Author: Franz Malten Buemann

Hi Marketers, We’re trying to find the right marketing automation software or software stack with good integration but after several months of research, we’re yet to find a system that will do everything we need. Most systems are really good at their “thing” but only do 70% of what we need. We sell travel insurance so we have 3 main phases: Nurturing (transactional) User responds to an ad -> hits a relevant landing page -> gets a quote -> is emailed a quote specific to them -> added to a remarketing list (FB, Adwords, Youtube etc) -> added to a quote follow up sequence (email, SMS, scheduled call). Sale (transactional) User buys a policy -> added to a date triggered email sequence for delivery of the product (sale confirmation, reminders, event warnings, friend referrals) Rebuy (campaign) Regular campaign sequences triggered by sales, important dates, world events, etc. The features we need: – Journey builder – with decisions based on page visits, email opens/clicks (both transactional and campaign) – Campaign builder that supports complex sequences – Email builder (Marketing and Transactional) with split test and dynamic text – Transactional email system that supports complex sequences and multiple transactions for the same customer – Able to connect sequences with Google, FB, SMS & other remarketing – Landing page builder / pop ups – SMS / WhatsApp – Tracking of repeat site visitors with ability to launch a sequence based on this – Split testing emails and landing pages in a sequence – Attribution reporting We have our own custom CRM and have devs that can do any integration work required. I hoping someone out there has solved this and can suggest a tool or stack of tools that has worked well to solve the above. Any suggestions greatly appreciated! Cheers, Dean
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If you’re considering whether a shared IP or dedicated IP environment is better for your business, this quick guide will help you decide. We explain the differences between the two and how your IP reputation can impact your sender reputation and email deliverability.

What are the Best Email Marketing Software out there for your business? Getting the appropriate Marketing Software product is as straightforward as comparing the features and terms offered by these six software that I personally use and recommend. (HERE) I suggest that you take some time to review their unique features and determine which one is the better alternative for your organization. What’s more remember to take into account your company’s or industry’s special circumstances, for example, a multilingual app for a global company or a mobile platform to help you work in the field. I collected The 6 Most Useful Blog posts about them: Read more here. I also wrote a blog about the Top 3 Best Email Marketing Tools– Check It Out HERE And about the Top 2 Best Landing Page Software Comparison– Read It HERE And The Nr.1 Shopping Cart Software That I Personally Use– Take a look HERE Try Them FREE
submitted by /u/szdebrecen1 [link] [comments]

There’s nothing quite like a sudden Google algorithm update to leave marketers feeling equal parts confused and concerned. It seems as though search engines like Google wait for you to get all of your ducks in a row and then unleash an update that makes your efforts instantly obsolete.
Plus, there’s still some secrecy behind how Google evaluates websites and determines which sites appear — and how they appear — on the search engine results page (SERPs) for different queries.

The good news is that there are a number of search engine optimization (SEO) tools out there — some free, some paid — that can help you view your website the way search engines like Google see it — this way, you can improve your ranking and relevance for your target keywords.
In this blog article, we’ll review 11 free SEO tools and 14 paid SEO tools.
(Note: Some of the free tools below also offer paid plans while some of the paid tools also offer free plans — so, we recommend you check out the pricing pages for the tools you’re most interested in to determine which plan is ideal for your needs and goals.)
11 Free SEO Tools
1. HubSpot Website Grader

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Marketers work to generate traffic and qualified leads via their company’s website. That’s why it’s important for marketers to understand exactly what they can do to improve the impact and SEO of that website.
With HubSpot’s Website Grader, simply enter the URL of your website and you’ll automatically receive a Report Card with actionable insights about your SEO efforts. From there, you can sign up for the HubSpot Academy Website Optimization course that teaches you how to improve your website’s SEO, user experience (UX), and more based on the type of feedback you received on your Report Card.
With the HubSpot Website Grader, you can:

Learn about your website’s performance in just seconds.
Identify specific performance issues and receive clear, actionable feedback on how you can fix them.
Receive how-to education and on-demand support on how you can improve your website.
Gain access to a five-lesson HubSpot Academy course on Website Optimization so you can understand how to improve upon your website’s specific problem areas.
Discover how to optimize your website for mobile.
Learn how you can implement website security best practices.
Personalize your website’s UX to create a delightful experience for users.

2. Google Search Central: Google Search Console

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Google Search Central (formerly known as Google Webmasters) has a number of tools meant to help you appear in the SERPs for the search terms and phrases your target audience is looking for.
If you’re a business person or marketer, Search Central guides you to use Google Search Console to help with your SEO and website analysis. Google Search Console monitors, debugs, and optimizes your website — and there’s no coding knowledge necessary.
Here are some examples of website elements Google Search Console will teach you about and help you optimize.

The keywords that currently rank on your website.
Any crawl errors that exist on your website. 
The mobile-friendliness of your website. 
The number of your web pages that are in Google’s Index (if they aren’t in Google’s Index, you can use the tool’s URL Inspection Tool to submit a page for indexing). 
The website-related metrics that matter most to you including clicks, impressions, average click-through-rate (CTR), and average position.

3. Google Analytics

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Although Google Analytics has a paid version, the free version of the product can help you manage your website’s SEO — this is especially true if you pair Google Analytics with Google Search Console. In doing so, all of your website’s SEO data will be centrally located and compiled, and you can use queries to identify areas for improvement with the keywords and phrases that you want your website and web pages to rank for.
Other ways that you can use the free version of Google Analytics to understand and improve your SEO are:

Remove spam traffic — or filter your referral traffic — to get rid of the traffic that has the potential of ruining SEO reports, such as fake referrers (which bring fake traffic to your website).
Compare organic versus non-organic website traffic.
Identify which of your web pages receive the most traffic so you’re able to understand what you can do to improve SEO on those pages.
Use Site Content Reports to determine engagement metrics on each web page, engagement for the directories and pages on your website, page exit metrics, as well as acquisition, behavior, and conversion of landing pages.
Review the Multi-Channel Report’s Assisted Conversions feature to identify which of your Channels — which are defined as sources of your traffic, such as paid and organic search or referral sites — led to the most sales or conversions, and the value of those sales and conversions for your business.

4. UpCity Free SEO Report Card

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The Free SEO Report Card by UpCity lets you analyze your website to determine how it stacks up against the competition.
In exchange for a bit of your contact information, SEO Report Card will serve up a report that covers the following:

Rank Analysis: A snapshot of where your website ranks on Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. Your ranking is based on your main keywords.
Link Building: A detailed account of the number of websites that link back to your site.
On-Site Analysis: A look at how successful you were in incorporating your main keyword throughout your site.
Website Accessibility: Information about your site’s load time and accessibility.
Trust Metrics: An overview of your site’s level of trust or authority.
Current Indexing: An indication of how many of your site pages have been indexed.

5. Internet Marketing Ninjas

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Internet Marketing Ninjas is an SEO-focused company with a variety of free tools you can use to compare your website against the competition, optimize web pages for certain keywords, generate meta tags, and increase organic traffic to your website.
Here are some examples of the free Internet Marketing Ninja SEO tools you can take advantage of:

Identify broken links and redirects and use the site crawl feature to generate an XML sitemap of your website.
View images (plus their alt text and display size) and all of your page links (external, internal, etc.) on your web pages to review what’s working well and what’s broken or needs an update.
Use the on-page optimization tool to evaluate your web page content, meta information, and internal links.
Get a side-by-side comparison of the SEO of your web pages versus a competitor’s web pages.
Analyze page-load time and how long each component of a web page takes to fully display.

6. Bing Webmaster

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Microsoft Bing Webmaster gives you access to a number of tools that offer insight into your your website such as reporting, diagnostic, and SEO tools. The SEO tools that you can use for free have the power to help you analyze your website, manage backlinks, and review keywords to ensure your site is well-optimized for organic search.
Here are some of the other things you can do with Bing Webmaster’s SEO tools:

Learn about your backlink profile to understand referring pages, domains, and anchor links.
Perform keyword research to determine which keywords and phrases your audience is searching for as well as the search volumes of those keywords and phrases.
Use the site scanning feature to crawl your website and identify technical SEO errors.
Get SEO reports that tell you about any errors that are on your website and individual site pages.

7. Seolyzer

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Seolyzer is a free site crawling, log analysis, and SEO tool that helps you determine how search engines like Google view your website. Seolyzer pulls information that crawling bots leave in your server’s log files while browsing your site to identify and create your SEO KPIs. The tool also identifies error codes, redirects, and page speed and performance.
Additionally, Seolyzer can help you:

Quickly identify, and continually monitor, SEO issues on your website such as poor response time, error messages, and crawl volume so you can resolve them before serious damage is done.
Manage and analyze your unique KPIs with Seolyzer such as page performance, crawl volume, HTTP status codes, active and new pages, and desktop versus mobile responsiveness.
Segment your web pages to determine what your most crawled pages are. 
Compare your web pages that Google deems as the most important to the ones that you deem as the most important (e.g. revenue-focused pages).
Measure the impact of your SEO efforts on a page-by-page basis or by the category of the page.

8. SEOquake

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SEOquake is a Google Chrome extension that automatically checks a web page’s SEO parameters quickly and for free. This includes on-page SEO audits, internal and external link review, real-time URL and domain comparison, and data file export.
Other things you can use SEOquake for are:

Get a detailed description of how all of your links are doing — including URLs, anchor text, and other link types — with the tools Link Examiner feature.
Adjust the SEOquake reports you receive to display only the parameters and metrics that you care about.
Compare different domains or URLs for the SEO parameters that matter to you.
Audit your website’s SEO to identify any SEO-related issues that would be findable by search engines.
Export the results of your SEO analysis into an adjustable and shareable report.

9. Seoability

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Seoability is a free SEO-checker tool. With it, you can test your website’s level of compliance with today’s SEO guidelines. By simply entering your URL, your site will be analyzed and you’ll receive tips on how you can better optimize your website.
In addition to a detailed SEO audit of your website, you’ll gain access to 1,000 subpage audits, email reporting and alerts, and keyword monitoring.
Here are some more advantages of using Seoability:

Find technical errors and other on-page SEO issues so you can resolve them quickly.
Receive an SEO score for various website factors including meta-information, page quality, link structure, and more.
Understand the specific SEO issues with your meta information such as meta titles/ descriptions, meta tags, and invalid or incorrect domain names or page URLs.
Identify areas for improvement regarding your page speed and quality (related to text, duplicate content, responsive design, and alt attributes for content).
Understand how your page and link structure can be improved by getting data about your headers, internal links, incorrect anchor text, and number of links.
Identify specific server errors related to any redirects, HTTP headers, or CSS and Javascript files.

10. Check My Links

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Check My Links is a Google Chrome extension that you can use to ensure your links on both internal or external web pages work. For instance, if you were to search a term on Wikipedia, Check My Links would be able to tell you how many links that Wikipedia page has in total and how many of those links are broken.
This is helpful because you can make corrections to broken links immediately (or hopefully, before a page goes live). Check My Links is ideal for developers, content editors, and web designers according to its creators.
Here are some more examples of what Check My Links can do:

Check each link on your web pages and identify all invalid and broken links.
Auto-highlight the good links in green and the broken links in red.
Copy all of your bad links to your clipboard in one click.

11. BROWSEO

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BROWSEO is an SEO browser that allows you to review your webpage in a stripped-down format so you can analyze it’s UX and content as well as gain insight into its SEO. Once you input the URL, the output will hone in on your HTML so you’re able to understand the page’s structure, optimized search terms, and other SEO-related factors.
Examples of what you can do with BROWSEO are: 

Get the number of words on the page.
Discover your server response code.
Determine the number of internal and external links on your page. 
Identify the headers on your web page. 
Get all of your meta information (e.g. title tag, meta description).

14 SEO Tools
Next, let’s look at some paid SEO tools. (Note that some of these tools have free trial periods. Some also offer entirely free plans but with restrictions in terms of flexibility and customization.)
1. Ahrefs

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Price: Seven-day trial for $7, $99/ mo for Lite, $179/ mo for Standard, $399/ mo for Advanced, $999/ mo for Agency
Ahrefs is an advanced SEO resource that examines your website property and produces keyword, link, and ranking profiles to help you make better decisions on your content.
Some of its main features are:

Site Explorer, which shows you the performance of specific webpages on your website.
Content Explorer, which allows you to search high-performing webpages under specific keywords and topics.
Keywords Explorer, which generates the monthly search volume and click-through rates of specific keywords.
Site Audit, which crawls specified verticals within your domain and reveals a number of technical issues at the page level.

When using the Keyword Explorer, Ahrefs also produces the “parent topic” of the keyword you looked up. A keyword’s parent topic is a broader keyword with higher search volume than your intended keyword, but likely has the same audience and ranking potential. This gives you more a valuable SEO opportunity.
2. SEMrush

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Price: $119.95/ mo for Pro, $229.95/ mo for Guru, or $449.95/ mo for Business
SEMrush is an elaborate dashboard that reports on the performance of domains as a whole and their specific pages. SEMrush offers numerous resources, one of which is the SEO Toolkit.
Toolkit allows you to track a website’s visibility improvement over time as well as identify which keywords it’s ranking for, what the page’s rank is for a keyword, the keyword’s monthly search volume, and more.
SEMrush also allows you to:

Compare your page performance against your competition.
Analyze backlinks from other websites to your site (also known as link building).
Research appropriate keywords.
Discover and take advantage of similar on-page SEO opportunities.
Use the Keyword Magic Tool to identify all keywords you need to successfully build a profitable SEO or PPC campaign.
Identify the paid keywords or ad copy used in the PPC ads of your competition.
Use the social media publishing and analytics tools.
Receive recommendations for how you can increase your organic traffic by optimizing your content.
Upgrade your account at any time for greater flexibility and more features.

3. GrowthBar

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Price: Free five-day trial, $29/ mo
GrowthBar is a Chrome extension that can help you perform keyword research, competitive analysis, and track SEO rankings. With the GrowthBar, access data points about any website directly from the search engine results pages. This allows you to assess your competitors’ performance and view the growth channels, keywords, backlinks, and ads that are working for them.
Here are some more key features of GrowthBar:

Use the Top Keywords and Backlinks feature to see which paid and organic keywords are driving the most traffic for your website and get a list of the most authoritative backlinks pointing to your site.
Get your Keyword Difficulty Score to quickly assess how hard it would be to rank for a particular keyword based on the strength of the domain authorities of the URLs ranking on page one.
Use Word Count to view the word count of any page directly from the SERP.
Run Facebook Ads and get a visual of what they look like from a search engine’s perspective. 
Use the Keyword Suggestions tool to get a list of related keywords you might want to rank for along with their Search volume & CPCs.

4. Woorank

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Price: Free 14-day trial, $59.00/ mo for Pro, $179.00/ mo for Premium, or contact for Enterprise quote
Woorank’s in-depth site analysis helps marketers reveal opportunities for optimization and improvement. This analysis takes into account the performance of existing SEO initiatives, social media, usability, and more.
Each report is divided into eight sections to help you easily analyze your site and identify targets for optimization — here are the sections:

Marketing Checklist
SEO
Mobile
Usability
Technologies
Social
Local
Visitors

5. BuzzStream

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Price: Free 30-day trial, $24/ mo for Starter, $99/ mo for Group, $299/ mo for Professional, $999+ for Custom
Although backlinks to your website are critical to ranking well on Google, the outreach you do while link building can feel a lot like cold calling. BuzzStream makes it easy to research the appropriate people, come up with effective email messages, and track who’s accepted each link request.
BuzzStream also helps you:

Identify candidates for outreach based on their industry. 
Identify candidates for outreach based on how engaged they are across various social networks.
Identify candidates who will likely be receptive to your backlink request for other reasons that are unique to your business’s niche. 

6. Moz Pro Tools

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Price: Free 30-day trial, $99/ mo for Standard, $149/ mo for Medium, $249/ mo for Large, $599/ mo for Premium
The Moz Pro subscription serves as an all-in-one tool for increasing your business’ search ranking. Moz’s collection of research tools provides subscribers with the resources they need to identify SEO opportunities, track growth, build reports, and optimize their efforts.
Moz Pro also includes: 

A website crawler that analyzes up to 3,000 links on a given URL.
An email report that details that crawl data for the pages your site links to.
Insight into various “crawlability” factors, such as duplicate content and redirects, that could be influencing your SEO performance.

7. Linkody

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Price: $14.50/ mo for Webmaster, $24.90/ mo for Advanced, $49.90/ mo for Pro, 99.90/ mo for Agency, and $153.90 /mo for Agency XL
The best way to understand the performance of your off-page SEO is by having a good overview of your backlinks. Linkody allows you to discover, track, analyze, and disavow backlinks all from an easy-to-use interface.
Aside from that, the tool checks your links 24/7 and informs you of any changes so you can take immediate action in case a link is lost or broken.
Other Linkody features include: 

The ability to “spy” on your competitors’ backlinks. Simply enter the URL of your competitor and let the tool pull all the links and metrics. The information returned will help you discover niche-relevant, high-quality backlink opportunities for your brand.
Gain useful insights into your most important metrics when it comes to backlink tracking, such as the ‘rel’ attribute, Google indexation status, the website’s Domain Authority, Spam Score, Alexa rank, and more.
Create white-label reports that can be shared with your team and/or clients to get a better idea of your backlink distribution and link-building progress.

8. Screaming Frog SEO Spider

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Price: Free or €99/ year
Designed specifically for the SEO-minded, this program crawls the websites you specify, examining the URLs for common SEO issues. This program simplifies and expedites an otherwise time-consuming process — especially for larger websites. (It could take hours or days to manually evaluate the same URLs.)
Other notable features are: 

An intuitive Java program with easy-to-navigate tabs.
Easy export to Excel for further analysis of any of your data. For instance, if you use Optify, Moz, or RavenSEO to monitor your links or rankings for specific keywords, you could simply create a .csv file from your spreadsheet, make a few adjustments for the proper formatting, and upload it to those tools.

9. Remove’em

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Price: $249 one-time payment for Life-Time plan, $99/ mo for Subscription (one website), or $899/ mo for Agency (10+ websites)
Artificial or unnatural links have the potential to seriously hurt your search ranking. Remove’em helps get rid of those links. The tool has the ability to: 

Scan your backlink profile and turn up a list of contact information for the links and domains you’ll need to reach out to for removal.
Export that list if you wish to disavow them using Google’s tool.

Tell Google not to take these “bad” links into account when crawling your site.

10. AnswerThePublic

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Price: $99/ mo for Monthly plan, $79/ mo for Annual plan, $399/ mo for Enterprise plan
AnswerThePublic is a search listening and keyword tool that listens to autocomplete data from Google and other search engines, and then provides you with a list of phrases and questions that people are searching for around your keyword. This allows you to craft your website and content to your audience to increase traffic and conversions. 
With AnswerThePublic, you can also: 

Receive updates when people are talking about your most relevant keywords. 
Monitor keyword trends and understand keyword research behavior among your target audience and customers. 
View the keywords and phrases that your audience is researching in real-time. 
Get ideas for your website and blog content based on relevant keyword research. 

11. Keyword Hero

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Price: 14-day trial for any plan, Free for Little Hero, $9/ mo for Big Hero, $49/ mo for Giant Hero, and $149/ mo for Ultimate Hero
Keyword Hero pairs your visitor’s sessions with the keywords they used to land on your page, all within your Google Analytics account. In other words, this tool gives you an understanding of the search intent of your organic traffic. 
Here are some more actions you can take with Keyword Hero: 

Identify the organic traffic and conversions you receive from your intended keywords. 
Optimize your site structure and web pages for your target keywords.  
Separate your brand versus non-brand search traffic. 
Optimize your position in the SERPs by optimizing your website for specific target keywords. 
Identify the type of query (informational versus transactional) that your visitors used to arrive on your website. 

12. SpyFu

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Price: $39/ mo for Basic, $79/ mo for Professional, $299/ mo for Team
SpyFu is a competitor keyword research for Google Ads. In addition to keyword research, it helps with PPC competitive research, SEO competitive research, and the creation of custom lists and domains.
The tool helps you drive traffic to your Google Ads campaigns and website, monitor both paid and organic rankings on Google, Bing, and Yahoo, and obtain reliable and accurate contact information for leads. 
With SpyFu, you can also: 

Download a competitor’s PPC keywords to understand their clicks and how much they pay for keywords. 
Track the domains bidding on your Google Ads. 
Download a competitor’s SEO keywords. 
Review the ranking overtime of a page or website for a keyword. 
Identify the backlinks your competitors use. 
Discover keyword ideas and get keyword advice for your Google Ads to increase chances of conversion. 

13. Seomater

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Price: Pay as You Go (starting at $5), $19/ mo for Small Business, $49/ mo for Professional, $179/ mo for Unlimited
Seomater is an SEO auditing and website crawling tool. It assists with technical SEO analysis and SEO on-page optimization testing. Once the tool crawls your site, you’ll receive an SEO report that explains your website’s various SEO-related elements including internal and external links, backlinks, page quality and speed, social media, organic presence, and more. 
Your analysis will also come with tips on how you can improve each of these SEO elements. In addition, you can: 

Use the SEO Monitoring Alerts feature so your website is automatically crawled and so you’re notified immediately if something is problematic in terms of SEO.
Get up to 13 detailed reports about your on-page and off-page SEO aspects. 
Use the Domain Comparison tool to compare two competitor’s websites to identify the strengths and weaknesses of their SEO (such as broken links, content quality, HTML tags, and more).  

14. ContentKing

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Price: $139/ mo for Basic, $219/ mo for Standard, $319/ mo for Premium, or contact a rep for an Enterprise quote
ContentKing is real-time SEO auditing and content tracking tool — it tracks your website 24/7 so any issues related to SEO don’t go unnoticed for too long. The tool is cloud-based, meaning there’s no installation required and your data and reports are available whenever you need them.
You can also:

Use ContentKing’s 24/7 website audits (and algorithms) to gain insight into your SEO and receive tasks that will help you improve your SEO. 
Get alerted whenever something on your website is broken or is no longer well-optimized so you can efficiently fix the issue.  
Track all of your content changes on your site (such as changes on individual web pages and changes in robots.txt) and search your changes history.
Visualize data (from all of your websites) with real-time dashboards and reports. 
Easily collaborate with your team or clients from within the tool. 

Now that you’ve learned about 25 free and paid SEO tools, determine which option will help you achieve your SEO goals and get started auditing, optimizing, and monitoring your website, individual web pages, and content.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in December 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Love, flowers, chocolate, bla bla bla …
Where are the marketing results?!

Okay, probably not what your Valentine’s date cares about. But if you’re a marketer, you might be interested in merging the most lovey-dovey of days with your marketing. But how?

Well, these companies have figured out some creative ways to leverage the warm and fuzzies (or unadulterated rage and crushing loneliness … whatever) that Valentine’s Day instills in people.
If you don’t have a marketing campaign planned for the 14th, maybe some of these will inspire you to get in on some last-minute Valentine’s Day action.
9 Effective Valentine’s Day Marketing Campaigns
1. Crook & Marker’s “OnlyCans” Website
In 2020, many online threads and message boards were discussing the controversial website “OnlyFans.” This platform invites users to purchase videos or images from people or influencers with profiles on the site. 
Fast-forward to 2021, Crook & Marker is embracing the OnlyFans controversy with relatively PG marketing content.
The cheeky holiday campaign, which aims to earn donations for Muddy Paws Rescue, began with the brand launching a co-branded website called OnlyCans.dog.
When visiting the “OnlyCans” website, you instantly see videos and images of shirtless men holding cute puppies. You can also browse the profiles or each man-puppy duo.
From each profile page, you can then pick and share a pre-recorded video message or photo of them with a friend or loved one.
For every visitor who shares a video or photo message, Crook and Marker pledges to donate $1. Aside from the funny profiles, videos, photo messages from shirtless men, the site also features subtle ads for Crook and Marker products — as seen in the GIF above. 
This is a great example of a co-marketing campaign that leverages edginess and current trends to create a campaign that catches your eye and makes you laugh. Although Crook and Marker are only subtly mentioned on the website, users know that they created it and that the campaign is for a good cause. 
While this campaign isn’t specifically about marketing a brand, it’s fun and unique — which might enable shoppers to remember Crook & Marker next time they’re looking for a Spiked Seltzer product.
2. Ranch Dressing’s Customized Bottle
Nothing says Valentine’s Day like giving someone a bottle of — Ranch Dressing?
In 2021, while flower companies and B2C brands were highlighting the romantic gifts partners could give to each other, Hidden Valley took a funny approach to this strategy by offering audiences customized Valentine’s Day-themed bottles of Ranch salad dressing.

While this seems like an odd gift to some, Hidden Valley knows that they have fans out there that just love to cover everything they eat with Ranch dressing. To those audiences, this gift is funny, personalized, and potentially useful.

“I appreciate Ranch leaning into the quirky and self-aware following for their product. It’s a consumer brand not trying too hard,” says Connor Cirillo, HubSpot’s Conversational Marketing manager.
“I can’t wait to order some for my Valentine. And this totally isn’t just me,” Cirillo, who brought the campaign to our attention, admits. 

3. Deliveroo’s “Third-Wheel Kevin”
Many people have identified as a “third-wheel,” or the only single person hanging out with one or more couples. And, many of these people know how awkward or uncomfortable couple’s holidays, like Valentine’s Day, can be.
That’s why Deliveroo’s 2020 Valentine’s Day ad told the story of a third-wheel named Kevin, rather than a romantic couples’ narrative.
The commercial, which is filmed to look like a documentary, follows the life of Kevin — an incredibly single man who’s always surrounded by couples. As the ad goes on, it tackles the strange, awkward, and completely untrue thoughts that single people might wrongly think about themselves.

The narrator, who’s seen throughout the commercial, explains, “Being a single doesn’t just effect Kevin when he’s at home. Many life-affirming activities are impossible alone. — It can be tiring being this lonely. He’s just a hollow shell.”
As the narrator dramatically describes the slight inconveniences of being single in a comedic and light-hearted way, Kevin’s seen playing boring single-person sports and posing in a two-person photo stand. As Kevin is seen doing these daily-life activities alone, the narrator and his partner are also shown playing team sports together and enjoying each other’s company
After the narrator is done explaining how boring the single life is, he adds, “Deliveroo can help you give the third-wheel in your life some love.”
If you’re single person, the commercial is pretty hilarious because it reminds you of all the strange, over-dramatic comments less-single people make. Meanwhile, if you aren’t single, you reflect on the times you were single and thought about the same awkward thoughts. 
Because audiences might relate or laugh at the sarcasm of this ad, it might be more memorable to them. Because of this, they might think of Deliveroo next time they’re ordering a Valentine’s Day meal for themselves or “third-wheeeling” friends.
4. Twitter’s Offline Campaign
Believe it or not, one of Twitter’s great Valentine’s Day campaigns was actually not launched online.
In 2020, Twitter launched billboard ads around Valentine’s Day that only showed users’ incredibly sarcastic tweets about love and dating.
For example, in the image below, one tweet reads “Yo, I’m really awkward. Good luck to whoever is about to date me,” while another reads, “My husband said we had too much cheese in the fridge, so now I need to find a new husband.”

Image Source
In this funny campaign, Twitter highlights the tweets of real users that have leveraged the platform to share their thoughts around Valentine’s Day. While other companies are zoned in on promoting ideal images of love and relationships, Twitter promotes relatable content from its actual users.
“The campaign not only feels authentic, but it reminds you that Twitter is a place to share your thoughts freely without judgement — even if they aren’t always pretty,” says Pam Bump, HubSpot Blog Audience Growth Manager.
5. 1-800 Flowers’ Cupid Commercial
In 2019, 1-800 Flowers launched a commercial where Cupid shared his grievances of how the bouquet company put him out of a job.
In the ad, which features a shirtless Cupid in his costume sitting in front of phones that are no longer ringing, Cupid yells “Ever since 1-800 Flowers, I’ve been out of a job!” He adds, “People no longer need Cupid to express their love. Now all they need is 1-800 Flowers.” 

As Cupid continues to complain about 1-800 Flowers’ quality bouquet products, the video shows screenshots of the brand’s website and all the pretty flowers it has to offer.
Because you’re thrown into the scene of seeing Cupid as an angry, disgruntled grown man, the ad instantly grabs your attention. Then, as Cupid complains about how his competition is one-upping him, he also highlights how 1-800 Flowers is also better than competitors that also sell romantic products because they provide quick and painless scheduled delivery. 
This ad is a great example of how a brand can playfully leverage their competition, and tell a fictional story, that highlights what makes their product different.
6. Frankie & Benny’s “Lady & the Tramp” Instagram Post
In 2019, the Italian restaurant chain Frankie & Benny’s referenced romantic scenes from notable films like “Lady and the Tramp.”
In a cute Instagram post, two real dogs are seen on a classy date at Frankie & Benny’s holding the same strand of pasta in their mouths. This mimics a class scene from Lady and the Tramp where two dogs kiss after accidentally eating the same strand of pasta.
The carousel post then highlights actual photos from iconic movies like, “When Harry Met Sally.” In the post’s caption, it encourages Instagram audiences to guess which movies are being referenced.

 

 

 

 

 

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Happy Valentine’s Day 💝 Can you name the films that inspired our 4 romantic movie recreations? 🎬🎞 Comment below! #FrankiesFilms #ValentinesAtFrankies
A post shared by Frankie & Benny’s (@frankienbennys) on Feb 14, 2019 at 12:46am PST

While the real dog’s mimicking Lady and the Tramp grabbed attention, especially from the animal lovers on Instagram, this post’s caption and other photos encourages audiences to interact with the brand by guessing which movies are being referenced.
This is both a fun way to boost brand awareness, and leverage the holiday to gain engagement on social media.
7. Panera’s Engagement Offer
In 2018, Panera tweeted that customers who got engaged in one of their restaurants on Valentine’s Day could win free wedding catering from the chain. 
The tweet included a short and simple video which announced the promotion and showed two Panera employees cheering, as if they were witnessing a proposal.

Love is in the air. This Valentine’s Day, get engaged at a Panera and we might cater your wedding, for free. #PaneraProposalSweeps https://t.co/mpL5VbjSOd pic.twitter.com/VPRzu0QLNd — Panera Bread (@panerabread)
February 9, 2018

This is a quick and sweet way to leverage the holiday and social media to gain foot traffic into a physical business. Although Panera is a giant corporation, this campaign strategy is so simple that smaller businesses could create something similar with a tweet, short video, and offer that drives foot traffic.
8. Facebook Messenger Heart Feature
Just before Valentine’s Day in 2018, Facebook Messenger’s Twitter announced that if you shared that you were “In a Relationship” with a friend you were messaging, celebratory hearts would rain down in your Messenger thread with that person.

It’s not official until it’s #FacebookOfficial. Update your relationship status on Facebook and shower bae with ❤️❤️❤️on Messenger. Also customize your chat emoji, color and more! pic.twitter.com/P6oy35fHmp — Messenger (@messenger)
February 13, 2018

Although a small business probably can’t add a major feature to their product just because of a holiday, this is a good example of how you can theme something related to your product, such as your website, around a holiday temporarily. 
Another thing that’s interesting about this campaign is that Facebook is using a competing social platform, Twitter, to announce this new feature. This slightly undermines Twitter, which also allows direct messaging but with less interactive features.
9. “Adults Meal” – Burger King
While Burger King’s “Adults Meal” campaign is one of the oldest on this list, it’s still a classic that marketers talk about today.
Burger King has always been no stranger to poking fun at its biggest competitor, McDonalds. This was no different on Valentine’s Day 2017 when they offered an “Adult Meal” alternative with a similar box shape to McDonalds’ kids’ meal.
In the ad for the meal, Burger King explains that Kids’ Meals are for kids. But, on the night of Valentine’s Day, Burger King customers can buy an adult meal with an “adult toy.”

This campaign is pretty cheeky. However, it’s edgy mission and subtle comments about its competitor’s product make it memorable and funny. 
Honorable Mention: Match.com’s “Match Made in Hell” campaign.
Technically, this campaign wasn’t created for Valentine’s Day specifically. But, many of our marketers thought it had all the perfect elements of a great Valentine’s Day campaign. Because of this, we wouldn’t be surprised if it sees a lot of circulation in February.
In the commercial, directed by actor Ryan Reynolds, Satan sits in Hell using Match’s app when he sees he’s matched with a woman named 2020. When he meets up with her on Earth, he nervously says “Hi 2-0-2-0.” She replies, “Please, call me 2020” — pronouncing it like the year. 
As the commercial continues, 2020’s character appears to be the epitome of everything that happened in 2020.
For example, which launched in December, shows Satan and 2020 causing mischief, stealing toilet paper from store shelves, having a picnic inn empty stadiums, and ultimately posing for a selfie in front of a dumpster fire.
The couple frolics to the familiar sounds of Taylor Swift’s hit song, “Love Story.” which also sparks a sense of rom-com nostalgia for millennials. 

On the same day of this ad’s release, Match and Reynolds also shared another commercial showing the pair explaining how they met in couple’s counseling.
In this video, Satan explains how he found 2020 on Match:
“I started by using the Match custom search filter. I filtered out joy, happiness, toilet paper, and reason,” Satan says in the video below:

Although this didn’t launch in February, it was a very clever newsjacking example that many of our marketers say they enjoyed when they were asked to share their favorite Valentine’s campaigns.
While 2020 was a difficult year for many, Match and Reynolds identified a tasteful way to create content that audiences could relate to. At the same time, they still told an epic, hilarious love story with a pleasant, entertaining tone. Although they discussed a truly terrible year, they did so in a way that felt like escapism for the viewer.
Valentine’s Day Campaign Takeaways
As you create and launch Valentine’s Day campaigns, take note of these strategies many of the brands above used:

Grab your audience’s attention: Like with any holiday, marketers around the globe are churning out content around it. To compete with this overly saturated Valentine’s Day ad landscape, you’ll need to grab and keep your viewer’s attention with entertaining elements or valuable information.

Be relatable: Around this time of year, many people are inundated with high-budget Valentine’s Day ads that offer them no useful information or value. Even if you want to tell a mushy romance-fueled love story with your content, make sure it still feels relatable or authentic. To do this, you can leverage tactics like telling a story your audience will relate to, or leveraging user-generated content from your followers — like Twitter has.

Test out different platforms: While some companies on this list took to Instagram, others embraced physical campaign strategies like special products or billboard use. 

Editor’s Note: This blog post was originally published in Feb. 2013, but was updated for comprehensiveness on January 30, 2020.

Your competitor releases a new product or service. You offer something similar — but, of course, much better.
Then, suddenly, your competitor’s product is everywhere. News articles, online reviews, best-of lists, buyers’ guides, even TV segments.
How is this happening? And your real question: why isn’t it happening to you?
To compete against your competitors, there’s one thing you’ll need in your wheelhouse: a media kit.
Here, we’ll explore what a media kit is, and how it can help you increase brand awareness and, ultimately, sales.
Plus, how to make one for your own brand.

Media kits may live fully-online as responsive online press pages. Or, businesses may choose to make their press kits available as static, downloadable resources, like a presentation deck.
Whatever format you choose, this much is clear: businesses of all sizes benefit from having a professional, readily-accessible media kit. This vital resource is a key to the earned media coverage all businesses covet — from massive Fortune 500 corporations all the way down to individual influencers and solopreneurs.
A comprehensive media kit should include a description of the company or individual, contact information, social media statistics, case studies, information on partnerships and collaborations, and testimonials from past customers.
Basically, it’s all the information a journalist would need to feature your brand in a breaking news story — without the headache of a last-minute information request.
How to Make a Media Kit: What to Include
So, you want press coverage and partnerships (what brand doesn’t?). And you understand how a media kit helps make this all possible. But how do you make a media kit?
Here’s some good news: most of the content and creative assets you need to create your press kit likely already exist.
Key elements of a media kit include a bio or About Us page, social media statistics, case studies, partnerships and collaborations, and testimonials. To make it even easier for the press to cover your work, you’ll want to include high-quality brand identity images (think both logos, and other brand images or product/service images).
It’s up to you to (1) find this information, (2) make it look spectacular, and (3) make it painfully easy to find on your site. The rumors you’ve heard about journalists and how overworked they are? Entirely true.
To catch the attention of someone on tight deadlines with an internet full of story prospects, you’re going to want to make this simple. Most brands choose a direct page name like “Press” or “Media” –– or, if they’re really fancy, “Newsroom” –– and make it accessible directly from their homepage (often in the Footer).
Even if you prioritize a web version, having a downloadable media kit or deck is worth the time investment. Some media users might prefer the traditional form of this resource, and it gives you the best opportunity to control your pitch and tailor content to all audiences.
Biography or About Us
Let’s start with the star of your media kit: you. Here’s where you introduce your name, your logo, your mission. Make sure your media kit design reinforces your overall brand identity, utilizing the colors, fonts, and other visual hallmarks set out in your branding guide.
Evernote goes all-out in this section, housing their press kit information within the broader “About Us” portion of their website. All the essentials for journalists and partners are there too, but the organization’s values take center stage.

Social Statistics
For social stats, you’ll need to conduct a social media audit or collect this data from whoever manages your social channels. Remember your audience for the press kit: media and PR professionals.

Your media kit needs to effectively pitch your brand to people who specialize in getting people’s attention. So show them you’re capable of sparking conversation — and show them there’s already an audience eager for stories about you and your work.

Kickstarter puts a unique stamp on this section of their media kit page, highlighting a few top metrics that show massive engagement with their service.

Media kits aimed at partnerships and collaborations should prioritize engagement rates and similar actionable metrics alongside the bread-and-butter statistics like follower counts. Savvy marketers want to partner with brands and influencers that move people to action.
[Note: If you are a HubSpot Social user, you can use Reports to analyze the performance of your social posts and determine how well your social media efforts are performing.]
Partnerships and Case Studies
This section is your chance to let past partnerships and brand collaborations speak for themselves. Let the old adage “show; don’t tell” be your guide here. Featuring the right partnerships –– either via logos or through short case studies –– is a subtle but powerful tool for positioning your brand.
International football influencers The F2 highlight past campaigns, putting reputable brand names and logos front-and-center. They also note key engagement statistics for these campaigns

Testimonials
Testimonials are another great way to show media professionals the impact and effectiveness of your brand or product.
Keep this section succinct: just a single testimonial should suffice. Only a few lines of text (even just a single short quote) and a single related image gets the point across, lending your pitch greater credibility thanks to social validation.
Briogeo does a fantastic job highlighting testimonials on its Press & Buzz page, right below the rewards section for easy access:
Visual Assets (Downloadables)
Your media kit isn’t a style guide, but it should pull in the most essential elements of your visual brand. Want your logo and that slick product screenshot to display correctly?
Provide exactly the images and files you want featured. Have a killer data visualization, infographic, or product video? Include that, too.
Journalists will especially appreciate portraits of your management team. They’re most likely to cover stories involving people, so show them the people they’ll want to write about.
Birchbox makes this easy. They highlight “Press Materials” and link to a short but comprehensive set of resources. Having everything in well-organized cloud folders is a nice touch –– especially for those browsing on mobile.

Without downloading or unzipping a large batch of images, visitors can quickly confirm you have visual assets to make their publication look good. Remember, the audience for your media kit is especially busy and juggling lots of competing priorities. Jump to the top of their “potential posts” pile by making their job as easy and painless as possible.
(Added bonus: your external media resources are easily updated –– sparing you anxiety about outdated media kits and image files misrepresenting your brand.)
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Instagram also really crushes it in this portion of their press resources. They even provide branded, editable templates for broadcast media use, making it easy for publishers to adhere to their iconic visual brand.
Now you know the what and the how of creating a media kit to garner beneficial coverage for your brand. Click here to download our free media kit template and get started.
And go ahead, give yourself a pat on the back when that Features story comes out. You won’t see your name on the byline, but we both know who the real hero is here.