Category Archives: B2B

When HubSpot’s Global Events Team had its first kickoff planning session for INBOUND 2024, they weren’t sure about the creative direction they’d take.

One thing was clear though: Given how huge AI has become in the last few years, they knew they’d incorporate it somehow.

I connected with the team to learn more about the important role AI played in pre-production – from creating eye-catching visuals with Midjourney to targeted agendas with Claude.

Creating Fresh Interstitials

Prior to INBOUND 2024, the team kept the onsite interstitials pretty consistent year-over-year, sticking to static visual imagery and light animation.

It was time for a change.

Instead of graphics that would disappear into the background, they wanted to create interstitals attendees would want to engage with.

“This year, AI has been big, and we got an intro to Midjourney and the work that Eduardo had been doing with the tool,” said Sav Aaver, former HubSpot production manager who led the collaboration. “We decided to look into that to add more interest to our screens, create a new element so people have something to look at that sparks conversation, if they’re sitting and waiting and working between sessions.”

The Global Events team tapped Eduardo Garcia-Lopez, a lead designer on HubSpot’s Visual Design team, to oversee the production of fresh interstitials with AI – leveraging Midjourney, Topaz and Runway.

They weren’t trying to create something net new, he says, but they wanted to push their branding.

“We didn‘t want it to feel like, ‘Oh yeah, this is very on the brand. It’s exactly what we would expect,’” Garcia-Lopez said. “We wanted to explore, because AI gives us these possibilities – you can take it anywhere you want but still maintain the same style of the brand.”

After some brainstorming, they settled on three themes:

• An umbrella theme for INBOUND, which was very abstract and closely tied to the HubSpot brand.
• An extended brand for each stage.
• A third, surreal, abstract city theme

The Creative Process with AI

From start to finish, it took the team roughly a month and a half to generate 28 final videos, with 14 minutes of run time adapted for seven screen types at the venue.

Starting with a baseline of shapes, gradients and colors that have always been the foundation for INBOUND graphics, Garcia-Lopez fed those initial images to Midjourney.

That allowed him to generate initial ideas and options to present to the Global Events team.

With AI, the person doing the prompting becomes the director, he says.

“You‘re telling the AI. ‘Here’s my vision. Now, go out and do that,’” he says, “It takes a while, but if you compare that to a team, you still need somebody to drive the vision.”

Once both teams agreed on the final 2D images for each stage and location, Garcia-Lopez headed to Runway for mini video shorts and animation.

“It took me roughly two days to create the Boston mini paper city, generating all the flat images and creating a storyboard, going into Runway and animating all of them,” he says. “Then, I went into Adobe Premiere to edit the whole thing.”

He also used Topaz, an AI editing software that enhances the quality of AI videos. 

I wondered, how much would it cost if the team worked with a vendor to create these assets the old fashioned way. 

Garcia-Lopez estimates requesting a 30-second clip would take at least two weeks and thousands of dollars.

That said, Midjourney wasn’t exempt from the oddities that happen when you use AI to mimic reality.

“What I presented to the team was the most presentable, the cleanest options, but behind the curtains, there were many generations that were not coming out well,” Garcia-Lopez says. “It was very choppy. You would have something weird happen – buses going into each other, buses running into people, like all these weird things.”

What took a lot of time was identifying the best takes and cleaning up inconsistencies, he says. Thankfully, AI works fast.

“We were iterating in a matter of days. We’d have new options in a couple hours, so it was very, very fast,” Garcia-Lopez said. “As a designer, we would’ve needed a big team to deliver all of these assets, even an illustration for all the variation of styles.”

With Midjourney’s assist, he was able to create 25 distinct styles – a result he calls “almost unthinkable” in the time they had.

“You need a big team with specific skills to accomplish a specific style,” he says, “and we were able to go wild and choose what we wanted.”

AI isn’t without its limitations.

When I asked Garcia-Lopez about the design challenges that come with leveraging AI, he said there’s a big one people often forget.

“Editing something is actually quite hard. With an editable file, like a vector-based design in Adobe Illustrator, you can change every little detail,” he says. “With Midjourney and these AI tools, it’s not that easy.”

It’s a myth that editing with AI is quick, he says. For example, color wise, you might not always get the exact same colors you’d achieve from a color palette. But you can get something pretty close.

Aaver echoes that sentiment.

“It was a big learning experience for us, as the approvers and reviewers,” she said, “learning what we can and can‘t give feedback on, what’s an easy change, what’s not so easy.”

In addition, AI isn’t doing the bulk of the work, contrary to popular belief. There is a lot of bringing it back to Adobe and then feeding it back into the AI model to get the results that you want., Garcia-Lopez says.

“You can do a lot with a small team, but you need skills in other software and a good background to solve a lot of these issues,” he adds.

Creating Custom Agendas for Attendees

In addition to interstitials, the Global Events team also turned to Anthropic’s Claude to create assets.

“We wanted to consider safety and we love Claude because it doesn’t train on the data you input,”said Matt Diaz, the team lead on HubSpot’s Global Events team. “It has a large context window so we could upload a lot of information for it to train on and give us the output without keeping that data for its system.”

They wanted to develop attendee personas and create targeted agendas, which would then be used to promote the event in an interactive “Choose Your Own INBOUND Adventure” quiz.

The team’s first step was asking Claude to create targeted agendas, based on INBOUND’s sessions and speakers, their buyer personas, and their goals and objectives.

“It was able to do that within a minute,” Diaz says, “It was really detailed, it was incredible.”

Their next step was instructing Claude to make sure each agenda was unique, without overlapping sessions, making sure to add the chatbot for context and reasoning behind its choices.

The process took two to three rounds of reviews, as Claude would sometimes hallucinate, creating sessions or speakers that didn’t exist.

The whole process took less than a full day, according to the team.

“If you were to hire a team to do that, you‘re talking multiple days,” Diaz says, “and they’re going to hit you over the head with a lot of money to do that. And this was the price of a Claude pro subscription.”

Once their targeted agenda was built, they created dedicated personas for each agenda. This included marketing-focused ones like the AI-Driven Leader and the Marketing Technologist, sales-ones like the Go-To-Market Strategist, and founder-inspired ones like the Data-Driven Leader.

The second half of this project involved creating a personality quiz that attendees could take to match their persona to a targeted agenda.

“We were operating under the assumption that, especially on social media, people don’t want to go and find out who they are,” said Sarah Hughes, the social media lead on the Global Events team. “They like to be told who they are through these quizzes or personality tests.”

The biggest challenge was ensuring that the quiz’s scoring system had even odds for each agenda, i.e. making sure all quiz takers weren’t getting matched to the same targeted agena.

“Claude got us roughly 85% of the way, and then it came to figuring out that scoring rubric and making sure that it made sense for all the personas,” said Senior Content Marketing Manager Lanna Nguyen.

They published it on the INBOUND blog, driving traffic via email and social channels. To say it was successful is a bit of an understatement.

“In all of our 2024 blog posts, it was the third ranked in terms of impressions behind another post that we put a lot of paid spend behind,” said Lanna.

This quiz became a valuable resource for leads, prospects, and attendees, she adds.

With so many ‘AI gone wrong’ stories floating around, this is a small case study into AI getting it right. 

Full disclosure, I think my team and I are a little embarrassed. Believe it or not, blogging is kind of our main thing here at The HubSpot BLOG — so the fact that it‘s taken over a decade for us to put together our first-ever report on the state of blogging isn’t the best look.

But hey! As that Chinese proverb says, “The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is right now.” That’s why we surveyed over 500 marketers across various industries and company scales to get a pulse on the current state and future fate of blogging.

We covered all of the big bases, including:

• Do companies still publish blog content?
• Why do companies blog?
• What kind of content are companies publishing?
• Where does blog traffic come from?
• How is AI transforming the practice?
• How are blogs adjusting in the era of E-E-A-T?
• Where is blogging headed?
• So much more!

Check it out! Yeah!

Do companies still publish blog content?

Short answer? Yeah, they do — for good reason.

Our survey indicates that 65% of marketers are employed by companies that maintain blogs, and they generally post pretty diligently. Our research found that:

• 22% of businesses that maintain blogs publish content on a daily basis.
• 37% publish two to three times per week.
• 30% publish weekly.
• 7% publish bi-weekly.
• 5% publish monthly.

Most of those respondents also say blogging is still pretty crucial to their broader marketing strategies. Of our respondents whose companies publish blog content:

• 47% cite it as being very important.
• 46% cite it as being important.
• 5% cite it as being neutral.
• 2% cite it as being less important.

That‘s why blogging remains a pretty significant staple of many marketing orgs’ budgets. According to our research:

• 24% of marketers from blog-producing businesses say they dedicate less than 10% of their marketing budget to blogging.
• 31% say they allocate 11-20% to it.
• 25% say they allocate 21-30% to it.
• 18% say they allocate more than 30% to it.

And those figures make sense when you consider the returns blogging generates for several businesses. Our research found that:

• 50% of marketers from businesses that maintain blogs say they saw a higher ROI from blogging in 2024, relative to 2023.
• 31% said it was roughly the same year over year.
• 15% saw a lower ROI.

So it makes sense that a lot of blog-publishing businesses are leaning into the strategy. According to our study:

• 45% of marketers from blog-maintaining businesses say their companies are going to invest more budget in blogging in 2025, relative to 2024.
• Only 13% are going to invest less.
• 40% are going to keep their investment consistent year over year.

So by the looks of it, blogging is still popular and not going anywhere anytime soon — but why is that the case? We dug into that as well.

Why do companies blog?

Blogging is a pretty versatile practice. It can help cover a lot of bases on the marketing front, but our research indicates that most businesses that leverage it are doing it to garner attention. Our study found that:

• 66% of blog-maintaining businesses publish content for brand awareness.
• 53% do it for customer engagement.
• 49% do it for lead generation.
• 34% do it for SEO-related purposes.
• 26% do it to project thought leadership.

Naturally, those goals align with the KPIs most of those companies use to gauge their content’s success. We found that more brand awareness-oriented metrics were the most popular with businesses that publish blog content. According to our research:

• 54% of blog-maintaining businesses use pageviews to measure their blogs’ success.
• 53% use social shares.
• 46% use conversion rate.
• 45% use time on page.
• 22% use backlinks.

Ultimately, blog content is — first and foremost — a promotional play for most businesses. While some use it for hard conversions, most blog-producing businesses are just looking for another avenue to get their brand in front of potential customers. While those goals are generally consistent, there are a lot of ways to achieve them.

“Blog content” is a pretty broad catch-all that covers several content formats — and the marketers we surveyed saw value in a wide range of them.

What kind of content are companies publishing?

A company blog can be an excellent medium for establishing longer-term credibility through evergreen content and immediate clout with more trend-responsive articles, and the marketers we surveyed generally publish a mix of the two. According to our research:

• 40% of outlets that produce blog content produce evergreen and timely content at a 50/50 split.
• 24% split their content 75% evergreen and 25% timely.
• 18% split their content 75% timely and 25% evergreen.
• 7% publish evergreen content exclusively
• 2% publish timely exclusively.

Our research also indicates that blog-producing businesses see solid returns from a fairly wide range of different content formats. Our study found that:

• 51% of blog-producing businesses find that how-to guides perform well for them.
• 45% find that industry news performs well for them.
• 42% find that case studies perform well for them.
• 34% find that encyclopedic articles explaining concepts relevant to their verticals perform well for them.
• 23% find that product listicles perform well for them.

But how you structure the content you produce is a bit of a non-factor if you can’t distribute it effectively — and as any content strategist will tell you, that is one of the most (if not the most) challenging aspects of maintaining a blog.

Where does blog traffic come from?

Getting engaged eyes on your content is every bit as tricky as it is essential — and in a landscape facing seismic shifts prompted by factors like volatility in organic search and the popularization of short-form content, maintaining a diverse range of distribution channels is transitioning from nice-to-have to need-to-have for bloggers.

The marketers we surveyed reflected that sentiment. Our study found that:

• 83% of businesses that maintain blogs distribute their content through social media.
• 47% leverage email newsletters.
• 47% leverage paid ads.
• 36% leverage organic search.
• 33% leverage influencers.
• 23% leverage paid search.

Our research also indicates that businesses with blogs are generally split on sourcing traffic organically versus through paid avenues. Our survey found that:

• 38% of businesses with blogs mostly sourced traffic organically.
• 21% sourced it primarily through paid avenues.
• 36% sourced it with a mostly equal combination of the two.

While we’re on the subject of nice-to-haves becoming need-to-haves, let‘s take a look at how AI is playing into businesses’ blog strategies.

How does AI play in?

AI — specifically generative AI — is probably the most disruptive element ever introduced into the world of content marketing (and maybe the world in general, but that’s neither here nor there.)

It’s presenting a real “adapt or die” moment for bloggers, and our respondents seem to understand that. Our research indicates that:

• Only 4% of bloggers never use AI tools to support content creation.
• 21% use it to support less than 25% of content creation.
• 37% use it to support 25-50% of content creation.
• 19% use it to support 51-75% of content creation.
• 16% use it to support more than 75% of content creation.

Bloggers also use AI at various points in the content creation process. Our study found that:

• 43% use AI to support editing and proofreading.
• 38% use it to support outline creation.
• 37% use it to support first-draft writing.
• 31% use it to support image creation.
• 30% use it to support topic research.
• 26% use it to support meta-description generation.

Of the AI resources available to bloggers, the most popular were:

• ChatGPT with 68% of respondents referencing using it for content creation.
• Google Gemini with 50%.
• Copy.ai with 13%.
• Claude with 12%.
• Jasper with 11%.
• HubGPT with 8%.
• 5% used other resources.

As you can probably assume, one of the primary benefits of incorporating AI tools into bloggers’ workflows has been an increase in content production volume. Our research found that:

• 19% of respondents saw their production significantly increase after folding AI resources into their content production.
• 48% saw it moderately increase.
• 17% saw no change in content production volume.
• 9% saw it moderately decrease.
• 3% saw it significantly decrease.

AI‘s emergence isn’t the only element that recently rocked the world of content marketing. These past couple of years saw Google pivot to E-E-A-T (Experience-Expertise-Authority-Trust) — a new search-grading criteria that places extra emphasis on relevant, first-hand experience with the subject matter bloggers cover.

How are blogs E-E-A-T-ifying?

Several blogs have found themselves scrambling to adjust to these new standards, and our respondents took a range of approaches to get there.

One key factor in appeasing the E-E-A-T gods is establishing author credibility, and respondents whose companies publish blog content went about that a few ways. Our research found that:

• 43% of blog-producing businesses established author expertise by referencing published works and citations.
• 42% used author bios with credentials.
• 40% included links to professional profiles.
• 27% referenced industry certifications.
• 8% were unsure.

Incorporating research and data is also a big help when E-E-A-T-ifying blog content — making it one of the more popular approaches our respondents took. According to our study:

• 8% of our respondents featured data in 0-20% of their blog content.
• 23% featured it in 21-40% of their content.
• 28% featured it in 41-60% of their content.
• 26% featured it in 61-80% of their content
• 13% featured it in 81-100% of their content.
• 3% were unsure.

However, loading your content with data might not be enough to cut it on SERPs nowadays. Again, the additional “E” in E-E-A-T stands for “experience” — meaning firsthand insight is pretty mission-critical when trying to make headway in the current search landscape. According to our research:

• 45% of blog-producing businesses project firsthand experience by highlighting personal experiences from team members.
• 36% source original quotes from subject matter experts.
• 35% reference case studies from actual clients.
• 33% feature expert interviews.
• 25% share product testing results.
• 10% don’t specifically document experience.
• 6% were unsure.

Ultimately, E-E-A-T represents what might be the most monumental shift in organic search ever, so naturally, it‘s fundamentally shaped several blogs’ content development process. According to our research, these are the primary ways our respondents have adapted:

• 39% increased citation of primary sources.
• 34% implemented expert review processes.
• 36% added original research and data.
• 31% implemented enhanced fact-checking procedures.
• 20% added author credentials and bios.
• 12% didn’t implement any significant changes.
• 7% were unsure.

So with all of the shifting tides, turmoil, and uncertainty that‘s been shaping the landscape of content marketing as of late, there’s really only one question to ask — where is blogging headed?

Where is blogging headed?

Well, despite all of the recent headwinds and “all-over-the-boardness” that a lot of my fellow content strategists can speak to, most of the marketers we surveyed were optimistic about the future of blogging.

Our research found that:

• 56% of marketers who work for blog-maintaining businesses say they see the role of blogging in their content marketing strategy expanding in the future.
• 32% say it will stay the same.
• 7% they’ll be reducing focus on it.
• 5% are unsure.

Still, content marketing is ever-evolving, and businesses can‘t lean strictly on their blogs to drive engagement going forward — and most of our respondents recognize that. That’s why they’re also investing in other content formats. According to our study:

• 81% of blog-producing businesses are also investing in video.
• 53% are investing in podcasts.
• 46% are investing in newsletters.
• 39% are investing in webinars.
• 20% are investing in ebooks.

So what is the state of blogging in 2025?

Ultimately, if our research is any indication, blogging is far from obsolete halfway through the 2020s. A lot of changes have rocked the practice in recent years — the popularization of AI and the introduction of E-E-A-T criteria being two of the most transformative — but bloggers appear to be adapting.

Blogging is still one of the most effective vehicles marketing orgs have at their disposal for facilitating key goals like lead generation and generating brand awareness. And the fact that the marketers we surveyed still see enough value in the practice to keep investing in it speaks to how versatile and productive it can be.

So what’s the state of blogging? In a word — solid.

It’s ever-changing and fundamentally different than it used to be … but still solid.

“Behind the Blog”: A Look at the Ins and Outs of The HubSpot Blog Team

• HubSpot’s SERP Secrets: How The HubSpot Blog Is Combatting SERP Volatility
• How the HubSpot Blog Built a Freelance Writing Program That Actually Makes Great Content

Whether you’re a diehard Super Bowl fan or, like me, prefer watching superb owls, you gotta admit: Super Bowl commercials are pretty great.

They’re also pretty expensive. And still, Fox, which holds the rights to Super Bowl LIX, easily sold all the ad spots for the big game on February 9, 2025.

Let’s take a look at what goes into the most expensive TV ads in the world, how much they’ve cost throughout the history of the big game, and what brands are really getting out of them.

Table of Contents

• How much does a Super Bowl ad cost?
• How Super Bowl Ad Prices Have Changed Over Time
• Is a Super Bowl ad worth the cost?

How much does a Super Bowl ad cost?

It’s a little tricky to put a number to the cost of an average, non-Super Bowl TV ad, since the numbers can vary from a couple hundred thousand to several million dollars. But let’s give this question some context:

• In 2024 (Kansas City Chiefs 25 – San Francisco 49ers 22), U.S. and Canadian advertisers spent an estimated $69 billion on TV advertising. That’s the GDP of Costa Rica.
• The top 10 TV advertisers in the U.S. — we’re talking brands like Geico, Burger King, and T-Mobile — spent an average of nearly $7.5 million every week in 2023 (Chiefs 38 – Philadelphia Eagles 35).
• Upfront primetime ad sales — these are the ads you’ll see on major TV networks between about 8 and 11 p.m. or 7 and 10 p.m., depending on your time zone — were projected to hit $19.12 million in 2024, which is actually a slight decrease from 2023.

Google’s 90-second “Loretta” ad from the 2020 Super Bowl (Tampa Bay Buccaneers 31 – Chiefs 9) cost the search behemoth $16.8 million ($20.5 million today).

Drilling down a little further, let’s look at the five most expensive 30-second ad spots during the 2020/21 broadcast television season, according to a Statista report:

• NBC Sunday Night Football: $783,718 per ad
• Fox Thursday Night Football: $624,626 per ad
• NBC’s This Is Us: $476,352 per ad
• NBC’s The Voice (Monday): $254,224 per ad
• Fox’s The Masked Singer: $225,764 per ad

Awards season is also catnip for advertisers, with a 30-second spot during the 2024 Academy Awards commanding an average of $2.2 million.

Amazon’s 90-second “Before Alexa” ad from 2020 cost $16.8 million ($20.5 million today).

In 2025, 30-second Super Bowl ad spots sold for about $7 million a pop. That’s nearly 220% more than a spot at the Oscars, and nearly 800% more than a regular season Sunday Night Football commercial.

And that’s just to air the ad — one time. It doesn’t account for celebrity spokespeople, who are making a cool $1 – $3 million each; premium ad agency costs; production and post-production costs; even the marketing budget for the ads themselves.

In recent years, between 70 and 100 commercials have aired during each Super Bowl game, adding up to around 40 minutes of commercials.

In 2012 (New York Giants 21 – New England Patriots 17), Super Bowl ads cost $3.5 million ($4.9 million today) for a 30-second spot. Chevrolet and OK Go’s musical Rube Goldsbergian machine took four months of prep and cost an estimated $500k – $1m to produce ($700k – $1.4m today).

Some brands snag decorated Hollywood directors for the shoots, and while numbers are hard to come by, it’s safe to assume that these directors raked in some cash:

• The Coen Brothers directed the 2017 (Patriots 34 – Atlanta Falcons 28) Mercedes ad, an homage to the counterculture biker film Easy Rider.

• At the 1984 Super Bowl (Las Vegas Raiders 38 – Washington, D.C. 9), a Ridley Scott-helmed Orwellian ad introduced Apple’s first-ever Macintosh computer.

• David Fincher directed a swaggering Brad Pitt in Heineken’s “Beer Run” from 2005 (Patriots 24 – Eagles 21)

If you’ve watched even one Super Bowl, you probably know the brands at play — usually the biggest names in tech, food, computer, and beer. Budweiser, Booking.com, Dunkin’, and Volkswagen were
favorites of the 2024 Super Bowl.

Even though Google and Amazon share the title for most expensive Super Bowl ad ever, the King of Beers is the King of Super Bowl ad spend. Anheuser-Busch spent an estimated $470.5 million on its wildly popular Budweiser ads between 1967 and 2020.

In 1999 (Denver Broncos 34 – Falcons 19), a 30-second Super Bowl ad cost $1.6 million ($3.1 million today).

84 Lumber’s “The Journey Begins” spot cost $16.2 million in 2017 ($20.1 million today), making it among the most expensive Super Bowl ads in history.

How Much Can You Buy With the Cost of a Super Bowl Ad?

Have millions burning a hole in your pocket but missed the deadline for a Super Bowl LIX ad? Here’s what else you could spend $7 million on:

• A 24-acre private island in the Bahamas
• 16 fully tricked-out Rolls-Royce Ghosts or 241 mid-range Honda Civics
• 1.7 million gallons of non-organic 2% milk
• Feed 3,835 superb owls for one year*
• Between 17 and 28 chief marketing officers
• 140 entry-level marketers
• 70,000 seats on the Canva Teams plan

* It’s illegal to own an owl as a pet in the U.S. Number based on estimates from wildlife rescues and zoos that feed Great Horned Owls.

What 
doesn’t cost $7 million is software like
Marketing Hub or our
ad management software. You can build or manage your ad campaigns, whether you’re targeting football fans or superb owl enthusiasts.

How Super Bowl Ad Prices Have Changed Over Time

The first Super Bowl was played in 1967 (Green Bay Packers 35 – Chiefs 10), and NBC and CBS charged brands $37,500 for each ad, or about $360k in today’s money.

A decade later, in 1977 (Oakland Raiders 32 – Minnesota Vikings 14), brands were forking over $125k (about $675k today). In 1987 (Giants 39 – Broncos 20), 30 seconds cost $600k ($1.7m today); by 1997 (Packers 35 – Patriots 21) it was $1.2m ($2.38m today).

The Betty White Snickers ad from 2010 (New Orleans Saints 31 – Indianapolis Colts 17) is estimated to have cost $4 – $5 million ($5.8 – $7.3 million today).

Another decade, another (million) dollar(s). In 2007 (Colts 29 – Chicago Bears 17), ads averaged $2.39m ($3.72m today); in 2017, it was $5m ($6.5m today).

Is a Super Bowl ad worth the cost?

The short answer: Probably not. Unless you do marketing for a brand with a positively enormous marketing budget, a single $7 million ad spot isn’t even on the table.

But for brands that do have that kind of spend, the ROI can be significant, with Super Bowl ads in the zeitgeist for several weeks before and after the big game. (I don’t watch the Super Bowl — but I definitely watch all the ads as soon as they’re online.)

And 123 million U.S. viewers watched Super Bowl LVIII — second only to the moon landing — and nearly a third of viewers say that the commercials are their favorite part of the game. Your $7m ad is getting a lot of eyeballs on it.

According to Kantar research in 2021, “Super Bowl ads delivered an average return on investment (ROI) of $4.60 per dollar spent, with many brands in the double digits.”

Brad Adgate, described as a veteran media analyst, told the New York Times in 2024, “In this era of fragmentation, the Super Bowl is what television used to be.”

It’s arguably the only true mass-market live event of the year, reaching nearly every demographic. Beauty brands like NYX and Dove have entered or re-entered the Super Bowl ad game, putting the lie to anybody who thinks football isn’t for girls, women, or drag queens.

In a 2024 interview with NPR, Maria Rodas put the ROI of a Super Bowl ad in simple terms. Rodas is a marketing professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and a self-described “big fan” of Super Bowl ads — in her household, talking is allowed during the game but not during commercials.

Rodas told NPR, “[Super Bowl ads are] like mini-movies. [Advertisers] hire these big celebrities. The production value is insane. And so all of a sudden, $7 million is probably, like, the smallest of what they spend compared to the rest [of the money] that they put into creating these.”

“To have this almost undivided attention provides an amazing opportunity for marketers to create a narrative, to really be able to connect at a much deeper level with consumers.”

Lessons in Super Bowl Marketing

That connection is important whether you have a $7 million or $700 ad budget.

And plenty of brands have found alternatives to shelling out $7 million big ones.

So don’t despair if you’re doing marketing on a modest or even shoestring budget — $7 million can buy you 100+ million viewers, but no amount of money can make up for bad marketing.

If you asked marketers about their 2025 content marketing budget, you’d be hard-pressed to get a straight answer.

While marketers recognize the value of great content, it’s not always easy to define exactly what “great” content looks like — or how much it costs to create.

I’m no exception. For more than a decade, I’ve been creating content for big brands and small companies alike. I’ve seen the pendulum swing from keyword-stuffed content to in-depth narrative exploration to the burgeoning use of AI to help kickstart writing efforts.

And in all of this, I’ve never seen a single, simple way to determine exactly how much you should spend on your content marketing budget. The (hard) truth is that what you spend depends on a combination of content goals, market forces, and strategic business objectives.

While I won’t be able to tell you exactly how to budget for your content marketing, I can help make the calculations easier by looking at current spending, budgeting best practices, and what’s on the horizon for content marketing.

Table of Contents

• Is content marketing worth the money?
• Where are marketers spending on content creation?
• Content Marketing Budgets: How Much is Enough?
• How to Establish a Content Marketing Budget
• Content Marketing Types to Budget For

Is content marketing worth the money?

My simple answer? Yes.

My slightly more complex answer? Yes, so long as your content reaches and resonates with the right audience.

According to HubSpot’s State of Marketing in 2024 Report, 50% of companies planned to increase their marketing budget this year. With 40% of Gen Z, 40% of Gen X, and 43% of Millenials saying they’ve discovered new products through content on social media, this ongoing investment makes sense.

In fact, HubSpot dedicates a portion of its budget to creating content with the help of freelance writers. I’m a member of that team.

“We absolutely find content marketing to be a worthy investment,” says Kaitlin Milliken, who runs HubSpot’s freelance writing program. “We need to keep content fresh and showcase expert insights that our in-house team may not have. Finding experts, showcasing their work and paying them fairly is all part of the model.”

If marketers can engage with prospective buyers on the social platform of their choice, they can drive organic traffic to websites or ecommerce portals and increase the chances of sales conversion.

Perhaps more importantly, engaging content can set the stage for an ongoing relationship that sees customers coming back again and again.

Where are marketers spending on content creation?

I’m sure you won’t be surprised to hear me say that the global reach of social media sites makes them the primary focus for content creation spending. For example, Facebook has more than 3 billion active monthly users. Instagram boasts 2 billion, and up-and-comer TikTok recently passed the 1.5 billion mark.

In 2024, 76% of B2C small businesses were using Facebook as part of their content creation strategy, and 63% used Instagram.

LinkedIn, meanwhile, was used by 89% of B2B marketers to generate leads.

TikTok, meanwhile, was tied with YouTube and Instagram for delivering the biggest ROI of any marketing strategy, according to 67% of marketers.

In terms of content types on these platforms, video rules the roost. Consider that 89% of customers say that product explainer videos have influenced them to make a purchase, and 92% of marketers say that video provides positive ROI.

Emails also remain a popular content marketing approach, with some caveats.

First is that segmented emails outperform their generic counterparts, with marketers reporting 30% more opens and 50% more clickthroughs on segmented emails. In addition, GenAI is becoming a key component of email marketing strategies, with 95% of marketers using GenAI rating it as “effective.”

Content Marketing Budgets: How Much is Enough?

When it comes to content marketing budgets, “enough” is the amount that gets you the results you want without breaking the bank.

I know, I know — that’s not exactly helpful. There are two reasons for a lack of hard-and-fast rules in content marketing budgets.

First is the changing nature of content engagement. Look at TikTok. Five years ago, TikTok was primarily a platform for teenagers and young adults. While silly and funny videos drove views, they had little impact on purchasing decisions.

Enter the era of the social media influencer, and the TikTok shop was born. Creator funds combined with expanding demographic influence made TikTok a force to be reckoned with, even as other platforms saw a flattening of ad curves (looking at you here, Facebook).

All this is to say that there’s no such thing as a sure thing in content marketing.

Right now, it makes sense to ramp up spending on platforms like TikTok and YouTube and take it slower on platforms like Facebook or Instagram. It’s also worth remembering a simple mantra: Easy come, easy go. While TikTok is a social selling powerhouse right now, it won’t last forever.

So, in addition to the change in the landscape, markets looking to create a content marketing budget also have to consider how industry plays a role in setting content marketing budgets.

“When it comes to our budget for working with writers, our program is always looking at industry rates,” Milliken says. “We can’t make great content or work with great people if we’re paying below what’s standard. Oftentimes, you do get what you pay for.”

For example, businesses in the banking and finance industries often spend approximately 9.5% of total company revenue on marketing. Retail wholesalers spend 14.52% on average, while consumer packaged goods companies shell out just over 25% of total revenue on marketing.

How to Establish a Content Marketing Budget

While your content marketing budget will evolve and change over time, I’ve seen how you can establish a solid funding framework with these five best practices.

1. Pinpoint your target audience.

Don’t waste money on marketing to customers who aren’t interested in your product or service. While you may get the occasional unexpected conversion, I can tell you that the vast majority of prospective buyers outside your intended audience will either ignore your content or actively seek to disengage from it.

To prevent this from happening — and to find your funding sweet spot — I recommend ensuring you’ve pinpointed your target audience. Common customer factors can include demographics such as age, location, average income, and historic patterns of content interaction. This is always my first step.

At HubSpot, Milliken says her team’s writing focuses on specific personas. That laser focus on who the audience is makes sure the team’s content resonates with potential customers.

2. Calculate your current content marketing spend.

Next, I’ll calculate how much I should spend — but before I do that, I need to know how much I’m currently spending. It sounds simple enough, but I find this is a crucial first step.

This number includes money spent on creating social media posts, blogs, videos, and other content, along with any funds used for research and preparation. And don’t forget to include the cost of tracking content metrics as part of your larger budget.

Current spend provides a baseline for future content budgets. Even if your plan is to boost spending to increase your reach, knowing what you spend now helps you level set for new initiatives.

“I keep track of what I spend in multiple places,” Milliken comments. “I have a tracker that shows my team’s spend per month. Then, I put those numbers in Allocadia so leadership knows how much is spent on content marketing across programs.”

3. Define your strategic goals.

What’s the plan? If you don’t have one, don’t start spending that budget just yet.

While you could take a scattershot approach to content marketing, you’ll get out what you put in: Assets that occasionally hit the mark but mostly miss your target audience.

Instead of hoping for the best, I always build a budget plan. Identify content areas that have seen significant growth over the past year, and prioritize those efforts. Even better? I drill down into why they’re working with surveys or focus groups.

For example, if you’re seeing great returns on short-form videos, ask customers why they’re working so well. Sure, the smaller length plays a role, but what else stands out about the content? The visuals? The audio? The CTA? Play to your strengths to get the best return on your investment.

If you’re still developing and evolving your goals (and who isn’t!), HubSpot’s free content planning templates can also be a big help. And Content Hub, of course, is a great unified platform for creating and managing personalized content experiences across the customer journey.

4. Identify measurable outcomes.

I’m sure you’ll agree that conversions are the ultimate metric of content marketing success. The more prospects you convert into customers, the better for your bottom line.

But conversions alone don’t tell the whole story. You also need to track metrics that measure engagement, such as how long visitors stay on your webpage or how many click through on CTAs to sign up for newsletters or learn more about your newest product.

I also like to measure engagement through social interactions such as likes or comments, which indicates that users took the time to stop and interact with your content rather than scrolling by.

5. Regularly review your spend.

Finally, it’s worth remembering that content marketing spend isn’t static. As consumer preferences change, so will the way they interact with and consume content.

For example, if engagement on a specific social media platform begins to fall, and this decrease is paired with a larger drop in the platform user base, it may be time to shift marketing spend.

By the same token, if new approaches such as interactive chatbots or highly personalized advertising show a marked increase, it’s worth doubling down on ad budgets.

Content Marketing Types to Budget For

2024 was a year of social media spending for content marketers. What’s on deck for 2025? Here are four content marketing types you should consider budgeting for next year.

Short-Form Videos

In 2024, 56% of content marketers said short-form video was their top investment trend. “Short” in this context means less than 10 minutes long — 96% of marketers agreed on this number, and one in three said videos shouldn’t exceed the three-minute mark.

This particular content form continues to see significant growth across platforms such as YouTube and TikTok. Other social media sites such as Facebook and Instagram have also hopped on the trend — in many cases, videos are cross-posted between multiple platforms.

Informational Blogs

Despite the rise of multimedia, blogs continue to deliver content marketing returns. In 2023, 9 out of 10 marketers used blogs to help achieve their content goals, and companies using blogs generated 67% more leads each month than their non-blogged competitors.

The caveat? Gone are the days of keyword stuffing and backlink frenzies. Blogs aren’t simply promotional vehicles; they have to offer something of value to readers or they won’t get read.

Influencer Partnerships

Influencers continue to positively impact content marketing efforts. Statistics show that 69% of consumers now trust influencer recommendations over those directly from brands, and 36% of marketers say that influencer content outperforms typical marketing content.

GenAI Content

While it’s casting a broad net, companies can’t afford to ignore the impact of generative AI in creating personalized content. With 94% of marketers saying that personalization increases sales and 96% saying it encourages repeat purchases, it’s no surprise that GenAI is a priority in content marketing efforts.

Generative AI is also playing a bigger role in content creation as referenced in the graph above with 77% of marketers saying it helps them create more personalized content. Additionally, 71% of marketers claimed GenAI helped them better understand their customers and improve their overall experience.

GenAI continues to grow in popularity because it’s an effective way to personalize your marketing efforts at scale.

Content Marketing Budgets: A Moving Target

In this piece, I’ve offered some basic guidelines and best practices for marketing budgets and target content types to help you take your best shot at the moving target that is content spending. If you’re looking for more concrete applications of the concepts above, however, HubSpot has you covered. 

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in March, 2022 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

I’ve worked in a lot of different industries — as a freelancer, as a manager of freelancers, as a marketer, as a writer — and you know what never changes? The need for content creators to be crystal clear on their assignments. 

One of the simplest ways to achieve this is to write content briefs.

Don’t be deceived, though: Even though a content brief is simple, it’s still important to get it right. 

Table of Contents

• What is a content brief?
• Importance of Content Briefs
• Elements of a Content Brief
• How to Write a Content Brief

What is a content brief?

A content brief is a short document — if you can keep it to a page or two, everybody will be happy — that’s a guide or blueprint for creating content.

The specifics will vary depending on the kind of content you’re creating and who the brief is for, but it should anticipate and answer top-level questions about content, format, communication, and so forth.

If you manage freelance writers, a content brief will be a lifesaver for both you and your writers — and that’s only a slight exaggeration. Your content briefs will describe exactly what’s expected of the writer, including any required subheadings, target word count, and deadlines.

If you work on a project with multiple partners at multiple organizations, a simple content brief will give everybody a single source of truth.

Content Briefs vs. Creative Briefs

Although they sound similar, content briefs and creative briefs serve different purposes. A creative brief outlines a campaign, and may include more extensive messaging, deliverables from multiple contributors, and other details that give shape to the entire campaign.

A content brief focuses on a specific piece of content — my examples below are for written content, but you could use the same elements to create a content brief for videos, podcasts, or anything else you’re producing. If you’re using software like Content Hub, a brief will be the foundation for each piece of content.

Importance of Content Briefs

Sure, you could try to muddle through without one, but they save more time than they take to write.

I once worked on a project with several external partners, and other than Slack and Google Docs, nobody used the same organizational tools, and it caused a lot of frustration and confusion.

I pulled together a generic content brief that could be iterated on for specific assignments. It included approved messaging, links to all the documents that everybody was working on, and major deliverables and deadlines. You could almost hear the sigh of relief in the Slack channel.

I used to do some freelance writing, and my favorite client was the one that had the best content brief. Writing for a new client can be intimidating, even for experienced writers, because you have to learn a new style guide, a new voice, and maybe even an entirely new target audience.

That particular client included a one-page brief with each assignment. It included the target word count and the rate, the name of the publication and its audience, as well as links to the style guide and any assets, a description of the assignment, and the assigning editor and due date. If an interview was required, contact info was provided.

They were a dream to freelance for because I never wasted time with logistical questions — the expectations were clear and everything I needed was at my fingertips.

If you’re editing content, providing a clear content brief will reduce the number of revisions and rewrites (not to mention frustration!). Let’s talk about how to strike a balance between detailed and concise.

Elements of a Content Brief

The elements of a content brief will vary depending on your needs, but here are what I think are the absolute essentials:

• Point person and/or a responsibility matrix
• Communication protocols, such as a Slack channel
• Clear description of the project or assignment, including target audience and word count
• Links to assets, messaging, style and/or brand guides, and any other relevant shared documents
• Deliverables and deadlines

You might also include:

• Approved messaging and/or language from partners
• KPIs
• Funnel stage
• Links to similar content that can be used as a model or inspiration
• Links to the competition
• Links to audience personas

When I’ve worked on marketing multi-partner podcasts, I’ve found it helpful to include a few bullet points of approved messaging, noting who has approved on behalf of each partner.

Some stakeholders may have certain requirements for how their company or organization is described, and your writers and content marketers will need that info.

Keep it simple:

Pro tip: Especially when working with external partners, it’s often worth repeating important brand details that are in your style guide. Don’t get too bogged down here — the style guide exists for a reason — but stakeholders will appreciate having this info at hand.

If you’re writing content briefs for freelancers, you’ll want to make sure they have access to any information they might need during the course of their assignment — style or brand guidelines, Slack channels, who to contact with questions, and any context for the assignment.

Let’s dig into “clear description of the assignment,” since that can contain a lot of important details for your writer(s), such as:

• Purpose. Tell the writer what the content goal is; maybe it’s a blog post to address demand for a certain keyword, or maybe you need ad copy and a variety of CTAs for a new product.
• SEO/keywords. What does your writer need to know about target keywords? Are there any keywords or topics that they should avoid to prevent content cannibalization?
• Subject matter experts and sourcing. In our brave new E-E-A-Tified world, firsthand experience is more important than ever. If your writer is expected to conduct SME interviews, include that in the brief. You may also ask that they provide links to any other sources they’ve used to assist with any light fact-checking.
• Required subheadings and other technical specifications. If you’ve done your keyword research, you may already have H2 or H3 subheadings in mind. This will also help the writer understand how you want the content organized. Your writer may also be expected to provide meta descriptions, alt text for images, or social media copy.
• Other formatting requirements. If a document needs to be formatted in a certain way, explain how (ideally with an example or template). If you can only accept (or if you prefer) a certain file type, include that — don’t assume that everybody is using Google Workspace or Microsoft Word just because you are.
• Sharing/access requirements. We all know the frustration of seeing “Access denied.” Set everybody up for success by including info on who to share files with.
• How and where to file the completed assignment. Does your workflow require tagging certain people in an Asana card? Do writers email you when they’ve completed an assignment?
• Naming conventions. If any of the deliverables, including assets, need to follow a specific filename convention, lay that out in your content brief.
• Post-assignment expectations. If writers should expect to hear from an editor, let them know that ahead of time — freelancers in particular will need to budget time for this. And if you manage a large roster of freelancers, it can be helpful to include any reminders about the rate and invoicing requirements.

How to Write a Content Brief

Let’s make a template: Using your word processor of choice, create a one-page doc with a two-column table. In the left-hand column, write out the basic elements: point person and/or responsibility matrix, communication protocols, assignment description, assets, and deadlines and deliverables.

This is personal preference, but I like to list the communication info in the top left header of the brief, including the relevant Slack channel — I repeat this info when I have to create other docs for stakeholders, so everybody gets used to having it front and center.

It immediately answers the top questions: Who’s in charge? Who needs to provide approval? Where did you tell me that Google Drive was? Why didn’t anybody tell me there was a Slack channel for this project?

Even if this info feels redundant, it can be especially helpful for new freelancers or new hires, so I suggest making it part of your template. Freelancers often have several (or more) clients, all of whom might have different requirements and formats, and this will save them some time and sanity.

Your brief might start off like this:

Pro tip: You’ll note that I’ve included the time and time zone in the due date — I consider this essential information. Especially in the age of distributed workforces, where employees and freelancers may be in different time zones, including this will save everybody a headache and set your writer up for success.

Before you flesh out any details in the assignment description, consider who your content brief is for. Freelance writers will likely need more links and more context than in-house writers, who already have the company style guide bookmarked (right? Right?).

You may find it useful to create two templates, one for in-house writers and one for freelancers, so you can provide your marketers with the most concise brief. For instance, freelancers may not need info on KPIs; in-house writers who upload their own work to the CMS won’t need a folder for deliverables.

What’s the absolute minimum information a writer needs to successfully complete an assignment? It’s tempting to include links to everything related to the project, but don’t overload your writers with unnecessary context.

It’ll be useful at this stage to talk to them, whether they’re in-house or freelance, and find out what they find most helpful.

You’ll need to describe the assignment, its purpose, and its audience:

Pro tip: For freelancers, consider always including a link to your style guide. That way it’s always handy. And a simple “thank you” is always a nice touch.

If your content has a lot of specific requirements for conversion strategy, SEO, keywords, and the like, include those in a table so they’re easy to parse.

When I worked as a freelance writer, I found this incredibly helpful. It’s a small thing, but being able to see all this info in the same format with each assignment makes it much easier to get started on assignments.

Info that’s often included in HubSpot assignments is the monthly search volume, any required CTAs, and SEO and conversion strategies:

Write Your First Content Brief

Once you’ve built a template (or two) that suits your needs, content briefs won’t take you much time at all to fill out. And whether you’re working with in-house content creators, freelancers, and/or external stakeholders, having a single source of information will make everybody’s job easier and more efficient.

I love to do content research — what’s more satisfying than falling down a few Google rabbit holes? (Don’t answer that.) 

Of course, great marketing content is built on more than just Google search results. I’ve put together a six-step guide to how I do my own content research for HubSpot blog posts using a real-life example.

Table of Contents

• What is content research?
• Why is content research important?
• Components of Content Research
• How to Do Content Research

On the one hand, content research is exactly what it sounds like — researching content. But it’s a deceptively simple term for a process that’s a lot more complex than a few Google searches.

Put into marketing terms, content research is the systematic process of gathering information to create valuable content that meets your readers’ needs, furthers your business goals, and ranks in search results.

Why is content research important?

Thoughtful and thorough research will reward you with compelling, engaging, and genuinely helpful content. You’re probably already doing keyword research (if not, learn the basics!), and you probably already know subject-matter experts in your company or network. Content research will connect all these points together.

And “genuinely helpful” cannot be understated. If you understand search intent and can answer your users’ questions, you’re establishing your brand as an authority, setting yourself up for return visitors, and showing Google that you know your stuff.

Having a structured research plan will help with other aspects of your content workflow, like a marketing calendar or editorial calendar, content intelligence, and any other tools you and your team use to maintain a well-oiled marketing machine. 

Components of Content Research

Although the sub-steps of content marketing research may look a little different depending on your project and field — we’ll get into that in the next section — there are a few basics that are foundational to great content.

Keyword Research

Begin at the beginning, as they say. Keyword research is the gateway to analyzing search intent that answers not just your users’ initial questions, but also their follow-up questions (and maybe even questions they didn’t know they had).

You can check out our beginner’s guide to keyword research, but here are the main elements to keep in mind:

• Relevance: Your content will only rank for a keyword if it meets the searchers’ needs.
• Authority: Google provides more weight to sources it deems authoritative.
• Volume: Volume is measured by MSV (monthly search volume), which means the number of times the keyword is searched per month across all audiences.

Audience Research

You probably already know who your target audience is, and you may even have customer or buyer personas. Also consider search intent and follow-up questions.

If I’m writing marketing content about bedding, let’s say, there’ll be a substantial difference in the audience for budget bedding versus luxury bedding. For the former, I might be looking for subject-matter experts on different kinds of materials, including less expensive options. If I’m marketing luxury bedding, I might look for experts on the highest-quality materials and construction methods.

Whoever your audience is, keep those personas in front of you as you conduct the rest of your research so you don’t find yourself down the wrong rabbit hole.

For a deeper dive into market research, including a how-to guide, check out our market research guide and templates.

Competitor Research

You’ll likely turn up some competitors as you do your keyword research. I like the Ahrefs tool that compares two sites so you can see what one has that the other doesn’t — this can be super useful if you’re comparing a top-ranking competitor with one that ranks a bit lower. What sets the number one apart from the rest?

Continuing with luxury bedding, here’s what Ahrefs’ keyword explorer looks like:

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I want to see what the top-ranked result has that the 10th result doesn’t. In the Competitive Analysis tab, I can input both of those URLs, like so:

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When I hit “Show keyword opportunities,” I can see what the top-ranked link has that the 10th-ranked link doesn’t:

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I confess I don’t know exactly what “coastal bedding” is, but the top-ranked link has a lot of it. Knowing where my competitors are killing it will help me think about the search intent of my target audience.

Start thinking about what you bring to the table in terms of your own experience, knowledge, and network. What holes in search intent might you be able to fill?

Topical Research

Whether you start on Google or an AI-powered search engine, make sure that you’re careful about your sources. Are they websites or publications that you know and trust? What info can you find about the author in their bio or on LinkedIn?

(Random pro tip that hopefully you’ll never need, but: If something seems too good to be true, check and make sure it’s not dated April 1. I know more than one smart writer who’s fallen for a brand’s April Fools’ joke.)

A few starting points I’ve relied on in my own research:

• Search LinkedIn for your keywords. Oftentimes, I’ll find experts and thought leaders talking about exactly what I’m writing about. Just be sure that you cite and link to them if you use their writing as a source.

  Pro tip: Do your due diligence — read the person’s LinkedIn profile and make sure you can trust their expertise.

• Search Google Scholar. Even though the results might be too academic for your audience, this has helped me locate experts and find the newest research, especially when AI is involved.

  Pro tip: Check the publication date or restrict your search to the last couple years, unless you’re looking for historical knowledge. For studies, make sure you understand the sample size and the geographical location — they might be quite different to your own target audience, so proceed with caution.

• Post on your own LinkedIn. If you have a sizable following and/or a strong network in your industry, letting other content managers know that you’re working on a piece can surface some experts you may already know. Your network might also have suggestions for other people or resources.
• Use primary sources. If you have a subscription to Statista or a similar service, you can usually find a treasure trove of studies that are directly relevant to your topic.

  Pro tip: Don’t rely on other articles that cite studies — I’ve found that these are often old studies, even if the article has a recent date.

• Use social media. Even if you don’t have access to social media listening tools, you can still dig into places like Reddit, Quora, Substack, or niche online forums where people in your industry gather and talk.
• Use your co-workers. If you don’t already have a Slack or Teams channel where your fellow marketers can bounce ideas off each other or ask questions, consider this a sign to start one. Your colleagues may be experts themselves, or they may be able to connect you with somebody from their network.

Subject-matter Experts

Not everything you write requires a subject-matter expert, but getting an outside perspective on a topic can give you ideas and creative inspiration, and expert quotes are good for your readers and good for search algorithms that prioritize personal experience.

Quotes and background information from the people in the trenches will also distinguish your final product from AI-written content. I like to keep these informational interviews to just 15 minutes — it’s long enough to get some solid background info and quotes, and short enough that it’s easy for even busy people to say “yes” to.

Performance Analysis

You’re not quite done when you hit “publish.” Take some time to review your KPIs to see how the content resonated with your audience, and whether there’s anything you should consider editing now or revising in the future.

KPIs that you might include in your analysis:

• Engagement metrics like scroll depth, click-through rates, and bounce rates
• Traffic metrics like page views, unique visitors, and return visitors
• Conversion metrics like lead generation rates, product purchases, and email signups

If you have the resources to do at least a light monthly performance analysis of all your content, patterns will emerge, and you’ll be able to further refine SEO, E-E-A-T, voice and tone, and other elements that make your content distinct.

How to Do Content Research

Let’s use a piece I wrote recently about B2B newsletters as an example. It’s a topic I have experience with, but I wouldn’t consider myself an expert, per se.

Here’s how I conducted my content research:

1. Research keywords and audience intent.

Thanks to our crack SEO team, I know that the primary keyword for this article is “B2B newsletter marketing,” so my first step is to use Ahrefs’ keyword explorer:

Source

I can also narrow my search by user intent by selecting the dropdown menu and ticking the “intent” box.

Source

A few things I’m noticing in these results: strategies, examples, and best practices. This gives me an idea of what users are looking for, and it will help me structure my article to make sure it delivers real value.

People Also Ask

On Google, I searched for “B2B newsletter marketing” and scrolled down to the People Also Ask section.

Source

It’s more of the same — users want an overview of what B2B newsletter marketing is and what best practices are.

Ahrefs also has a handy SERPs overview with the same info:

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AI Search Engines

I personally don’t like to use AI for outlines or first drafts, but I do like it for content research. I often use Perplexity for research and Claude for analysis; together they can help me identify a perspective I hadn’t considered or uncover more resources.

When I search Perplexity for “B2B newsletter marketing,” I can scroll down to the Related Questions section:

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No surprises here — more confirmation that users are searching for an overview, best practices, and examples.

2. Research the competition.

I use both Ahrefs and Perplexity to identify competitors.

Perplexity synthesizes info from its top sources, so I want to see what it’s identified as a source. I just use a simple search term for this rather than a complex engineered prompt:

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This shows me three sources; click on the box that says “Show all” to see all the sources it’s pulling from.

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This reveals all the sources and its links, which gives me an idea of the competition.

In Ahrefs, I can skim through the list of the top-ranking articles that rank for the same keyword I’m targeting.

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One important note at this step: It can be very easy to inadvertently plagiarize from a competitor — maybe a definition, the structure of the post, or even a turn of phrase. You’ll read something, it gets stuck in your head, and a day later, you write it down without realizing it’s from another source.

My strategy for avoiding this is to not spend a ton of time reading the competition — I really do just skim — but your mileage may vary, so do whatever works for you.

3. Consider your own experience.

I took down some notes about the newsletters I’ve written for over the past few years — questions I had, questions I didn’t know I had until I was knee-deep in an email newsletter platform, and lessons learned.

For instance, at a previous job with a very small team, I found myself face to face with some of the more technical aspects of running a newsletter. I had no clue what “DKIM” or “DMARC” meant, and as far as I knew, “SPF” referred to sunscreen.

So when I started working on a different blog post about B2B newsletters for HubSpot, I knew I wanted to include something about the technical side of newsletters without going into too much detail.

I reached out to a HubSpotter on our MarTech team who was able to give me some high-level advice on what marketers new to newsletters should consider from a technical perspective.

This is just a fraction of the information I got from a 15-minute Zoom call:

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Sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know, and reaching into your own experience can help uncover questions your audience will have as they dive further into the topic at hand.

4. Research the topic and any trends.

If you have access to a data and research tool like Statista, IBISWorld, or similar, get in the habit of running a few searches. This didn’t turn out to be a major source for this particular topic, but I did find some data on personalization, which was one of the subtopics I touched on in the blog post.

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I also searched Google Scholar for “email newsletters in marketing,” restricting results to anything from 2023 or later. I came across a December 2023 paper entitled “Personalization (In)effectiveness in email marketing” from a journal called Digital Business.

This ended up being a background resource for me rather than something I quoted in my article, but in my opinion, it’s worth taking a few minutes to check scholarly journals — you never know when you’ll come across somebody doing something brand new in the field.

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5. Interview subject-matter experts.

This step can be intimidating if you don’t know subject-matter experts. Here’s a few of my tricks I used to find people to talk to about B2B newsletters:

• I started by asking the HubSpot #marketing Slack channel: What are your favorite email newsletters? Lia Haberman’s ICYMI and Alexis Grant’s They Got Acquired were both mentioned several times, so they went on my list.
• I searched LinkedIn for “B2B email marketing” and found other experts and top voices.
• I went through my own network and found that I knew a few people on the technical side. I asked them if they had any suggestions and recommendations.
• I asked other newsletter writers at HubSpot if I could talk to them, and if they knew anybody they could introduce me to.

6. Analyze the performance.

It’s good to check the performance of your piece after a month, though I’ve also worked in places where we monitored daily performance — so let your industry and KPIs guide you. If you’re writing timely (as opposed to evergreen) content, your pageviews will probably peak within the first week or even sooner.

If you use HubSpot CMS, clicking “view post details” will let you monitor metrics like lead conversion rates, revenue attributed, and other metrics. HubSpot also shows you the breakdown of traffic sources, which can help you fine-tune your distribution in the future. (Google Analytics, a commonly used tool, has similar metrics.)

Research With Confidence

There are many approaches to content research, and not everything I’ve outlined may apply to you. But you should now have a solid foundation for content research, the many paths it can take, and how to effectively and efficiently start researching great content.

I’ve faced plenty of problems when building content teams. Sometimes, those problems led to outright failures. Content falls flat, email campaigns flop, or new hires don’t work out.

At times, it feels easier to just accept reality and move on. “Well, that new hire wasn’t the right person for our team right now. We’ll do better next time!” But, if you don’t understand why that hire didn’t work out — if you fail to understand the real problem — you’re bound to repeat it.

Conducting a root cause analysis (RCA) helps you confront your perceived reality and truly understand what went wrong so you don’t repeat history. Now, that can sound a little scary.

After all, while we’ve been told for years that learning from failure is key to growth, admitting to failure feels vulnerable. What if I am the problem? What if it’s something I cannot fix?

The RCA process helps us work through those fears using a data-driven approach and critical thinking. It asks us to eschew the easy answer and chase deeper truths. From there, we can build a more informed and practical approach to challenges. We fail, we learn, and we improve. That’s the goal of a good RCA.

How do you run a root cause analysis, and what tools can you use to do it effectively? Grab your free root cause analysis template, and let’s get into it.

Table of Contents

• What is root cause analysis?
• What is the “5 whys” approach for a root cause analysis?
• What tools can help you with root cause analysis?
• Start Your Root Cause Analysis With Our Free Template

Marketers experienced in project management know it’s important to monitor your systems and take an honest look at things when they break down. RCA offers a framework to better understand how organizational components work together and how it can improve.

To help us unpack RCAs, I talked with Ellen Smolko, a fractional CMO at Foresight Performance. She’s helped many companies analyze business problems with RCAs and find significant value in the process.

“Root cause analysis helps you move past surface-level symptoms and tackle the true sources of underperformance,” Smolko said.

“For example, if sales are down, it’s tempting to assume you need more leads. But often, the real problem lies deeper: perhaps your offerings no longer meet evolving customer needs, or your messaging fails to communicate value. By systematically identifying and addressing these root causes, RCA enables you to make informed decisions that lead to lasting improvements.”

What is the “5 whys” approach for a root cause analysis?

An RCA’s purpose is to identify the root cause of a problem. That means that when we’re confronted with a problem, we can’t accept our first instinct.

We need a framework to help us question the people, processes, tools, systems, and environments influencing a negative outcome.

That’s where the “5 Whys” comes into play. In the 5 Whys approach, you repeatedly ask why a problem happened to drill down past the obvious answers and find the underlying root cause. Sakichi Toyoda pioneered this technique and applied it liberally in the company he founded — Toyota Industries.

As an example, I’m going to apply the 5 Whys to my new hire example from before.

Several years ago, I was building a content team from scratch. We had an urgent need to meet client expectations with stellar written content. But, our content was falling below that expectation, and our new hires were turning over voluntarily and involuntarily within 12 months.

Why was this happening?

Why 1: Why are new content hires not meeting performance expectations and leaving so soon?

An important piece of the 5 Whys exercise is to use objective data as much as possible. We often build subjective assumptions around people and processes and let those influence decision-making:

• “The new hires just don’t get it.”
• “They’re not spending enough time understanding their customers.”
• “They’re not surfacing their own problems fast enough.”

But, does the data we gather bear out those assumptions? During this exercise, set aside what you think you know and focus on what you can prove.

Pro tip: Using data to support decisions is a key tenet of total quality management — and simply a good practice to lean on when advocating for complex organizational changes.

In this case, I looked at quality control data provided by clients and team leads, as well as satisfaction surveys from staff. From those data points, I found that several team members were unhappy with their roles. These team members were also the ones clients flagged as producing content that didn’t meet expectations.

It’s tempting to stop here; after all, doesn’t this back up our subjective assumptions? The new hires clearly don’t get their clients. But, the 5 Whys has us go deeper.

Why 2: Why are team members unhappy with their roles and not meeting client expectations?

I could sense team members were frustrated, and the data supported that feeling. And clients were certainly vocal about their frustrations as well.

So, I dug deeper into the quantitative hiring, onboarding, and performance data. I also ran more qualitative surveys, talking with current team members about their struggles and what they felt was happening.

Analysis at this stage uncovered two key learnings:

1. Unhappy team members felt overwhelmed by the number of clients and their expectations.
2. They weren’t getting enough feedback and support to adjust to those expectations and improve their performance.

Why 3: Why are team members feeling overwhelmed and lacking sufficient feedback and support?

You’ve probably noticed a trend with these questions: the previous conclusion informs the next question. That’s the secret to a good 5 Whys session — you keep interrogating.

You also might start taking things personally at this stage of the process. I felt I owned a significant piece of this problem. They were my team — were they not getting enough help from me? What was I doing wrong?

There’s a place in this process for extreme ownership and to follow through on improvements personally. But, remember that we need data to back our decisions. We have to continue objectively to ensure we really understand the root cause.

So, I talked with our talent management, and we dug deeper into the hiring and onboarding process, including screening questions, writing test analysis, and early hire management practices. The data showed us:

1. We were not thoroughly assessing content team candidates’ skills and abilities for a match to the role.
2. We lacked consistent performance reviews and mentorship to ensure feedback turned into professional development opportunities.

Why 4: Why was there a role mismatch and a lack of performance reviews and mentorship?

We reviewed hiring and onboarding data and saw how fast managers pushed to hire. We had a fair number of steps in our hiring process, but we could move through those steps quickly (and, perhaps, too quickly).

Looking at onboarding, we also found our process covered the usual administrative tasks like taking PTO or logging client hours. Yet, we hadn’t addressed the need for continuous performance management or close mentorship.

Why 5: Why were we hiring so quickly and using a limited onboarding process?

At this stage, you can see how organizational goals and challenges influenced my team. Our company was growing rapidly, and client count and expectations grew accordingly. Growth pressured the hiring managers, who wanted to just get people onto the team to meet ballooning demand.

The rush also led to a rushed onboarding process. We were so focused on getting team members that we didn’t put enough energy into keeping them. We were missing a strategic focus on long-term team development, which included deeper onboarding and more effective mentorship and performance management.

Using the 5 Whys to Improve Your Organization

From this approach, we took measures to make substantial improvements:

• Reassessing the pressure to scale quickly.
• Tinkering with hiring and onboarding processes to find best-fit people for our growth stage.
• Implementing more structure and feedback opportunities to boost performance.
• Doubling down on team development as a core component of managers’ roles and responsibilities (including my own role).

These changes helped build a stronger, more resilient team who consistently met and exceeded client expectations. It wasn’t a perfect solution — growth always surfaces new challenges. But, it got us going in a more informed direction.

Pro tip: You can run the 5 Whys with nothing more than a whiteboard and dry-erase marker, but it’s tough to think through challenges on the spot. I recommend using our 5 Whys template to break through barriers and start mulling.

It’s also vital to note that you can only perform the 5 Whys successfully if your company culture can accept failure and not resort to blame and distrust. While you should own failure and learn from it, you cannot do so in a place where you don’t feel safe.

That lack of safety leads to ignoring data that points to the “wrong” conclusion, not fully analyzing the situation, or failing to follow through on needed changes.

My experience also raises an important point of caution that Smolko echoed.

“While straightforward, the 5 Whys method has limitations,” she said. “It assumes a single root cause and relies heavily on accurate data. Many marketing challenges are multifaceted, requiring deeper exploration and validation.”

This approach helps you get started, but a true root cause analysis should push you beyond a single-cause mentality.

What tools can help you with root cause analysis?

After you’ve run your 5 Whys approach, you should have a better sense of root causes. But, like Smolko mentioned, there are more places begging for deeper review and critical thinking. RCAs can use different approaches and tools to help unpack complex challenges.

Fishbone Diagrams

You may also see these called Ishikawa diagrams or cause-and-effect diagrams, but they’re called fishbone diagrams because they look like a fish’s skeleton. These diagrams help you map potential contributing factors to your specific problem.

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Begin by placing your problem at the “head” of the fishbone. Then, identify major categories like people, processes, and tools. Under each category, brainstorm all possible causes contributing to the problem. For instance, I would put “speedy hiring and onboarding” under the processes category.

Finally, analyze how these causes relate to each other and your problem. The fishbone visual helps you organize thoughts around complex problems and spot missing connections and opportunities.

Pro tip: If you’re looking to hop right into a fishbone diagram exercise, check out our free fishbone diagram template for a head start.

Affinity Diagrams

An affinity diagram helps you organize and analyze large data sets. You place data and ideas into groups based on their relationships with each other.

Start by gathering data from multiple sources, focusing on anything pertinent to your problem. Then, define categories and sort that data into groups. Label each group and analyze potential connections for patterns and potential root causes.

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For my team’s challenges, I could grab data from exit interviews, performance metrics, and qualitative surveys from clients and team members. Natural buckets like Training Deficiencies or Lack of Support might surface, and connections between data would show them as points to begin addressing immediately.

Pareto Charts

If you’ve been around project management, you’ve heard of the Pareto Principle or the 80/20 Rule. Succinctly, it’s the concept that things in life aren’t distributed equally. As in, 80% of your company’s production comes from 20% of its workers.

Applied to RCA, a Pareto chart operates from the underlying concept that a few root causes are responsible for most of your problems.

Start with a list of potential causes related to your problem. Then, you count every time to see each cause affecting the outcome in your data. The causes with higher frequency tend to be the “bigger challenges” to solve.

For instance, while going through my 5 Whys exercise earlier, we could categorize my team’s frustrations and count instances where it appeared in the data. Inadequate training may have appeared 15 times, while high workload only appeared 5 times.

I would read this chart and see we need to focus on training opportunities, as that would more effectively address the root cause of our retention issue. This chart helps you spend time on the weightier root causes and make a greater impact.

Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA)

RCAs often take place after a problem emerges. However, an FMEA focuses on identifying failure points before they break. In this process, you assess possible root causes for failure and prepare actions to mitigate problems.

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Part of the FMEA is to rate from 1-10 the severity, occurrence, and detectability of each failure mode. Or, basically:

• How bad would it be if it happened?
• How likely is it to happen?
• How easily can we tell it’s happening?

From there, you derive a Risk Priority Number and build plans to address the highest-risk failure points. It’s a great way to sniff out problems early and prioritize limited resources toward the biggest potential challenges.

Start Your Root Cause Analysis With Our Free Template

You can run these RCA tools without specialized resources. Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets can help you accomplish this process. Some specialized data-driven tools, such as Minitab or Tableau, can help with more complex challenges.

At HubSpot, we see many opportunities where a root cause analysis can help your marketing team. So many, in fact, that we compiled our best tools and resources into a template. Open this template in Word, Excel, Google Docs or Sheets and follow our guided steps through a complete RCA.

Inside our template, you’ll find places to track event dates, customer details, and descriptions of problems. You can then assign investigators, track possible root causes, and build suggested solutions.

This template will help you make informed, data-driven decisions and focus on consistent organizational improvements.

Don’t Fear the Root Cause Analysis

A good root cause analysis should make you a tad nervous.

Confronting underlying issues with organizational problems requires asking tough questions, sharing openly and honestly, and being vulnerable with your role and responsibilities. It’s a humbling process at times.

But, I think it’s also an important process. Follow the steps behind an RCA and use the tools and data at your disposal, and you’ll find the real issues holding you back from success.

If you’re looking to build toward long-term achievement, don’t let fear limit you.

Dig deep and find the keys to victory.

Video is quickly becoming the preferred tool for most marketers to connect with and reach new audiences.

Branding videos are undeniably effective — including a video on a landing page can boost conversion rates by over 80%, and the mere mention of the word “video” in your email subject line increases open rates by 19%.

For me, a great video can spark curiosity, get me asking questions, or even make me feel emotional.

But what separates great brand videos from those that fall flat? Here’s a look at what makes video marketing successful, and five examples of brands that got it right.

Table of Contents

• What makes a successful brand video?
• Five Examples of Great Branding Videos

What makes a successful brand video?

What is a brand video? Any video that promotes your brand.

What makes a successful brand video? Any video that reaches your target audience and causes the desired reaction.

For example, if I’ve just launched a new outdoor clothing brand, my target audience might be people who are interested in camping or other outdoor activities. My desired reaction is for potential customers to visit my website or social media pages.

As a result, my video should focus on what my product does, not what my product is. This could mean creating a short video of hikers exploring a new trail or campers setting up next to a lake, all while wearing my clothing.

I wouldn’t show prices or talk about specific product lines; I’d just show my gear being used in real-life situations. At the end of the video, I’d showcase the company name and website.

Then, I measure the reaction. Have my visitor numbers gone up? Have users left comments on social media pages or sent direct messages? If yes, then my video was a success. If not, I need to go back to the drawing board.

Key Features of a Branding Video

No two marketing videos are the same. Some target awareness, others drive conversions, and some focus on providing information.

Regardless of the intent, however, all great videos share five key features:

• Clarity: Great videos have focus and purpose. They have a clear message and use clear language and images to get it across. They also waste no time in getting to the point. While there’s no hard-and-fast rule here, ads should stay in the 30-second to 1-minute range for maximum impact.

• Specificity: For branding video ads to work, they must target a specific audience. For example, if you’re selling top-of-the-line car care products, your audience is car owners. Make your ad too general, and it won’t reach your target audience.

• Authenticity: While it may be quicker and cheaper to make inauthentic videos using stock footage or actors as stand-ins for real customers, users can tell when you don’t put in the effort. Want better engagement? Put real people talking about real experiences on the screen.

• Quality: Your branding video doesn’t need the budget of a blockbuster movie, but it should look and sound good. Think clear images, crisp colors, and clear audio. If your messaging is great but your quality is “meh,” your video won’t have the same impact.

• Consistency: All videos act as ambassadors of your brand. As a result, it’s important to use consistent logos, fonts, colors, and designs to ensure users can easily recognize your products.

I know — it’s a lot to consider when planning your brand video and your overall video marketing strategy. If you need help getting your ideas off the ground, try HubSpot’s free AI video tool Clip Creator.

Five Examples of Great Branding Videos

1. Tasty

The goal: Increasing brand awareness.

Video can help your business reach new audiences and attract new viewers to your social media pages and website, which is likely why “increase brand awareness” is the number one reason brands use video.

Take this video from Tasty, a Buzzfeed brand:

Ultimately, Tasty‘s video isn’t meant to sell any products (at least, not directly) — instead, it‘s simply meant to entertain new audiences and, ultimately, increase awareness of Tasty’s brand.

Why I Think It Works

The video works because it’s entertaining. It’s silly, fun to watch, and provides a small but welcome diversion. Yes, it mentions Tasty, but that isn’t the focus of the video. Instead, the ad provides a jumping-off point for viewers to learn more about food and recipes — which just happen to be on the Tasty channel.

2. Fabletics

The goal: Driving new sales.

Consider how you might create entertaining or informative videos with the sole purpose of increasing brand exposure.

Ultimately, brand awareness can foster trust and increase brand equity, so it plays a critical role in your company’s bottom line.

To highlight this point, here’s a video that I think makes a good example. This video highlights Kate Hudson’s company, Fabletics:

While at first glance it might look like a somewhat random video of Kate Hudson running through the Aspen wilderness, it’s actually an effective example of a video designed to increase sales without appearing like, well, an ad.

For instance, while the video portrays Hudson in a range of workout gear from her October Fabletics collection, it also incorporates an exclusive interview with the celebrity to discuss family, nature, and growing up in the mountains.

Add in a gorgeous Aspen backdrop, and viewers might be fooled by the true purpose of the video: to sell Fabletics clothing.

Why I Think It Works

Ads that don’t look like ads are becoming more commonplace.

This ad works because it leverages Hudson’s well-known name and combines it with a popular clothing category: Athleisure. Show both in tandem and I’d say you’ve got a winning ad formula.

3. Gillette

The goal: Growing a social media community.

Did you know that four of the top six channels global consumers use to watch videos are social channels? Ultimately, many marketers use video to attract visitors to a company’s social pages.

Consider, for instance, this #ShaveItOff video by Gillette partner The McFarlands:

While the video is undoubtedly entertaining to watch, it also serves a powerful purpose: to send some of The McFarlands‘ 2 million followers back to Gillette’s own social channels.

Best of all, the hashtag #ShaveItOff can be found on Gillette’s Instagram page as well, ensuring viewers can find the brand regardless of which social channel they prefer.

Why I Think It Works

Social media is one of the fastest-growing platforms for product sales. In part, this is thanks to a concept known as “ambient shopping.”

Unlike intentional shopping, which sees customers seeking out a particular product or service, ambient shopping happens when users are scrolling social media or watching streaming services and come across an interesting product.

This video works because it features well-known TikTokers doing exactly what their audience has come to expect — only this time, it points back to a partner product page.

4. HubSpot

The goal: Educating customers.

Video can be an incredibly effective tool for education. This how-to video from HubSpot Marketing dives into a game-changing technology that’s transforming the ecommerce world for small businesses: text-to-image AI tools.

Many people learn best through visuals, which is why video can be a phenomenal tool for educating prospects and even customers.

Consider how you might incorporate educational videos into your own content strategy in unique ways – for instance, perhaps you include video demos for interested prospects, or how-to tutorials for new users of your product.

Why I Think It Works

HubSpot is a well-known resource for free and comprehensive content.

Of course, our ultimate objective here at HubSpot is to create new customer connections, but this video shows the power of providing something of value for free to help kickstart a reciprocal relationship.

5. Microsoft

The goal: Building brand authority.

Similar to the reason listed above, the fifth reason brands use video is to build brand authority on a subject and demonstrate expertise.

Ideally, this means when people are searching for help on a certain topic, your brand will show up. After watching your videos, if viewers feel they‘ve gained unique insight, they’ll trust your brand more and explore other offerings.

Consider what happens when I search “How to run a vlookup” in Google. When I click on the video section (since I prefer learning about vlookups through visuals like video), Microsoft is the first two video results:

In this example, Microsoft is demonstrating its brand expertise when it comes to its Excel product — and, more widely, anything related to technology and data.

This provides Microsoft with a good opportunity to showcase its brand authority while attracting new visitors to its website.

Why I Think It Works

When I do a Google search, it’s rare I make it to page 2.

In most cases, I’m clicking on one of the top five results, and at most I’m heading down through the top 10.

Why? Because higher rankings are associated with increased authority on a subject, product, or service.

Microsoft succeeds here because it’s (still) capturing the top 2 spots.

Branding Video: Getting Noticed for All the Right Reasons

Video gets you noticed. Branding videos tip the scales — prospective and current customers get closer or farther away depending on how well you package and convey your message.

My best advice? Don’t get locked into a single branding approach. Different videos have different purposes. Some are designed to generate interest, while others drive new sales and still others look to build community or build authority.

What’s important isn’t replicating what other brands have done, but rather defining a goal for your video, and then measuring how successfully your video achieved that goal.

Take a look at The Ultimate Guide to Video Marketing to learn more about how you can create a powerful video marketing strategy for your own brand.

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

Traditional marketing versus digital marketing has become a hot topic among marketing professionals.

I set out to learn the pros and cons of each and return with my findings so that you can make an informed decision about marketing your brand.

I’ll go over what the two terms mean, and how they work together. Then, I’ll dive deeper into traditional marketing, which sometimes feels like it doesn’t get a fair shake in the current digital-dominated landscape.

But if you’re trying to choose between the two, I’ll give away the ending before we begin: the answer is both.

Table of Contents

• What is traditional marketing?
• What is digital marketing?
• Traditional Marketing vs. Digital Marketing
• Types of Traditional Marketing
• Importance of Traditional Marketing
• Pros and Cons of Traditional Marketing

What is traditional marketing?

Traditional marketing is all marketing that happens offline. This includes print, broadcast, direct mail, phone, and out-of-home advertising like billboards and posters.

It’s called the traditional method because it’s the way marketing was done pre-internet. But even though the contemporary market has incorporated newer methods, traditional marketing isn’t going away.

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What is digital marketing?

Digital marketing, on the other hand, is any marketing that’s conducted online. Examples here include paid social media ads, email marketing, and PPC advertising, along with content marketing, SEO, and much more.

This post won’t go into all the details, but for a deep dive into digital marketing, check out What is Digital Marketing: Everything You Need to Know.

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As the world becomes more digital, the way we market has evolved. Not only is digital marketing sometimes more cost-effective than traditional, but it’s also a more direct way to connect with target audiences globally.

Digital marketing has now overtaken traditional marketing as the primary way to reach consumers. But really, these two strategies coexist, and mixing methods is becoming the norm.

In today’s landscape, it’s no surprise that digital marketing is an increasingly important revenue driver. In fact, 78% of businesses that use social selling outperform those that don’t.

Disadvantages to digital marketing do exist, however. Chief among them are privacy and security concerns. According to the same 2024 report, online data privacy is valued as a human right by 74% of survey respondents.

In response, the tide has shifted toward more safeguards, with 84% of marketers saying it’s affected their strategy. Apart from that, digital marketing faces the challenge of people being fed up with disruptive ads, like pop-ups and video, while viewing offline ads favorably.

What about AI?

In 2024, according to our State of Marketing Report, 85% of marketers say generative AI has changed how they will create content, and marketers using AI are “95% more likely to say their marketing strategy was very effective this year than those who don’t.”

AI is, of course, changing the game for everyone — including the marketing industry — and it’s yet to be seen how it will affect the relationship between traditional and digital. But one thing is for sure: it’s currently the single biggest trend driving industry growth.

Types of Traditional Marketing

Now that we understand both sides of the coin, let’s take a deeper look at traditional marketing. It can take many forms, but the major types are as follows.

Print Media

Print media uses newspapers, magazines, and other printed materials to market to potential customers. This option is scalable, from locally to globally read publications.

A now-infamous example of an attention-grabbing newspaper ad is Norwegian Airlines’ “Brad is single” campaign, which capitalized on the breakup of a celebrity couple. I’m not one to gossip, but if you’re looking to draw eyes to your low, low prices, that’s a way to do it.

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Broadcasting

This refers to TV and radio commercials and aims to create brand awareness. Broadcasting relies on repetition, as the same ad will play over and over.

An ad that has always stuck with me is for Wendy’s hamburgers – where a woman examines the competitor’s offering and asks, “Where’s the beef?”

Originally aired in 1984, the commercial later became so iconic that I can still call up the woman’s voice in my head — even though I didn’t see the ad when it appeared. Forty years later, I’d say that’s good advertising.

Direct Mail

Direct mail is when marketing materials are sent straight to your door.

These can be letters, postcards, flyers, catalogs, or even gifts, and the point is to connect with an individual directly — unlike with print or broadcast, where the aim is to reach as many people as possible.

An example of a direct mail campaign where the mailing matched its purpose comes from Ikea. To market one of its side tables, a small pop-up version of the table came encased in the Ikea catalog.

It caught my attention for the perfect parallel between Ikea’s flat-packed furniture and the paper miniature meant to advertise it.

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Phone

Telemarketing, which includes cold-calling, is another traditional method for reaching a prospect directly. Direct phone marketing goes a step further than direct mail in aiming to generate a connection with the prospective customer.

I admit I had to look up an example for this one, and it’s difficult to find much information since calls are so ephemeral.

But I found a leading telemarketing campaign from Microsoft in 2009 when sales reps were calling to sell the Office Suite software. Sources say the company generated $1 million in revenue from this campaign alone.

Out-of-Home (OOH)

OOH marketing means it occurs outside your home, and the primary examples are static billboards, posters, signs on buses, and painted wallscapes.

This is a form of visual marketing that most often uses images to convey its message. OOH is location-based and aims to market to people passing by a particular spot.

As someone who spent much of my life walking around cities as an urban researcher, this type of marketing is the most likely to call my attention.

A smart example that comes to mind is the Coca-Cola billboards that appeared in European cities in 2019. The image takes the brand’s recognizable white ribbon and turns it into an arm, with a hand that points to a recycling bin on the street.

The campaign hints at Coke’s promise to make its bottles fully recyclable. And I personally, love this type of interaction between the ad and the urban environment.

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Importance of Traditional Marketing

It might already be pretty clear from the above examples, but I want to break down some of the reasons why traditional marketing is still important alongside digital marketing.

Trust

Connecting with potential customers is at the heart of marketing. And recent surveys show that when asked about their most trusted advertising formats, traditional marketing channels fill out the top slots, with print ads ranking first.

So, even if it seems like we live in a digital marketing landscape, when it comes to trust, what’s tried and true works better.

Loyalty

Given that I hardly receive mail anymore, I was surprised to learn that direct mail ranked third in the same trust surveys.

In addition, according to a 2024 post from the Data & Marketing Association, personalized mailings are set to make a comeback with contemporary marketers for their ability to convert into long-lasting loyalty.

Reach

Looking at broadcasting, I was skeptical about how effective radio ads could still be, but when I got my hands on the results of a 2023 Edison Research survey, it turned out that if you spend any time in a car, you’re likely to be listening to AM/FM radio (76% of listeners are).

That makes you a perfect audience for ads in that channel.

Cold-calling was the other one I wasn’t so sure of. But just like direct mail, cold-calling effectiveness is on the rise — and again I was surprised by the numbers.

Cognism’s 2024 State of Cold Calling Report announced that the success rate of B2B cold-calling doubled from 2023 to 2024 (from roughly 2% to 4%).

Pros and Cons of Traditional Marketing

Compared to digital marketing, traditional marketing has both pros and cons.

Pro: Local Audiences

Traditional marketing is great when you want to reach a local or niche community. If you’re operating in a small market, highly-specific ad placements can help you reach the right people.

Pro: Repetition

Another advantage is repetition of ads. And it’s not just with TV commercials or radio jingles that might get stuck in your head. When thinking about OOH, it’s easy to imagine how walking past the same bus shelter billboard daily increases brand visibility and awareness.

Pro: Credibility

And that leads me to credibility. With brand recall, especially in the public spaces we occupy on a daily basis, ads start to feel familiar, like any part of the environment, and add to credibility.

Con: Cost

Traditional marketing can be pricier than digital marketing. In 2024, an average newspaper ad could run upwards of $750, while an online ad 3-5 cents per click.

Beyond that part of the budget will be wasted on casting a wide net and getting your ad in front of people outside your target.

Con: Targeting

This brings me to precision targeting: it’s an integral part of the digital marketing world — and a part that traditional marketing really can’t compete with. If you need granular segmentation, none of the marketing channels above will give you that.

Con: Measurability

Alongside the inability to precisely zoom in on certain target audiences, measuring the results of ad campaigns is not as straightforward as with online marketing.

There are no real-time results or optimizations. And the process of changing an ad will take longer if you realize it’s underperforming.

Can traditional and digital marketing really work together?

Absolutely. My biggest takeaway after sinking my teeth into the stats is that not only is there room for both strategies to exist, but it can be an advantage to double up and use them together.

While traditional marketing can win over local audiences, it doesn’t offer a granular way to target. That gap can be filled with digital marketing.

And with marked distinctions between the two methods, I’d say it’s more a question of multiplying options than pitting the two against each other.

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

Ranging from brief social posts to deep-dive digital guides, I’ve written thousands of pieces of content for SaaS companies, small businesses, government offices, major nonprofits, and my own websites.

These pieces of content were tracked and analyzed to gauge their success, but all using unique measuring sticks. How? Using a tailored content scoring process.

With your own tailored content scorecard, you can create a data-driven process for measuring your individual content marketing success. I’ve gathered examples from my own websites and brands across industries, plus tips to help you create a powerful content scoring system.

I even have a metric that one entrepreneur says can impact conversions by 50% — measured using a free tool. Excited? Let’s get scoring!

Table of Contents

• What is content scoring?
• Why is content scoring important?
• How to Score Content
• Content Scoring Best Practices
• Content Scoring Tools
• ChatGPT For Scoring
• What’s a good content score?

What is content scoring?

Content scoring is the process of measuring the success of your content marketing. Metrics such as views, engagement, shares, and backlinks are tracked to analyze content quality and performance.

The resulting scorecard helps steer future content creation.

Why is content scoring important?

Let’s zoom in on the three big benefits of content scoring, starting with the term every marketer loves to hate: single source of truth.

Content scoring helps create a single source of truth.

93% of marketers with a single source of truth for data report that it’s beneficial for their organization, but only 65% of marketers actually have one.

Lack of communication and alignment between departments is a top concern of marketers, per our 2024 State of Marketing survey. A scoring system unifies teams and facilities better communication, while also acting as a roadmap for populating your editorial calendar.

Pro tip: Both your sales and marketing teams must be involved in the creation of the scoring system to maximize its potential.

Content scoring helps you leverage expertise.

I‘m not an expert in social listening and TikTok content performance.

Guess what? I use Later to help me with that, which means I don’t need to be. The tools you use to score your content will leverage incredible amounts of expertise and put data-driven insights at your fingertips.

While you can use generic tools such as ChatGPT (and I’ll share a prompt in a minute), a huge benefit of the content scoring process is choosing specialized tools that deepen your understanding of your content.

Content scoring helps you prove ROI.

Return on investment is always a priority for marketing teams and organizations as a whole. But then, why does so much data fall through the cracks?

The numbers matter: Over half of marketing decisions are influenced by marketing analytics.

Yet data’s falling through the cracks. 87% of marketers reported that data was their company’s most underutilized asset.

Given that 50% of marketers plan on increasing their content marketing investment in 2025, marketing teams need to quantify content’s performance and prove ROI with as much detail as possible.

How to Score Content

Let‘s walk through the steps to score your content. After explaining each step, I’m going to show you how this looks using the example of a blog post from my website, Walk The Camino Portugués.

There‘s no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to content scoring. It’s important for you to find a system that works, and you’ll — wait for it — actually use it (happily, I hope). Use this as your starting point.

Step 1: Choose which content you’ll score.

Not all content can be scored the same way. Social media content is different from email, which has different metrics from website content. Start this process by choosing which content you’re going to be scoring. Options include:

• Social media posts.
• Email marketing.
• Landing pages.
• Product pages.
• Blog posts.
• Videos.

As an example, I‘m going to be analyzing blog content for my travel site. Let’s look at which metrics belong on the scorecard.

Step 2: Choose your metrics.

You should consider key metrics related to content quality AND content performance. There are many numbers that you can choose from, and they don’t all need to be included on every scorecard (your marketing team will give you an ear full if you try).

Choose what matters most to your target audience and your business objectives. Here are some suggestions — notice that these include both positive and negative metrics (more on this in a minute).

1. Video percentage watched.
2. Reader satisfaction.
3. Impressions/views.
4. Optimization score.
5. Follows/unfollows.
6. Video view rate.
7. Time on page.
8. Conversions.
9. Bounce rate.
10. Scroll depth.
11. Readability.
12. Comments.
13. Backlinks.
14. Exit rate.
15. Shares.
16. Clicks.
17. Saves.

What I’m measuring: The metrics that matter most to me with my new travel website are SEO score, website traffic, readability, and Pinterest saves. Given that this is a new website, I‘ll track SEO score and readability upfront and I’ll measure traffic and saves over a period of six months.

Step 3: Choose tools to score content.

The numbers you‘ll get from tools aren’t all the same. Some tools will score content by assigning an objective number, while others will gather analytical data.

For example, SurferSEO might assign a blog post an optimization score of 72. This number reflects how my content performed against platform or industry benchmarks. An engagement tool, on the other hand, may share that content’s engagement rate is up 5%.

The 72 and 5%, while both important, aren‘t directly comparable. It’s like comparing apples and oranges — keep this in mind as you parse your data.

Consider these tools to score your content:

• Google Search Console (GSC): search visibility.
• Google Analytics 4 (GA4): website traffic.
• Hemingway App: content readability.
• SurferSEO: website optimization.
• SharedCount: social shares.
• ChatGPT: content analysis.
• Later: social analytics.
• Semrush: readability.

It‘s worth noting that some insights won’t be discoverable using a content scoring method. Some extremely valuable insights can only be gathered through manual review of top-performing content and looking for trends. This is ideally done over a period with significant data, such as a year-end review.

My scorecard: I’ll be using GA4, SurferSEO, the Hemingway App, and SharedCount to create my content scoring model.

Step 4: Create a scorecard.

Once you‘ve established your scoring criteria, you need to store all of your scored content in one place for easy review. This can be done in a spreadsheet, Notion, within a tool’s analytics interface — I share options for this below.

For those who’d like to create their own scorecard for their unique scoring system, you can input data into a simple table.

Note: The numbers you‘ve collected all have different values. For example, a blog post’s SEO score of 78 isn’t directly comparable to getting 245 social shares.

Some marketers will resolve this by ranking all of their data points on a scale of 10, then adding these up at the end. I‘ll show you a screenshot of this type of table created with ChatGPT in a minute.

Personally, I’m choosing to just list the original numbers and evaluate them individually, as I think it dilutes the data too much to convert everything to a 1-10 scale.

I’ve done this below with my website data:

Article	SEO Score	Readability	Search Ranking*	Shares*
Planning guide	92	Grade 6	3	147
Scallop shell explained	84	Grade 8	8	38
Luggage transfer	98	Grade 7	6	12

*This is a new website, and there’s no data for these points yet, so these values are used as fillers.

Step 5: Use to inform content strategy.

Use the insights from your content scoring strategy to help you create high-quality content. When you have more than 12 months of data, you can look at seasonal trends and use these insights to guide the creation of your marketing calendar for the year (free template here).

As a content manager for businesses, these insights guide 80% of my content creation for the year.

Looking at my own scorecard, I know that I need to improve the readability of all of my pieces (see more on this in best practices). The data on rankings and traffic will prioritize which pieces need to be updated first.

Content Scoring Best Practices

Let’s look at some of the best practices for your content scoring process.

Find the silent data.

Jake Ward, founder of Kleo, suggests that you engage with your silent data in addition to the typical (loud) data points. Listening to the loud and silent data in your business can look like:

• Engagement + disengagement.
• Purchases + abandoned carts.
• Clicks + hovers.

“Don’t just focus on the obvious metrics like clicks or open rates, but also on the data that isn’t making noise,” Jake shared.

Choose metrics intentionally (new brand vs. established).

Key metrics for judging a new brand are sometimes different from those you’d use for an established brand. Established websites can see results for some key metrics much faster, like:

• Search rankings.
• Social shares.
• Backlinks.

A new website might need to wait months before it sees these numbers start to build momentum. As a result, I’d pay more attention to metrics, like:

• Time on page.
• Readability.
• Comments.

One of these metrics is much more important than most people (even marketers) realize — readability.

Don’t ignore readability.

Alex Hormozi, founder of Acquisition, shared the power of improving readability in one of his “Mozi Money Minute” email blasts. He recommends simplifying your language to the third-grade level (age 8 or 9) using the Hemingway App.

“I once ran all my emails and web pages through this process and got a permanent 50% boost,” Hormozi shared with his email subscribers. “There are very few things that always work. But, this tactic is about as close as it gets.”

I‘d never used the Hemingway App before, and I thought my article’s content score would be fine. I was surprised to discover that my article was given a grade 6 readability score and would require edits to 84 sentences to maximize the readability per Hormozi’s advice.

Source

Leverage those positive metrics.

Having content that performs well should do more than just cause high-fives in the marketing department — it should also be leveraged as social proof. I spend a lot of time reviewing marketing materials online and I find that this is overlooked on 90% of websites.

Here’s an example of how Forbes leverages their positive metrics by publicly sharing article views:

Source

Why does it matter? Engagement begets more engagement. Tap into this self-fulfilling prophecy by displaying positive metrics on your website. Here are some ways to feature your positive metrics:

• Webpage backlinks: “As featured in” section
• Blog post views: Share total number of views (tutorial)
• Blog engagement: Display comment count
• Product downloads: Share the number of lifetime purchases or downloads
• Page shares: Display shared count (Social Warfare Pro plugin)
• Video views: Pin high-performing videos (TikTok tutorial, Instagram tutorial)
• Social followers: “Join X followers” website widget

Content Scoring Tools

I shared a lot of individual tools above, and I know that the number of options can be overwhelming for beginners. To help simplify it, I’m going to highlight a few powerful tools below that can solve most content scoring needs.

Important note: While I don’t spend time on them, Google Analytics 4 and Google Search Console are non-negotiable tracking tools that every website must have set up.

WordPress

Price: Free, with one paid tool featured below (Social Warfare Pro, $29 per year).

With a few standard plugins, WordPress users can customize their dashboard to include a number of important scoring metrics. This enables you to analyze your website content right within your site dashboard, without throwing a dozen more steps into your workflow.

Here, you can see five powerful metrics at a glance right within the “posts” page of my WordPress dashboard:

Source

Here’s a key for the boxed icons above:

• Stats: Jetpack (free).
• Comments: WordPress (free).
• Social shares: Social Warfare Pro (paid).
• Traffic light: SEO score by Yoast (free).
• Feather: Readability score by Yoast (free).

Your entire team will already have access to the website, which avoids extra costs of having to pay for “seats” on subscription-based platforms.

You can even sort content based on certain metrics, like shares or comments. You can see how that looks here on my main site, where I’ve sorted my blog posts in order of most comments to fewest comments:

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WordPress does have limitations, though. Data can’t be separated and analyzed by date, which can make finding specific relevant information difficult. Google Analytics is much more powerful for those advanced features but is overwhelming for beginners looking for at-a-glance data.

SEO Writing Assistant by Semrush

Price: Free plan, then $139.95 per month.

This is another tool that focuses on written website content, like articles, landing pages, product listings, etc. SEO Writing Assistant has a document-like interface where you can write content from scratch or paste in existing text. This tool has a scoring system that evaluates your content’s:

• Readability (free).
• SEO (free).
• Originality (paid).
• Tone of voice (paid).

Source

It gathers data for those four metrics and assigns a single score to your website content. This allows content assets to be easily compared and ranked.

I don‘t rely on this tool for my own content or my clients’ content, but I do think it‘s a great resource for people with straightward needs who aren’t brand loyal to other more specific tools.

Later

Price: Free plan, then $16.67 per month when billed annually.

While the first two tools focused on owned content on your own website, Later analyzes social media content. This is an incredibly robust social scheduling platform that pulls huge amounts of data for you to sift through and analyze your content’s performance.

I‘ve been using Later for years, but I can’t share analytics screenshots without revealing private client information. Instead, here‘s a summary of the analytics capabilities as described on Later’s website:

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A few features I love:

• Content sorting based on whichever metric you value most.
• Finding your audience’s most active times online.
• Social listening.

I’ve worked on teams that use other scheduling tools — sometimes very pricey ones — but Later is my preferred platform. It has an enjoyable interface and puts a ton of analytics data at your fingertips (without being overwhelming).

ChatGPT For Scoring

Would I rely on ChatGPT for my entire content scoring process? No, I personally would choose tools that are specialized and store my data for me in a more convenient way.

But maybe you‘ll find ChatGPT to be a fast and convenient way to evaluate your content. Note that ChatGPT can’t scrape content from social media, so it’s best used on your own website or XLS files.

Here’s a prompt for scoring website content:

You’re a content marketer trying to score the below [blog URLs/pages/product listings] based on readability, SEO, and ability to retain readers. Please generate a score on a scale of 1-10 for each of the above key metrics, then evaluate and score each piece of content below. Provide your data in a table.

Source

Scoring AI-generated content.

AI content can be valuable for your brand, but it needs to be leveraged carefully. Here are a few insightful statistics from our State of Marketing trends report:

• Only 6% of marketers report using AI to produce entire pieces of content for them.
• 95% of marketers who are using generative AI to write copy have to edit the text, with 44% saying they make significant edits.
• 60% of marketers fear the concern that AI can harm their brand’s reputation through plagiarism or bias.

When you’re ranking AI-generated content, assess it upfront for inaccuracies and plagiarism. When you’re gauging its performance, assess time spent on page, bounce rate, and conversion rate. Let content intelligence be your GPS.

If you’re going to choose AI tools, go for reputable tools that prioritize high-quality content, like the HubSpot AI Content Writer tool.

What’s a good content score?

There are mountains of data available on content performance. Need to know what the average X (previously Twitter) engagement rate for the finance sector is? Three percent. But, finding and leveraging that data for every single platform and industry would be tedious at best and impossible at worst.

Some software, like SEO Writing Assistant by Semrush, will use their own proprietary scoring system to combine several scoring factors into one number. No single software provides a complete picture, though.

How you’ll get the most value from content scoring: Identifying above or below-average content performance can only come from having month-over-month, year-over-year analytics and comparing your own datasets.

My Scoring Example

A good example is my Portuguese Camino luggage transfer guide. My article received a score of 6.9 out of 10 with Semrush’s tool, which earned it the label of “good.” However, when I looked at why it was given that score, I disagreed with it for a few reasons.

I chose to write a more in-depth guide. My article is 1,975 words long, while this tool is telling me to trim it back to 617 words. I’m a thorough writer, not a brief one (have you noticed?).

The tool also automatically assigned keyword targets from my article, many of which were incorrect. When I manually edited the keywords, my content’s score automatically went up to 7.7 out of 10.

Tools can be powerful, but keep prompting and tweaking them to personalize and tailor the results.

Final Thoughts

When I check on the content‘s performance, I’m excited. I’ll either discover cause for celebration or an opportunity to improve.

Speaking of improvement, I have my work cut out for me by simplifying my vocabulary and shortening my sentences to improve my readability score. I hope that these tools provide that same enthusiasm and direction for you (even if it means that you still have some work to do, like me).