Author: Franz Malten Buemann

As you browse and maneuver around the internet, you visit landing pages all the time.
A landing page can be the designated page you’re taken to when you click on an ad. It can also be the page that follows a call-to-action button or serve as the homepage of a website.
Regardless of how you “land” on a landing page, its purpose is to encourage you to convert to a lead or customer. For that reason, landing pages are uniquely powerful components of a business’s digital marketing strategy.

What is a landing page?
A landing page is a website page with a specific purpose — the objective of a landing page is to convert visitors into leads. While there are many types of landing pages the intent the same — get more leads.
Landing pages contain lead forms that ask visitors for their contact information in exchange for something of value, otherwise known as an offer.
The video below will help drive that definition home.

Now, think about how protective you are of your personal information. What would make a person want to give up their contact information over the internet?
Well, that’s where landing page best practices come in. A targeted, well-crafted landing page with a solid format and sound copy will get almost anyone to submit their information.

First, why do you need a landing page?
Why would you create a special page just for people to fill out a form? Why not just use your homepage or about page? Great questions.
After reading this article, you’ll likely be able to answer those questions yourself, but the short answer is this: A landing page eliminates distractions by removing navigation, competing links, and alternate options so you capture your visitor’s undivided attention. And complete attention means you can guide your visitor where you’d like them to go, i.e., to your lead form. In sum, landing pages are specifically designed to create conversions.
Now that you understand their importance, let’s cover landing page best practices to make sure your pages are set up to convert.

Was that a lot? We’ll break down these landing page best practices below.
1. Craft a benefit-focused headline.
For every 10 people that visit your landing page, at least seven of them will bounce off the page. To keep that number low, your visitors need to know (and understand) what’s in it for them within seconds of arriving. Your headline is the first thing they’ll read, and it should clearly and concisely communicate the value of your landing page and offer.
2. Choose an image that illustrates the offer.
Yes, an image is mandatory, and it should represent your target audience. The purpose of your image is to convey a feeling — it should illustrate how your visitor will feel once they receive your offer. Certain images may work better than others, so you should always split test your options (which we’ll cover below).
3. Write compelling copy.
Don’t spend all that time crafting the perfect headline and finding your ideal image to fall flat when it comes to the words that will actually sell your call-to-action. Your copy needs to be clear, concise and should guide your visitor to the action you want them to complete. Compelling copy also speaks directly to the visitor by using “you” and “your” to make them feel engaged. We’ll go more in-depth on copy tips below.
4. Include the lead form above the fold.
Your lead form needs to be readily accessible should your prospect want to convert right away — you definitely don’t want them searching and scanning your landing page to find your offer. “Above the fold” just means that visitors don’t have to scroll to get to the form — that it’s in view as soon as someone hits the page. This could be a form or an anchor link to the form. Even better: Design your form to scroll with the user as they move down the page.
5. Add a clear and standout call-to-action.
The call-to-action (CTA) is arguably the most important element on your landing page — it’s one of many elements that encourage conversion. The CTA button needs to stand out, meaning you should use a color that contrasts with other elements on the page. Be clear about what you want visitors to do, that is, use an action verb that spells it out for them, like “submit”, “download”, or “get it now”. More on CTA best practices below.
6. Give away a relevant offer.
Think of your landing page as a part of your lead’s journey to your ultimate offer — your product or service, that is. Your offer is the thing you give in exchange for your lead’s personal information. Not only should it be compelling enough for your visitor to provide their contact info, but it should also be relevant to your business. Say you sell horseshoes.
Your offer might be something like “10 Simple Ways to Size Your Horse’s Hooves,” because, ultimately, you’re going to ask that lead to buy your horseshoes. You wouldn’t hook them with an offer about organic farming because that puts them on a completely different path. We’ll talk more about how compelling offers below.
7. Only ask for what you need.
You want to gather as much information as possible about your lead, but how much you ask for depends on several factors: how well acquainted they are with you, where they are in their buyer’s journey, and how much they trust you. Ask for as little info as you need in your lead form to create a low barrier to entry. A name and an email are more than sufficient to nurture a new lead.
8. Remove all navigation.
Your landing page has one objective and one objective only: to convert visitors into leads. Any competing links — including internal links to other pages on your website — will distract from that goal. Remove any other links on your page to draw all of your visitors’ attention to your call-to-action.
9. Make your page responsive.
Just like every other page on your website, your landing pages need to be responsive to accommodate every viewing experience. The last thing you need is for your form to fall out of view on mobile devices. Give your visitors every possible opportunity to convert, no matter how they’re viewing your page.
You can use tools to help accomplish this. For example, HubSpot’s drag-and-drop landing page editor, available in Marketing Hub Starter, makes it easy for you to create mobile optimized landing pages and forms effortlessly.
10. Optimize for search.
Sure, you’ll be driving visitors to your landing page through email blasts, social posts and other marketing methods, but your page should also be optimized with target keywords for your paid campaigns and organic search. When someone searches for your key phrase, they should find your landing page. Similarly, when you target a keyword with paid ads, those words should exist on your landing page.
11. Remember to use a thank you page.
A thank you page is where you send leads once they’ve completed your form. Now, you could just show a thank you message on the same page or ditch the thank you altogether, but there are many reasons why that’s not the best option.
A thank you page serves three important purposes:

It delivers the offer that you promised (usually in the form of an instant download)
It gives you an opportunity to interest your new lead in additional relevant content
It serves as a chance to thank them for their interest, which goes a long way in promoting them to a customer down the line.

How to Design Your Landing Page
Often times, design means creativity, colors, and pretty pictures. For the purpose of a landing page, we take design a step further to mean functional, direction-oriented, and effective. So, to craft a well-designed landing page, you’ll have to tap into both your right and left brain. But don’t get me wrong — you still need great imagery and attractive colors to convert your visitors. We’ll touch on how to incorporate all of this below.
Landing Page Structure
The good news is you don’t need to get too creative here. Most landing pages follow a very similar structure because it’s been proven to work. You can infuse your creativity through branded elements and images, but stick to a landing page format that people are used to seeing.
A good landing page has five elements (check out the landing page example below to see these elements in practice):

Headline that grabs the visitors attention

Relevant image that is relevant to your audience

Lead form that sits above the fold to capture visitors’ information

CTA that is action-oriented and compelling

Copy and description that informs and entices your visitor to complete your form

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Can your landing page include more than this? Absolutely. (Think social share buttons that visitors can use to spread the word about your offer). This is simply the bare minimum. You need to know your audience, where they are coming from and where they are in their buyer’s journey to know how much you need to include. The rule of thumb is to include as much information as you need to get people to convert.
Landing Page Layout
This may come as a surprise, but most people don’t read every word of your cleverly-crafted copy. Instead, they skim through and pull out the most important tidbits. Your job is to make those tidbits stand out so your visitor doesn’t miss anything important.
That means a few things …

Keep the most important information above the fold so your visitor doesn’t need to scroll to get to it.

Perform a blink test on your page, meaning a visitor should be able to gather the main message in less time than it takes them to blink, i.e., less than five seconds.

Use white (or negative) space to keep your visitor engaged, focused, and to help them comprehend your message.

Write with bullets and short paragraphs to make your copy easy to digest.
Try to work the important copy into an F-pattern, which is the direction that most people scan a page online. Work with the flow of visual patterns to drive people to the key points that will get them to convert.

Landing Page Colors
The design of your landing page — including the colors you use — should reflect that of your website. You’re aiming to form a long-term relationship with the people who visit your landing page, and that means they need to become familiar with your branding colors and unique style. The more they recognize your brand, the more they trust you (and the more they trust you, the easier it is to get them to do what you want them to do).The areas where you should consider using alternate colors are on the elements of your page that need to stand out — ahem, your CTA button. Contrast is the name of the game here. Say your branded colors are mostly green … you’ll want to choose a color that can draw users attention, say purple.
Wondering what colors perform well? We did a little research for you to determine which colors convert best.
Landing Page Images
The image on your landing page is one the first things people see, and since people process visuals far quicker than they do text, it sets the tone for their entire experience. But how can you possibly choose between millions of stock photos and that company photo shoot that’s taking up all the space on your computer?
Let’s narrow down the selection with a few important questions:
Who is my target audience?
What does your persona look like? How old are they? How do they dress? What are they interested in? The answers to these questions are important in determining what image you’re going to place front and center on your landing page. If it’s going to appeal to your audience, then it needs to represent them in some way.
Where on my landing page do I want them to look?
This might seem like an odd question, but really it’s based on the idea that people follow directional cues, like where someone is looking or pointing. If you want visitors to fill out a form, consider an image that drives their attention toward that form.
Will this image reinforce my message?
Every element on your landing page serves an important purpose. Since your image is one of the first things that people see, it should help clarify what the visitor can expect from your page. Make sure that your image adds value.
Here are some other important things to consider when creating great landing page images.

Call-to-Action (CTA)
We’ve discussed your CTA a few times so far, but since it’s the most important part of your landing page, it’s worth mentioning again. When it comes to the design of your CTA, there are a few tricks will make it so alluring that visitors feel compelled to click. To clarify, your CTA includes the button and the copy you use to draw attention to it; these tips cover both.

Give your CTA a vibrant and contrasting color
Focus your CTA copy on the benefit to your visitor
Get to the point — try using no more than five words
Tell your visitor what you want them to do using action verbs, e.g. Get, Download, Click
Make your button large enough to stand out on the page
Give it some negative space — don’t crowd the area around your CTA
Follow the flow of the page and place your CTA where your readers’ eyes will go, such as to the right of or below the copy
Test your button shape, test your copy … as a matter of fact test everything (we’ll cover how to do this below)

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Mobile Landing Page
More than half of website traffic comes from mobile devices, therefore, the user experience should be the same no matter the device visitors are using. By making your landing page responsive, you give them every opportunity to view and convert, whether they’re on a desktop, phone, tablet, or otherwise.

Landing Page Copywriting Tips
After design comes great copy. Your objective is to be compelling, instructive, likable, concise, effective, trustworthy and informative all at once. How? Keep reading.
1. Cover the main points.
No matter how you position it, there are a few main points that you need to hit with your copy. Those main points are your persona’s pain point, the solution to that pain point, how your solution works (features), how your solution will improve their situation (benefits), and verification that it works (social proof).
The majority of what you write needs to address how you can help your prospect, not how awesome you are (because that’s implied). Let’s go more in-depth on these points.
The Pain Point
The pain point that you focus on should be the one that your offer solves. Not to sound negative, but it’s important to touch on the problem your persona is facing so they know you understand what they’re going through. Empathy is an effective way to build trust. And if they know you get their problem, then they’re more likely to trust your solution.
Your Solution
The solution to their pain point is what you’re offering in exchange for their information. Illustrate a clear path between their problem and how your solution is the remedy they need.
Features
Just knowing what your solution is may not be enough to convert leads, so you need to mention what’s included in that solution. If it’s an ebook, what are the subjects your cover? If you’re promoting a webinar, how will it work and what will you teach? If it’s a service, what can they expect? Give your potential lead all the information they need to make a decision.
Benefits
Your copy should be heavy with benefits to the user because that’s what they really care about — what’s in it for them. While features list what your offer has, benefits tell visitors how their situation will be improved as a result. It paints a vivid picture of how much better their life could be by using your solution.
Social Proof
Studies show that social proof is effective for persuading people to take a desired action. Social proof comes in the form of logos of brands you’ve worked with, testimonials from previous clients, reviews of your product, or confirmation that others have purchased your service. In essence, people want to know that others are have used and benefited from your solution, too. By including social proof on your landing page, you’re validating your offer without even saying anything.

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Touching on each of these points will provide you with well-rounded copy that answers all of your visitors’ questions … which brings me to my next point.
2. Preemptively respond to objections.
A key part of writing persuasive copy (copy that gets people to convert) is dismantling objections before they even come up. Now, this takes some skill … or at least some help from a friend.
Once you’ve laid your foundation by addressing all the main points, put yourself in the mind of your prospect and think about where they might protest or challenge you as they read. For instance, if you say “We’ve helped Fortune 500 companies bring in customers,” your reader might scoff or doubt it unless you follow up that statement with social proof.
Do this exercise for every section of your page (or ask an unbiased friend to help) until you’ve covered every possible objection you can think of. When you get questions from people who’ve visited your landing page, use that as feedback to sharpen your copy even further. Better yet, seek out constructive criticism from your first few converted leads to ensure your landing page is meeting every need.
3. Build trust with your prospect.
Say you were reading a sales page and the company wrote, “Our product has helped 100 people and it might work for you, too!” Meh. I’d probably pass and find a company that has a solution that can definitely work for me. Your goal is to build trust with your visitor and the way to do that is to come across as an authority.
Besides using social proof, some other ways to build trust are:

Write in the way that you speak and address your prospects as you would a live customer.
Cite statistics that support your message.
Use case studies that highlight customers similar to your target.
Be relatable. Show your audience that you’re human by admitting failures, opening up about doubts you’ve had, and being honest. The caveat is you should only share what is relevant to their struggle; don’t just divulge anything.

4. Use click triggers.
Click triggers are designed to eliminate that last bit of doubt before a visitor converts. You can think of them as lick Probability Enhancers (… yes, I made up that term). They are essentially copy positioned next to your CTA that pushes your prospect over the edge by easing their mind and mitigating the risk of converting.
Below are some effective ways to employ click triggers:

Money-back guarantee
Easy unsubscribe
Quote from a successful or happy customer
Blurb on “what to expect”
Price slashing
Privacy policy
Some other creative method

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Whatever you choose, click triggers will give your conversions the boost they need.

A/B Testing Your Landing Page
Everything we’ve discussed until this point is great … in theory. But your business is different from others, and your target audience is unique. How do you know if the copy you chose is working? Or if your CTA placement is right? Or what colors perform best? Or which image to choose?You test it. That’s how. Split testing (or A/B testing) is probably nothing new to you as a marketer, and split testing your landing page is just one more experiment to add to your list.
Let’s briefly go over how to best A/B test your landing pages.
What is A/B testing?
A/B testing is simply splitting your traffic to two (or more) variations of a page to see which performs better. While you could do this manually by launching one variation for a period of time, then another for the same amount of time, it’s far more efficient to use a software that allows you to split test and can track your results.
The main components of an A/B test are variants, or the two versions of the page, the champion, or the original page, and the challenger, or the page that you modified to test against the original.
How to A/B Test
The most important trick to split testing is to make very small tweaks with each experiment. For instance, you don’t want to split test your headline and your image at the same time because you won’t know which element garnered the results. For this reason, stick to testing one element at a time. The “winner” becomes your champion, then you can create a new challenger to test the next element. You repeat this cycle until you reach a conversion rate that you’re happy with (and that falls within realistic expectations, which we’ll cover below).
What should you test?
You can test virtually anything on your landing page. But while that’s possible, you may want to limit your test to a few of the most impactful elements of your page, like:

Headline copy
Image
CTA color
Click triggers
Copy on the page
Lead form length and fields

These tests will have the biggest impact on your conversion rates. Try starting with the simplest change first, like a headline or CTA color, then work your way to the larger undertakings, like your page copy.

Landing Page Metrics to Track

Metrics will tell you everything you need to know about how well your landing page is performing as well as give you some insight on how to improve it. It’s hard to know exactly what will work when you launch a page. Measure and track meticulously in the beginning until you reach a relatively good conversion rate, then you can track your metrics less frequently.
Page Visits
How many visits are you getting on your landing page? The more visits, the more you increase your probability of conversions. Try adjusting your paid strategy or redefining your keywords to drive more traffic to your page. You can also let your current followers know about your offer through emails, social media, and on your website.
Traffic Source
Knowing where your traffic is coming from will let you know where you should double down on or ditch your efforts.
Submission Rate
This is the number of people that complete your lead form and land on your thank you page. There are many tweaks you can make to your page to increase this number, but make sure to A/B test so you know what’s working.
Contacts
Contacts refer to the number of leads that you generated from your form. The reason this is different from submissions is because duplicate contacts are only counted once, meaning if a current lead fills out your form to get your offer, they don’t affect the count.
Heat Mapping
This is more of an observation of how people interact with your page as opposed to a metric. Heat mapping can show you where people scroll, what they read, and how they engage with your page. This is all useful data when thinking about your page layout and structure.
Bounce Rate
If visitors are coming to your page and immediately leaving, then you need to examine whether the content is aligned with the offer. Does your copy capture visitors’ attention and do visitors automatically know what to do when they land on your page? Is your page a reflection of the copy you used to get people to visit it?
Form Abandonment
This metric tells you how many people start filling out your form but don’t complete it. If this number is particularly high, some adjustments to consider are introducing new click triggers, shortening your form, or making it more clear what you want your visitor to do.
Benchmarks
You need to judge your landing page against industry norms and across a similar audience to know if it’s performing as expected. Check out some industry benchmarks to set as your baseline, but don’t be discouraged by other company’s results.
No matter what’s going on, it’s possible to diagnose and heal your landing pages if you pay attention to the metrics.

How to Make Your Landing Pages More Effective
There are always tweaks you can make to boost landing page performance. Below are a few great tips (if I do say so myself) to get your landing pages leveled up.
Optimize your landing page.
Optimize is such a confusing word, isn’t it? I mean, are we talking about imagery, copy, keywords, or UI? The answer is yes — we’re talking about all of it. Optimize just means to make your landing page the best it can be, and that can include a myriad of modifications. If you want to know everything you could do to optimize your landing page, you’ll need a pretty expansive guide. And, guess what, we have one here.

Present a really good offer.
You could argue that anything free qualifies as “good,” but that isn’t exactly true. Not only should your offer be free (we’re not talking sales pages here) but it also has to be good enough to warrant a stranger giving you their personal information. Let’s face it — there are a lot of companies competing for your audience’s attention, asking for their information and soliciting them via email. So, what’s going to make you stand out from the pack? An outstanding offer, that’s what.
Here are a few questions to determine if you have a compelling offer or not:

Does my offer solve a pain point for my target audience?
Is there a clear benefit that a lead can gain from this offer?
Can my offer rival the competition?

Decrease page load time.
A single second delay in page load time means 7% fewer conversions and 11% fewer page views. Slow page load times can also result in customer dissatisfaction and frustration.
Needless to say, landing page load time is a metric to take seriously. If you need some tips, check out this resource on decreasing page load time.
Keep the buyer’s journey in mind.
Since you’re driving traffic to your landing page, you should have a clear idea of where your visitors are in their buyer’s journey. That means you’ll know if they’re trying to diagnose a problem (awareness), looking for a solution to their problem (consideration), or are ready to close (decision). Your copy and offer should reflect this if you want to convert. It’s no different from any other marketing materials — meet your visitors where they are.
Create a seamless experience.
No one should be surprised when they arrive on your landing page. It should be exactly as advertised, meaning be consistent with your copy. Use the same words on your landing page that you used to get people to arrive there, whether it was a paid ad, social post, blog CTA, or email. You need to avoid the bait and switch at all costs if you want people to stick around.
Create a clear path to conversion.
There should be no guesswork involved in navigating your landing page. Once someone arrives on your page, it should be clear what you want them to do — submit their info to your lead form. Your goal is to guide visitors to your form using creative directional cues.
Here are some ways to point your visitor to a conversion:

Choose an image of a person that is either gazing in the direction of or pointing to your form
Make your CTA a contrasting color to draw attention to it
Use arrows that point to your lead form
Insert anchor text that brings people back to the form when clicked
Give your CTA some negative space on the page
Frame your lead form with a bold color or outline

Add scarcity to your offer.
Few emotional marketing tactics work as well as fear … and the fear of missing out (more formally known as FOMO). Consumers don’t like to lose their ability to choose, and once you make it clear that your offer is in high demand and/or short supply, they’re going to clamber to get it. (Here’s a cool study on cookie jars if you want to geek out on the psychology of scarcity marketing.)
The other reason why this technique works is because people want things that are hard to obtain — that signifies value and exclusivity.
To show scarcity, mention how little of your offer is left, include a countdown timer, use words like “ends soon” or “last chance”. Obviously, we want you to be genuine, so only employ tactics that are true for your business. Bottom line: there are many ways to use and benefit from this technique.
Use video.
Video marketing is becoming increasingly popular for good reason. Not only do customers prefer to see video from companies, but 88% of video marketers say that video gives them positive ROI. The key is to create an effective video that doesn’t distract visitors from your ultimate goal: the call-to-action.
If you’re on the fence about using video, here are some reasons that might push you over the ledge.
Video …

Increases conversion rates
Is a more personable way to share a message and connect with prospects
Can be more engaging than an image and will get visitors in the habit of clicking (and converting)
Can reduce the number of support calls or tickets you receive
Is processed 60,000 times faster than text

If you do plan to employ this tactic, VidYard has some helpful landing page video guidelines to follow.
Are you excited yet about all the ways you can improve your landing pages? Sure, there are quite a few but that just means that a poor-performing landing page doesn’t have to stay that way. Take it one tactic at a time and build as needed.
What to Do Post-Conversion: Lead Nurturing
So, you have an optimized landing page that converts like a charm. Now what? You don’t want to leave those leads hanging. Instead, you want to nurture them into becoming customers, then nurture them some more. Here’s how.
Optimize your thank you page.
I hope you’re not tired of optimizing yet. Your thank you page is the first thing someone sees after they convert, so it serves as a great opportunity to delight your new lead even more than you already have. Your objective is twofold: deliver your promised offer and get them interested in something else on your site.
Your thank you page should:

Thank your new lead (go figure)
Provide links to relevant content on your site
Invite your lead to follow you on social media
Ask your lead to subscribe to your blog
Automate a follow-up email with the offer

Guide them along their buyer’s journey.
Your new lead is going to make their way to the decision stage with or without you. You want to be the one to help them get there. You’ve gathered some valuable information about your lead, which means you can anticipate what they need next. Provide content or resources to bring them to the subsequent stage of their journey, and you just might be their option for the decision stage. After all, we know that prospects buy from companies that they know, like, and trust.
Form a relationship.
Once someone signs up to receive information from you, they become a potential customer with whom you should work hard to build a relationship and connection. The good thing is you already know what they’re interested in and what their pain points are, so you can target them with additional, helpful content and personalized marketing.
If you’re still stuck, get some inspiration from some of the best landing pages we could find.
Grow Better with Landing Pages
Landing pages will account for a majority of your new leads, so they demand your attention. With the vast number of tweaks, additions, and variations you can implement, there’s no reason why you can’t have a landing page that converts well.
As long as you’re following the best practices we covered above, you’ll be on your way to a high-performing landing page … and if you need some additional guidance, we’re always here as a resource.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in August 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

In college, I interned at a MarTech company that sold email marketing optimization software. With their software, brands could finally gain visibility into their email program’s deliverability rate or inbox placement, which most email service providers, like Constant Contact or MailChimp, can’t do.
The business’ largest revenue stream was a channel partner program that enabled email service providers to sell my old company’s software to their own customers. And one day, at an all-hands meeting, our CEO showed us a slide that listed every single email service provider we partnered with and the amount of customers they all had.
He told us this was our total addressable market. Then, he showed us a slide of how much of the market we had captured — it was a single digit percentage. Even though we generated $100 million in revenue per year, we were shocked at how little of the market we had secured. But it also helped us realize that we still had plenty of room to grow, which motivated us to win as much of the market as possible.

Whether you want to start a new company and gauge its industry’s profit potential or forecast a realistic revenue growth goal for your business, measuring your total addressable market is a crucial first step you must take. To help you do this, we’ve put together a guide that’ll teach you exactly what total addressable market is and the best way to calculate it.

Total Addressable Market (TAM)
Total addressable market or TAM refers to the total market demand for a product or service. It’s the most amount of revenue a business can possibly generate by selling their product or service in a specific market.

Unless they’re a monopoly, most companies can’t capture the total addressable market for their product or service. Even if a company just has one competitor, it would still be extremely difficult for them to convince an entire market to only buy their product or service.
That’s why most companies also measure their serviceable available market to determine how many customers they can realistically reach with their marketing and sales channels. Additionally, they gauge their share of market to understand the size of their actual target market.
However, total addressable market is still useful because businesses can use TAM to objectively estimate a specific market’s potential for growth.
How to Calculate TAM
There are three ways to calculate your business’ total addressable market.
1. Top-Down
The top-down approach uses industry data, market reports, and research studies to identify the TAM. In this approach, you might use industry data from Gartner or Forrester to identify which subsections of your industry align with your goals and offering — and just how big those subsections are.
However, there are limitations here. Data generated by industry groups may not always be kept up to date and may not reflect niche elements of your market. You may want to hire a market research consulting firm to conduct fresh research that is focused on your need areas.
2. Bottom-Up
The bottom-up approach to TAM calculation is based on previous sales and pricing data. First, multiply your average sales price by your number of current customers. This will yield your annual contract value. Then, multiply your ACV by the total number of customers. This will yield your total addressable market. Let’s see what this looks like in an example.
Say you sell scuba fins to dive shops in the state of California. You might sell an average of 60 pairs of fins, at $35/pair, to dive shops in California. 60 multiplied by $35 equals an ACV of $2,100. Then, you’d multiply your ACV ($2,100) by the total number of dive shops in California (125) for a total addressable market of $262,500.
3. Value-Theory
The value-theory approach is based on how much value consumers receive from your product/service and how much they’re willing to pay in the future for that product/service.
To return to our scuba example, let’s say you manufacture a type of fin that’s lighter than your competitors and has patented technology that makes them easier to get off than anything else in the market. You’d identify your value-theory by estimating how much dive shops would be willing to pay to carry your superior product. If normal fins are being sold at $35 a pair, would dive shops pay $40 or even $45 for a pair of your ultra-lightweight fins?
After you calculate your total addressable market, it’s time to determine whether it’s worth entering the industry or not.
An industry with a market size ranging from $30 million to $200 million per year might be worth entering. However, if the industry’s market size is under $5 million per year or over $1 billion per year, it’s probably not.
In both situations, it’d be challenging to persuade investors to back your company — an industry with a market size of $5 million per year would likely be too niche and an industry with a market size over $1 billion would likely be too saturated.
Know Your TAM Before You Take Action
Starting a business or projecting next year’s revenue growth is always thrilling. But if you want to follow a realistic path toward success, you need to first understand what’s actually possible. So let your total addressable market be your North Star and guide you through a journey that’s rooted in reality, not hype.

Companies often use their blogs as sales vehicles for their company. This is the wrong approach. It ends up turning off your audience and reducing the impact your blog can have on your company. Why is it Bad to Heavily Promote Your Company in Your Blog Posts? If you step back and look at your…
The post Educate Your Content Marketing Prospects First, Then Sell Them appeared first on Benchmarkemail.

Let’s say you’ve come to the difficult realization that quite frankly your brand — if you can even call it that — is all over the place. Or perhaps worse, you have a defined brand, but you’re noticing that it just doesn’t seem to mesh with who you really are and what you really do.
Don’t panic.
Before you get all hung up on what shade of green to use for your logo or what tone you’re going to use when engaging with people on Twitter, you need to step back and take a look at the big picture.
What is Brand Strategy?
Brand strategy is a plan that encompasses specific, long-term goals that can be achieved with the evolution of a successful brand — the combined components of your company’s character that make it identifiable.
(We’ll get into that more in a bit.)
A well-defined and executed brand strategy affects all aspects of a business and is directly connected to consumer needs, emotions, and competitive environments.
First, let’s clear up the biggest misconception about brand strategy: Your brand is not your product, your logo, your website, or your name.
In fact, your brand is much more than that — it’s the stuff that feels intangible. But it’s that hard-to-pin-down feeling that separates powerhouse and mediocre brands from each other.
So to help you rein in what many marketers consider more of an art and less of a science, we’ve broken down seven essential components of a comprehensive brand strategy that will help keep your company around for ages.

7 Components for a Comprehensive Branding Strategy
1) Purpose
“Every brand makes a promise. But in a marketplace in which consumer confidence is low and budgetary vigilance is high, it’s not just making a promise that separates one brand from another, but having a defining purpose,” explains Allen Adamson, chairman of the North America region of brand consulting and design firm Landor Associates.
While understanding what your business promises is necessary when defining your brand positioning, knowing why you wake up every day and go to work carries more weight. In other words, your purpose is more specific, in that it serves as a differentiator between you and your competitors.
How can you define your business’ purpose? According to Business Strategy Insider, purpose can be viewed in two ways:

Functional: This concept focuses on the evaluations of success in terms of immediate and commercial reasons — i.e. the purpose of the business is to make money.

Intentional: This concept focuses on success as it relates to the ability to make money and do good in the world.

While making money is important to almost every business, we admire brands that emphasize their willingness to achieve more than just profitability, like IKEA:

Source: IKEA
IKEA’s vision isn’t just to sell furniture, but rather, to “create a better everyday life.” This approach is appealing to potential customers, as it demonstrates their commitment to providing value beyond the point of sale.
When defining your business’ purpose, keep this example in mind. While making money is a priority, operating under that notion alone does little to set your brand apart from others in your industry.
Our advice? Dig a little deeper. If you need inspiration, check out the brands you admire, and see how they frame their mission and vision statements.
2) Consistency
The key to consistency is to avoid talking about things that don’t relate to or enhance your brand. Added a new photo to your business’ Facebook Page? What does it mean for your company? Does it align with your message, or was it just something funny that would, quite frankly, confuse your audience?
In an effort to give your brand a platform to stand on, you need to be sure that all of your messaging is cohesive. Ultimately, consistency contributes to brand recognition, which fuels customer loyalty. (No pressure, right?)
To see a great example of consistency, let’s look at Coca-Cola. As a result of its commitment to consistency, every element of the brand’s marketing works harmoniously together. This has helped it become one of the most recognizable brands in the world.
Even on the surface of its social media accounts, for example, the seamlessness of its brand is very apparent:

To avoid leaving potential customers struggling to put the disconnected pieces of your business together, consider the benefits of creating a style guide. A style guide can encompass everything from the tone of voice you’ll use to the color scheme you’ll employ to the way you’ll position certain products or services.
By taking the time to define and agree upon these considerations, your brand will benefit as a whole.
3) Emotion
Customers aren’t always rational.
How else do you explain the person who paid thousands of dollars more for a Harley rather than buying another cheaper, equally well-made bike? There was an emotional voice in there somewhere, whispering: “Buy a Harley.”
But why?
Harley Davidson uses emotional branding by creating a community around its brand. It began HOG — Harley Owners Group — to connect their customers with their brand (and each other).

Source: HOG
By providing customers with an opportunity to feel like they’re part of a larger group that’s more tight-knit than just a bunch of motorcycle riders, Harley Davidson is able to position themselves as an obvious choice for someone looking to purchase a bike.
Why? People have an innate desire to build relationships. Research from psychologists Roy Baumeister and Mark Leary best describes this need in their “belongingness hypothesis,” which states: “People have a basic psychological need to feel closely connected to others, and that caring, affectionate bonds from close relationships are a major part of human behavior.”
Not to mention, belongingness — the need for love, affection, and being part of groups — falls directly in the middle of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, which aims to categorize different human needs.
The lesson to be learned? Find a way to connect with your customers on a deeper, more emotional level. Do you give them peace of mind? Make them feel like part of the family? Do you make life easier? Use emotional triggers like these to strengthen your relationship and foster loyalty.
4) Flexibility
In this fast-changing world, marketers must remain flexible to stay relevant. On the plus side, this frees you to be creative with your campaigns.
You may be thinking, “Wait a minute, how am I supposed to remain consistent while also being flexible?”
Good question. While consistency aims to set the standard for your brand, flexibility enables you to make adjustments that build interest and distinguish your approach from that of your competition.
In other words, “effective identity programs require enough consistency to be identifiable, but enough variation to keep things fresh and human,” explains president of Peopledesign, Kevin Budelmann.
A great example of this type of strategic balance comes from Old Spice. These days, Old Spice is one of the best examples of successful marketing across the board. However, up until recently, wearing Old Spice was pretty much an unspoken requirement for dads everywhere. Today, it’s one of the most popular brands for men of all ages.
The secret? Flexibility.
Aware that it needed to do something to secure its place in the market, Old Spice teamed up with Wieden+Kennedy to position their brand for a new customer base.

Source: Works Design Group
Between new commercials, a new website, new packaging, and new product names, Old Spice managed to attract the attention of a new, younger generation by making strategic enhancements to its already strong brand.
So if your old tactics aren’t working anymore, don’t be afraid to change. Just because it worked in the past doesn’t mean it’s working now.
Take the opportunity to engage your followers in fresh, new ways. Are there some out-of-the-box partnerships your brand can make? Are there attributes about your product you never highlighted? Use those to connect with new customers and remind your old ones why they love you.
5) Employee Involvement As we mentioned before, achieving a sense of consistency is important if you wish to build brand recognition. And while a style guide can help you achieve a cohesive digital experience, it’s equally important for your employees to be well versed in the how they should be communicating with customers and representing the brand.
If your brand is playful and bubbly through Twitter engagements, then it wouldn’t make sense if a customer called in and was connected with a grumpy, monotone representative, right?
To avoid this type of mismatched experience, take note of Zappos’ approach.
If you’ve ever been on the line with a customer service representative from Zappos, you know what I’m talking about. If you haven’t, check out this SlideShare which details some of its most inspiring customer support stories.
Zappos is so committed to ensuring that not only its brand, but all brands, remain consistent across digital and human interactions that they’ve dedicated an entire department to the cause called Zappos Insights.

Come join us and learn the Zappos WOW approach to customer service! Learn more about the Zappos School of WOW: https://t.co/g3tU4179q9 pic.twitter.com/eRkpcfYAKD — Zappos Insights (@ZapposInsights)
August 21, 2017
By holding all Zappos employees to its core values
and helping other companies implement the same approach, Zappos has built a strong reputation for solid, helpful, and human customer service.
6) Loyalty
If you already have people that love you, your company, and your brand, don’t just sit there. Reward them for that love.
These customers have gone out their way to write about you, to tell their friends about you, and to act as your brand ambassadors. Cultivating loyalty from these people early on will yield more returning customers — and more profit for your business.
Sometimes, just a thank you is all that’s needed. Other times, it’s better to go above and beyond. Write them a personalized letter. Sent them some special swag. Ask them to write a review, and feature them prominently on your website. (Or all of the above!)
When we reached 15,000 customers here at HubSpot, we wanted to say thank you in a big way, while remaining true to our brand … so we dropped 15,000 orange ping pong balls from our fourth-floor balcony and spelled out thank you in big metallic balloons:

And while it may have seemed a little out of the ordinary to some folks, for those who know our brand, the gesture made perfect sense.
Loyalty is a critical part of every brand strategy, especially if you’re looking to support your sales organization. At the end of the day, highlighting a positive relationship between you and your existing customers sets the tone for what potential customers can expect if they choose to do business with you.
7) Competitive Awareness
Take the competition as a challenge to improve your own strategy and create greater value in your overall brand. You are in the same business and going after the same customers, right? So watch what they do.
Do some of their tactics succeed? Do some fail? Tailor your brand positioning based on their experience to better your company.
A great example of how to improve your brand by learning from your competitors comes from Pizza Hut:

@TheRealElysium You know our vote. ^AB — Pizza Hut (@pizzahut)
March 20, 2016

When a pizza lover posed this question to his Twitter following, Pizza Hut didn’t miss a beat, and playfully responded in minutes, before Domino’s had a chance to speak up.
If Domino’s is keeping an eye on the competitors, they’ll know to act fast the next time a situation like this arises.
For HubSpot customers, keeping tabs on your competitor’s social mentions is easy using the Social Monitoring App. Check out this article to learn more about how to set up custom social streams.
And while staying in tune with your competitor’s strategies is important if you want to enhance your brand, don’t let them dictate each and every move you make.
Sure, you probably sell a similar product or service as many other companies, but you’re in business because your brand is unique. By harping on every move your competitor makes, you lose that differentiation.

 

Editor’s Note: Spam filters have become much more sophisticated than the subject line triggers listed in this post. For a more up-to-date guide to email marketing, check out our free guide to creating email newsletters people actually read here.
Writing the subject lines for your emails can be one of the most stressful steps of email marketing. Is it engaging? Too short? Too long? Too boring? Will people click ‘delete’ because of it? Or will they open it? Will it even get to them, or will it trigger SPAM filters? It’s the last of these concerns that we’re here to help with today. 
SPAM filters can be triggered for a variety of reasons, causing your email to skip recipients’ inboxes and land straight in their SPAM box. One of easiest ways to avoid SPAM filters is by carefully choosing the words you use in your email’s subject line. Trigger words are known to cause problems and increase the chances of your email getting caught in a SPAM trap. By avoiding these words in your email subject lines, you can dramatically increase your chances of getting beyond SPAM filters.
Next time you sit down to write an email subject line, consult the exhaustive list below and make sure you aren’t using any words that will get you in trouble. In fact, you might want to bookmark this list so you can refer back to it every time you craft an email subject line. Back off, SPAM filters!
Email Spam Words to Avoid

Commerce 

As seen on
Buy
Buy direct

Buying judgments
Clearance
Order

Order status
Orders shipped by
shopper

Personal

Dig up dirt on friends 
Meet singles 
Score with babes

Employment  

Additional Income
Be your own boss
Compete for your business

Double your
Earn $
Earn extra cash

Earn per week 
Expect to earn 
Extra income

Home based
Home employment
Homebased business

Income from home
Make $
Make money

Money making
Online biz opportunity
Online degree

Opportunity 
Potential earnings 
University diplomas

While you sleep 
Work at home 
Work from home

Financial – General

$$$
Affordable
Bargain

Beneficiary
Best price
Big bucks 

Cash
Cash bonus 
Cashcashcash

Cents on the dollar 
Cheap
Check

Claims
Collect
Compare rates

Cost
Credit
Credit bureaus 

Discount
Earn
Easy terms 

F r e e
Fast cash
For just $XXX

Hidden assets 
hidden charges
Income

Incredible deal
Insurance 
Investment

Loans
Lowest price 
Million dollars

Money
Money back
Mortgage

Mortgage rates 
No cost
No fees 

One hundred percent free 
Only $ 
Pennies a day 

Price
Profits 
Pure profit

Quote
Refinance
Save $

Save big money
Save up to
Serious cash

Subject to credit
They keep your money — no refund! 
Unsecured credit

Unsecured debt
US dollars
Why pay more? 

Financial – Business

Accept Credit Cards
Cards accepted
Check or money order 

Credit card offers 
Explode your business
Full refund 

Investment decision 
No credit check 
No hidden Costs

No investment
Requires initial investment
Sent in compliance

Stock alert 
Stock disclaimer statement 
Stock pick 

Financial – Personal

Avoid bankruptcy
Calling creditors
Collect child support

Consolidate debt and credit
Consolidate your debt
Eliminate bad credit 

Eliminate debt
Financially independent
Get out of debt

Get paid 
Lower interest rate
Lower monthly payment 

Lower your mortgage rate
Lowest insurance rates
Pre-approved

Refinance home 
Social security number 
Your income

General

Acceptance
Accordingly
Avoid

Chance
Dormant
Freedom

Here
Hidden
Home

Leave
Lifetime
Lose

Maintained
Medium
Miracle

Never
Passwords
Problem

Remove
Reverses
Sample

Satisfaction
Solution
Stop

Success
Teen
Wife

Greetings

Dear [email/friend/somebody] 
Friend
Hello

Marketing

Ad
Auto email removal 
Bulk email

Click
Click below
Click here

Click to remove 
Direct email 
Direct marketing 

Email harvest 
Email marketing 
Form

Increase sales 
Increase traffic 
Increase your sales

Internet market
Internet marketing
Marketing

Marketing solutions 
Mass email 
Member

Month trial offer
More Internet Traffic
Multi level marketing

Notspam
One time mailing 
Online marketing

Open
Opt in
Performance

Removal instructions
Sale
Sales

Search engine listings
Search engines
Subscribe

The following form
This isn’t junk 
This isn’t spam 

Undisclosed recipient
Unsubscribe
Visit our website

We hate spam 
Web traffic
Will not believe your eyes 

Medical

Cures baldness 
Diagnostics
Fast Viagra delivery

Human growth hormone
Life Insurance
Lose weight

Lose weight spam 
Medicine
No medical exams

Online pharmacy 
Removes wrinkles
Reverses aging

Stop snoring 
Valium
Viagra

Vicodin
Weight loss
Xanax

Numbers

#1
100% free
100% Satisfied

4U
50% off
Billion

Billion dollars 
Join millions
Join millions of Americans 

Million
One hundred percent guaranteed 
Thousands

Offers

Being a member
Billing address 
Call

Cannot be combined with any other offer 
Confidentially on all orders 
Deal

Financial freedom 
Gift certificate
Giving away

Guarantee 
Have you been turned down? 
If only it were that easy

Important information regarding
In accordance with laws
Long distance phone offer

Mail in order form 
Message contains
Name brand 

Nigerian 
No age restrictions 
No catch 

No claim forms 
No disappointment 
No experience 

No gimmick 
No inventory 
No middleman

No obligation
No purchase necessary
No questions asked

No selling
No strings attached
No-obligation

Not intended 
Obligation
Off shore

Offer
Per day
Per week

Priority mail
Prize
Prizes

Produced and sent out 
Reserves the right
Shopping spree 

Stuff on sale
Terms and conditions
The best rates

They’re just giving it away
Trial
unlimited

Unsolicited
Vacation
Vacation offers

Warranty
We honor all 
Weekend getaway 

What are you waiting for? 
Who really wins? 
Win

Winner 
Winning 
won

You are a winner!
You have been selected 
You’re a Winner!

Calls-to-Action

Cancel at any time 
Compare
Copy accurately 

Get
Give it away
Print form signature

Print out and fax 
See for yourself
Sign up free today 

Free

Free
Free access 
Free cell phone 

Free consultation 
Free DVD 
Free gift

Free grant money
Free hosting
Free installation 

Free Instant
Free investment 
Free leads 

Free membership 
Free money 
Free offer 

Free preview 
Free priority mail 
Free quote 

Free sample 
Free trial 
Free website 

Descriptions/Adjectives

All natural
All new
Amazing 

Certified
Congratulations 
Drastically reduced 

Fantastic deal 
For free 
Guaranteed

It’s effective
Outstanding values 
Promise you

Real thing
Risk free
Satisfaction guaranteed 

Sense of Urgency

Access
Act Now!
Apply now

Apply Online 
Call free 
Call now 

Can’t live without
Do it today
Don’t delete 

Don’t hesitate
For instant access 
For Only

For you
Get it now
Get started now 

Great offer 
Info you requested
Information you requested

Instant
limited time
New customers only 

Now
Now only
Offer expires 

Once in lifetime 
One time
Only

Order now
Order today
Please read 

Special promotion 
Supplies are limited
Take action now

Time limited
Urgent
While supplies last 

Nouns

Addresses on CD
Beverage
Bonus

Brand new pager 
Cable converter 
Casino 

Celebrity
Copy DVDs 
Laser printer 

Legal
Luxury car 
New domain extensions 

Phone
Rolex
Stainless steel 

 

 

 

 

The thing that can make or break the success of a sales team, is responding to leads at the right time. As research shows, 63% of surveyed businesses were taking up their leads way too late to convert them to sales, even though being the first responder can give you 30-50% sales from the contacted leads. However, only up to 25% of your leads at any time are ready to buy. So acting fast is not enough.

 

It’s more complex than just being able to take up lead right after it was sourced from a website, ad, or in any other way, by just any of the salesmen in the team. Yes, you need to be quick but also smart about it, if you don’t want to waste your time on leads that have little chance of converting into customers. With sales alerts in SALESmanago, you can manage the number and quality of leads passed to your sales reps.

 

What is a sales alert and why is it useful?

 

Sales alert is an automatic email or SMS notification sent by the system to the selling team and supporting their work with close to real-time updates on leads’ activity. It notices them about every important event connected to a potential customer, about their website visits, downloading an ebook, or asking for pricing. That information indicates that the lead is interested in offered products or services and taking it up can result in conversion.

 

 

Sales alerts are therefore useful when you want to make sure that the selling team works as fast as possible and also gets a chance to be better prepared. Thanks to the alert being activated by a specific action on the lead’s side, you also know that the ones who are about to be contacted have potential and your team is not wasting its time on contacts that will probably not turn into opportunities.

 

What’s more, sales alerts can be generated by any leads, even those, who originally told you over the phone, that they need more time to think. When they get back to your site for more details, your sales team will know this.

 

Define the rules for lead’s sales qualification

 

Thanks to the possibility of setting the events which are supposed to trigger automatic sending of the sales alert, you can decide what makes the lead qualified. It can be an event like a form on the website being filled, a request for a demo, etc., but also, a specific monitored behavior, which will also from the beginning help you figure out what a given person is interested in. Or from the business perspective – think what actions on your website are indicators of the leads’ interest in your product and set up the right events in automation rules or Workflows to inform your reps on such actions. 

 

Let’s say a contact visits your website repeatedly, they look at a range of products or services, from which one is viewed the most. You contact them for example by email with extended information on the product, but they don’t decide on the purchase. Sometime later, they visit your website again, looking for more information. You already know what they would be willing to buy, you can see that even though they didn’t purchase anything before, they show interest again, and based on that you can assume they are ready to buy. 

 

The first visit on the product page doesn’t always mean the customer is actually interested. You can use the tag scoring feature in SALESmanago to assign points to the behavioral segments assigned for visiting different products or services, and execute sending alerts only for leads that collected a specific amount of points in the tag scoring. For example, scoring points can be assigned to a specific tag after every time contact visits a specific category on your website.

 

 

Assign leads to the reps that will provide them the right service

 

Not all prospects are equal. They want to buy different products, some already know quite much about your product, some saw it for the first time. And your reps are not equal as well – you might have more experienced workers or some of them may specialize in specific fields or situations. You can easily manage the lead routing process, by defining different sales alerts triggered with different website behavior or user data and assigning the right sales reps to take over leads generated with such alerts. To do so, insert the email address of the salesperson who should contact the lead in the automation rule’s action. The alert can be also sent to a phone number, which can make the reaction to it even faster, especially if your reps work in the field. Not all prospects are equal. They want to buy different products, some already know quite much about your product, some saw it for the first time. And your reps are not equal as well – you might have more experienced workers or some of them may specialize in specific fields or situations. You can easily manage the lead routing process, by defining different sales alerts triggered with different website behavior or user data and assigning the right sales reps to take over leads generated with such alerts. To do so, insert the email address of the salesperson who should contact the lead in the automation rule’s action. The alert can be also sent to a phone number, which can make the reaction to it even faster, especially if your reps work in the field.

 

 

Because the alerts contain key information about the contacts, including information and data about their behavior, it’ll help your salesmen to step into action prepared. They’ll know what event triggered sending the alert and relate to that while contacting the lead. The sales alert contains contact details, history of messages last sent to a lead, and the last visited URL-s on the website.

 

 

Alert your lead management software

 

As delivering alerts directly to the sales reps might not always be the most reliable idea to make sure all leads will be handled properly, you can integrate sales alerts with any CRM or Call Center software. In this case, the information on the leads’ activity won’t be sent directly to your reps but will create a new lead in the CRM software or add them to the queue in your Call Center. To make it possible, you can put an attachment into the sales alert that will contain the right script that will send the lead’s data to the web service generated in your lead management software. 

 

These alerts also might contain other information taken from the leads’ 360° profile, to indicate suggested conversation subjects or ask the lead for other products that interested them earlier. 

marketing automation

marketing automation

The Files, in Lightning Experience, consolidates all of your users’ files, documents, content, and attachments into a single system for easier management and collaboration. Files are more versatile and provide some cool features like Version Control, Collaborate on files, Sync File … Continue reading →

When Thanksgiving rolls around, there are a few questions that we don’t exactly look forward to hearing: “When are you getting married?” “When am I getting grandchildren?” “Have you been moisturizing?”
And yet, none of those oh-so-polite questions even come close to the complexity of explaining what, as an inbound marketer, you actually do for a living.
It’s not that inbound marketing requires a long, drawn-out answer — after all, it can easily be described in 44 words. But explaining it requires some fundamental knowledge of how technology, marketing, and the internet work. You know, the things that your grandparents might not fully grasp in one fell swoop.
Good news — all you really need are a few storytelling strategies. We found five ways you can explain inbound marketing to your family. And sure, some of these are useful, and some are just sarcastic. But hey, family is family, right? They’ll still love you.
5 Ways to Explain Inbound Marketing to Your Family This Thanksgiving
1. The Food Analogy

Source: Giphy
In the U.S., Thanksgiving typically consists of a few staples: turkey, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin pie, to name a few. And while it might sound strange, you can use that knowledge to your advantage by using food preparation as an analogy for different aspects of inbound marketing.
To explain lead nurturing, you can use the pumpkin pie. Sending unnurtured leads to sales is like giving an unbaked pumpkin pie to your guests. I suppose the pumpkin pie could be eaten raw, but … gross. Instead, you should bake the pumpkin pie — that ultimately makes it richer and more palatable.
Nurturing leads before sales contacts them works in the same way. It warms them up to your brand, and starts to qualify them with better information on what they might need. “Warm” leads, like the cooked pie, are already familiar with your business, and will close at a much higher rate than those that are “cold.”
Use whatever analogy you like to describe inbound marketing — it clarifies confusing issues by comparing them to something that, quite literally, is right in front of everyone.
2. The Real-Life Scenario

Source: Giphy
When I’m asked about inbound marketing, I like to use real-life examples of interruptions that they’ll likely recognize, and explain how the inbound methodology pertains to it. It usually sounds something like this:
Amanda: Hey, Dad. You know how much you hate telemarketers calling you in the middle of dinner?
Dad: Yes. Hate it. Why? Is that what you do for work?
Amanda: No, actually. Inbound marketing is the exact opposite. That’s interruptive marketing. They literally interrupt you. So annoying, right?
Dad: Yes. I’m surprised they’re not interrupting us right now.
Amanda: Well, in my job, I create marketing that doesn’t interrupt what people are doing. In fact, I create content that people are actively looking for, because it’s helpful, entertaining, or informative. Instead of a telemarketer who is calling to sell you spoons, I create stuff that someone looking for information about spoons might be searching for on the internet.
Dad: So I would find you, instead of you calling to bother me?
Amanda: Yes! I provide you with actual value from my company, which makes you more interested in what my company sells.
The keys here: 1) Identify which interruptive media your dinner guests are familiar with, and 2) play into their pain points when dealing with that media. Inbound marketing is much more logical when you explain it that way — even if your family doesn’t work in marketing or communications.
3. The Theatrics

Source: Giphy
If you’re feeling especially creative — and you have at least one Thanksgiving guest who is willing to participate — you could set up a role play. There are lots of scenarios you can act out, but a classic one would be the telemarketer/dinner guest scenario.
Let’s use the telemarketing example above — and be warned, it might require a few minutes of planning before everyone sits down to dinner. You play the role of the telemarketer, and your dinner guest can be, well, the dinner guest. First, put his or her phone’s ringer on the highest volume possible. Then, as soon as someone asks you about your job, excuse yourself and duck out to a quiet area with your own phone.
Next, call the dinner guest, and have him or her answer the call on speaker while you pretend to be a telemarketer selling something completely unnecessary at that point: Halloween costumes.
Be sure your dinner guest uses key phrases like “You’re interrupting me in the middle of Thanksgiving dinner with this irrelevant call,” or, “Don’t you think it’s a little late to be calling me about Halloween?” or, if you really want to go nuts, “I wish you had sent me a targeted, personalized email in October about those costumes — I would have bought them.”
Then, have them slam down the phone on the table. You can return from your “bathroom break” and say, “See? Telemarketing, or any type of interruptive marketing like that, is profoundly annoying. In my job, I create marketing that helps people — not annoy them.”
End scene.
Depending on the talent of your guest, you might be able to improv the entire thing. Otherwise, you might want to type a script out and email it to the guest beforehand. And if you really want to go overboard, stay in character the entire dinner. The sight of you dressed up as a skeezy telemarketer with a headset will be just too intense to forget … that is, at least until your mother requests, “Please remove your headset from the table.”
4. The Puzzle Pieces

Source: Webnode
This technique boils down to an age-old philosophical question: Is the whole greater than the sum of its parts? Aristotle thought so, but when you’re describing inbound marketing to an unfamiliar audience, it’s probably okay to explain the three ways you might apply inbound marketing specifically: attract, engage, and delight. 
Try explaining inbound marketing by breaking it up into those three aspects, and explaining each one individually.
For instance, you might say to grandma: “Attract means drawing in the right people with valuable content and conversations that establish you as a trusted advisor with whom they want to engage. Engage means presenting insights and solutions that align with their pain points and goals so they are more likely to buy from you. And delight means providing help and support to empower your customers to find success with their purchase.”
Of course, it’s easier said than done. And I’m willing to bet diving into how the inbound methodology serves as a strong foundation for the flywheel, which creates momentum and eliminates friction in your organization, is another feat entirely. 
5. The “I Write Articles on the Internet”

Source: imoviequotes
If the previous four have all failed, you can always say, “I write articles on the internet for a living.” I mean, it’s somewhat accurate — you drive real business results with inbound marketing, and you don’t just spew out nonsense blogs about your feelings to get paid — but it can get your family off your back, especially if you’re not sure they’d be interested in hearing the whole shebang. If you choose this path, be prepared to hear how easy it is to blog, and how many of your family members wish they could get paid to do it.
Then, try to switch the subject quickly to something everyone can relate to. “Hey, Uncle Eddie, I’d love to get your amazing stuffing recipe.” Trust us … It works every time.
We’re Grateful for You
Good luck out there. And remember: There are so many people who want to know what you do — which, admittedly, is why we love writing about it every day.
We always give thanks for you, our amazing readers. And to express our gratitude, we put together what we hope is a hilarious video of what our families think we do. Happy Thanksgiving!

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in November 2013 and has been updated and for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.