Author: Franz Malten Buemann

Did you know the current U.S. cosmetics market is worth over $95 billion? 
With the fast growth of the cosmetics industry, it’s become competitive and saturated — especially for startups.  This industry can be even more challenging to break through when you’re trying to sell a product that you’re audience might be less familiar with.
With this in mind, Glow Recipe, founded by Sarah Lee and Christine Chang, aims to bring U.S. awareness to Korean beauty (or K-beauty) trends, as well as its own lines of natural, fruit-based cosmetic products. 

But, before Glow Recipe sold thousands of cosmetic products and built an audience of more than 1 million social media followers, it actually started as a simple product curation site aiming to highlight other K-beauty brands. 
In a recent episode of The Shake Up, Alexis Gay and Brianne Kimmel sat down with Co-CEOs Sarah Lee and Chang to learn how they built a well-known beauty brand and positioned their products for the U.S. and other global markets.
Below are just a few great highlights from the episode, as well as an audio player so you can listen while you read.

Glow Recipe Highlights
How and Why Glow Recipe Began With Curation
[00:18:54] Gay: It seems to me like through the work of several companies, but particularly Glow Recipe, Americans are increasingly aware of K-beauty and the philosophy behind it. … I’m wondering if you could just tell us a little more. What are the actual key markers of K-beauty?
[00:19:17] Chang: The whole catalyst for us starting this was actually the realization that there was a burgeoning interest in Korean beauty at the time. This was all the way back into 2014. We were also seeing not only consumers but also global companies looking to Korean manufacturers and Korean labs for the latest innovations and skincare, ingredients, and technologies.
… We were also seeing that Korean beauty articles … were very focused on [K-beauty] as a 10 to 15-step regimen. … It would almost be a little — in terms of content — too clickbaity, versus really getting at the heart of the matter, which is that Korean beauty is about a philosophy. … It’s something that we ourselves learned at our mothers’ and grandmothers’ knees growing up.
We both have these amazing memories of … our grandmothers using watermelon rind and rubbing that on the skin to suit heat rash, or our mothers just marching over to the pantry. And I know Sarah’s mother — one of her favorite ingredients was cucumber slices. Or my mom would like to use greater potato and [00:20:30] just that holistic very easily, the accessible approach to natural ingredients, incorporating that into your self care routine. We would very often mask together with our moms while watching TV. And it wasn’t a chore. It wasn’t an arduous 15 step thing you had to get through.
[00:22:19] Kimmel: Can you tell us a little bit more about that evolution from becoming the trusted source in your friend group for K-beauty products to then curating this amazing new experience that turned into an amazing community in a very big market.
[00:22:45] Chang: We flew over in 2014 to Korea without so much as a website to get some brands on board. And we pounded the pavement to find these brands that many of which we’re still very close to today. … The commonality was that they were all helmed by really passionate brand founders that had unique products, really clear product formulation philosophies, and we felt like these were the brands … that needed to be introduced to the U.S. and other global markets — because of the sheer astounding innovation, beautiful textures, and ingredient stories we were seeing. … After a lot of convincing … We were able to get eight or nine brands on board.
… On that trip, we kicked off our site right away. … There were a lot of mishaps along the way. I cringe a little bit when I see the early iterations of our site, because at the time you were like, “Hey, it looks great.” … Now, looking back on it, there were some clear optimization opportunities, but it was so fun.
… Every day, we were making emails ourselves. We were cold calling journalists ourselves. We were figuring out the social media content. … It was a lot of scrappiness, but also we really enjoyed it because we knew each and every step we were taking was getting us closer to our goal of bringing K-beauty philosophy to the wider audience and the way that we thought was right.

… We knew that eventually, we would have to take that step ourselves because we ourselves had that formulation philosophy internally that we wanted to really materialize and manifest through, through our own brand and the right timing for that eventually came. So a couple of years after launching RSP as a curation site, we launched our own in-house food-for-skincare brand that you see today, and on the shelves at Sephora in mid-2017. … And that was … a very close partnership with the retailer to make sure that we were successful in launching the brand.
Why Glow Recipe Pivoted from Curation to Product Creation
[00:26:29] Lee: I think the first reason why we started as a curation business model was because we wanted to give the platform and the opportunity to these brilliant founders and brands to go global by providing the content and education and marketing.
… Once we were able to gain that credibility in the market, I think that’s when we needed to really think about what we wanted to do as founders.
… What we wanted to do was combine those [Korean beauty] tenants and create our own brand because we didn’t really think that all of the influx of Chinese and Korean beauty innovations were fully understood by the American consumer. We felt the urge to break down that barrier and create our own brands that are actually much simpler.
[00:28:12] Chang: With Glow Recipe Skincare, it just felt right. Our community could not get enough. People were DM-ing us, our brand, our, our personal Instagrams nonstop asking about … the next draw, product suggestions, ideas. There was just so much passion and buzz around this brand. And we knew that we had struck a chord with it because it was this balance of — yes — Korean beauty philosophy, but also results. …
Also, [one thing that drew audiences was] the fact that we were speaking about fun skincare. For the longest time, I think skincare had been really dominated by a lot of very clinical brands. … Of course, so many brands that are in that space are also really amazing. But I think that sense of sensory reality — that extra moment that touch that made your self-care routine that much more special — all of this was really, really appreciated and we felt like it was ours. [It was] lmost our dutie to the community to make sure that we were giving them what they wanted.
How Glow Recipe Maintained Brand Relationships
[00:29:45] Kimmel: How did you think about … the early community that you had built around curation. Were there specific ways that you were able to learn from those founders or continue to build a relationship with them once you made the transition from curation over to Glow Recipe?
[00:30:12] Lee: some of the founders from the curation brands are still our friends to this date. So there is a lot of synergy that comes from that because we can always pick up the phone, call them, and ask them for opinions about certain things.
… We’re both brand builders and creators, right? So we share so much in common. We terminated our curation business model, but the relationships and the friendships continued to this day. We still touch base with them once in a while, make sure that if they have any questions around navigating the U.S. market, we’re there for them because we want everyone to succeed at the same time.
… When we were transitioning to a creation business, we were not only giving them connections to the networks that we had with the retailers. But, we were asking our customers to not forget about these products or brands. We were giving them site links to those products to continue to shop them because we curated them for a reason.
Why Marketing Product Differentia is Key
[00:31:40] Gay: Did you ever have any doubts at that time that this was the right move, or were you 100% confident? 
[00:31:53] Chang: I don’t think we had doubts per se, but then it’s really hard to gauge the level of success a brand will have. There are so many brands in the industry. We’ve had many conversations with many people in the industry about how saturated the market is. So each and every brand that comes into existence needs to have a real point of difference and a real reason. I think with Glow Recipe Skincare, we were able to really distill some of those personal experiences, those personal passion points into the brand.
… How do we provide products that are different and really add value to [the customer’s] routine when they buy it and make it part of their skincare wardrobe? That perspective, I think, has continued to serve us. And it goes back to those early days where we ourselves were answering every single customer email and writing notes to every single person who purchased from our site.

Balancing Community and Product Management
[00:33:32] Gay: I’m wondering how you balance keeping that customer-first, community-first mentality with some of the less glamorous aspects of creating a product.
[00:33:46] Lee: We’re first-time entrepreneurs. One of the things that we’ve learned, are still learning, is how do we balance everything when we have to oversee everything as founders and co-CEOs. I think the great benefit that we have today is that we have such an incredible, talented team. … I can say with confidence, that they just understand the social space. A lot of our team members are actually relatively young and very plugged into TikTok. So they just have their ears and eyes on the … social media landscape in realtime. Because of that, we’re able to not only react quickly, but proactively share what we have going on transparently with our community.
… That communication aspect, but also the decision making internally for the business has been really instrumental. … We think of every team member as a content creator. When we hire people, we always ask about their storytelling aspect, or photography skills.
… And we often have brainstorm sessions with our team members, just tasking people to think about a challenge that we’re facing, whether it’s a marketing initiative or a new campaign idea where we’re stuck and we want everyone to contribute,
Chang and Lee’s Top Leadership Challenges
[00:37:49] Alexis Gay: What keeps you up at night? What’s hard right now. What challenges you as co-CEOs?
[00:38:06] Lee: It’s a really timely question because there are some key challenges that we’re facing today where, as a company, we’re very rapidly growing. We’re very grateful for that, but that comes with a challenge around how we can make sure that everyone stays motivated and our culture is maintained.
… I think any entrepreneur can relate with something like this. Cause at any point of your entrepreneurial journey, your team pretty much makes up most of what makes a success or not. … I think people s everything. And so we’re trying to figure out how to, you know, hire because we do need to have at least 10 people more on our team and the next few months.
[00:38:52] Chang: We do have a lot of brainstorm sessions because the team is full of ideas and we love having those creative conversations and just really giving everyone an opportunity to voice their thoughts and opinions.
… Going forward, it’s really up in the air, right? Because is that day in the life going to take place at an office, is it going to continue to be worked from home? These are questions I think every founder, every company owner’s, grappling with as we move toward getting out of the 100% work from home time that we all had to be in.
To hear the full podcast, as well as other episodes, check out The Shake Up on the HubSpot Podcast Network. 

To ensure the success of your webinar, you must get as many people as possible to sign up for it.  The more people that sign up to attend your webinar, the more people you have to add to your email list and introduce your product or services to. Which is why it’s crucial you put…
The post Webinar Landing Page 101: How to Convert More Visitors Into Email Leads appeared first on Benchmark Email.

Your website’s bounce rate is a metric that indicates the percentage of people who land on one of your web pages and then leave without clicking anywhere else on your website – in other words, single-page visitors.
How sticky is your website? If visitors bounce, it suggests they either didn’t find what they were looking for, or the page wasn’t user-friendly. A high bounce rate also means visitors aren’t looking for more content on your site, clicking on your calls-to-action, or converting into contacts.

For inbound marketers whose primary goal is to attract and convert website visitors into highly qualified leads for their sales teams, it’s scary stuff. So, let’s get into how to decrease your bounce rates.

Improving Your Bounce Rate Infographic
Fortunately, QuickSprout has created an awesome infographic that explains why bounce rate is so important, highlights benchmark industry averages for bounce rate, and identifies a variety of changes you can make to help reduce your website’s bounce rate. Check it out!
And if you want help converting visitors who are about to bounce from your site, try using HubSpot’s free lead capture tool Lead Flows to create a call-to-action with a relevant offer triggered by exit intent.

Bounce Rate Benchmarks
Having a benchmark is so valuable when trying to understand where you stand against competitors in your industry. 
Find below some 2021 key statistics on bounce rates.   

1. Set realistic expectations.
When it comes to your bounce rate, it’s important to set the right expectations. As mentioned in the infographic, look at your historical data as a baseline for how your website has performed in the past.
Then, compare it to the average for your industry and platform.
Let’s say your company is a B2B brand with an average bounce rate of 56%. As seen in the previous section, the average bounce rate across industries is 47%, so you might say yours is really high.
However, the data also shows that bounce rates are much higher for B2B industries, at 75%. So, at 56%, your company is actually doing quite well. While this doesn’t mean you should stop your efforts at reducing the bounce rate, it’s important to know how you stack up against benchmarks.
In this case, where you’re only in competition with yourself, it’s time to rely on historical data to guide your strategy.
2. Attract the right visitors.
Picture yourself in a grocery store. You’re looking for a particular item and you go down an aisle. You look around and you can’t find it. So, what do you do? Leave the aisle and ask for help, or just try the next one.
Think of your website as an aisle at the store. If your content doesn’t match the visitors you’re attracting, they’ll quickly leave.
So, how do you make sure you’re attracting the right visitors?

Create multiple landing pages with unique content and keywords for your different buyer personas.
Maintain top rankings for branded terms.
Write attractive, useful meta descriptions for search engine users.
Improve targeting of online advertising campaigns.

3. Prioritize the user experience.
In this day and age, no one has the patience to navigate through a difficult website. You only have a few seconds to make a good impression and present a website that users enjoy being on.
To do so, follow these steps:

Make your text readable through sensible organization and the use of larger fonts, bulleted lists, white space, good color contrast, and large headlines.
Use well-organized, responsive layouts that allow for quick and easy navigation on all platforms and browsers.
Don’t let ads distract from your content: Place static ads to sides, and avoid pop-ups and self-loading multimedia ads.

4. Speed up your page load time.
Page speed is one of the main reasons website visitors leave a website. In fact, Google reported in 2017 that when a page load time goes up to 10 seconds, the bounce rate on mobile goes up 123%.
Think about it: When was the last time you waited over a minute for a page to load? Most users’ first instinct is to exit and find another website to meet their needs.
Several factors can contribute to a slow website:

Image size

Self-loading multimedia content.
Site server

The ideal page load time is two seconds or less. Make sure you test your page speed regularly to ensure it falls within that timeframe.
5. Produce high-quality content.
Content can make or break your website visitor’s experience.
Your content should be:

Engaging – Does your content make your visitors want to keep reading?

Clear – Is your content easy to understand and digest?

Relevant – Does it answer the question your website visitors are asking? Or is it clickbait (a big no-no)?

If you’re not sure how to answer these questions, have an objective third-party review your content. You should also consider hiring a copywriter who is an expert at producing high-quality content.
6. Monitor, test, and optimize.
Every change you make to your website can have an impact on your bounce rate. From the placement of an ad to the content on the page.
With this in mind, you must monitor your website closely to assess traffic changes. If you notice a rise in your bounce rate and a drop in visitors, run A/B tests to determine what page elements could be affecting your traffic.
Once you identify the issue(s), optimize your page.
When it comes to bounce rate, there’s always room for improvement. Use optimization tools (more on that in the next section) to identify opportunities to lower your bounce.
Want to start optimizing? Use this checklist to maximize your website’s performance.
How to Decrease your Bounce Rate on Shopify
When you run an ecommerce business, monitoring your bounce rate is a priority, as an increase can drastically impact revenue.
To first thing you can do to decrease your bounce rate on your Shopify website is to make sure your search campaign is aligned with your landing page. This means ensuring the keywords you’re targeting align with what you’re offering on your landing page.
In addition, your landing page should be optimized for conversion by following best practices (e.g. clear CTA, no navigation bar).
The next step is to add credibility to your page. You can do so by displaying customer reviews and testimonials as social proof. You can also add trust badges on your website to indicate you’re a reputable company.
To further improve your page’s performance, add a live chat feature to assist website visitors as they shop. You may learn valuable insights from these interactions that help you optimize your page.
Lastly, invest in tools like Optimizely, Hotjar, Unbounce, and Crazy Egg to better understand your visitors’ behavior on your site and identify areas for improvement.
How to Decrease Bounce Rate of Your Blog
Reducing your blog’s bounce rate is all about following tried-and-true formulas:

Have a clear structure and page hierarchy – Using headers and subheaders help visitors (and search engines) understand what information is on the page and how it is organized.

Use high-quality media – Photos, gifs, illustrations, and videos are great for breaking up long sections of text as well as diversifying your information delivery method.

Make your content error-free – When users see a page riddled with mistakes, it can make them question the brand’s credibility and lead them to exit out of the page.

Include a clear call-to-action – Having a clear next step for your website visitor will help guide them in the direction you want them to go. Want them to read other articles? Hyperlink them in your post. Want them to download an offer? Include the CTA in the post.

How to Decrease Email Bounce Rates
Email bounce rates are defined differently than bounce rates on other channels.
An email bounce rate refers to the number of emails that are not delivered to a subscriber list. There are two types of bounce rates: hard and soft. The former refers to a permanent reason why the email cannot deliver while the latter refers to a temporary issue.
For instance, say you have 100 email subscribers. You send an email blast and 98% of them receive your email. Your email bounce rate, in this case, would be 2%.
The average bounce rate is 0.7%, according to Campaign Monitor. However, this number can vary slightly by provider.
A bounce rate ranging between 0 and 2% is normal. Anything beyond that and you’ll want to look deeper.
Here are some ways to reduce your email bounce rate:

Use double opt-ins – Sending a confirmation email to a recipient with a CTA to subscribe will ensure the submitted email is correct and working properly.

Clean out your subscriber list regularly – Removing inactive subscribers is another way to verify that your email addresses on file work are healthy and active.

Invest in a reputable email provider – Free sender platforms will not cut it when it comes to email marketing. This means leaving your Gmail, Hotmail, or Yahoo accounts for personal use and looking into HubSpot, MailChimp, SendinBlue, and more.

Designing a Website with a Low Bounce Rate
Having a website with a bounce rate requires constant monitoring and maintenance.
By making sure your content is aligned with your visitors’ needs, your content is easy to navigate, and your conversion elements are clear, you can keep a low bounce rate.
Ready to start optimizing your website? Use this checklist as your guide. It includes everything you’ll need to improve your website performance, including SEO and security.
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in July 2014 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Like a tree falling in the woods, if you launch a product without spreading the word — will anyone use it? Will anyone even want it?
Probably not. Whether you’re launching something huge, something small, or you’re updating a current offering, you’ll want to start your preparation well in advance of the launch date.
This includes nailing down your positioning and messaging, sharing that with key teams and stakeholders, listing out all the launch activities, creating assets and content, prepping everyone involved in the launch, and so on.

Because there are so many moving parts in this process, bringing your product to market can be intimidating and tricky.
To help you, we’ve come up with a step-by-step checklist for a successful product launch and gathered the best product launch tips from a HubSpot Product Marketer.
Plus, we’ll review how to know when to delay a product launch.

1. Learn about your customer.
Whether you call it “market research,” or “customer development” it’s key to learn about what drives your customer. Identifying their goals, motivations, and pain points could lead you to developing and marketing a valuable solution.
You don’t need to perform years of intense research to learn about your customer. In fact, we suggest just talking to 12 to 15 current or prospective customers.
When speaking to them, pay extra attention when they start sentences with “I wish a product did this function…” or “Why can’t products do this?” When they give these statements, respond with questions that go deeper, like “Can you get more specific about that?” If they don’t bring up any pain points, ask them a few specific questions that will encourage them to give deeper answers.
These conversations will give you a solid idea of what their biggest pain points are and how you can market a solution to them. Once you learn these key details about your customers, you can develop a buyer persona that your team can focus on serving.
2. Write a positioning statement.
Write out a statement that can clearly and concisely answer these three questions:

Who is the product for?
What does the product do?
Why is it different from other products out there?

If you’d like to go even deeper, create a statement that answers the following questions:

What is your target audience?
What segment of the target audience is most likely to buy the product?
What brand name will you give your product or service?
What product or service category does your product lie in?
How is it different from competitors in the same category?
What evidence or proof do you have to prove that your product is different?

Still need more guidance on how to write a positioning statement? Check out this template.
3. Pitch your positioning to stakeholders.
Once you’ve established your position statement, present it to stakeholders in your company so they are all on the same page.
If your employees have a hard time buying into the product, your customers might as well. If your team loves it, that might be a great sign that the product launch will go well.
4. Plan your go-to-market strategy.
This is the strategy that you will use to launch and promote your product. While some businesses prefer to build a funnel strategy, others prefer the flywheel approach.
Regardless of which method you choose, this process contains many moving parts. To create an organized strategy for launching your product, it can be helpful to use a template, like this one.
As you create the strategy, also start considering which type of content you’ll use to attract a prospective customer’s attention during the awareness, consideration, and purchase decision stage. You’ll need to produce this content in the next step.
5. Set a goal for the launch.
Before you get started on the implementing your strategy, make sure you write down your goals for the launch.
Alex Girard, a Product Marketing Manager at HubSpot, says, “Create specific goals for the launch’s success. Keeping these goals in mind will help you focus your efforts on launch tactics that will help you achieve those goals.”
For example, the goals of your product launch could be to effectively establish a new product name, build awareness, or create sales opportunities.
One of the best ways to set goals for your launch team is to write them out like SMART goals. A SMART goal is Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound.
6. Create promotional content.
After planning out your go-to-market strategy and writing your SMART goals, start producing content that will support and align with those promotional efforts. This can include blog posts related to your product or industry, demos and tutorials, and landing pages.
Our go-to-market template will also help you determine which content you should create for each phase of your prospective customer’s buyer’s journey.
7. Prepare your team.
Be sure that your company and key stakeholders are ready for you to launch and begin marketing the product. Communicate with the company through internal presentations, Slack, or email to keep your company in-the-know of your launch plan.
8. Launch the product
Once you’ve completed all the above steps, you can launch the product.
9. See how well you did achieving your goals.
After you launch your product, track how the go-to-market strategy is performing. Be prepared to pivot or adjust aspects of your plan if they aren’t going smoothly.
Additionally, don’t forget about the goals you set before the launch. See how well you did achieving those goals. If the launch didn’t meet expectations, you can rethink your go-to-market strategy and adjust from there.

The cost of launching a new product varies significantly. For instance, an entrepreneur will see vastly different costs for launching a product on Amazon than an enterprise company might see for launching a product in a million dollar market. 
Let’s consider two examples to explore this more closely. 
In the first example, let’s say you’re an entrepreneur who has invented a design app you’re hoping to sell online. You might conduct market research to determine which marketing strategies work best for your goals, which messaging resonates best with your audience, and which design elements appeal to your desired prospects. If you use a few focus groups to determine these answers, you might expect to spend roughly $5,000. 
When you’re bringing a new app to the market, you’ll need to choose the best go-to marketing strategy for your needs. Regardless of the strategy you choose, they all cost money. For instance, product branding could cost roughly $1,000 if you’re paying a designer to help you out, and website design could cost anywhere from $500-$3,000 if you’re paying a web designer a one-off fee. 
These fees don’t include the cost you need to pay yourself and any employees if this is a full-time job. It also doesn’t include the costs of hiring an engineer to update the app’s features and ensure the app is running smoothly. 
With this simplified example, you’re looking at roughly $8,000. Of course, you can cut some costs if you choose to do any of these tasks yourself, but you might risk creating a subpar customer experience.
On the other end of the spectrum, let’s consider a large enterprise company that is launching a new product. Here, you’ll likely pay upwards of $30,000 – $50,000 for market research.
Perhaps you’ll spend $15,000 on brand positioning and the marketing materials necessary to differentiate yourself against competitors, and you might pay upwards of $30,000 for all the product design and brand packaging. Finally, your marketing team could need a budget of roughly $20,000 for SEO, paid advertising, social, content creation, etc. 
All said and done, launching a product against other enterprise competitors’ could cost roughly $125,000. Again, that doesn’t include the costs you’ll pay your marketing, product development, and engineering teams. 
How to Launch a Product Online
To launch your product online, you’ll want to ensure you’ve followed the steps above. However, there are a few additional steps you’ll want to follow to gain traction primarily online. 
1. Figure out the story you want to tell regarding your product’s bigger purpose. 
What story do you want to tell across social platforms, landing pages, and email? This is similar to your positioning statement, but needs to be geared entirely towards your target audience. Ask questions like, Why should they purchase your product? And How will your product or service make their lives better? 
Communicating cross-functionally ensures the communication materials you use across various online channels align — which is key when it comes to establishing a new product in the marketplace. 
Consider, for instance, how Living Proof announced its new product, Advanced Clean Dry Shampoo, on its Instagram page. The story revolves around a simple nuisance common with most other dry shampoos — How consumers still want that just-washed feeling, even when using a dry shampoo. 

Image Source
By focusing on how the product will benefit consumers through storytelling, and using a new hashtag #NoWastedWashes, Living Proof builds excitement and demand for its new product. 
2. Display customer testimonials, case studies, and other social evidence to positively frame your new product. 
Consumers want to see that other consumers have already taken the risk and purchased your new product before doing it themselves. This is where social proof comes into play. 
In the weeks leading up to a product launch, or shortly after its launched, begin posting customer testimonials, reviews, and case studies to showcase how your new product has already helped other people. Take this a step further and employ influencers to share the word about your product as well, if it’s a good fit for your brand. 
Consumers are smart enough to know they shouldn’t trust every advertisement they see — but they can trust fellow consumers. So leverage that trust through social proof methods. 
3. Create a social and email campaign. 
Create a full, comprehensive social media campaign to increase interest and awareness in your new product.
Use paid advertising to reach new audiences, create full product explainer videos to use across your social channels, and use email to reach existing customers and provide an exclusive, first look at your new product’s features.
Additionally, you might consider hosting a live stream to connect directly with prospects and existing customers, and invite experts from your product development team to explain the new features of your product. 
It’s important to note — in this stage, you’ll want to pay attention to how consumers are interacting with the communication materials regarding your new product. Share concerns and feedback with the product development team — it’s important to trust your consumers and use their feedback to strengthen your product. 
4. Have a pre-order option. 
If a consumer is excited to purchase your new product, don’t make them wait — provide an option to pre-order the product or service before it’s even available. This helps spread out demand, while enabling consumers to purchase the product whenever they’re feeling most inclined to do so.
Product Launch Best Practices by Industry
1. How to Launch a Digital Product
When launching a digital product, you’ll want to begin building anticipation with a strong content marketing strategy. Use blog posts, email marketing, social media, and other channels of distribution to increase interest and demand for your digital product. 
You’ll also want to ensure you’re leveraging lead generation strategies to reach existing customers and prospects. 
For instance, let’s say you’re launching an online course on SEO. In the weeks leading up to launch, you might create SEO-related blog content to send to your email subscribers with an option to join the SEO course’s waitlist. This helps you gauge the effectiveness of your marketing materials while reaching an audience that has already demonstrated interest in your brand. 
How to Launch a Product on Amazon
Anyone who’s ever shopped on Amazon knows the importance of a good product listing. In the week’s leading up to launch, take the time to create a strong, high-converting product listing — including taking high-resolution photos of your product, writing a description that outlines your product’s differentiating features, and using keywords to help your product rank on Amazon. 
Additionally, product reviews are incredibly important on Amazon, so you’ll want to ensure you have reviews ready-to-go before you even launch your product on Amazon. To do this, ensure you’ve either launched your product on your own website first (which gives you time to earn reviews before launching on Amazon), or send your product to a select group of interested buyers ahead of the full launch, and collect reviews from them. 
Finally, ensure you’re ready for an Amazon product launch by checking inventory. You never know how quickly your product might gain traction on the ecommerce super-store, so make sure you have enough product to fulfill Amazon orders quickly. 
Take a look at HubSpot’s The Ultimate Guide to Selling on Amazon in 2021 for more information related to Amazon. 
How to Launch a SaaS Product
To launch a SaaS product, you’ll want to start by researching competitors and understanding the marketplace at-large. There’s plenty of demand for SaaS products, since more than 38% of companies work almost entirely on SaaS. However, the SaaS industry is also well-saturated, so before launching a SaaS product, you’ll want to determine how your product differs from all the others in the industry. 
To create a successful product launch, you’ll want to conduct market research and focus groups to determine the true benefits and differentiators of your product. 
Next, you’ll want to employ a strong content marketing strategy to increase your website’s visibility on search engines, and to ensure your business is appearing in search results for topics related to your product. 
Since you aren’t launching a physical product, your marketing efforts need to convince businesses that your product can solve for their needs. For instance, take a look at how HubSpot positioned the new Operations Hub product in this introductory video: 

Additionally, you might want to offer free trials or a freemium option for smaller businesses on lower budgets to test out your offerings before committing. 
For a full SaaS rundown, take a look at HubSpot’s Ultimate Guide to Software as a Service (SaaS). 
How to Launch a Food Product
To launch a food product, you’ll first need to ensure you’re prepared for the costs required to do so — including how much it costs to package and store the product (including packaging, warehousing, and distribution), and how much it costs to sell the product (including branding and digital marketing). 
Next, you’ll want to follow federal and state food regulations. For instance, you need to ensure you’re following health department rules for food preparation surfaces, refrigeration, and sanitation.
You’ll also need to make sure the labeling you use on your product’s packaging is accurate, which requires you to send your food product to a lab for analysis, and check with your state commerce to see what it requires when it comes to nutrition labels. 
When launching a food product, you’ll likely want to hire a food broker. A food broker can foster relationships with national or local grocery stores, and will create a promotional plan to help increase sales as soon as your food hits the shelves. 
Typically, a supermarket will test out your product for a few months before determining if there’s enough consumer interest to keep it stocked — which is why a food broker can be incredibly useful for using business intelligence and industry knowledge to ensure a successful food product launch. 
Product Launch Tips
To learn the best practices for a successful product launch, I talked to Alex Girard again.
The HubSpot Product Marketing Manager said he had three main tips for a successful product launch:

Your product positioning should reflect a shift you’re seeing in the world, and how your product helps your customers take advantage of that shift.
Create a recurring schedule for you and the core stakeholders for the launch to check in and ensure you’re all on the same page.
Make sure you keep the product team in the loop on your marketing plans. The product team could have insights that inform your overall marketing campaign.

However, sometimes, external factors might impact your ability to launch a product. When that happens, you might need to delay your launch.
How to Know When to Delay a Product Launch
To understand when, and why, you might hold off on a product launch, Girard told me there are three key reasons why you might want to delay a product launch, including:

When your product itself isn’t ready, and you need to change your timeline to create the best customer experience possible.
If a situation occurs where your current customers are having a less than optimal experience with one of your current products. Before launching and promoting a new product, you should make sure your current customers are satisfied with your existing product offering.
If something occurs on an international, national, state, or local level that requires your audience to readjust their priorities and shift focus away from your company and its product launch. Make sure that when the time comes to launch, your target audience is ready to learn about your new product.

If you’re looking for templates to coordinate your team efforts and align your company around your new product’s messaging, download our free product marketing kit below.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in November 2015 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

 

When marketers like us create landing pages, write email copy, or design call-to-action buttons, it can be tempting to use our intuition to predict what will make people click and convert.
But basing marketing decisions off of a “feeling” can be pretty detrimental to results. Rather than relying on guesses or assumptions to make these decisions, you’re much better off running an A/B test — sometimes called a split test.

A/B testing can be valuable because different audiences behave, well, differently. Something that works for one company may not necessarily work for another. In fact, conversion rate optimization (CRO) experts hate the term “best practices” because it may not actually be the best practice for you.
But A/B tests can also be complex. If you’re not careful, you could make incorrect assumptions about what people like and what makes them click — decisions that could easily misinform other parts of your strategy.
Keep reading to learn how to do A/B testing before, during, and after data collection so you can make the best decisions from your results.

To run an A/B test, you need to create two different versions of one piece of content, with changes to a single variable. Then, you’ll show these two versions to two similarly sized audiences and analyze which one performed better over a specific period of time (long enough to make accurate conclusions about your results).

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A/B testing helps marketers observe how one version of a piece of marketing content performs alongside another. Here are two types of A/B tests you might conduct in an effort to increase your website’s conversion rate:
Example 1: User Experience Test
Perhaps you want to see if moving a certain call-to-action (CTA) button to the top of your homepage instead of keeping it in the sidebar will improve its click-through rate.
To A/B test this theory, you’d create another, alternative web page that uses the new CTA placement. The existing design with the sidebar CTA — or the “control” — is Version A. Version B with the CTA at the top is the “challenger.” Then, you’d test these two versions by showing each of them to a predetermined percentage of site visitors. Ideally, the percentage of visitors seeing either version is the same.
Learn how to easily A/B test a component of your website with HubSpot’s Marketing Hub.
Example 2: Design Test
Perhaps you want to find out if changing the color of your call-to-action (CTA) button can increase its click-through rate.
To A/B test this theory, you’d design an alternative CTA button with a different button color that leads to the same landing page as the control. If you usually use a red call-to-action button in your marketing content, and the green variation receives more clicks after your A/B test, this could merit changing the default color of your call-to-action buttons to green from now on.
To learn more about A/B testing, download our free introductory guide here.

A/B Testing in Marketing
A/B testing has a multitude of benefits to a marketing team, depending on what it is you decide to test. Above all, though, these tests are valuable to a business because they’re low in cost but high in reward.
Let’s say you employ a content creator with a salary of $50,000/year. This content creator publishes five articles per week for the company blog, totaling 260 articles per year. If the average post on the company’s blog generates 10 leads, you could say it costs just over $192 to generate 10 leads for the business ($50,000 salary ÷ 260 articles = $192 per article). That’s a solid chunk of change.
Now, if you ask this content creator to spend two days developing an A/B test on one article, instead of writing two articles in that time period, you might burn $192 because you’re publishing one fewer article. But if that A/B test finds you can increase each article’s conversion rate from 10 to 20 leads, you just spent $192 to potentially double the number of customers your business gets from your blog.
If the test fails, of course, you lost $192 — but now you can make your next A/B test even more educated. If that second test succeeds in doubling your blog’s conversion rate, you ultimately spent $284 to potentially double your company’s revenue. No matter how many times your A/B test fails, its eventual success will almost always outweigh the cost to conduct it.

There are many types of split tests you can run to make the experiment worth it in the end. Here are some common goals marketers have for their business when A/B testing:

Increased Website Traffic: Testing different blog post titles or webpage titles can change the number of people who click on that hyperlinked title to get to your website. This can increase website traffic as a result.

Higher Conversion Rate: Testing different locations, colors, or even anchor text on your CTAs can change the number of people who click these CTAs to get to a landing page. This can increase the number of people who fill out forms on your website, submit their contact info to you, and “convert” into a lead.

Lower Bounce Rate: If your website visitors leave (or “bounce”) quickly after visiting your website, testing different blog post introductions, fonts, or featured images can reduce this bounce rate and retain more visitors.

Lower Cart Abandonment: Ecommerce businesses see an average of 70% of customers leave their website with items in their shopping cart. This is known as “shopping cart abandonment” and is, of course, detrimental to any online store. Testing different product photos, check-out page designs, and even where shipping costs are displayed can lower this abandonment rate.

Now, let’s walk through the checklist for setting up, running, and measuring an A/B test.

How to Conduct A/B Testing

Follow along with our free A/B testing kit with everything you need to run A/B testing including a test tracking template, a how-to guide for instruction and inspiration, and a statistical significance calculator to see if your tests were wins, losses, or inconclusive.

Before the A/B Test
Let’s cover the steps to take before you start your A/B test.
1. Pick one variable to test.
As you optimize your web pages and emails, you might find there are a number of variables you want to test. But to evaluate how effective a change is, you’ll want to isolate one “independent variable” and measure its performance. Otherwise, you can’t be sure which variable was responsible for changes in performance.
You can test more than one variable for a single web page or email — just be sure you’re testing them one at a time.
To determine your variable, look at the elements in your marketing resources and their possible alternatives for design, wording, and layout. Other things you might test include email subject lines, sender names, and different ways to personalize your emails.
Keep in mind that even simple changes, like changing the image in your email or the words on your call-to-action button, can drive big improvements. In fact, these sorts of changes are usually easier to measure than the bigger ones.
Note: There are some times when it makes more sense to test multiple variables rather than a single variable. This is a process called multivariate testing. If you’re wondering whether you should run an A/B test versus a multivariate test, here’s a helpful article from Optimizely that compares the two processes.
2. Identify your goal.
Although you’ll measure several metrics during any one test, choose a primary metric to focus on before you run the test. In fact, do it before you even set up the second variation. This is your “dependent variable,” which changes based on how you manipulate the independent variable.
Think about where you want this dependent variable to be at the end of the split test. You might even state an official hypothesis and examine your results based on this prediction.
If you wait until afterward to think about which metrics are important to you, what your goals are, and how the changes you’re proposing might affect user behavior, then you might not set up the test in the most effective way.
3. Create a ‘control’ and a ‘challenger.’
You now have your independent variable, your dependent variable, and your desired outcome. Use this information to set up the unaltered version of whatever you’re testing as your control scenario. If you’re testing a web page, this is the unaltered page as it exists already. If you’re testing a landing page, this would be the landing page design and copy you would normally use.
From there, build a challenger — the altered website, landing page, or email that you’ll test against your control. For example, if you’re wondering whether adding a testimonial to a landing page would make a difference in conversions, set up your control page with no testimonials. Then, create your challenger with a testimonial.
4. Split your sample groups equally and randomly.
For tests where you have more control over the audience — like with emails — you need to test with two or more audiences that are equal in order to have conclusive results.
How you do this will vary depending on the A/B testing tool you use. If you’re a HubSpot Enterprise customer conducting an A/B test on an email, for example, HubSpot will automatically split traffic to your variations so that each variation gets a random sampling of visitors.
5. Determine your sample size (if applicable).
How you determine your sample size will also vary depending on your A/B testing tool, as well as the type of A/B test you’re running.
If you’re A/B testing an email, you’ll probably want to send an A/B test to a subset of your list that is large enough to achieve statistically significant results. Eventually, you’ll pick a winner and send the winning variation on to the rest of the list. (See “The Science of Split Testing” ebook at the end of this article for more on calculating your sample size.)
If you’re a HubSpot Enterprise customer, you’ll have some help determining the size of your sample group using a slider. It’ll let you do a 50/50 A/B test of any sample size — although all other sample splits require a list of at least 1,000 recipients.

If you’re testing something that doesn’t have a finite audience, like a web page, then how long you keep your test running will directly affect your sample size. You’ll need to let your test run long enough to obtain a substantial number of views. Otherwise, it will be hard to tell whether there was a statistically significant difference between variations.
6. Decide how significant your results need to be.
Once you’ve picked your goal metric, think about how significant your results need to be to justify choosing one variation over another. Statistical significance is a super important part of the A/B testing process that’s often misunderstood. If you need a refresher, I recommend reading this blog post on statistical significance from a marketing standpoint.
The higher the percentage of your confidence level, the more sure you can be about your results. In most cases, you’ll want a confidence level of 95% minimum — preferably even 98% — especially if it was a time-intensive experiment to set up. However, sometimes it makes sense to use a lower confidence rate if you don’t need the test to be as stringent.
Matt Rheault, a senior software engineer at HubSpot, likes to think of statistical significance like placing a bet. What odds are you comfortable placing a bet on? Saying “I’m 80% sure this is the right design and I’m willing to bet everything on it” is similar to running an A/B test to 80% significance and then declaring a winner.
Rheault also says you’ll likely want a higher confidence threshold when testing for something that only slightly improves conversion rate. Why? Because random variance is more likely to play a bigger role.
“An example where we could feel safer lowering our confidence threshold is an experiment that will likely improve conversion rate by 10% or more, such as a redesigned hero section,” he explained.
“The takeaway here is that the more radical the change, the less scientific we need to be process-wise. The more specific the change (button color, microcopy, etc.), the more scientific we should be because the change is less likely to have a large and noticeable impact on conversion rate.”
7. Make sure you’re only running one test at a time on any campaign.
Testing more than one thing for a single campaign — even if it’s not on the same exact asset — can complicate results. For example, if you A/B test an email campaign that directs to a landing page at the same time that you’re A/B testing that landing page, how can you know which change caused the increase in leads?

During the A/B Test
Let’s cover the steps to take during your A/B test.
8. Use an A/B testing tool.
To do an A/B test on your website or in an email, you’ll need to use an A/B testing tool. If you’re a HubSpot Enterprise customer, the HubSpot software has features that let you A/B test emails (learn how here), calls-to-action (learn how here), and landing pages (learn how here).
For non-HubSpot Enterprise customers, other options include Google Analytics, which lets you A/B test up to 10 full versions of a single web page and compare their performance using a random sample of users.
9. Test both variations simultaneously.
Timing plays a significant role in your marketing campaign’s results, whether it’s time of day, day of the week, or month of the year. If you were to run Version A during one month and Version B a month later, how would you know whether the performance change was caused by the different design or the different month?
When you run A/B tests, you’ll need to run the two variations at the same time, otherwise you may be left second-guessing your results.
The only exception here is if you’re testing timing itself, like finding the optimal times for sending out emails. This is a great thing to test because depending on what your business offers and who your subscribers are, the optimal time for subscriber engagement can vary significantly by industry and target market.
10. Give the A/B test enough time to produce useful data.
Again, you’ll want to make sure that you let your test run long enough to obtain a substantial sample size. Otherwise, it’ll be hard to tell whether there was a statistically significant difference between the two variations.
How long is long enough? Depending on your company and how you execute the A/B test, getting statistically significant results could happen in hours … or days … or weeks. A big part of how long it takes to get statistically significant results is how much traffic you get — so if your business doesn’t get a lot of traffic to your website, it’ll take much longer for you to run an A/B test.
Read this blog post to learn more about sample size and timing.
11. Ask for feedback from real users.
A/B testing has a lot to do with quantitative data … but that won’t necessarily help you understand why people take certain actions over others. While you’re running your A/B test, why not collect qualitative feedback from real users?
One of the best ways to ask people for their opinions is through a survey or poll. You might add an exit survey on your site that asks visitors why they didn’t click on a certain CTA, or one on your thank-you pages that asks visitors why they clicked a button or filled out a form.
You might find, for example, that a lot of people clicked on a call-to-action leading them to an ebook, but once they saw the price, they didn’t convert. That kind of information will give you a lot of insight into why your users are behaving in certain ways.

After the A/B Test
Finally, let’s cover the steps to take after your A/B test.
12. Focus on your goal metric.
Again, although you’ll be measuring multiple metrics, keep your focus on that primary goal metric when you do your analysis.
For example, if you tested two variations of an email and chose leads as your primary metric, don’t get caught up on open rate or click-through rate. You might see a high click-through rate and poor conversion rates, in which case you might end up choosing the variation that had a lower click-through rate in the end.
13. Measure the significance of your results using our A/B testing calculator.
Now that you’ve determined which variation performs the best, it’s time to determine whether your results are statistically significant. In other words, are they enough to justify a change?
To find out, you’ll need to conduct a test of statistical significance. You could do that manually … or you could just plug in the results from your experiment to our free A/B testing calculator.
For each variation you tested, you’ll be prompted to input the total number of tries, like emails sent or impressions seen. Then, enter the number of goals it completed — generally you’ll look at clicks, but this could also be other types of conversions.

The calculator will spit out the confidence level your data produces for the winning variation. Then, measure that number against the value you chose to determine statistical significance.
14. Take action based on your results.
If one variation is statistically better than the other, you have a winner. Complete your test by disabling the losing variation in your A/B testing tool.
If neither variation is statistically better, you’ve just learned that the variable you tested didn’t impact results, and you’ll have to mark the test as inconclusive. In this case, stick with the original variation, or run another test. You can use the failed data to help you figure out a new iteration on your new test.
While A/B tests help you impact results on a case-by-case basis, you can also apply the lessons you learn from each test and apply it to future efforts.
For example, if you’ve conducted A/B tests in your email marketing and have repeatedly found that using numbers in email subject lines generates better clickthrough rates, you might want to consider using that tactic in more of your emails.
15. Plan your next A/B test.
The A/B test you just finished may have helped you discover a new way to make your marketing content more effective — but don’t stop there. There’s always room for more optimization.
You can even try conducting an A/B test on another feature of the same web page or email you just did a test on. For example, if you just tested a headline on a landing page, why not do a new test on body copy? Or a color scheme? Or images? Always keep an eye out for opportunities to increase conversion rates and leads.

A/B Testing Examples
We’ve discussed how A/B tests are used in marketing and how to conduct one — but how do they actually look in practice?
As you might guess, we run many A/B tests to increase engagement and drive conversions across our platform. Here are five examples of A/B tests to inspire your own experiments.
1. Site Search
Site search bars help users quickly find what they’re after on a particular website. HubSpot found from previous analysis that visitors who interacted with its site search bar were more likely to convert on a blog post. So, we ran an A/B test in an attempt to increase engagement with the search bar.
In this test, search bar functionality was the independent variable and views on the content offer thank you page was the dependent variable. We used one control condition and three challenger conditions in the experiment.
In the control condition (variant A), the search bar remained unchanged.

In variant B, the search bar was made larger and more visually prominent, and the placeholder text was set to “search by topic.”

Variant C appeared identical to variant B, but only searched the HubSpot Blog rather than the entire website.
In variant D, the search bar was made larger but the placeholder text was set to “search the blog.” This variant also searched only the HubSpot Blog

We found variant D to be the most effective: It increased conversions by 3.4% over the control and increased the percentage of users who used the search bar by 6.5%.
2. Mobile CTAs
HubSpot uses several CTAs for content offers in our blog posts, including ones in the body of posts as well as at the bottom of the page. We test these CTAs extensively for optimize their performance.
For our mobile users, we ran an A/B test to see which type of bottom-of-page CTA converted best. For our independent variable, we altered the design of the CTA bar. Specifically, we used one control and three challengers in our test. For our dependent variables, we used pageviews on the CTA thank you page and CTA clicks.
The control condition included our normal placement of CTAs at the bottom of posts. In variant B, the CTA had no close or minimize option.
In variant C, mobile readers could close the CTA by tapping an X icon. Once it was closed out, it wouldn’t reappear.

In variant D, we included an option to minimize the CTA with an up/down caret.

Our tests found all variants to be successful. Variant D was the most successful, with a 14.6% increase in conversions over the control. This was followed by variant C with an 11.4% increase and variant B with a 7.9% increase.
3. Author CTAs
In another CTA experiment, HubSpot tested whether adding the word “free” and other descriptive language to author CTAs at the top of blog posts would increase content leads. Past research suggested that using “free” in CTA text would drive more conversions and that text specifying the type of content offered would be helpful for SEO and accessibility.
In the test, the independent variable was CTA text and the main dependent variable was conversion rate on the content offer form.
In the control condition, author CTA text was unchanged (see the orange button in the image below).

In variant B, the word “free” was added to the CTA text.

In variant C, descriptive wording was added to the CTA text in addition to “free.”

Interestingly, variant B saw a loss in form submissions, down by 14% compared to the control. This was unexpected, since including “free” in content offer text is widely considered a best practice.
Meanwhile, form submissions in variant C outperformed the control by 4%. It was concluded that adding descriptive text to the author CTA helped users understand the offer and thus made them more likely to download.
4. Blog Table of Contents
To help users better navigate the blog, HubSpot tested a new Table of Contents (TOC) module. The goal was to improve user experience by presenting readers with their desired content more quickly. We also tested whether adding a CTA to this TOC module would increase conversions.
The independent variable of this A/B test was the inclusion and type of TOC module in blog posts, and the dependent variables were conversion rate on content offer form submissions and clicks on the CTA inside the TOC module.
The control condition did not include the new TOC module — control posts either had no table of contents, or a simple bulleted list of anchor links within the body of the post near the top of the article (pictured below).

In variant B, the new TOC module was added to blog posts. This module was sticky, meaning it remained onscreen as users scrolled down the page. Variant B also included a content offer CTA at the bottom of the module.

Variant C included an identical module to variant B but with the CTA removed.

Both variants B and C did not increase the conversion rate on blog posts. The control condition outperformed variant B by 7% and performed equally with variant C. Also, few users interacted with the new TOC module or the CTA inside the module.
5. Review Notifications
To determine the best way of gathering customer reviews, we ran a split test of email notifications versus in-app notifications. Here, the independent variable was the type of notification and the dependent variable was the percentage of those who left a review out of all those who opened the notification.
In the control, HubSpot sent a plain text email notification asking users to leave a review. In variant B, HubSpot sent an email with a certificate image including the user’s name.

For variant C, HubSpot sent users an in app-notification.

Ultimately, both emails performed similarly and outperformed the in-app notifications. About 25% of users who opened an email left a review versus the 10.3% who opened in-app notifications. Emails were also more often opened by users.
Start A/B Testing Today
A/B testing allows you to get to the truth of what content and marketing your audience wants to see. Learn how to best carry out some of the steps above using the free e-book below.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in May 2016 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

To thrive as a small business, you need press coverage. But, unfortunately, coverage doesn’t just come naturally – you need to work for it.
Enter: the press release.

Press releases are important for increasing your brand awareness and helping your public relations (PR). But if nobody sees your release, you won’t get very far. You need to distribute it effectively to get your story picked up by local and/or national newspapers, magazines, or blogs.
In this guide to press release distribution, we’ll cover the following to help you put together a plan of action that results in coverage:

What is press release distribution?
Why is press release distribution important?
How to distribute your press release
Distribution mistakes to avoid
Should you use distribution services?

Keep reading to learn how you can properly create, pitch, and distribute a press release for optimal brand awareness.
What is press release distribution?
Before we dive any deeper, let’s iron out exactly what press release distribution is.
It’s the process of circulating or seeding out your press release to journalists, publishers, and members of the press.
Your press release normally provides updates on your company’s products and/or services, projects, partnerships, organization structure, and more. With distribution, you allow various publications to share your press release and thus, reach a wider audience.
Why should you submit a press release?
The purpose of distributing a press release is to land coverage in media publications, such as newspapers, radio, TV news bulletins, podcasts, and blogs. That way, you’re positioning your brand in front of a wider audience.
If you only post your press release on your website, most consumers won’t know about it – which defeats the entire purpose behind writing your press release.
Gaining press coverage helps to get your business or brand name into the public forum. That helps build brand awareness – especially when 71% of journalists consider press releases to be their favorite type of content to receive from brands.
Distributing a press release also has these benefits:
1. Press releases can boost your SEO.
Over three billion Google searches are made every day.
Implementing SEO tactics into your overall marketing strategy will help you rank high for your target audience’s search queries. This means that you’re that much closer to reaching potential customers as they search online for information related to your company, industry, product, or service.
Gaining backlinks to your site from high-authority websites is a huge ranking factor for SEO, as explained in a 2021 study by Backlinko:

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Distributing press releases can help you land coverage on huge publications. Additionally, there’s a chance those websites will link to yours, which can help to boost your search engine visibility.
But what happens if you land awesome coverage without a backlink?
Don’t panic – In the past, Both Google and Bing have suggested that positive brand mentions can play a role in how they rank your site, meaning positive PR coverage can aid your SEO efforts even without a link.
2. A press release can drive local foot traffic to your store.
If your business is a brick-and-mortar shop, press release distributions can help to get people through the door.
Whether you’re running an event or simply launching an eye-catching sale, measuring foot traffic into your store after distributing a press release is a simple way to gauge how successful your release has been.
3. A press release can generate more sales.
If you’re launching a new product or an exclusive line, a targeted press release can have a significant impact on your bottom line. Why? Because it helps drum up interest if it’s innovative and sets you apart from competitors.
Busy shopping days can be a great way to get your products in front of potential customers.
For instance, if you’re offering discounts on Black Friday or Cyber Monday, why not reach out to retail journalists to highlight your offers?

Should you use press release distribution services?
Distributing a press release sounds time-consuming, doesn’t it? If only there was a way to get yours seeded out quickly, at scale.
Fortunately, there is.
If you’re on a tight schedule and don’t have time to manually reach out to local or national publishers, a press release distribution service is the perfect solution.
These services allow you to send out your release to relevant journalists without doing any of the manual work yourself.
While it does cost to use these services, they can save you hours of work. By letting the experts distribute your news story, you can spend time focusing on other tasks.
So, if you fancy taking distribution off your plate, check out these 10 services.
1. Newswire

Newswire is one of the top distribution service providers available in the market. When using the top-rate company, your press release can reach major news outlets, such as NBC, MarketWatch, and NBC.

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Newswire also offers multitarget layering for you to reach your desired audience at the local, state, and regional levels.
Furthermore, the service provider follows a strict editorial process to ensure your press release is error-free when it reaches consumers.
Pricing: Starts at $199 per release and goes up to five figures based on the number of press releases you want and the industries you’re targeting.
2. eReleases

With a media database of over 1.7 million contacts, eRelease is a distribution service you should consider.

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The brand has nurtured relationships with publishers, including influencers and reporters, for over 20 years and promises to include curated emails that will increase engagement.
In addition, eReleases optimizes your press release using white hat SEO practices to increase its chances of ranking on search engines. Furthermore, you can expert a detailed report after distribution with metrics on engagement, audience, and traffic.
Pricing: Starts at $299 and goes up to $599, excluding certain add-ons.
3. EIN Presswire

EIN Presswire is a leading distribution service with affordable pricing.

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With one of the quickest reviewal processes, EIN Presswire only takes about an hour to approve your release during the normal weekday hours. Once your release is distributed, you will gain access to a dashboard that will start populating after two hours.
In addition, EIN Presswire is a high authority website through which you can earn backlinks and reap the benefits on search engines.
Pricing: Starts at $49.95 per release and goes up to $999 for bundles.
4. PR Distribution

PR Distribution provides distribution services in both the U.S. and the U.K.

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Their starter press release package offers a guarantee of 25 placements, ensuring your story will be seen by your target audience.
Every other package offers an unlimited word count, a multi-tiered editing process, and access to ABC, NBC, and other news outlets.
Pricing: Starts at $99 and reaches up to $1,300 for bundle packages.
5. PR Newswire

Whether you’re looking for print or online distribution, PR Newswire is a great option.

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PR Newswire helps connect you to leading publishers in a wide range of industries.
If you’re looking for accurate data on your release’s performance, this provider’s got you covered. You can monitor and measure the impact of your story, and gain insights for future releases.
Furthermore, PR Newswire has a network of over 4,000 websites and 20,000 email subscribers. With a host of distribution channels, it’s up to you to decide which one will work best for your brand.
Pricing: Not published on their website.
6. 24-7 Press Release

Using a cloud-based platform, 24-7 Press Release distributes your news to traditional and digital outlets.

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24-7 Press Release follows a strict reviewal process to ensure your press release is ready to be distributed and follows their guidelines.
With a two-day turnaround time, their starter pack allows you to include up to five industry categories, four images, or documents and be sent to over 50 premium news sites.
The more advanced packages come with next-day turnaround, which is helpful if you have a tight deadline.
In addition, you’ll receive a report that tells you if and where your story was picked up.
Pricing: Starts at $19 per release and goes up to $389 depending on the distribution package you select.
7. PR Web

PR Web is a tool owned by Cision, a PR and earned media software company.
Their press release distribution service allows you to upload your press release (along with rich media like images and videos), then distribute the story to journalists and publications in your selected categories.

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PR Web also provides you with a comprehensive analytics dashboard, so you can monitor the impact of your campaign and calculate important metrics, such as ROI.
Pricing: $99 to $389 depending on the distribution package you select.
8. Response Source Press Release Wire

Response Source is a UK-based distribution service connecting brands with top UK publishers and journalists. With over 20 years of experience, the company has built a thriving network of journalists and publications, so you can benefit from having your news distributed by email to useful contacts.

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In a few simple steps, you can upload your release, set the date for publication, attach your media, select the categories, and choose your distribution channels.
You’ll also get your own “newsroom,” along with access to analytics, such as the number of views your press release received and email open rates.
Pricing: Starts at £85 per press release for ad hoc users and goes up to £1050 for bundles.
9. Presswire

Presswire has a live global database, allowing you to send your press release directly to the journalists who are most likely to pick up your story.

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One standout feature from Presswire is the ability to translate your press release into any language and leverage geo-targeting to deliver it to the appropriate regions.
This distribution service also offers an advanced analytics platform, providing insight on:

Who opened your press release.
Whether your release was forwarded.
How many times it was read.
How long people spent reading it.

These insights can help you refine your approach for future press releases.
Pricing: Starts at £150 and goes up based on the distribution package and add-on services you select.
10. PR Fire

PR Fire syndicates your release to newswires and journalists in the US and UK in your chosen industry categories – all within four business hours after receiving your content.
The press release is also published on the platform’s social media pages and site.
Additionally, two weeks after your press release is distributed, you receive a report detailing its performance.
PR Fire also offers a copy-editing service, in which a professional edits or rewrites your press release.

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PR Fire has landed its customers press coverage in a range of top-tier publications, including BuzzFeed, Metro, The Huffington Post, and The Times, so it’s worth checking out.
Pricing: £50 to £150 per press release depending on the distribution package you select.
You know how important PR is, and you’ve crafted a succinct, yet powerful, story. All that’s left to do is share it with the world.
But journalists have to write up to seven stories per day. So how do you ensure your press release is one of those stories? And just as importantly, how can you make your distribution email stand out in a crowded inbox?
Follow this five-step guide to learn how.
1. Find journalists who might be interested in your press release.
When have news to share, I’ll bet you’re tempted to tell as many people as possible. You want everyone to hear about it, right?
However, that’s not always the best strategy.
After crafting a great press release, you can identify journalists who may be interesting in creating a larger story surrounding your news.
You can do that by searching for journalists and publishers who’ve already written about your topic or industry.
For instance, let’s say you run a car parts business. You’ve conducted some research around potholes, gathered some interesting data, and turned it into a killer press release. But mailing every journalist under the sun is probably going to be a waste of time.
Instead, it’s worth seeking out publishers who cover the automotive industry and journalists who’ve covered similar topics before.
To do this, fire up Google, type in your topic (potholes), and navigate to the News tab:

As you can see, there are plenty of recent articles on this topic, meaning journalists are more than likely interested enough to cover it.
Next, read some of the articles on Google News and make a note of the journalists’ names.
A simple spreadsheet with the journalist’s name and the publication they write for is a good way to keep a log of your distribution plan:

If you have the budget, you can also use a media database, such as Cision or Muckrack to find relevant journalists and reporters.
This method is much more likely to get you responses because you’re only pitching the release to journalists who’ve demonstrated an interest in your topic.
2. Get the journalists’ contact details.
Next, it’s time to find some contact information for the people on your press release distribution list.
This could be as simple as clicking on an author’s bio on their publication’s site.

… and making a note of their email address:

But, just like anything else in the world of PR, it’s not always that easy.
You’ll often have to do a little digging to find the contact details – starting with a simple Google search such as “[Journalist’s name] email]”.
If that doesn’t do the trick, you could also use a media database like Muckrack:

Don’t have the budget for paid databases? Harness the power of social media.
LinkedIn is an excellent place to discover contact information for professional contacts (AKA, your journalists). Simply search for “journalist” and filter the results by selecting your target publication as “company,” then plug their name into Hunter to find their email address:

Twitter can also be a quick and easy way to get in touch with your target journalists, too.
3. Craft a killer pitch.
Email is the most effective way to send your press release quickly.
However, there’s another obstacle you’ll need to overcome here: Journalists can receive up to hundreds of pitches a day.
So here’s what you should do to stand out: First, keep it brief.
Don’t waste the journalist’s time with a long-winded, self-absorbed introduction to yourself or your business. They probably don’t care.
Instead, get straight into the purpose of your email: The story, and why they should cover it in their publication.
Journalists are time-poor, so they’ll appreciate a nice, succinct message that sells your story in a few words – like this:

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As you can see in the example above, the entire story is sold in the first sentence, with a direct question asking if the journalist is interested – rather than just assuming so.
Follow this up with a couple more sentences to give the journalist some additional context, before adding a line spacer and pasting your full press release.
Note: Avoid adding your press releases as attachments. Journalists don’t like opening attachments in fear of viruses or malware, so eliminate that problem by pasting the body of your press release below your pitch.
Second, you must personalize your pitch.
Show some interest in the journalist’s previous work by indicating that you know they’re a good fit based on the topics they cover.
Try to build a relationship with the journalists first, rather than hitting them with a release and expecting instant coverage.
Sometimes, it’s worth playing the long game by getting to know your desired publisher ahead of your pitch. Engage with them on LinkedIn, respond to their tweets, and generally work yourself into their notifications – and their radar.
3. Make your subject line irresistible.
What’s the first thing you look at before you open an email? The subject line, right? In many cases, it plays a big role in the email open rate.
So, how can you make sure yours gets opened? Try these tips:

Keep it short and sweet: Ideally, 10 or fewer words.

Ensure it’s unique: A powerful subject line should be disruptive, innovative, or offer a human-interest angle.

Be specific: Your subject line should be descriptive enough to let the reader know what to expect when they open the email.

Provide exclusivity: If you’ve got some unique data or research, mention that. Exclusivity can help you grab a journalist’s attention.

… And one thing to avoid? Clickbait. It’s that simple.
4. Send your press release pitch (at the right time).
Press release? Check. Pitch email? Check. Contact details? Check.
… But that doesn’t mean you’re ready to distribute your press release.
You’ll need to think about the day (and time) you hit the “send” button because certain days and times have better success rates than others.
For instance, some journalists may prefer to sift through pitches in the morning. While others may prefer mid-day or late afternoon.
It’s often a trial-and-error process that you should keep note of.
Additionally, it’s important to consider the day of the week. While modern-day businesses are often active seven days a week, there’s still a traditional lull in pick-up rates when it comes to press release distribution.
So, consider the day you send your release — it might land more coverage if you pitch it midweek, as opposed to sending it first thing on Monday morning.
5. Follow-up on your release.
An age-old question: Should you follow up on your pitch if it doesn’t get traction?
It depends on who you’re asking, but generally, the consensus seems evenly split. Some people believe following up to be a big no-no, while others indicate that it can be fruitful.
If you have a release you’re particularly proud of, it won’t hurt to follow up if you’re struggling to land coverage – provided you’re tactful.
Don’t spam the journalist’s inbox with the same press release and the same pitch. That can get annoying, and ruin your chances of getting your story picked up.
Instead, try tweaking the angle of your pitch to something that highlights why they should care about this story.
How to Submit Local Press Releases
Local press releases are great for small, brick-and-mortar businesses who want to reach consumers who are in their area.
That’s why it’s beneficial to send out your press release to local newspapers, publishers, and journalists.
Many of the guidelines outlined above still apply. What’s different here is that you can take a more personal approach to your pitches as well as distribution channels. For instance, you can target local radio and TV stations that may be interested in mentioning your story.
Press Release Distribution Mistakes
All set to send your next press release? Hang on a second.
Here are some common mistakes people make, and how you can avoid them when you distribute your press release.
1. Your press release is too long.
Your story needs to be short and succinct.
The easiest way to get your press release read is to cut the fluff. Remove any sentences that won’t add value to the reader.
Your press release needs four main sections:

Paragraph to introduce the news.
About two to three paragraphs to dive into the “what” and “why” of the news.
About and contact information.

Remember: Every sentence counts.
2. You’re targeting the wrong people or publications.
If you work for a small business looking to get some coverage, you’re going to get the most success from contacting local publications.
A local business story is rarely important enough to make national news.
You should also double-check that your target journalists are a good fit. Many tend to specialize in one or two interests – emailing a sports reporter about a press release related to health isn’t likely to result in coverage.
3. Your story isn’t newsworthy enough.
Before hitting send and distributing your release, take a moment and ask yourself: “Is this story actually newsworthy?”
If your release is too self-promotional, it may not interest your target audience.
Ensure it’s got a relevant angle and includes information and/or data pertinent to the story.
Accompanying quotes are also great, as they bring the story to life, rather than over-selling your own company. For instance, say you’re partnering with another brand, consider including a quote from the other brand’s CEO, which explains their interest in wanting to partner with you.
4. You didn’t include your contact info.
Imagine crafting that story, pitching it, and finding an interested reporter who wants to contact you for a larger story. But the journalist hits a dead end and is unable to contact you.
Unfortunately, if you don’t include your contact information in the press release, you risk losing out on the chance for increased exposure.
You need to make it easy for journalists to contact you by leaving a phone number and email address in your press release distribution email.
​​Remember to Keep the Relationship Alive
When you need to create a press release, follow the distribution steps in this guide to boost your chances of landing coverage.
Keep tweaking and refining your approach until you see success. Your first piece of coverage could well be the domino that starts the run. A story picked up by one news outlet can soon snowball from publication to publication.
Plus, if your story does get picked up, don’t forget to thank the journalist. It can facilitate a relationship that you can then nurture and facilitate easier coverage down the line.
Ultimately, you can never have too much good press!
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in November 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.