Author: Franz Malten Buemann

The battle for customer attention has never been so fierce.
We’ve seen an explosion in brands using online channels to promote their services and products to potential customers.
The problem with this model is that you’re not only battling other competitors for that attention; you’re competing against every site that publishes informative videos, the latest trends, and educational content that serves the needs of their audiences.
We’ve built HubSpot on the belief that you earn attention by being of value. That belief is at the very heart of HubSpot’s success; creating remarkable content is what makes a remarkable brand. It’s why we’ve invested in publishing blogs, courses, ebooks, templates, and videos that help generate millions of visits to HubSpot every month.
We can’t stop there, though. Just as the product requirements of growing companies have changed over time, so have their content needs. Newsletters, podcasts, premium content, and other media have exploded in popularity for startups and scaleups looking for best practices and tech news.
So how can companies adapt to this change? We believe that the next generation of software companies will invest in media that earns the attention of their audience. Instead of the traditional model of having a software company embedded inside of a media company, we predict that the next generation of tech companies will have the opposite – a media company embedded inside a software company.

We’re taking our first steps in that direction today with an acquisition that we believe will help HubSpot deliver on the diverse content needs of entrepreneurs, startups, and scaleups across the mediums they love.

HubSpot has signed an agreement to acquire The Hustle, a much-loved media company whose mission is to inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs and innovators.

Traditionally, a B2B company’s marketing plan was focused on getting their product into decision-makers’ hands and convincing them to buy it. The majority of content published were whitepapers, functional specs, and content that helped their buyers make a purchase decision. Companies spent their time and resources building relationships with a small group of people who were actively looking for a product to buy.
Over the past decade, we’ve seen huge changes in how B2B companies approach media, with an explosion in popularity of those developing media products paired with inbound marketing to build relationships with large audiences across all stages of their business flywheel (attract, engage, convert, delight).
Today, B2B brands can be a daily part of their customers’ lives before they even use their product. They can become a daily source of education and information for their customers. They can grow a large audience for that content by creating it for the people who buy their product and the many more who will use it. They can earn the attention of their audience by continually creating value for them.

As we considered how we could keep meeting our customers’ needs, we knew there was an opportunity to diversify the content we published and the mediums through which we delivered that content.

We started looking for potential opportunities to acquire media companies who had the talent and experience in the mediums we wanted to invest in. It became obvious to us that The Hustle perfectly met all those needs.
We loved The Hustle’s content. They have a daily newsletter that reaches over 1.5 million subscribers each day with the latest tech and business news. They’ve recently launched a premium content subscription named Trends, offering thousands of business ideas for the next generation of entrepreneurs and innovators. And they have a very successful business podcast, “My First Million.”
We were also incredibly impressed by the entire Hustle team – led by founder Sam Parr. Together the Hustle team has built an incredible product and loyal customer base. You can expect the same great content you’ve become accustomed to getting from The Hustle and HubSpot is excited to be a part of that.
We live in a busy world; it’s not easy trying to grow a scaling business and to keep on top of all the critical content that can help you be more successful. With this acquisition, we want to give our audience and customers the content they need in the medium they engage with most, whether that’s blogs, YouTube, newsletters, or podcasts. We’re excited about the current media products The Hustle has and the new ones we plan to launch together in the coming year.
It’s never been a more exciting time for a software company to become a daily part of their customer’s lives through media, and we can’t wait to continue innovating on how we earn the attention of our audience.
Learn more here.

Nowadays, subtitles are becoming increasingly common, particularly as businesses expand their marketing efforts and aim to reach a broader, global market. Additionally, subtitles are often necessary to ensure your video and audio files are as inclusive as possible.
Fortunately, there’s an easy solution to adding subtitles to video — an SRT file.
To ensure your videos are inclusive and easily digestible for any audience, it’s critical you include an option to watch with subtitles. Here, we’ll explain what an SRT file is, and how to create and edit one for your marketing videos moving forward.

What is an SRT File?
An SRT file (otherwise known as a SubRip Subtitle file) is a plain-text file that contains critical information regarding subtitles, including the start and end timecodes of your text to ensure your subtitles match your audio, and the sequential number of subtitles.
It’s important to note, an SRT file is just a text file you would use alongside video or audio — it does not also include the video or audio you’re subtitling.

How to Create an SRT File

You can create an SRT file in any text editor, including Notepad, TextEdit, and Notepad++.
Open a text editor of your choice, and order each line of your subtitles, starting with 1.
Next, put the time the subtitle begins, then “–>”, and the time it ends.
Format your timestamp like this — “hours:minutes:seconds,milliseconds”.
Below your start and end timestamp, put your first line of text.

SRT files can be created from scratch or downloaded and edited. Before we get into the basics of editing SRT files, let’s take a look at what an SRT file looks like and how it’s formatted. 
SRT File Example
Generally, Wordpad or Notepad are the easiest programs to open SRT files with because you can view them in plain text. However, you can also use software specific to SRT files such as Subtitle Workshop (more on this later).
In order for an SRT file to work in conjunction with the video or audio file it’s paired with, it must follow a specific format consisting of: 

The line number
The time range where the line should appear in the video
The text that should appear on the line

The timestamp is formatted like so with the milliseconds rounded to three decimal points: 
Hours:Minutes:Seconds,Milliseconds
The timeframe is formatted like so with an arrow denoting range:
[First Timestamp] –> [Second Timestamp]
The arrow must consist of two hyphens and a right-pointing angle bracket (also known as the greater-than sign or carrot).
If you’re creating one from scratch, feel free to copy and paste this sample SRT formatting:

Example SRT Formatting

1
00:00:00,000 –> 00:00:00,000
[Insert your first line of text here, and don’t forget to change the timestamps.]
2
00:00:00,000 –> 00:00:00,000
[Insert your second line of text here, and don’t forget to change the timestamps.]

If you notice your subtitles don’t align with your audio, or you need to change the phrasing, it’s easy enough to edit your SRT file. Consider using Subtitle Workshop or another subtitle editor of your choice.
Alternatively, if you don’t want to download an editor, you can open your SRT file in Notepad. You can change the time and phrases within the file, but don’t change the punctuation. Then, click “File” → “Save as”, and choose the SRT file extension.

How to Edit an SRT File

Download Subtitle Workshop.
Find “File” and then select “Load Subtitle” to insert your SRT file.
Click “Movie” and then “Open”, and select the corresponding video file.
Next, select “Edit”. You can choose from Timings, Texts, Subtitles, or Translations.
Adjust the time or the text on each line.

Captions are one element that you can include in your video marketing strategy that makes your content more inclusive and valuable to your audience. 
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in December 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

With all the excitement that comes with starting a new company and gauging its industry’s profit potential or forecasting a revenue goal for your business, you must remember to root these figures in reality.
If you don’t, you could enter a market that doesn’t have a large enough market size to convince investors to back you, or you could set an unrealistic revenue goal for your business and burn your employees out.

To help you avoid these issues, we’ve put together a guide that’ll teach you exactly how to calculate your industry’s total addressable market, serviceable addressable market, and share of market. 
TAM SAM SOM
TAM, SAM, and SOM are acronyms for three metrics to describe the market your organization operates in. These metrics are key components of a business plan, particularly as you craft your marketing and sales strategy, set realistic revenue goals, and choose to enter the markets that are worth your time and resources.

TAM (Total Addressable Market)
Total addressable market or TAM refers to the total market demand for a product or service. It’s the maximum amount of revenue a business can possibly generate by selling their product or service in a specific market.
Total addressable market is most useful for businesses to objectively estimate a specific market’s potential for growth.
SAM (Serviceable Addressable Market)
Due to the limitations of your business model (such as specialization or geographic limitations), you will not likely be able to service your total addressable market. 
Serviceable addressable market is most useful for businesses to objectively estimate the portion of the market they can acquire to determine their targets.
SOM (Serviceable Obtainable Market)
Unless you’re a monopoly, you most likely can’t capture 100% of your serviceable addressable market. Even if you only have one competitor, it would still be extremely difficult to convince an entire market to only buy your product or service. That’s why it’s crucial to measure your serviceable obtainable market to determine how many customers would realistically benefit from buying your product or service.
Serviceable Obtainable market is most useful for businesses to determine short-term growth targets.
TAM SAM SOM Template
Now that you know what each of these acronyms are and what they’re used for, let’s get into the nitty gritty on how to calculate TAM, SAM, and SOM. Doing so requires advanced market research ahead of time, but here are the formulas once you’re able to obtain those figures:
Total Addressable Market (TAM) Calculation

The best way to calculate total addressable market is by running a bottom-up analysis of an industry. A bottom-up analysis involves counting the total number of customers in a market and multiplying that number by the average annual revenue of each customer in this market.
Serviceable Addressable Market (SAM) Calculation

To calculate your serviceable addressable market, count up all the potential customers that would be a good fit for your business and multiply that number by the average annual revenue of these types of customer in your market.
Serviceable Obtainable Market (SOM) Calculation

Divide your revenue from last year by your industry’s serviceable addressable market from last year. This percentage is your market share from last year. Then, multiply your market share from last year by your industry’s serviceable addressable market from this year.
Keep in mind that these figures will largely be estimates to inform your strategy. The more market research you do and the more historical data you build up, the more precise your planning will be.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in March 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

This year, CBS opened the bidding for a 30-second Super Bowl ad slot cost roughly $5.6 million — plus $300,000 if brands wanted their ads on CBS’ Super Bowl live stream.
And, although the price above is about the same as it was for 2020, it took until January for all of CBS’ slots to sell out.
This year’s sluggish ad-buying isn’t shocking. Due to the ongoing global pandemic and times of financial uncertainty, many big brands that used to rush to buy ad slots are now trying to avoid spending millions of dollars on commercials that last only 30 seconds.
While $5.6 million seems like a lot of money for just a slot, think about how much advertisers are spending on the additional costs of producing these commercials, often known for having A-list talent, crazy special effects, or even award-winning directors.

Three notable brands that won’t be airing Super Bowl ads on CBS this year are Budweiser, Coca-Cola, and Pepsi. 
While Pepsi Co. opted out of ad slots to direct more budget to its sponsored halftime show, the two other brands took current events and the current financial climate into account.
For example, Budweiser will donate its Super Bowl commercial budget to charity this year, Coke, which will also be donate some funds to charity, opted out to conserve its budget. 
“This difficult choice was made to ensure we are investing in the right resources during these unprecedented times. We’ll be toasting to our fellow brands with an ice-cold Coke from the sidelines,” read a statement Coke sent to CBS News.
While a Super Bowl ad can obviously provide major visibility to millions of viewers, this year’s shifts show that a company doesn’t necessarily need to pay $5 million to gain awareness. 
Below, I’ll walk through a few examples of what big brands that opted out of Super Bowl ads did to market their brand instead. Then I’ll explain how you can use common Super Bowl-season marketing strategies affordably in your own campaigns.
What 4 Big Brands Did Instead of Buying Super Bowl Ads
Budweiser
While Bud Light Seltzer’s Super Bowl commercial tackles the “lemons” of 2020, Budweiser opted out of an ad for its flagship beer. 
Instead the brand decided to launch a Twitter campaign where a video featuring its mascot — the Clydesdale — would be tweeted during each commercial break.

Our Clydesdales are returning to the Super Bowl. Not for one commercial break, but for all of them. You’ll find them on Twitter during every break in the game, and if you follow along you could win a retro fridge stocked with Bud. Keep your #EyesOnTheClydes this Sunday. pic.twitter.com/WNID0DXzY8— Budweiser (@budweiserusa)
February 4, 2021

This is a great example of how a brand can leverage the Super Bowl commercial break without actually having an ad in it. While millions are glued to Super Bowl ads, they also scroll through Twitter or social media feeds for live game coverage. While doing so, they might discover Budweiser’s campaign.
Avocados from Mexico
While Avocados from Mexico aired a few Super Bowl ads in the past, this year, they’ve embraced the #GuacBowl instead.
Because guacamole is a popular football snack made with avocados and some sports viewers are missing the excitement of being in a stadium, Avocados from Mexico created a virtual sports facility called Guac Bowl Stadium. 
When you enter the stadium, you can click to see content from Avocados from Mexico, buy Guac Bowl Swag, and learn more about a contest where Avocados from Mexico fans could win $1 million. 
Here’s a look at what this online experience looks like: 
This is a great example of how a brand can engage audiences with a virtual experience that discusses a product, highlights intriguing content, and gives them the opportunity to interact with the brand. In a time where businesses are increasingly going virtual, brands can take a note from Avocados from Mexico for building this creative but somewhat simple web experience.  
Audi
Instead of creating a high-priced Super Bowl ad, Audi has seemingly avoided acknowledging the Super Bowl entirely on social media. Instead, the brand is ramping up for the “world premiere” of its latest car, the Audi e-tron GT — which has an early February launch plan. 
Instead of focusing on a 30-second commercial slot, Audi has been rolling out content including interviews with its Senior VP to discuss the creation of the new car and how it will solve for consumer pain points.

Starting a new era. Henrik Wenders, Senior Vice President, Audi Brand, is ready to see the world electrified. The story continues, 3 days until the Audi e-tron GT* world premiere on February 9.https://t.co/v9oEP2NVrO#Audi​ #etronGT​ #FutureIsAnAttitude pic.twitter.com/8iCjDtb1cW— Audi (@AudiOfficial)
February 5, 2021

Although Audi is not diving deep into Super Bowl campaigns, it is a good example of a brand that might have redistributed funds for a multimedia marketing campaign. This shows that, sometimes, an effective campaign doesn’t need to leverage current events at all.
Skittles
This year’s wasn’t the first time we saw major brands opt out of the big game.
Take 2018 for example. That year, Skittles decided they didn’t want to shell out millions of dollars on a Super Bowl ad. Instead, they used the money to create a full-length Broadway musical.
What could the Skittles musical possibly have been about? Well, it was described as a musical commercial that discussed the insincere and high-priced world of advertising.
The musical was never aired on TV or streaming services, but here’s a look at the musical’s main ballad, “Advertising Ruins Everything:”

While what Skittles did was both creative and clever, it was still pretty expensive. And, as a small to medium-sized business marketer, you likely can’t afford a Super Bowl ad or a Broadway musical alternative just yet.
So, what do you do if you don’t have millions in your budget like the brands above?
Below, I’ll list five common advertising strategies that brands use during the Super Bowl. For each, I’ll walk you through how you can take advantage of each on a much smaller scale while still effectively gaining brand awareness.
5 Affordable Marketing Alternatives to Super Bowl Advertising
1. Buy video ad space on social platforms.
As a small business marketer, you don’t need to pay for a high-priced televised ad slot to get seen by the right audiences.
With the growth of online platforms and social media networks, like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, we’ve also seen the growth in opportunities for in-stream advertising. If you’re less familiar with this form of advertising, it allows you to submit a video-based ad to a service like YouTube or Facebook. Then, the ad will usually be seen as pre-roll or mid-roll within longer videos.
Investing in online on in-stream video ads might also be a better bet than investing in traditional television commercials. Aside from the Super Bowl and other major televised events, people are tuning in less and less to live television. Meanwhile, consumers are streaming video, surfing the internet, and logging into social media channels more than ever before.
Additionally, while Super Bowl or TV ads usually have one up-front cost, online ad placements have more flexible costs that can be higher or lower depending on how long they are, how long you’d like to circulate the ads, and the size or scope of your target audience. To put it plainly, while brands pay millions for just 30-seconds during the Super Bowl, ad platforms like Facebook or YouTube allow you to spend less while targeting audiences that are most likely to engage with your content.
Another perk? While televised commercials require a consumer to remember and look up your brand later, online ads often allow audiences to click on them directly when they’re interested in your product or offer. This automatically adds a greater chance of ROI and decreases friction between the brand and the customer.
If you decide to take advantage of online video ads, you’ll want to drill down on your buyer persona before putting money behind an ad platform. Ask yourself questions like, “Which social media platforms do they use?”, or “What’s their gender and age range?” The answers to these questions will help you determine which social media platforms you should run ads on and which audience targets you should set for your ads.
After defining your audience, you’ll also want to create attention-grabbing content targeted specifically for your target buyers.
On online platforms, you’ll often be able to purchase an ad slot between six seconds to one minute long. However, because the internet is so fast-paced, your audience’s attention span could be much less than your allotted time. For example, on average, Gen Z and millennials will only pay attention to online content for eight to 12 seconds.
If you purchase a more budget-friendly skippable ad placement, drawing attention will be an even more crucial strategy as uninterested viewers will press the “Skip Ad” button to watch the video they’ve searched as soon as they’re able to.
Here’s a great example of a pre-roll ad from the job search site Reed.co.uk. The ad immediately draws attention with a video of meowing kittens. Then it embraces its pre-roll placement by calling out YouTube viewers for watching videos because they’re “distracted from their job.” At the end, Reed, the site’s founder, tells the viewer to click on the video, which will send them to the job site:

As you create an ad, take a note from Reed.co.uk by ensuring that it draws attention immediately.
Don’t have a box of kittens like the ad above? Consider using other techniques to draw attention, such as presenting a relatable pain point, offering a value proposition, or placing viewers into an action-filled scene when the video starts playing.
2. Dive deeper into a video narrative.
Aside from traditional commercials that establish a basic pain point and offer a simple product-based solution, Super Bowl ads are also known to have a unique storyline or feel like miniature movies.
Here’s one historic Super Bowl example that sits in the Clio Hall of Fame. During its 1984 ad spot, Apple announced the Macintosh with a commercial themed around the George Orwell novel, “1984.”
The novel, written in 1948, told the story of a dystopian society where all people followed one leader, dressed the same and conformed to the same ideologies.
The Apple commercial stays in line with the George Orwell classic as it begins with thousands of men walking in a lined formation as they enter an auditorium where an all-powerful leader preaches about their society on a giant screen. The ad’s narrative gets interesting when a woman in colorful clothing suddenly runs into the room and hurls a hammer into the superior leader’s screen, figuratively destroying the bland conformist society.
At the end of the commercial, a narrator announces, “On January 20th, 1984, Apple will introduce the Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like 1984.”

Why was the Apple ad so fascinating and iconic? At the time, Apple was considered a young disruptive underdog company while the PC world was monopolized by IBM — a much more traditional big corporation. This commercial is a deep metaphor for how Apple’s brand, innovative products, and mission would free computer users from the monopolies of past tech giants.
Yes, Apple did have more resources than the average startup when producing this ad. In fact, it was directed by Ridley Scott — known for his work on award-winning films like Alien and The Martian.
But, on a smaller scale, all it takes to create an attention-grabbing narrative ad is one or two creative team members and affordable video equipment.
Additionally, commercials that tell a great story don’t necessarily have to discuss a deep or intense topic, like Apple’s. Alternatively, they can also be quick and funny anecdotes.
This smaller-scale example from Bernie & Phyl’s Furniture simply tells the story of a bulldog getting behind at his office job. The storyline encourages people to spend more money on crucial things, like job candidates, while still saving money on furniture at the store chain:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBMjOh7XObQ
Interested in crafting a compelling advertisement script? Check out this template. If you have a great idea but aren’t sure where to start production-wise, read this step-by-step guide.
3. Leverage major events or holidays.
Whenever there’s a major event, like the Super Bowl, big brands jump to create campaigns that leverage trends related to it. This is because people who are interested in the event might also enjoy the content or ads that discuss it.
Although big brands air commercials during major events, you can instead create campaigns that make pop culture or event references. These could include blog posts about how an event relates to your industry, a social media post that leverages topical hashtags, or a marketing video about how your customers might be celebrating an event.
Here’s an example where the energy drink brand G-Fuel asks Twitter users to reply to their tweet with who they think will win the 2020 “#SuperBowl.” In the tweet, they include an image of two G-Fuel drinks in front of a football field:

This is smart because those who are interested in the Super Bowl might click the #SuperBowl hashtag or search the topic and find this post. Although it doesn’t directly advertise the drink and doesn’t have an endorsement from the NFL, the post still leverages the trend and enables Super Bowl fans to learn more about the sporty energy drink.
However, while leveraging a holiday and social media trends might seem like low-hanging fruit, you should keep in mind that each event has certain legalities around it.
For example, the NFL has trademarked the term Super Bowl and does not allow brands to say the event name in content with commercial intent. So, if G-Fuel were to promote its drinks as “official Super Bowl beverages,” it would infringe upon this trademark. However, by showing a picture of their product in front of a football field and simply asking fans about their thoughts on the actual game, they aren’t saying that their product is in any way endorsed by the NFL.
To avoid any further blurred lines when referencing the Super Bowl in a paid ad or commercial, brands usually call it, “the big game” or “the football game,” instead.
4. Lean into co-marketing.
Sometimes, even for big brands, it’s more budget-friendly and engaging to create a co-marketed Super Bowl ad. With this strategy, two or more brands put money, time, effort, or resources into creating a joint piece of content that cleverly highlights all brands involved.
Here’s a great example of a 2015 ad where Newcastle pooled its money with 37 other brands to buy a Super Bowl ad slot that mentions all the companies at some point. The ad was appropriately titled, “Band of Brands:”

The example above is one of the most insane examples of co-marketing, but this is a strategy that is incredibly scaleable to small businesses and has been used as a tactic for ages.
Below is an example of how Louis Vuitton and BMW joined forces as luxury travel and transportation product providers by launching a series of ads that show their sleek, black products together. The campaign was titled, “The Art of Travel.”

The co-branding example above is effective because it features two companies that complement each other rather than competing against each other. Their audiences, which are made up of upper-class professionals, also mesh well together and will engage similarly with this type of promotion.
5. Consider influencer marketing.
Aside from high-budget productions and interesting storylines, Super Bowl commercials are also known for their star-studded casts. Remember this Amazon Echo commercial where Alexa is voiced by a handful of popular celebrities?

Although you probably can’t hire stars like Cardi B, you might be able to budget content from a micro-influencer who’s heavily followed or considered credible in your industry.
When you sponsor an influencer that really understands their audience and your industry, they’ll create and publish content that intrigues their audience while also highlighting your product.
Influencer marketing is similar to co-branding. But, instead of increasing the chances of two branded audiences learning about both companies featured in one piece of content, influencer marketing enables the influencer’s audience to learn about your product while your audience can learn more about the influencer.
An influencer marketing strategy can also be especially effective on social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, or TikTok.
In this example, the smartphone game “Run Around” sponsored a TikTok user who’s gained more than 15,000 followers simply by recording herself playing mobile games.
In the effective TikTok example above, the brand identified that gaming-oriented audiences were on TikTok and sponsored an influencer who’s audience anticipates her mobile gaming reviews and demonstrations.
Creating a (Somewhat) Super Bowl-Quality Ad
As you work towards creating a quality ad on a budget, keep these scaleable big brand tips in mind:

Tell a great story. Pull your viewers in, allow them to relate to your brand, and hook them by presenting how your product can help them.

Embrace current events: Craft campaigns that touch on highly-discussed on trendy events, such as the Super Bowl, award shows, or holidays — especially if they relate strongly to your brand.

Leverage brands and influencers: Partnering with brands and influencers can allow your product or company to get attention from similar audiences that you haven’t already reached. To get started, research and build relationships with brands and influencers that your audiences or industries look to for credible tips.

Want to see more effective big brand campaign strategies that you can learn from? Check out this post where we reveal our favorite Super Bowl ads of all time. 
Editor’s Note: This piece was originally published in February 2020, but was updated in 2021 for comprehensiveness and freshness. 

If you need help building a website, creating a company blog, or getting webpages discovered by search engines, there’s plenty of SEO training that can help you get started.
But, once your website is built and your customers find your content online, how do you improve your search ranking and reach a larger audience?
While keyword research, overlap tests, and link-building, are a must for creating an online presence, there’s much more you can do to increase the amount of traffic coming to your webpages.
That’s why we spoke to experts on HubSpot’s SEO team to learn how they’ve improved content strategy over time. Read on for a list of their tips that can help you rank higher on search engines and optimize the accessibility of your marketing campaigns.
How to Improve SEO Like HubSpot
1. Encourage visitors to search for your brand.
When your business is growing, it’s important to increase the share of unbranded searches coming to your website. These are keywords that aren’t specific to your brand, but they may be relevant to your industry.
For example, if you were a power-washing company located in Massachusetts, then you would want to rank for a search like, “best power-washing companies in New England.” While the name of your company isn’t included in this search, you would still want your website to appear in the search results when someone is looking for power-washing services in the New England area.

Once your company grows and develops stronger relationships with its customers, you can encourage branded traffic to your webpages. In fact, companies like Amazon have even influenced their buyers’ search habits, and now its customers add “amazon” to their search queries when researching products on Google. This ensures that the top result on the SERP is most likely a link to an Amazon page.
Your company can have a similar effect on its customers by becoming a thought leader and resource for topics related to your industry. For instance, if customers had questions about how powerwashing works, its benefits, when you should do it, etc. then our powerwashing company might have a blog that answers all of these questions. As people read these articles and become familiar with our content, they might amend their search queries to include the name of our company so they can access our content faster.
2. Update your content.
Search engines are constantly updating their algorithms and improving their tools to provide better search results for their users. This means that your content can become outdated within months to a year and the keyword research that you did when you first created a piece may change as search engines adapt over time. That’s why it’s important to regularly update your content, so you can keep tabs on its performance and ensure it continues to rank high on search engines.

When updating content, you should replace old statistics and outdated terminology, and fill in any content gaps that you may have missed when you first created the piece. You should also fix any broken links or images and make sure that the formatting and branding is consistent with your current content. Do this at a cadence that makes sense for you — for many teams, it’s every few months.
3. Analyze keywords beyond search volume.
When analyzing keywords, it’s easy to locked in on search volume and prioritize keywords with the most potential traffic. However, it’s important to look beyond just search volume and consider the intent of the keyword before you create content that’s targeted towards it.
Open an incognito window and search for your keyword. Look at the content that’s currently ranking for it and ask yourself if your content would fit with this SERP. If it doesn’t, then it might be hard to rank for this topic with the content you’re currently using.

Here’s an example. Let’s say our powerwashing company recently revamped its support team and we wanted to rank for the term, “progressive customer service.” While we could write alot about our new and improved service team, we probably won’t beat the insurance company, Progressive, from winning over this keyword. That’s because the intent behind this keyword is for Progressive’s service team and not for content related to the customer service industry.
4. Prioritize internal linking.
It’s easy to grow organic authority when publishing content consistently, but it’s just as easy to plateau if you don’t consider where it should be published. This is a form of SEO “tech debt” that can hamper your growth the bigger your site gets.
To avoid this setback, it’s important to audit your internal linking structure and identify different pieces of content that should be linked together. Adding links between internal pages helps search engines understand which content is related to one another as well as the keywords that these pages are targeting. It can also help Google index new pages faster if they’re linked from the right pages to begin with.

You can use a number of SEO tools to systematically find these opportunities and update the pages that matter most to your sales efforts.
5. Form strong relationships with your developers and designers.
As your online presence grows, you might be surprised to find your SEO team is working closely with your web developers and designers. This is expected, though, since SEO is influenced significantly by how your content is designed and maintained.
The better relationship between your SEO team and web designers, the higher your content will rank. After all, if your web developers understand the importance of SEO, then they’re more likely to listen to your SEO team’s advice when creating and designing new content.

At the very least, open communication between these two teams can be the key to more consistent digital growth. For example, if your web developers want to delete a page that has 500 backlinks, they should first check in with your SEO team to see if there would be any negative repercussions. Effective communication between your developers and your SEO team can help you avoid SEO headaches and maintain high search rankings.
6. Prune content after long periods of growth.
Not all of your content is going to hit it out of the park — and, that’s okay. Some content will fall shorter than expected and even though you update it, it might not obtain the amount of traffic you were originally hoping for.
As this content piles up, it can impact the speed and performance of your website. If it does, then you might want to consider pruning these pages so that they don’t adversely affect user experience. Even though you’ll forfeit a small amount of traffic from these pages, you’ll likely save alot more by improving the user experience on your other, more popular pages.

7. Optimize Search-Friendly Content.
Not everything that you publish is going to be search-friendly — like ad landing pages, thank-you pages, internal sales enablement pages, and login pages. These pages aren’t typically target by search engines and therefore aren’t as important to optimize for search.
Instead, you should focus your attention on pages that are search-friendly. These are the ones that search engines are looking for and they play a much bigger role in the customer experience. If you can get this content in front of your target audience, they’ll eventually discover your other pages as they continue to explore your site.

Optimizing Your Content Strategy
SEO is always a work in progress. So long as search engines continue to update their algorithms, marketing teams will have to create content that’s not only relevant to their audience but can be easily discovered, too.
While SEO marketing software can help brands shape their content strategies, ultimately it will be up to marketers to create effective content that ranks high on search engines and attract new leads for their business.
For more ways to improve your content’s search ranking, read these SEO tips.

 

 

The fact is, marketing is based on human behaviors. Psychological principles used in business are probably countless. Reciprocity norm is one of them. It is based on mechanisms of mutuality and wanting to return the favor. Coupons or free gifts in your shopping cart are not just a polite gesture of the company. It’s the promotion campaign, which we are usually not aware of. Is the urge to return the favor greater than common sense?

 

An eye for an eye

 

Internet marketing is a complex mechanism, based not only on promotion strategies but also on an extensive number of psychological aspects that help reach consumers. Reciprocity norm is a concept from social psychology, saying that action directed to us by someone, will have its consequences in reciprocating the same behavior to that person. The oldest and widely known example of that norm is an eye for an eye rule from Hammurabi’s code, saying that if one will harm a man’s eye, his eye also should be harmed. It may sound a little drastic, but do not worry, marketers have adapted it into more modern solutions and nobody has to lose eyes.

 

The reciprocity rule in marketing

 

The concept of reciprocity as a behavioral pattern is known probably since the dawn of humanity. We can act on it daily, even without realizing it. Do you know “scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours”? That’s exactly what the concept stands for, and because it is so natural to use for us as humans, it is also easy to implement in different fields including marketing. 

 

Just like in Hammurabi’s code, the norm is being implemented into marketing strategies, using reciprocity in a bit different context than losing a body part. Consider a scenario in which you want to buy a piece of garment from an online store and see a pop-up saying: “Sign for subscription and get 10% off”. What would you do? Reciprocity mechanisms at that moment are unconsciously trying to make a personal connection between you and the shop. By offering you a discount essentially for free, you should feel an urge to give something in return, meaning – to buy from the shop.

 

Giftology

 

Bearing in mind the reciprocity norm, there are few principles one could implement to the marketing, the most obvious one is to be the first to offer. When we are offered free gifts, something tells us to pay back. This powerful influence on our behavior, makes us feel obliged to act in favor of the donor. A great example could be a promotional campaign like “buy 1, get 1 for free”. Getting one item for free may seem like a favor, therefore we are more willing to buy the promoted product, just to return that favor. John Ruhlin, a man whose entire business was built by the rule of reciprocity, called it a “giftology”. He managed to create his lifelong success by gifting someone $7000, which resulted in getting millions in return.

 

Reciprocity examples

 

Let’s stop for a moment, and appreciate how different businesses take advantage of reciprocity to engage and maintain a relationship with the client.

 

Spotify

Spotify provides a 30-day free trial for their Premium membership, which can be canceled at any time at no cost. By giving the possibility of using a better, adless version for free, users feel appreciated with this opportunity and they will more likely continue the subscription, especially for only 8$ a month.  

 

SEO RANK SERP 

SEO RANK SERP is a digital marketing SEO agency, which you can of course hire. To give you a better overlook of what you are doing, they are giving you tons of helpful resources for free without any subscription. This way by getting good content without any costs or efforts, by the reciprocity rule you should feel grateful, and maybe even hire the company. 

 

Dropbox

Have you heard of Dropbox’s referral campaign – this is honestly one of the best-thought campaigns working on reciprocity norm. You just have to refer the Dropbox to someone and both, you and the referee will get an additional 500MB to use.

 

Zalando 

Their 100-day return policy is a great strategy that helps in increasing credibility in the eyes of customers. No bells or secret agenda, you can just return your product within 100 days from its arrival. This for sure increases trust in the company and encourages them to buy from there. 

 

As you can see, the reciprocity rule is used to make your clients behave in a particular way that can benefit your business. To use this leverage well, you should inspire trust and nurture a long-lasting relationship. Letting clients get to know you, and then get used to your product will ensure willingness to keep this relationship going.

 

All that glitters is not gold

 

We may be wondering, what happened to the good, old “give and expect nothing in return”? Is there even a place for it in marketing? Given that reciprocity is not always an even exchange, customers must be aware of what they are committing to. Just like John Ruhlin’s example above states, he managed to get so much for a relatively small favor. That indicates how people acting on reciprocity norms are willing to give even more than they received. 

 

Should every gift be suspicious?

 

Of course not! Knowing about the reciprocity rule applied to marketing means only that now you can recognize and use it the best way you can. Also, marketers should know that it is a powerful tool and must be used with great responsibility, certainly shouldn’t be abused. Building mutual relationships with customers requires time and should be conducted without pushing too hard on the client. If implemented the right way, the reciprocity principle affects not only higher sales but also a long-term relationship between your company and the customer.

marketing automation

marketing automation