Author: Franz Malten Buemann

What will your marketing team look like six months from now? Or a year from now? How many people will you add? What new tools, systems, and data will you need?
There are a lot of potential questions you can ask about the future of your business, but there is one certainty: you’ll deal with more data, more people, more processes, and more complex problems as you grow.
But how do you deal with that in your marketing team? That’s where marketing technology, or martech, comes in. By automating tasks and removing obstacles from your team’s workflows, marketing tech empowers your team to waste less time on menial tasks, allowing your business to grow more efficiently.

When you put it all together, you get a marketing technology stack: a collection of tools that your team uses to do their best work every day.
As your team and business scales, it’s important to create a martech stack that streamlines your day-to-day processes. In this post, we’ll go over everything you need to know about martech and how to build a marketing tech stack that will stay with you as you grow your business.

Marketing technology can be used by any type of marketer — even non-digital marketers. One martech tool is typically used for a different marketing discipline.
Here are a few examples of disciplines and a martech tool that can be used for them.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO): A keyword research tool such as Moz is an example of a martech tool for SEO.

Content marketing: A content management platform such as CMS Hub can be used for content creation.

Social media marketing: A social management platform such as HootSuite is an example of a martech tool for social media marketing.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM): Google Ads is an example of a martech tool for SEM.

Event marketing: A lead collection software like the one included in Marketing Hub can be used for lead capture during an event.

Advertising: A programmatic ad platform such as mediasmart is an example of a martech tool for advertising.

Instead of adopting a plethora of different tools, some marketers choose to adopt an all-in-one solution such as Marketing Hub.
How is technology used in marketing?
Technology is used by marketers to execute their marketing campaigns. Marketers use software to automate marketing tasks and collect data so they can get insights related to campaign activity and their impact on customers.
For example, say that your team spends a significant amount of time emailing customers. The action feels repetitive, and it’s keeping people away from more pressing assignments. You may choose to use an email automation software, so less time is spent sending emails.
You also want the software you use to track data related to those emails, so you gain an understanding of how your users interact with them.
In brief, marketers use technology to make their jobs easier and understand their levels of success. The technology that marketers use in their campaigns is known as their marketing tech stack.
Let’s say that you primarily focus on SEO and paid ads on social media. You would add the following tools to your marketing tech stack: Moz for SEO and HootSuite for social media management.
Alternatively, you can adopt an all-in-one solution such as Marketing Hub to take care of both your SEO and social media marketing strategies.
For instance, Marketing Hub’s SEO tool will assist you in optimizing your site with its built-in keyword research tools, as well as as-you-type optimization advice while you’re creating content.

Its social media management tool will take care of everything related to social media — including post creation and audience engagement analytics. You can even reply directly to comments from the tool.

Overall, the technology you choose will help you execute your campaigns from start to finish.
But with so many to choose from, it can be difficult to build a martech stack that works for your team. Let’s go over how you can build an effective stack.
How to Build a Marketing Tech Stack
There is no out-of-the-box method for building your martech stack. Your company is unique, and your perfect marketing stack is not going to look exactly like anyone else’s.
This is the time for choosing the right tech tools for your team and setting them up in a way that your future team can use and understand. To do so, take the following steps.
1. Identify your primary marketing strategies and goals.
Before ever choosing a martech tool, you’ll need to outline your marketing strategies. It doesn’t have to be complicated, either: you simply need to have an idea of the basic strategies that you want to implement.
If you already have an established marketing team, take a look at the strategies that are currently in place. This will help you gauge, from the get-go, the types of tools you need.
Here’s an example. Let’s say that you want to increase organic traffic to your website. The strategy for that would be SEO. Next, you want to capture leads. So you would invest in a website redesign strategy that highlights your calls-to-actions more efficiently.
Jot these strategies down in a document, then include ideas for possible tools you can use to implement the strategies. If you don’t know which tools you use, simply write that you’ll list them after further research.
Example 1

Goal: Increase organic traffic

Strategy: SEO

Tools: To be determined

Example 2

Goal: Get more visitors to convert

Strategy: Redesign the website

Tools: To be determined

2. Survey your team to find out their challenges.
Next, sit down with your team and find out the challenges they encounter when trying to execute their day-to-day duties.
What adds more time to their workflow? What makes their job harder?
While the conversation should be open-ended, try to connect their challenges to your marketing goals. For instance, if you want to increase organic traffic, ask what specifically your team finds challenging when trying to optimize the website. If they say keyword research takes too much time, then you’d know that you’ll need a keyword research tool specifically.
Jot these challenges down in the same document you’ve already started. Keep it simple — just a sentence or a few bullet points will do.
Example 1

Goal: Increase organic traffic

Strategy: SEO

Challenges: Keyword research takes too much time

Tools: Keyword research tool that quickens the process

Example 2

Goal: Get more visitors to convert

Strategy: Redesigned website

Challenges: Unable to add CTAs because of the outdated backend system

Tools: A new content management system that allows the team to add CTAs to any page

3. Establish an estimated budget.
Building your dream martech stack means nothing if you can’t afford it. As you begin to determine the types of tools you’ll need, think about the funds you’ll allot for them.
You can go several ways about this. You can determine a budget per tool or per strategy. Alternatively, you can choose a budget overall for the entire team in a yearly, quarterly, or monthly basis.
Choosing a monthly budget is the best choice for small businesses without a dedicated finance team. Most tools are available on a monthly subscription basis, which makes it easier to drop one if it doesn’t work for the team.
You can also choose a budget per strategy. For instance, you can decide you’ll invest $200 a month in SEO tools.
Be sure to take into account the amount of seats you’ll need for the tool, or ensure the team is open to sharing one subscription. Most times, sharing a single subscription will work without a problem, and you can save a significant amount of money.
4. Research the tools you’ll consider for your martech stack.
Now that you have your strategies, your tool ideas, and your budget, it’s time to research the actual products you’ll add to your martech stack. If you’re a marketing leader, you can leave this task to individual team members, because they’ll be the ones using the tools.
It’s helpful to look at product curation posts to get a general idea of the offerings that are out there. For the keyword research challenges in your team, for example, you can look at a list of keyword research tools. If you’re looking for a new CMS, you should look at a list of the best CMS systems.
From there, you can investigate pricing, product reviews, and general fit for your team.
Make a list of the tech tools in a spreadsheet and include pricing and a general description of the product. From there, refine the list until you’ve decided on the tools you want to try out, and be sure to specify whether the tool needs a monthly or yearly subscription.
5. Consider non-marketing tools to add to your tech stack.
When we talk about the martech stack, we’re often caught up in marketing-specific tools. But there are a wide range of “general” tools that are useful for a marketing team.
Project management tools, collaboration platforms, and data sync software solutions are just a few of the products you can consider. Anything that cuts time from a complicated workflow is worth exploring. Google Drive would be an example, and so would Asana.
Add these products to your martech list, including the pricing and a brief description.
6. Compile the data that you’ll transfer into the tools.
After you’ve purchased the tools, it’s time to transfer the data. Already have a list of leads? How about Microsoft Word documents you’d like to import into Google Drive for collaborative editing?
Compile all of them in folders. Assign a type of data to each team member. For instance, one team member can compile the contacts from a conference. Another team member can compile the current templates you use for your social media posts. Another can compile all of the copy from the website for the website redesign.
When it’s time to sign up for the tools and adopt them, you can transfer these files and data and more easily pick up where you left off.
7. Assign one team member to create a workflow per tool.
Now that it’s time to adopt the martech tools, you don’t want to throw it out to your team without a workflow. That’s an easy way to end up with a subscription that no one is using.
Assign one team member to explore one specific tool. This team member will jot down workflow steps for using the tool effectively and write a step-by-step tutorial with screenshots. After, schedule a meeting for the team member to carry out a live tutorial.
Why? You can establish the best way to use the tool without a lot of guesswork. The process will be scattered and haphazard if everyone starts using the tool at once. By having a single uniform process, you can guarantee that every team member is using the tool to its fullest extent.
8. Analyze the tools’ success and switch solutions if necessary.
You don’t want to end up with an unused martech stack. Always audit your tools for their success — whether they effectively streamline workflows, automate tasks, and help your team do their work in a better way.
If not, there’s no shame in cancelling your subscription and going for another solution. Take a look at product curation posts, or research individual tools you may have heard of from other marketing leaders.
Let’s go over a few tips you should apply when building your martech stack.
Martech Stack Tips
As you build your marketing tech stack, you’ll be pulled in all sorts of different directions. When your business is growing, you’ll be tempted to add more complexity to address urgent gaps.
We’ve been there. HubSpot’s marketing operations team is all too familiar with the challenge of dealing with more and more as our team grows.
We’ve learned a lot along the way — so we gathered insights from HubSpot’s resident operations experts to ask what they wish they would have known when growing HubSpot’s own marketing tech stack.
1. Strategy first, technology second.
As companies grow, it can be tempting to rely on technology to support processes that are still evolving. Usually, this happens when a team adopts powerful tools that have a lot of potential, and they try to mold their systems around it.
HubSpot’s marketing operations team has made this mistake, too, and with an important takeaway: What sets apart truly powerful tech stacks isn’t just about the technology.
“The tools themselves won’t make you successful but rather how you use them,” explains Kerri Harrington, Marketing Ops Analyst here at HubSpot.
Harrington has worked closely with HubSpot Partners, consulting many who were in the midst of building their tech stacks. She taught them to think about their tech stack not as the powerhouse behind their systems, but a vehicle to efficiently and effectively execute their strategy.
If you are still developing your strategy, she says, try drawing out and visualizing your tech stack. This gives you an opportunity to think critically about each tool, the purpose it serves, and where there is any overlap or duplication in your tools.
2. Keep systems simple.
Have you heard of the “keep it simple, silly” (KISS) principle? The term, originally coined by an aeronautical engineer in the US Navy, states that simplicity guarantees the greatest levels of user acceptance and interaction.
The term is used often in software design, for example, where function and instruction creep can make products unmanageable over time.
How do you prevent this happening in your own company as it continues to grow? Put your current strategy down on paper, and review the value of every stage of your process with your leadership team. Consider what processes could be done more efficiently, and what could be eliminated altogether.
“The #1 driver of complex business systems is complex business rules,” says Mark Metcoff, Director of Marketing Technology at HubSpot. “If you can simplify your go-to-market strategy as much as possible, then regardless of how you structure your systems, you’ll be heading in the right direction.”
3. Aim for medium-term solutions.
In an ideal world, every decision you make about your tech stack today will work seamlessly for your team for years to come.
In reality, though, you are probably going to change systems a dozen times over the next few years if you continue to scale. You shouldn’t worry about picking your forever tech, but do not settle for a tool that will become obsolete in 6 months, either.
“Aim for the medium-term,” Metcoff suggests. “The costs of switching systems has never been lower, thanks to the emergence of more persistent datastores like customer data platforms that can underlie front-office facing systems, and iPaaS solutions that allow you to integrate front-office providers for easy data transfer.”
4. Document everything, and document it well.
Imagine opening your spice cabinet, ready to cook up a chicken curry, to find that nothing in the cabinet is labeled. Every spice and herb is in the same colored jar, with no ingredient label or expiration date.
Unless you have a noteworthy sense of smell, this project would not be very easy or enjoyable.
This is what it’s like to step into a new role only to realize that your new team’s processes and database have not been properly documented. This is common among growing companies, because as your database grows and your systems evolve, it’s easy to end up with a lot of clutter, data integrity issues, and confusion.
Many will skip right over this — who likes to document? Who has the time to ‘waste’ a day of innovation to do seemingly admin work? We get it — But for the sake of your future team, make sure you take the time to lay down the right foundation for data architecture.
“I can’t tell you how many times we have to review the history of a change or ‘walk through’ the last couple of years on a topic,” says Maggie Butler, Builder Marketing Team Manager at HubSpot. “It gets really, really hard if no one has documented anything.”
One incredibly valuable resource HubSpot had during one of its growth spurts, she says, was the documentation built by our engineers that detailed in simple language how the logic and code worked. Aim for this level of documentation to be comprehensive across all applications, and easily accessible for everyone on your team.
In terms of marketing tools, our Lead Management tool embodies the ‘document everything’ mantra. The tool can be used to create a database of all customer information, where you can view chronological timelines of every interaction customers have had with you.
5. Choose point solutions that serve a single purpose.
A point solution is a product or service that addresses one very specific need in a marketing organization. Sometimes, you just need a piece of software to do a specific thing really, really well. There’s no shame in it.
The data sync software included in Operations Hub is a great example of this. If you use multiple different apps to execute your marketing strategy, keeping track of customer data from each app can be a tedious process. The data sync tool can integrate with your CRM to streamline this process by syncing customer data from your favorite apps into one up-to-date database.
But keep in mind that every piece you do add to your infrastructure comes with its own compliance risks, technical challenges, maintenance and upkeep, and general administration.
“Also look closely at whether or not it needs to be integrated into your tech stack,” explains Metcoff. “Sometimes point solutions work just fine in a silo.”
If you have any point solutions in your current stack, think about how it fits into the bigger picture: how does it interact with the rest of your technologies, and what do you need to do to keep it running?
6. Aim for ease of use, but don’t sacrifice the necessities.
There are a lot of options out there — so don’t settle for less than what you need. At the end of the day, you need to choose a system that’s easy for your team to pick up and use, but still has the power and flexibility you need to get things done.
The challenge with today’s marketing automation tools is that they offer either enterprise-grade power or consumer-grade ease-of-use, but never both. As a result, many still go with the safe bet — overpriced, overly complicated, and under-utilized tools — which translates to spending more time on systems than on your customers.
Best Marketing Tech Stack
The best marketing tech stack for your business is entirely tailored to your needs, but there are a few tools we recommend — especially if you’re just building out your marketing team.
Let’s take a look at a martech stack for general use, attracting site visitors, converting site visitors, and engaging leads. These martech tools are essential for running a high-performing marketing team.
Collaboration: Google Drive

Google Drive allows your team to collaborate on documents, spreadsheets, and folders — all on the cloud. There’s no need for anyone to download any software on their laptop. The best part is that losing work is nearly impossible with Google Drive.
Pricing: Free
Alternatives: OneDrive, Dropbox
Communication: Slack

Slack is an instant messaging platform that’s specifically designed for work (and not leisure chatting). This tool makes it easy for your marketing team to share quick updates, send files, and communicate live if necessary. With Slack, there’s no need to send emails that can be covered in a quick conversation.
Pricing: Free; $6.67/user/month (Pro); $12.50/user/month (Business +); Custom (Enterprise Grid)
Alternatives: Google Chat, Microsoft Teams
Project Management: Asana

Project management is the heart and soul of marketing. Whether your team is scheduling campaigns, managing complicated workflows, or working on a project-to-project basis, you don’t want anything to fall through the cracks. Asana makes it easy by providing a collaborative space for your team to check off tasks and share project updates.
Pricing: Free; $10.99/user/month (Premium); $24.99/user/month (Business)
Alternatives: Trello, Freedcamp, Project.co
Asset Creation: Canva

Canva offers a wide range of helpful templates to help your marketing team create assets for anything. Social media posts, Facebook banners, posters, infographics, presentations, flyers, and brochures can all be created with Canva. The best part is that you can start for free, and there’s virtually no learning curve. You can sign up and start using it right away.
Pricing: Free; $199.99/year (Pro); $30/user/month (Enterprise)
Alternatives: Visme, Snappa, Adobe Creative Cloud (recommended for advanced users)
Stock Images: Unsplash

Stock images are used in any type of marketing material, such as blog posts, banners, flyers, and brochures. It’s illegal to use images you find online unless they’re under a Creative Commons license. Some of these images are also not of professional quality. Unsplash is a great option for getting access to and downloading high-quality stock photos for free.
Pricing: Free
Alternatives: Pexels, Shutterstock (Paid), Getty Images (Paid), iStock Photos (Paid)
Image Optimization: Toolur

After you download stock images, it’s important to compress them so that they don’t slow down your website. There are many image compression tools out there, but Toolur is one of the best. You can upload up to 25 images at a time, choose different compression methods, set image quality, and resize them all to a preset width. Competitors only allow you to upload an image at a time or try to upsell you by restricting compression options.
If you’re optimizing GIFs, we recommend Ezgif.com.
Pricing: Free
Alternatives: Squoosh.app, TinyJPG
Grammar Checker: Grammarly

Publishing error-free copy is paramount to presenting your business professionally online. With Grammarly, you can take all the manual work out of copy-editing your work. Although it’s still recommended to give your pieces one final read-through before publication, Grammarly will catch most errors.
Pricing: Free; $12/month (Premium); $12.50/user/month (Business)
Alternatives: ProWritingAid, Hemingway App
Content Management and Blogging: CMS Hub

If you don’t yet have a website or blog and need to create one, you’ll need a scalable CMS system to power your website. If you already have a website but the CMS is clunky and hard-to-use, you’ll also need to seek a replacement that makes it easier to publish and update content.
CMS Hub is one of the best options in the business. You can build landing pages, create forms, add pop-up CTAs, publish blog posts, and see all of your performance metrics in one easy-to-use platform. It’s integrated with Marketing Hub, allowing you to seamlessly connect your other marketing initiatives to your website. Because it’s an all-in-one solution, there’s no need to pay for plugins and add-ons that slow down your site.
Pricing: $270/month (Professional); $900/month (Enterprise)
Alternatives: WordPress, Joomla, Drupal
Website Visitor Analytics: Google Analytics

Knowing who’s visiting your site, when they’re visiting, where they’re visiting from, and whether they bounce off is critical to understanding and improving your overall website performance. Google Analytics also helps you measure your organic traffic, see top landing pages, and see top exit pages.
Pricing: Free
Alternatives: StatCounter (Paid), Simple Analytics (Paid)
Web Page Analytics: Google Search Console

While Google Analytics is an excellent way to measure overall website performance, Google Search Console takes it a step further by providing analytics page-by-page. You can use it to see your top queries for either the whole site or a specific page, compare time periods, and compare two or more URLs on your site.
Pricing: Free
Alternatives: Ahrefs (Paid), Moz (Paid)
Website Analytics Dashboard: Google Data Studio

You’d create a dashboard for nearly anything in marketing: email marketing performance, landing page performance, user acquisition stats, and more. For those, you’d be better off with a dedicated reporting dashboard software.
For creating dashboards on website analytics, however, Google Data Studio is a budget-friendly tool that automatically imports data from Google Analytics. This makes it an easy choice for current Google Analytics users. Simply choose the data you want to show and configure it using the drag-and-drop dashboard editor.
Pricing: Free
Alternatives: HubSpot’s Dashboard and Reporting Software (included in Marketing Hub), Databox (Paid)
Email Marketing: Marketing Hub’s Email Marketing Tool

Marketing Hub’s free email marketing tool allows you to create rich HTML emails without writing a single line of code. You can also personalize the emails using smart rules and A/B test campaigns to increase click-through-rates. The tool is integrated with all of Marketing Hub’s features — so a lead from any form on your website automatically turns into a subscriber.
Pricing: Free
Alternatives: Constant Contact (Paid), MailChimp (Paid)
Marketing Automation: Marketing Hub

Marketing automation allows you to nurture leads with drip campaigns that are triggered based on a lead’s specific action. Marketing Hub allows you to automate campaigns and personalize workflows with segmentation logic. You can also score leads, send leads to sales, and trigger internal notifications.
The workflows feature is included in the Professional and Enterprise subscription tiers.
Pricing: $800/month (Professional); $3,200/month (Enterprise)
Alternatives: Marketo
SEO: Ahrefs

SEO has many facets: keyword research, backlink-building, competitive research, and rank tracking. But you don’t want to pay for different tools to do each one of those things. Ahrefs has a keyword explorer, rack tracker, and site explorer where you can audit the inbound links pointing to your competitors.
Pricing: $99/month (Lite); $179/month (Standard); $399/month (Advanced); $999/month (Agency)
Alternatives: Moz, SEMRush
Technical SEO: Screaming Frog

A robust technical infrastructure can take your website from serviceable to outstanding. Screaming Frog is an essential tool for finding 404 errors, identifying broken links, generating sitemaps, finding duplicate content (which can greatly harm your rankings), and analyzing your pages’ metadata.
Pricing: Free; $211 USD/year
Alternatives: DeepCrawl, Ahrefs, Moz
SEM (Paid Ads): Google Ads

When considering an SEM tool to add to your martech stack, there’s no better option than Google Ads. This tool allows you to place sponsored results on the search engine results pages (SERPs), and also allows you to display ads on Google’s display partners.
Pricing: Varies (Pay-Per-Click)
Alternatives: Media.net, AdRoll
Social Media Marketing: Marketing Hub’s Social Inbox

Social media marketing is critical for growing your follower base and increasing lead generation. It’s important to use a tool that allows you to post, comment, and manage your brand across multiple platforms.
Marketing Hub’s social media tool empowers your team to do all of this and more. You can schedule posts up to three years in advance, analyze your performance on social platforms, monitor brand mentions, and participate in the conversations that most matter to you. It’s included in the Professional and Enterprise subscription tiers.
Pricing: $800/month (Professional); $3,200/month (Enterprise)
Alternatives: HootSuite, SproutSocial
Video Marketing: Wyzowl

If your team does any video marketing, you’ll need a video marketing tool to help you create engaging videos that increase brand awareness and effectively explain your product. Wyzowl makes it easy because you don’t have to hire a videographer, animator, script writer, and voiceover actor to create polished, shareable videos.
Pricing: Available upon request
Alternatives: Testimonial Hero, Content Beta
Webinars: ON24

Webinars are an important tool for B2B marketers and an effective way to generate leads. If your team runs webinars or is planning to, ON24 is a top option for creating engaging webinars, gauging your event’s performance, and identifying potential leads.
Pricing: Available on request
Alternatives: GoToWebinar, Zoho Meeting
Conversion Rate Optimization: Optimizely

A conversion rate optimization tool will help your team ensure that your CTAs are designed to drive conversions. The Optimizely Digital Experience Platform allows you to experiment with colors, placement, and design of your CTAs. You can also test your website’s personalization options and deliver highly tailored recommendations to your website users.
Pricing: Available on request
Alternatives: Google Optimize, Crazy Egg
Build a Martech Stack that Helps You Grow Better
With all of the tools available these days, there is no need to use clunky, complex, and time-consuming legacy software. We believe you shouldn’t have to sacrifice productivity to get power, because the best tools combine both power and ease-of-use. When you focus on delighting your customers and creating great experiences instead of managing your software, you will grow better.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in December 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Although the practices of marketing and branding have been around for centuries, the industries started to shift in the 1990s.
The digital age came about and companies began to market their brands more than their products with the goal of giving their company a personality.

As a millennial born in the early 90s, I grew up at the same time as the digital revolution. In fact, millennials have a reputation for spending all day on their phones and being lazy.
However, I’d argue that as the digital age and technology began to evolve, so did society’s work expectations. Businesses, and even employees, are expected to be a brand in and of themselves that has value and positively impacts society (instead of just selling products).
As a marketer or business owner, you might be wondering, “How can I create a brand that my audience connects with?”
In this post, we’ll discuss how to create brand pillars that clearly communicate your brand identity to your audience.
For example, brand pillars can be core values, important strengths, or aspects of a brand that support or add dimension to the core idea of “Who are you?”
Essentially, these brand pillars can be anything that your customers find important — perhaps it’s innovation, reliability, on-time delivery, etc.
Brand pillars are meant to differentiate your brand and should be valued and endorsed by your customers. When someone asks why your customers like your brand, they’ll probably be able to list off your brand pillars if you’re clearly communicating your brand well.
These pillars should be decided on strategically to provide better products or services to your customers.
I know this might sound slightly conceptual. Brand pillars can be easier to understand when we break them down into categories.
Below, let’s learn about the five brand pillar categories you can use to determine your own brand pillars.
What are the five brand pillars?
The main brand pillars are purpose, perception, identity, values, and brand experience.
1. Purpose
Purpose can be described as the mission and foundation of your company. It will answer questions like “Why did you start your company?” and “What are you hoping to achieve?”
Think about this strategically. What do you want to communicate to your audience as your purpose? What do you want to communicate to employees or potential employees? Knowing your purpose will help you hire employees who align with your mission and correctly target your audience.
Purpose can even be described as the culture of your company. For example, at HubSpot, our culture is about growth-minded individuals who have HEART (they are humble, empathetic, adaptable, remarkable, and transparent). The acronym HEART is one of our brand pillars as a company.
2. Perception
Perception is about how your customers perceive your company/brand. You’ll want to either evaluate how current customers view your brand, or if you’re a new company, write down some characteristics that you’d like customers to associate with your brand.
This could be something like hospitality or leadership. If these are your perception brand pillars, then you want customers to view you as a leader in your industry that is a trusted, good host (this makes sense for a hotel, for example).
3. Identity
This brand pillar is about who you are as a brand. A brand is something you are, it’s not something you have. It’s all about your personality as a company.
For example, an identity brand pillar could be something like “cheeky” or “bold.” This means that you want customers to see you like a cheeky personality. The reason to define this brand pillar is so you have a guiding light for how to be human and interact with your customers.
4. Values
Your values are about communicating your overall position to your audience. What’s important to you as a company? How do you want to make a difference? This could be something like valuing integrity and ownership.
5. Brand Experience
Lastly, brand experience is a pillar that will help you promote your products and services. People use products and services when they like a brand. When there are so many options to choose from these days, customers will choose to buy from companies they like. This means you need to create a positive customer experience and association with your overall brand.
By using these brand pillars as a basis, you can create a brand identity that sets you apart from your competition. Companies that fail most likely haven’t considered what their brand pillars are and how they align.
If you have a robust strategy, but you don’t have a purpose or identity, people won’t feel compelled to purchase from you. On the other hand, if you promise that you value user experience, but the perception is off, then you also won’t find success.
In the next section, let’s review how you can use these categories to define your brand pillars.
How to Determine Your Brand Pillars
To determine your brand pillars, you should ask yourself a series of questions to come up with the top characteristics that you want to communicate to your audience.
Purpose

Why did you/are you starting your company?
What do you want to accomplish?
How do you want to serve your customers?
What value do you offer to customers that support your mission and vision?

Your purpose should serve as a magnet for employees and customers who share similar values. It will also provide a hook to tell your company’s story and differentiate yourself from your competition.
Perception

What role do you play in your customer’s mind?
What do they perceive your value to be?

This pillar could be something like education. Perhaps people view you as a place they go to learn about your industry. This is completely owned by your audience and how they interpret your brand through messaging and reputation and management.
Identity

What’s your culture like?
What’s your point of view?
What kind of tone of voice do you use in communication?
What are your convictions and behaviors that define your brand?

Defining your voice and brand is about strategizing how you want to speak to your audience on several platforms. The brand personality signals what employees might be like, how they behave, who your customers are, etc.
Values

What’s important to you in your interaction with your audience?
What do you value above all else, even before your own financial interests?

Again, this pillar will help define what you care about as a company.
Brand Experience

How do customers interact with you at each touchpoint?
What kind of experience do you want customers to have?
What makes your customer experience better than your competitors?

This pillar will define much of your perceived personality and reputation.
When creating your brand pillars, think about what your customers get from you. Do they get convenience, higher quality, time savings, etc.?
To determine your brand pillars, think about your brand strategy and come up with things that clearly define your personality, voice, customer experience, your purpose, and how people will perceive your brand.
Brand Pillar Examples
1. Hilton Brand Pillars
Hilton’s brand pillars are very clearly stated on its website. They value hospitality, integrity, leadership, teamwork, ownership, and now (sense of urgency).
These are stated as their values, but they’re really brand pillars that showcase how the company wants to be perceived, what their identity is, what the customer experience is like, and what they value.
2. Patagonia Brand Pillars
Patagonia is a brand that has personality and purpose. Their mission is to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis (this is their purpose). Additionally, Patagonia offers a minimalistic style and values simplicity and utility (this is their personality and values).
3. Nike Brand Pillars
Since it was founded, Nike has been consistent in its brand pillars. They are all about competition and surpassing one’s limits. All the company’s advertising, messaging, and investment decisions support that personality and value.
Brand pillars are a great way to define and differentiate your company from the competition. It’s not just about making products anymore — it’s about having a voice and point of view that offers value to its customers.

By 2022, online video content is predicted to command more than 82% of all web traffic (15 times higher than it was in 2017). If you haven’t started thinking about how video fits into your long-term marketing strategy, now’s the time to start taking it seriously.
Before you dive into creating videos, it’s important to figure out where you’re going to host them. YouTube is obviously the largest video hosting platform on the web, but it might not be the best choice for every business.
To help you find the best fit for your company’s unique needs, we compared YouTube directly against the smaller, more niche platform Vimeo across a number of factors. Read on to see the results, and decide for yourself.

Number of Users
Winner: YouTube
There’s no real competition here. YouTube commands an audience of over two billion monthly users — almost half of the entire internet-using population. Vimeo’s 240 million monthly viewers and 90 million registered users seem insignificant in contrast. For maximum reach, choose YouTube.
Search Optimization
Winner: YouTube
YouTube leaves Vimeo in the dust here. YouTube is the second largest search engine on the internet, right after parent company Google. If you’re planning to create a video tailored to a specific search query, (e.g., how to pick a font for your website), your video belongs on YouTube. Not only will it appear in search results directly on YouTube, but Google also seems to favor videos from YouTube over those posted on other platforms.
Mobile
Winner: YouTube
70% of all YouTube views come from mobile, and the YouTube mobile app is absolutely dominating the mobile streaming space — outranking even formidable competitors like Netflix, Hulu, and Twitch.
Videos uploaded to Vimeo and YouTube are both optimized automatically for mobile, but YouTube offers more opportunities for mobile discovery and reach.
Cost
Winner: YouTube
YouTube is free — even for businesses. But you might be wondering if Vimeo is as well.
Is Vimeo free to use?
Vimeo operates on a tiered pricing model, ranging from a free basic plan to a $50/month package aimed at businesses.
Vimeo Pro vs YouTube
While Vimeo does have a free basic plan, it limits you to 500MB maximum storage per week.
If you’re okay with paying some money, you can get a Vimeo Pro plan. In Vimeo Pro, you’ll have access to support, advanced analytics, and professional privacy.
On the other hand, you can have unlimited storage for free on YouTube.
Support
Winner: Vimeo
With their paid packages, Vimeo offers several levels of technical support that could be a game-changer for businesses without much video expertise. YouTube offers plenty of free help documentation and access to a (rather crowded) support community, but if you’re seeking higher-touch, personalized support on-demand, a paid Vimeo account is the better option.
Storage
Winner: YouTube
YouTube offers unlimited, free storage for all accounts, while Vimeo charges for storage on a tiered basis. The basic, free Vimeo account option gives you 500MB of storage per week. With their highest level, $50/month package, you can store 5TB total with no weekly limits.
No Pre-Roll Ads
Winner: Vimeo
If you upload your videos to YouTube, there’s a good chance a pre-roll ad will play before it, which has the potential to deter some viewers from sticking around. Vimeo currently doesn’t allow ads, and it doesn’t look like they’ll be changing this policy anytime soon.
Running Ad Campaigns
Winner: YouTube
If you’re thinking of running your own ads on a video platform, you can’t beat YouTube (You also can’t purchase ad space on Vimeo, even if you wanted to, because they don’t allow it.)
YouTube offers an advanced, user-friendly ads platform, as well as personalized support from a “YouTube Advertising Expert” when you spend $10 a day on ads.
Community
Winner: Vimeo
User numbers don’t tell the entire story. With such a massive audience on YouTube, the environment is naturally more competitive. It’s easier for your video to get drowned out by thousands of others if you aren’t planning to feature it somewhere off YouTube. Vimeo’s smaller, more community-driven platform might be a better option if you’re hoping to tap into an existing creative niche, or get featured on their hand-curated staff picks page.
Advanced Privacy Options
Winner: Vimeo
Both YouTube and Vimeo give you the option to set videos to private or public (the default setting on YouTube is public), but Vimeo offers a handful of more nuanced, specific privacy options if that serves your interests. You can add a password protection option to videos, share a video only with people who follow your account, or even hide it from the Vimeo community — which could be useful if you plan on embedding the video on your website and want it to be viewable in only one place.
Customizable Player
Winner: Vimeo
Vimeo’s sleek embedded player offers a number of useful customization options that YouTube can’t match, including hex color customization and the ability to include a custom player logo (on Business and PRO accounts). Plus, when you change the default customization options on your account, all previously embedded videos will update to reflect the changes automatically, with no need to go back and tinker with any code.
Analytics
Winner: YouTube
YouTube takes the win here because all their analytics — ranging from basic statistics like views to more advanced options — are completely free. Vimeo does also offer powerful analytics tools to evaluate performance, but you’ll have to pay to access everything but basic stats.
Video Quality
Winner: Vimeo
When it comes to video quality, Vimeo beats out YouTube. In a test done by Medium, Vimeo’s video quality was crisp, clean, and easier to read. On the other hand, the same video on YouTube was blurry, making it much harder to follow.
Audio Quality
Winner: Vimeo
Again, when it comes to quality, Vimeo comes out on top. Sound quality is higher on Vimeo because the platform supports 320Kbps. However, to enjoy higher-quality videos and audio, you’ll need to be subscribed to one of the paid plans.
Live Streaming
Winner: YouTube
Both Vimeo and YouTube have live streaming options, however, YouTube is the clear winner here because it’s free. Vimeo offers live streaming with a paid plan. However, with Vimeo, you can upload new versions of the video and keep on using the same URL and upload higher quality recorded versions of a live stream, which you can edit before posting.
Image Source
So which one should you choose?
It depends largely on what exactly you want to accomplish with your videos. If you’re looking for a creative community where you can connect with other video creators and gain some exposure in a specific niche, Vimeo is a better place to start sharing your content. If you have business goals that revolve heavily around search optimization and ads, YouTube is your best bet.

No one wants to end up on the email blacklist. If you’re struggling to reach people with your emails, there’s a small (but not insignificant) chance that you’ve somehow found your way onto a spam blacklist. These prevent your emails from ending up in your subscribers’ inboxes, which, as you might expect, is going to…
The post Is Your Email Blacklisted? Here’s How to Find Out appeared first on Benchmark Email.

This spring, I was thrilled to be named general manager for Salesforce Pardot — one of the fastest-growing marketing automation platforms in the B2B space. I’m a product person at heart, and I couldn’t be more excited about our recent innovation and planned roadmap.
Earlier in the year, we gave you a sneak peek of upcoming innovations for our account-based marketing (ABM) technology. Today, I’m excited to share more details about those innovations and other features included in our Summer ‘21 release. Together, these features will help you reach the right accounts for your business, launch ABM campaigns in seconds, deliver more compelling email messages at the right time, and much more.
Here are just a few highlights from the Summer ’21 release along with a preview of what’s ahead. For a complete view of what’s launching, review the Pardot Summer ’21 release notes or watch the Pardot Summer ‘21 release readiness webinar (number 13 in the playlist).
Generally Available Now
Einstein Send Time Optimization for Pardot
One of our most popular Marketing Cloud features is now available to Salesforce Pardot customers. Use the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to better understand your accounts and boost email engagement. Einstein evaluates open and click times so you can send email messages at the right time for every prospect on your list — whether they’re on the East coast of the U.S. checking email after dinner or just starting their day on the opposite side of the globe.
We’re so excited about this feature that we’re dedicating an entire blog post to it. Watch for it later this week.
Accounts as Campaign Members
Once you’ve identified your top accounts, you can now add them directly to a campaign — even before you’ve identified the account buyers. 
Historically, Salesforce Pardot campaigns have centered on contacts and leads. But as more organizations rally around an ABM approach to account selection and nurturing, building campaigns at the account level is more important than ever. With Accounts as Campaign Members, you can run prospecting campaigns with outbound sales reps to identify the right buyers in each target account. You can also target accounts for virtual events before you finalize the RSVP list, then automatically add new account contacts as they’re identified.
Simply put, this feature is a game changer that will empower sales reps to help marketing target the right buyers for upcoming campaigns. 

New Email Marketing Settings to View Mailable Prospects in a New Light 

Have you ever struggled to understand why a prospect didn’t receive your email, or how to make a prospect mailable again? To solve these types of mailability issues, we’ve upgraded Pardot’s model for qualifying prospects to receive marketing messages. 
The updated model offers more insights into a prospect’s mailability status, their Do Not Email and Opted Out settings, and bounce information; it also provides more options for editing mailability data via Pardot automations. This means you can filter out undeliverable prospects from future communications faster and prioritize opt-in preferences more easily into your compliance workflows.
The mailability upgrade is available now and must be enabled to use. It will become a permanent upgrade for all customers in the Winter ’22 release. 
Email Builder Enhancements
We’re always working to improve the user experience for Email Builder. With the Summer ’21 release, we have:

Expanded the list of default font options to help you build eye-catching messages
Improved our error handling so you can easily identify which components on the canvas have issues that need to be addressed before saving
Provided an in-app video tutorial to help acclimate new users
Added packaging capabilities for email templates so you can easily gather all related assets and save them for future use

You can also send operational emails for critical notifications using the Pardot Email Lightning experience and access a streamlined setup experience for Pardot Email, including a simplified setup page and the ability to leverage a default domain for CMS — eliminating the need for IT support.
In Beta
Einstein Key Account Identification
Don’t rely on intuition to guide your account selection strategy. Einstein Key Accounts Identification draws on the power of AI to identify accounts in your CRM with the strongest buying signals so you can spend your time on the right deals. 
Einstein will look at buyer engagement data across the account in Salesforce Pardot, along with data from your CRM, to highlight key account characteristics and buyer behaviors that indicate an account’s viability as a business opportunity. It will tier each account as an A, B, C or D — A being accounts with the greatest buying potential. Einstein will also dig deeper into the data and surface the “why” behind each account’s ranking. 
More Pardot Resources
See what’s next for Pardot by joining the June 22 webinar Pardot Product Roadmap: Powering the Next Generation of B2B Marketing.
Watch our on-demand webinar Pardot Release Highlights: ABM, Privacy, and More.

Big Idea or Enduring Question: How can users automatically follow records when the records meet specific criteria? Within Salesforce, users can Follow and Unfollow records by clicking on the Follow icon on the record’s Detail page. If you want to … Continue reading →
The post Getting Started with Salesforce Flow – Part 65 (Auto Follow Record Based on Criteria) appeared first on Automation Champion.

As creative people and marketers, we spend a lot of time thinking about the relationship between people and brand. Hours of sorting through data trying to determine if a particular ad, campaign, color, or headline was a huge success or a massive flop (or worse—totally neutral, revealing very little of value). 
We can get really obsessed, trying to get in the mind of the customer and understand them on a deeper psychological level that they don’t even understand.
I spend a lot of time reading blogs and books, or attending webinars, trying to understand why this and not that.
“Why did this button copy have a better click rate than this one?”
“Why did people seem to prefer this background color so much more than the other?”
Often, authors or webinar hosts will reference Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs when explaining the relationship between psychology and marketing.
If you’re not familiar, the Hierarchy of Needs is a framework by Abraham Maslow which theorizes that people are motivated by five basic categories of needs: physiological, safety, love, esteem, and self-actualization. It’s also, conveniently, represented in a rainbow.

The framework is simple, but the ideas here are complex. While much time has been spent diving into each of these categories, today, I’m going to spend time on that middle piece — love and belonging.
Cultivating a sense of belonging
Ever shown up to a party by yourself? It’s terrifying. If you are like me, your first move is to make a beeline towards the bar. After that, I usually find myself scanning the room for someone I know or someone who looks familiar to me. I feel instantly more comfortable in situations when I see representation. It moves me from safety needs to belonging needs. So what does this relationship look like between brands and their customers?
You have probably noticed the recent trend for brands changing their logos to the various LQBTQIA flags for pride month. LinkedIn, Spotify, Airbnb, and loads of others have jumped in on this trend.

Other brands have released rainbow limited edition products like Vans, Apple, Skittles, and Adidas. Some brands are even sponsoring pride content on streaming services like Hulu.

Don’t get me wrong, the more representation the better. But, inclusion is more than throwing up a rainbow flag for a month. Inclusion requires empathy, and empathy requires understanding.
I am welcoming of all types of inclusion, but if you are looking to create lasting relationships with certain communities, you must tap into the psychological need we all have as humans to belong and feel like equals. This level of representation is still very rare for most brands.
Watch these two commercials and tell me what is different.
Campbells:

This ad, while cute and representative, still has the punchline around being gay.
Wells Fargo:

This ad is not about being gay. It’s about being a family. You could easily swap the couple out for any gender or orientation. It was written with a couple in mind, not a gay couple. Why not just write a great script and cast people, of any kind? Why limit yourself by saying these have to be a specific way? I have always found it interesting that, as marketers, we feel like we have to write specific things for specific people rather than focusing on a great story or punchline. That’s hard enough on its own.
You need visibility and representation, but in a way that doesn’t frame the queer community as outsiders, but as people. Just like everyone else.
This is important from a human-to-human level — trying to see past stereotypes and misconceived notions of what you think a person is like, and actually getting to know them for who they are, and what is important to them. 
Belonging and love needs (from Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs) are only met when we take the extra step as marketers to see and understand that all people just want to be seen and shown as equals — not as props or checkboxes.
Small steps toward inclusivity
If you are a marketer looking for more ways to ensure you are being inclusive, here are a few things you can do:

Audit your sites and other marketing materials to ensure the photography or illustrations represent an equal balance of all people in authentic situations.
Include pronouns in profiles and signatures (if you aren’t already).

Push back on clients, managers, co-workers if there is feedback around inclusion and diversity.Tip: If you are dealing with people who want to talk numbers have them google “pink money” and the rise of LQBTQIA buying power.

Share your platform with members of the LQBTQIA community throughout the year rather than just seeking them out in the month of June. Collaborate with them on things other than LGBTQIA content, and allow them the space to speak about areas of passion or expertise. There is nothing more inspiring for a young professional than to see someone who is a badass in their career, and just happens to be out.

Above all else, check your own bias as a leader to make sure you are leading and inspiring the team around you to care about these issues.Extra Credit: Visit your local HRC branch and spend some time with people who work there. Understand what the LGBTQIA is still fighting for and what they need from local businesses in terms of support.

The post What Inclusion Really Means: Pride Month Edition appeared first on Campaign Monitor.