-knitted creations can encourage followers to want to shop with you.

On one of @averp’s TikToks, a follower commented, “do you sell these? Im in absolute NEED of the 1st tank!!!!!” to which the creator replied, “Yes i will be selling the vests!!!! Dm on instagram if you’d like to buy, otherwise it will be up on my depop tomorrow <3”

There is clearly opportunity to kickstart and grow your business while relying on social media. After all, 29% of consumers prefer to discover new products through influencers they follow.

Kabir mentioned, “I’m in the process of starting a business and will be implementing showcasing my product through social media as well as holding influencer events to help spread the reach.”

Social media is a great opportunity to show off your products, services, or budding business on a platform with high shopping demand.

Whether you’re part of a large corporation or small business, or simply an individual looking to sell your product, there are numerous ways to leverage social media to grow your brand awareness, following, and sales.

No matter where you primarily prefer to conduct your sales, social media offers cost-effective, efficient, and high-return opportunities to reach more consumers where they are.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in July 2022 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Being a small business is both easier and harder than ever. Yes, the competition is tough, but there have never been more AI tools that can help you in almost every segment of your business.

For example, I’d long wanted to sell merchandise with my designs. However, the thought of getting started and thinking about the initial steps felt overwhelming.

Turns out, I was wrong. With the help of AI tools, I got the name, slogan, and brand color suggestions in just a few minutes, and they were all stunning (more on this later).

So, in this piece, I’ll show you how AI can benefit your small business, going far beyond just communication and content creation. Let’s dive in.

How AI Can Level Up Your Marketing

There are so many different ways that AI can improve your marketing, and the list could probably include more than 100 ways, but I’ll show you the 12 greatest.

1. Speeding Up Content Writing

79% of marketers believe that AI improves the quality of the content they create. And I totally agree. AI has changed content marketing in a very positive way (of course, only for those who know how to use it properly).

Struggling with writer’s block? AI can analyze trends and suggest engaging content ideas which is the top reason why many marketers use AI, according to our study.

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It can also automate repetitive tasks such as generating SEO descriptions and social media posts.

Additionally, AI can improve content by checking grammar, spelling, and sentence structure to ensure clarity and professionalism. Some AI assistants, like Jasper, can even adapt their writing style to match your desired tone.

But remember, none of these tools are plug-and-play solutions. You still need creativity and solid writing skills. Otherwise, the content might sound off, and readers will notice it’s AI-generated. So, be ready to tweak and refine.

Pro tip: We have a free content assistant ChatSpot, which combines the power of ChatGPT with unique data sources like HubSpot CRM to streamline your working day.

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2. Automating Personalized Offers

Personalization isn‘t just about sending generic birthday coupons anymore.

You need to understand each customer’s preferences and then craft special offers just for them. Even though it may seem like a mountain of work, AI can swoop in to save you.

Based on customer data, AI can personalize your marketing content, recommendations, and offers for each individual customer.

This can significantly improve CTRs, conversion rates, and, most importantly, customer satisfaction. To prove how AI can help with personalization, I explored a bit and found a great case study.

U.S. Beauty retailer Ulta Beauty benefited from SAS Customer Intelligence 360, which combined all their data and sent personalized messages and recommendations to each customer.

The outcome? A massive win. Ulta Beauty’s sales went through the roof — an incredible 95% of their sales were influenced by their personalized marketing efforts.

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Pro tip: Always analyze customer sentiment during the checkout process. If you notice they’re hesitant, let your AI suggest a less pushy and more intriguing CTA like “Are you sure you need me? Let’s find out” instead of “Buy Now.” This subtle shift can address purchase anxieties and improve conversion rates.

3. Analyzing Customer Behavior

AI is seriously good at sifting through massive amounts of customer data — website visits, app interactions, social media activity, purchase history, email clicks, and more.

It can map out the different touchpoints customers interact with on their way to making a purchase, so you can identify any roadblocks or friction points in the customer journey.

It can also analyze customer purchase history to identify products that customers are likely to buy together. You can use this information to create targeted upsell and cross-sell campaigns that increase the average order value.

One pretty good tool for this purpose is Adobe Customer Journey Analytics, which provides insights into customers’ journeys across channels — online and offline. It offers connected data and unlimited customer data collection. And you can get contextual insights instantly, which is a huge plus.

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Pro tip: Give a try to HubSpot’s Behavioral Targeting tool to create segmented lists based on personas and engagement levels. Plus, the tool helps identify and respond to high-intent behaviors like website visits, email interactions, and form submissions.

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4. Predicting Audience Behavior

One of the best things about AI is its ability to predict audience behavior and pinpoint customers who are super interested in taking some action or those who are at risk of churning (canceling a subscription or stopping using your service).

For instance, Google Analytics and its Predictive audiences are great for this purpose. Predictive audiences help target users likely to take specific actions, like making a purchase soon.

It includes users with high probabilities of performing specific actions. For instance, “Likely 7-day purchasers” include those with high purchase probabilities. Adding extra conditions can refine the audience even further.

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Pro tip: Partner with industry experts and trend forecasters to develop “what-if” scenarios for your customer journey. Explore potential disruptions, changing customer expectations, or even the impact of new technologies.

5. Automating Email Campaigns

Email marketing automation has been around for a while, but new AI tools are making it even better.

They can help you write more interesting emails and understand what your subscribers like. This lets you spend less time planning and more time running successful campaigns.

Here’s how AI can help you with emails:

• Analyzes user data to send targeted messages that resonate, boosting open rates and clicks.
• Checks historical data and subscriber behavior to predict the optimal send time, so your emails land in inboxes when recipients are most likely to open and engage.
• Automates A/B testing of various email elements like subject lines, CTAs, and design layouts to identify the best versions for future campaign
• Analyzes your email content and flag potential spam triggers, so you can avoid landing in the dreaded junk folder.
• Identifies subscribers at risk of unsubscribing and creates personalized re-engagement campaigns to win them back.

Pro tip: HubSpot’s AI assistant can create an email that grabs attention and gets your subscribers clicking through to your content. It crafts catchy subject lines, product descriptions, and even whole email drafts.

6. Conducting Research

Market research can be time-consuming and labor-intensive. That’s why 48% of marketers use generative AI for research. Here’s how:

• No more legwork. AI automates boring tasks like sending surveys and sorting piles of responses.

• Mind reading (almost). AI can analyze social media posts, reviews, and surveys to understand the emotions and opinions hidden behind the words.

• Spotting hidden clues. AI can scan massive amounts of data to find trends and patterns that you might miss on your own.

• Seeing into the future (sort of). AI can analyze data to predict how customers might behave and what trends might emerge. This lets you make smarter decisions about products, campaigns, and where to invest your resources.

• Tailored questions for tailored answers. AI can personalize surveys and automatically create questions for different customer groups, which saves a lot of time.

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Pro tip: HubSpot Service Hub offers access to awesome Customer Feedback Software, which helps you run surveys and gain insights into your customers’ shopping habits. Plus, there are tons of ready-to-go survey templates, so you can quickly learn about your customers’ habits and preferences.

7. Transcription and Summarization

After having a brainstorming session with your marketing team, you definitely don’t want to spend time sifting through hours of recordings.

You need someone, or even better — something — to do it for you. That’s where AI transcription tools take the stage.

Actually, 63% of marketers use AI tools to take notes and summarize meetings.

Before adding such software to my toolkit (Notta is currently my fav), I was constantly scrambling to take notes, worried about missing something crucial.

This left me feeling overwhelmed, and frankly, I hated meetings altogether. Emails were my haven — clear, written communication where I could keep track of everything.

Now, I can be fully present in the discussion while, after the meeting, sorting all transcripts into clear text and bullet points.

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Pro tip: Most AI transcription tools have the ability to summarize the entire transcript into bullet points to make it clearer and more organized. Also, if you need a specific word you can simply find it by typing it in the search bar.

8. Automating Social Media Management

To market your small business, you need to be active on social media and keep regular track of what’s going on there, which can be overwhelming.

That’s why you need AI-powered social media tools that offer a range of features to help you:

• Schedule posts efficiently. Plan your content calendar in advance and publish across all your social media platforms at optimal times.

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• Craft engaging content. Generate content ideas, write attractive captions, and personalize posts for each platform.
• Gain audience insights. Track brand mentions, analyze customer sentiment, and identify trends to understand your audience better.
• Optimize ads. Improve your advertising efforts and identify relevant influencers for marketing campaigns.

Pro tip: HubSpot AI Social Media Post Generator refines post ideas, adjusts tone to match your brand, and helps create better posts in less time. You can also repurpose posts by channel and track the ROI of SM accounts.

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9. Faster Video Creation

Out of 701 people we asked about their favorite content types, 45% said they like short videos like TikToks, while 24% prefer longer videos.

So, it’s clear — if you want your business to stand out, you need video content. But, for small business owners and startups, hiring professional videographers and editors can be a budget-breaker.

Luckily, AI tools for video creation are incredibly good.

They allow you to script, generate, and even edit videos without needing pro equipment or expertise. These tools turn your ideas into engaging visuals with features like text-to-video conversion and footage libraries.

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Some popular options are InVideo, Lumen5, and Kapwing, all offering user-friendly interfaces and budget-friendly plans.

Pro tip: Avoid stock footage that screams “fake” and “boring.” Always film some of your content with a phone (it doesn’t have to be a pro camera), upload your clips, and then let the AI tool do its part of the work.

10. 24/7 Customer Support

Unlike human reps who need breaks and work limited hours, AI chatbots are tireless. They can answer customer queries and provide basic support anytime, day or night.

This is especially good for small businesses with limited staff or operating in global markets with different time zones.

We surveyed people to see how they feel about using AI chat for customer support on websites. It turns out that 25% always turn to web chat for help, while only 15% prefer sending direct messages.

The good thing about AI chatbots is that they’re trained to handle various FAQs and common issues.

For instance, a clothing store chatbot could answer questions about sizing, return policies, or order tracking.

AI bot will have all answers to these questions because they’re general and repetitive, so human reps can focus on more complex problems that require a personal touch.

Pro tip: You can build your AI chatbot using HubSpot’s Free AI Chatbot Builder. Sweet spot? No coding skills required. Your chatbot will qualify leads, schedule meetings, and offer customer support round-the-clock. The best part? You can customize it to perfectly match your brand.

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11. Intelligent Advertising

As a small business owner, the last thing you want is to throw money on ads that bring nothing. That’s why you should think about incorporating AI advertising tools. AI digs through information about past customers and website visitors.

It analyzes things like demographics (age, location) and browsing habits to understand who your ideal customer is.

With this customer profile in hand, it finds similar people on the web and personalizes your ads accordingly. Another way to use AI tools in advertising is for designing.

Kipp Bodnar, HubSpot’s CMO, shared that using AI to design ads for subscriber growth slashed contact acquisition costs by 300%.

How A $25B Company Uses A.I. To 300x Their Marketing Results (#129)

A great AI advertising tool is AdCreative.ai, which helps generate high-performing ad creatives quickly. It provides insights, generates text and headlines, creates social media post creatives, and even produces super-quality videos for ads.

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Pro tip: Involve consumers in your AI-powered advertising to ditch the cold, “robotic” feel. Encourage UGC through contests or challenges. Then feed the customer-created pics/videos to AI tools and watch the magic happen.

12. Search Engine Optimization

Last but not least, AI tools can help with SEO — not only for SEO content creation but also for keyword research, competitor analysis, and overall optimization.

For instance, here’s how HubSpot SEO tools can make “ranking climbing” easier:

• Get keyword recommendations to optimize your website content.
• Plan your content strategy by discovering relevant topics to target—those that resonate with your audience and boost search authority.
• Generate content ideas based on search popularity and competition.
• Track your website’s SEO performance with detailed reports.
• Integrate with Google Search Console for even deeper insights.
• Scan your website with an SEO recommendations tool that shows improvement opportunities automatically.
• Use AI Blog Writer to generate engaging SEO posts from outlines or bullet points.

Pro tip: Use AI Paragraph Rewriter to refresh existing content for relevance and engagement, extending its reach and effectiveness.

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My Favorite AI Marketing tools

I love AI marketing tools, and I’m often impressed by them. I’ve tried so many different ones. And of those tools, here are my four favorites.

1. ChatGPT Plus

My forever favorite is undoubtedly ChatGPT, especially its Plus version, which I can access even during peak times and get faster responses.

I always say that ChatGPT is the most versatile tool ever. I use it for all kinds of my projects.

• Need to sort out the messy data order? ChatGPT helps.
• Need to create an article outline? ChatGPT helps.
• Need to understand the overly complicated law? ChatGPT helps again.
• Need to proofread, reword, and find a creative angle? ChatGPT 4 helps here.

The most important thing to get the most out of ChatGPT is to give it the clearest possible directions so it can understand you and adapt to your writing style, tone of voice, or task.

Good prompts are key.

If you give it a good command, it will do a lot for you, and you’ll avoid generic words such as “unleash,” which the whole world is making a joke of. For instance, let me show you how I used it to invent the name for my shop.

Here’s the prompt I sent:

“I need some ideas for a unique name for my new merch brand. I‘ll sell clothes featuring personalized prints, capturing moments with family and friends that hold sentimental value. I want the name to be cute, maybe with ’charm‘ in it. But here’s something important: it has to be totally made up, invented, fictional, easy to remember, and sound nice. Give me some good words with all these qualities, please.”

The ChatGPT suggested many great ideas, but the winner was Charmaloo. I used it for my slogan as well, so here you can see the final result:

It also suggested using vibrant colors to grab attention and even provided color codes for me to choose from for my Insta feed. How amazing it all looks:

The LinkedIn post below shows just how great ChatGPT can be — it acted like a CEO. Yes, a real CEO. It made decisions on the brand name, product design, pricing, and even marketing strategy.

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Read the whole post here.

Submagic

As someone who enjoys creating videos for both my social media and clients, Submagic has been a lifesaver.

The primary reason I chose it over perhaps some more popular names is that it supports 48 languages. As a bilingual person, I often need automatic captions in languages other than English.

The best part about Submagic is that it generates 98% accurate real-time captions in literally seconds to a few minutes, depending on the length of the video.

Most of the time, I don’t even have to edit anything after its job. Other times, there are just maybe a letter or two or some commas. But overall, it’s very, very good.

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There is a great choice of different fonts, and it automatically adds relevant emojis, which is fantastic. This tool has saved me so much time. Now when I remember that I used to add subtitles manually, I could cry. Literally.

Grammarly

One of the tools I use on a daily basis is Grammarly, and I can‘t imagine living without its AI powers.

However, I’m not a big fan of it when it comes to suggestions. Sometimes, Grammarly offers corrections that actually disrupt the flow and tone of my content. I feel like its ideas throw off the vibe I’m going for.

So, I mainly use it to catch misspelled words and typos. Also, I love its phone app, which allows me to quickly fix mistakes in my messages as well.

Speaking of the app, I can’t get enough of Grammarly’s coolest notifications I receive when fixing all the mistakes in my text. For instance, look how sweet this is:

Jasper

While ChatGPT offers a lot, Jasper is No.1 for my social media needs.

Its pre-built templates are fantastic. I simply pick the desired SM template, add a quick one-sentence explanation and bam — my post is ready with emojis and hashtags.

But the main reason why I love Jasper is its uncanny ability to “get me.” When I choose the desired tone of voice and adjust the parameters, Jasper nails it 8 out of 10 times.

It understands the nuance I’m going for—playful and conversational for Instagram or informative and authoritative for my LinkedIn. It really has a “feel” for that because you can teach it.

It also helps me with all video-related things, such as hooks, scripts, titles, and descriptions — basically everything needed to ensure my video starts off on the right foot and turns out excellent.

Everyone needs AI.

Your small business needs the help of AI to move faster, smoother, and save time and money. But once you grow, you’ll still need it to continue growing, improving, and not falling behind.

And no, you don’t need to use it solely for business purposes.

As a small business owner, managing non-work-related activities and daily plans can be super challenging, right? AI can lend a helping hand with this, too.

If I had to choose just one tool that every small business owner should use, it’s ChatGPT Plus. It can assist with planning, strategies, ideation, data extraction, content creation, and even coding and SEO.

And remember — the more good tools you have in your toolkit, the better, faster, and more productive you’ll be, so you’ll have more time to enjoy the fruits of your business. So, don’t run away from AI — embrace it instead; it’ll pay off.

Quick riddle for you: What do you have in common with podcast hosts, YouTube sensations, TikTok stars, and Instagram influencers? Stumped? Okay, okay. I’ll tell you the answer.

Statistically speaking, you probably also consider yourself a “content creator,” at least on some level. Recently, our State of Consumer Trends Survey revealed that 50% of millennials and 46% of Gen Z call themselves content creators.

That number might seem high at first, but when you consider how deeply ingrained social media has become in our lives, it starts to make sense.

What did surprise me, however, was this: out of those who call themselves creators, one-fourth have less than 1,000 followers, and almost 50% have less than 5,000 followers.

This confused me. In high school, I had roughly 100 followers. But I’d never considered myself a content creator. I guess, as it turns out, maybe I should have.

To investigate whether the idea that “everyone is a content creator” is true — and what it means if it is — I spoke with three content creators and influencers about their relationship to the label. Let’s dive in.

Is anyone who creates content a content creator?

Li Jin is an investor and co-founder of Variant Fund, a venture firm investing in the ownership economy. Jin, who’s been called The Investor Guru for Online Creators, believes everyone is a content creator.

As Jin told The Information, “No matter which industry you’re in, people are all going to be creators …

This embrace of virtual brand-building is already starting to happen but will accelerate in coming years, as doctors, CEOs and other established professions, including venture capitalists, realize the importance of cultivating online profiles.”

Jin adds, “Everyone will have to build influence online, because we’re living more of our lives online … All of us will have to adopt some of the skill sets and behaviors of creators in order to be successful.”

If a content creator is defined as someone who “produces entertaining or educational material that caters to the interests and challenges of a target audience”, then it makes sense to label anyone with a social profile as a content creator.

It doesn‘t matter whether it’s just me posting a funny Instagram video to share with my 300 followers or a major TikTok influencer doing the same thing for her 3 million fans.

Leslie Green, HubSpot’s senior social strategy manager, agrees. She says, “Nike believes ‘everyone is an athlete,’ and I also believe everyone is a content creator. There may be varying levels of skill, but if you have a phone with a camera, you’re a content creator.”

Internet personality Jensen Tung also supports that statement, saying, “I believe anyone who creates content is a content creator. The term should not be gatekept, because who determines the cut-off line?”

Tung notes that what counts as a high follower count varies across platforms. Tung emphasizes that tying content creation with money and followers commercializes the activity and neglects the artistic side of content creation.

“Just like how athletes are labeled amateur athletes and professional athletes, I believe content creators can be labeled similarly. A content creator who makes money can be labeled a professional content creator,” Tung says.

A few years ago, being a content creator — or influencer — required a certain follower count to earn the title, and it was a relatively exclusive club reserved for brands, mega-influencers, or celebrities.

Now, anyone with a smartphone has the opportunity to become one.

There‘s something incredibly freeing about this: As we broaden the scope of what we mean when we say “content creator,” we’re inevitably opening the doors for more diverse voices.

This means consumers worldwide can find content creators who mirror their unique, distinct experiences.

Our 2024 Consumer Trends Report showed that when customers consider the types of content brands post on social media, 38% find relatable content to be the most memorable.

In other words: Content doesn’t need to reflect one singular version of reality anymore. Now, it can encompass all of them.

Nicole Phillip, The Hustle’s senior social media manager, told me she sees major benefits to the fact that there are no guardrails when it comes to labelling yourself as a content creator.

As Phillip puts it, “Content creator is definitely an overused descriptor … But that speaks to how accessible the arena is, which in some ways is great for people who otherwise would’ve hit glass ceilings or invisible walls trying to get their work out there through conventional means.”

To become a content creator, you only need a smartphone.

Admittedly, there are levels of skill, expertise, and influence within the creator economy, just like there are levels in any profession.

But what‘s surprising is that, unlike other professions, there’s no entry-level requirement to becoming a content creator.

You don’t need to possess certain skills or live in a specific region or be an expert in a particular field. You just need to own a phone or a computer.

That’s perhaps what makes it so enthralling for so many. Consider, for instance, how the hashtag #contentcreator reveals more than 9 million results on Instagram:

What’s equally interesting is the growth of the creator economy over the past few years Goldman Sachs reported that the creator economy market could nearly double over the next five years from $250 billion to $480 billion by 2027.

The creator economy, a term that refers to the marketplace of content creators as it relates to businesses, skyrocketed during the pandemic.

The pandemic also greatly impacted the requirements of becoming a content creator. As people were stuck at home with nothing but their phones, they had to make due. And, as it turned out, audiences didn’t care about super-polished content, anyway.

Instead, audiences appreciated and sought out the more authentic posts that spoke to the true state of the world.

As Phillip acknowledges, “Being a content creator used to mean you had a super large following and created original content that would consistently go viral to large audiences. Then, we started having micro and nano-influencers, which lowered the barrier to entry, so there’s no particular follower count necessary, either.”

She adds, “In terms of content types or quality, there’s an audience for every niche and ability, so someone who only has an iPhone 8 just recording their thoughts during their morning commute can compete in the same space as a celebrity makeup artist operating with a DSLR and an entire team.”

It’s undoubtedly thrilling to consider the possibilities of creative individuals with fewer resources competing in spaces with high-profile, mega-rich celebrities.

But that leads me to my next point: What’s the end game with all of this, anyway?

Becoming a content creator on social media is no longer a means to an end.

A few years ago, becoming an influencer was oftentimes a stepping stone to fame.

A few names come to mind: Consider King Bach, who became famous on Vine and has since starred in multiple TV shows, including The Mindy Project and Punk’D; or Addison Rae, a TikTok dancer who was recently featured in Netflix’s movie He’s All That.

And yet, nowadays, becoming an influencer is in-and-of itself the goal.

One TikTok creator, Brady Lockerby, decided to become a full-time TikToker after recognizing the financial incentives outweighed her previous employment.

As she notes, she made roughly $50,000 in her corporate 9-to-5 job. By comparison, she now makes upwards of her yearly corporate salary in one month.

Lockerby told me, “The first time I posted on TikTok, I never expected it to turn into what it is today for me. It’s something that truly just fell into my lap. Once my TikTok career started to take off and I realized, ‘Wow, this could actually be my job,’ I made the plunge and quit my job. Freedom was probably the driving force.”

She adds that nowadays most people are interested in money and receiving free items. However, she still believes that building authentic relationships is key.

“Whether that‘s with your followers or a brand, if you don’t have that trust, no one will believe your content. You make the choice to put your life online, and it makes my heart warm to know that people genuinely care about not only what products I’m promoting that month, but about me and my life,” Lockerby says.

Unsurprisingly, our 2024 Consumer Trends Survey showed that 21% of social media users purchased a product/service based on an influencer’s recommendation.

However, only 37% feel that the content they see from brands (i.e., ads, billboards, social media posts, etc.) is authentic to them.

In fact, customers can tell when something is worthwhile to interact with. So, the definition of quality material is constantly evolving. What’s popular this year can be dated and overdone the next — requiring you to be on your toes.

However, one thing should be on your mind: Never lose sight of someone looking over your content on their phone and determining whether it’s worthwhile for them to spend time on. So, make it worth their time.

It‘s also important to note that the money you make as a content creator is well-deserved. As easy as it is to earn the label of “content creator,” it’s not easy to make a living off of it.

Youtuber Robert Benjamin limits the definition of content creators to people who make a full-time living making content.

“Otherwise, I believe it‘s just a hobby and something you do for fun. I love to cook, but I’m certainly not a chef! I don‘t think that the number of followers matters — so long as you’re able to make a full-time living off of that following,” Benjamin says.

Followers also vary by the topics content creators cover. “Every niche is different and just because you don‘t have a lot of followers doesn’t mean that you don’t have a big impact on those that follow you,” Benjamin says.

However, Philip predicts that in the future, many will actually consider quitting as the market becomes increasingly saturated.

She told me, “People can get content from every corner of the internet, and to maintain an audience through such competition can be stressful and exhausting. I’ve seen this first-hand just working on branded social. There are no off days and you constantly have to feed the beast.”

Although full-time content creation has its perks, it’s still challenging. Occasionally, a creator can experience dry spells, difficult clientele, internet trolls, and creative blocks. In that case, preparing yourself to weather the storm is best.

It‘s true: Content creation is a 24/7 gig. And if you don’t consistently post engaging content, you could lose your audience’s attention as they move on to the new creator of the moment.

On average, consumers spend 4 hours daily on social media, and over 50% look through social media to find entertaining content. So, you must engage your audience as a content creator to help your brand grow.

But that shouldn‘t deter you from embracing your role as content creator if that’s what you want.

As Green says, “Content creators have more power than ever. Platforms like TikTok and Instagram are competing for content and are actively helping to produce income for their most valuable asset — content creators. If you’re looking to break into content creation, don’t be discouraged. Brands and platforms are looking for your personality and expertise.”

It’s clear from the success of each of these creators that no category is superior to another. As a content creator, your priority should be selecting the creative personality that fits your ideals and lets you express yourself freely.

There’s a big difference between a financial creator offering straightforward, money-saving advice to millennials/Gen Z and one who only provides general financial advice.

When it comes to the content brands post on social media, 63% are interested in authentic and relatable content. Among them, 52% of consumers enjoy content like images/photos/infographics, and 49% prefer short-form video content (e.g., TikToks, Reels).

Moreover, 29% of consumers prefer to discover new products on social media through an influencer they follow, underlining the crucial role of content creators in the marketing landscape. So, brands are now seeking content creators more than ever, recognizing their value and impact.

Green continues, “My best advice: pick a niche, stick to one platform, and focus on volume. Social media may feel like a crowded space, but there’s room for everyone. Be patient, test a variety of formats, and stick to a cadence you can be consistent with month over month.”

Ultimately, just as art means something different to every individual, so too does content. This means the narrow scope we‘d previously defined as content creator was too limiting.

There’s value in leveling the playing field and allowing anyone with a camera and a voice to be heard.

After all, every content creator has the unique ability to connect deeply to their audience — and whether that‘s an audience of one or one million, there’s power in that.