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“We have a 9 a.m. meeting? Hold on — let me scour the internet to find content for the morning tweet.”
Sound familiar?

Scrambling for social content is nothing new. We have meetings. We miss deadlines. Things come up. And it’s really hard to get any meaningful amount of work done when you have the next social media update looming over your head every 30, 60, or 90 minutes. Social media content moves so fast that you might occasionally feel thrown for a loop, which is why a pre-scheduled social media content calendar should be your new best friend.
To make social media content easier for companies to plan and schedule across the accounts they manage, we created a social media content calendar template. And because this field moves so quickly, we’re always updating this template with the latest social platform features to help you share your content strategy at a tactical level.

Use the Above Template to Plan Out Your Social Media Holiday Posts

What’s in this social media content calendar template?
Every social media content calendar is different and should be customized to fit your unique social media strategy. In this one, you’ll find a schedule tab, your monthly planning calendar, a repository for website content, and updates for each of the top social media platforms:

Twitter
Facebook
LinkedIn
Instagram
Pinterest

The great thing about this template is that as new social media platforms become popular and part of your content strategy (looking at you Tik Tok and Clubhouse), you can simply copy the spreadsheet and repurpose it for that new channel.
This blog post will walk you through exactly how to use a social media content calendar template to stay on top of your social media content planning for each channel.
Pro Tip: HubSpot customers can also schedule content through HubSpot’s Social Media Management Software, or use this spreadsheet to organize and upload content. Detailed instructions for doing this can be found in the cover sheet of the template.

How to Create a Social Media Content Calendar Template
When you open the social media content calendar template, you’ll notice the bottom of the Excel spreadsheet has several different tabs, most of which are dedicated to a specific social network.

Since each social media network is a little different, you don’t want to craft a generic social media post and use it across LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. Instead, it’s best practice to create a different worksheet for each platform.
Why?
A few reasons. Image sizes vary across all platforms, the types of content that work well on Facebook might tank on Twitter, and external links are great for Twitter but nearly impossible to use effectively on Instagram.
You can certainly promote the same piece of content across those networks, but that doesn’t mean you’ll craft your update the same way for each of them. In fact, you may want to add additional tabs if you’re active on other networks, like Quora or YouTube.
How to Use this Template
The following subsections will show you how to fill out each of the tabs you see in this template — Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest. But before we get to that, let’s start with the Monthly Social Calendar.
Monthly Planning Calendar
The tab Monthly Planning Calendar provides an overall snapshot of your monthly social media campaigns. It’ll help you coordinate with other stakeholders and keep all the moving parts in order. Here’s what it looks like:

There are three sections to take note of when you edit this template. First, the color-coding key. Each color represents a type of content or campaign you might coordinate, like ebooks, webinars, blog posts, product launches, and so on. Though only some of these might be relevant to you, they’re just the beginning of what you may want to include here — so be sure to add and remove categories that align with your own types of content.
The other two sections you’ll need to edit are the Month and Year at the top of the calendar, as well as the cells below each day of the week. In those cells, you should enter the type of content you’ll be promoting that day and color-code it to align with the campaign it’s supporting.
Instead of deleting all the content in this spreadsheet each month, I recommend copying this worksheet twelve times over and creating a separate sheet for each month. (If that gets to be too overwhelming, you can always save those tabs as a separate workbook.)
Planning Your Social Media Content Calendar for Twitter
Alright, now let’s get to the social media content part of the calendar. This section will be the longest because all subsequent sections will draw on the instructions we go through here. If you only read one section in this whole post, make sure it’s this one.
Let’s say you want to add some tweets to your scheduling template. Scroll over to the Twitter Updates tab in the content calendar spreadsheet, where you’ll see this:

The first four columns, Day, Date, Time, and Date & Time are there for your convenience, and if you choose to use a third-party app for pre-scheduling your tweets (like HubSpot’s Social Media Management Software), then these columns will be useful. For now, just fill in the date for when you’ll publish updates to Twitter, and the time at which you’d like them to go out. The Date & Time column will automatically change based on what you type in the previous two columns.
Now, let’s move over to the Message column. Here, input the copy you’d like to appear in your tweet, bearing in mind you should cap it at 217 characters to allow enough room for a link. (Read this blog post for a full character count guide.) This spreadsheet will auto-calculate the number of characters you’ve entered to keep you on-point, turning yellow and eventually red as you approach 240 characters.
After you’ve composed your tweet, paste the URL you’d like to include in your tweet in the Link column. Be sure to include UTM parameters so you’ll know whether these tweets are driving traffic, leads, and customers. This is an important step to remember if you’d like to demonstrate ROI from social media. You can also use the Campaign column to add an associated campaign which helps with more detailed tracking and reporting.

Finally, in the Image column, attach the tweet’s image (if you have one). For Twitter, we recommend images that are 1200 x 670 pixels.
(Click here for a full cheat sheet of social media image sizes.)
If you’re having trouble attaching your image to the spreadsheet, follow these steps:
Step 1: Click on the cell where you’d like to place your image.

Step 2: Click Insert in the top row, then click the Image button, and finally, click Image in cell to choose your image.
Step 3: In the Insert image window, choose the option your photo will come from. In this example, we uploaded an image from our computer.

Step 4: You’ll now see the image appear in the cell.
Pro Tip: This process is just for organizational purposes. If you decide to upload the spreadsheet to your social media publishing software, it will not attach — you’ll have to do that manually. If you’re a HubSpot customer, details for how to bulk upload your Twitter content to the HubSpot Social PublishingTool can be found within the downloaded template.
Planning Your Social Media Content Calendar for Facebook
Now, let’s talk about how to plan your Facebook marketing content with this template. First, navigate to the tab in your template labeled Facebook Updates.

The first three columns, Day, Date, and Time are there for your convenience. Scroll over to the column labeled Message and input the copy you’d like to appear in your status update, corresponding to the days and times you’d like those updates to run. Then, move to the Link column and input the link that’ll be included in the update. (Don’t forget that UTM parameter.) If you’d like the update to be tagged to a certain campaign, include this in the Campaigns column. Finally, attach an image just like you did with your Twitter updates — if you’re using one. (These images should fit the dimensions of 1200 x 628 pixels.)
Planning Your Social Media Content Calendar for LinkedIn
LinkedIn Groups let you start conversations with your Group members and share company updates on your Company Page.

To begin, fill out the first column, Message, for every post you create, including those for a Company Page or a Group. Simply enter your copy into this column, and then navigate to the next two columns, Link and Campaign. Here, you’ll add your URL with a UTM parameter that you’ll use to track activity. Then add the campaign in the Campaign column, if you’re using one. If you’d like to use an image for an update, attach one using the instructions we shared earlier. We recommend uploading the image in the dimensions of 1200 x 1200 pixels for a clear, professional-looking post.
Planning Your Social Media Content Calendar for Instagram
Now, let’s move on to setting up your Instagram photos and videos. Scroll to the tab in your template labeled Instagram Updates.

The first three columns, Day, Date, and Time are there for your convenience. Head on over to the column labeled Message, and input the copy you’d like to appear in your post’s caption, corresponding to the days and times you’d like those updates to run. Keep in mind that although Instagram captions can be up to 2,200 characters long, they cut off in users’ feeds after three lines of text. The exact length of these three lines depends on the length of your Instagram handle. (Read this blog post for a full character count guide.)
Next, move to the Link for Bio column and input whichever link you plan to put in the bio when you publish the accompanying Instagram post. Oh, and don’t forget the UTM parameter.
If you’d like the update to be tagged to a certain campaign, include this in the Campaigns column. Finally, attach an image just like you did with your other social media updates — we suggest you edit it to be 1080 x 1080 pixels. (Here’s the cheat sheet of social media image sizes.)
Pro Tip: Even though you can’t schedule Instagram stories automatically, you can still add them to your social media content calendar. Stories also support links once your account has over 10,000 followers, so you can include specific links for these types of posts in your content calendar. The dimensions for Instagram Story posts are 1080 x 1920 pixels.
Planning Your Social Media Content Calendar for Pinterest
Next, let’s go over how to set up your Pinterest Pins in advance with this template. Navigate over to the tab in your template labeled Pinterest Updates.

For your convenience, we’ve added Day, Date, and Time columns, but you can skip them if you don’t need them.
Next, go to the column labeled Message, and enter the information for the pin’s description. Then, scroll to the Link column and add the link you’ll be including in the update. (And seriously, don’t forget the URL Parameter.)
If you’d like the update to be tagged to a certain campaign, include this in the Campaigns column. Finally, attach an image the same way you did with your other social media updates — we suggest you edit it to fit the dimensions of 1000 x1500 pixels. This is the standard size, but Pinterest Pins can be much longer if your audience responds to longer content. Just make sure your Pin fits the aspect ratio of 2:3.
Content Repository (Or, Where to Source Social Media Content)
This template also provides you with a tab called Content Repository, which should help you keep track of all your content and maintain a healthy backlog of fodder to make sourcing social media content easier.

As you create more assets, you’ll likely want to resurface and re-promote those pieces down the line, too. To ensure you don’t lose track of all of that content, record it on this tab so you’re never at a loss for what to publish on social media. If the content you’re promoting isn’t evergreen, be sure to include an expiration date in the column marked Expiration so you don’t promote it after it’s out of date.
This tab will also help you maintain a healthy balance of content. Here you can include a mix of original content, curated content, various formats and types, and lead generation content vs. MQL-generating content.

Perfecting your social media content calendar doesn’t have to be a chore. With these essential components, you’ll have a foundation to organize your social media strategy at a tactical level.
Key
As you noticed in earlier sections, your stakeholders will appreciate having an easy-to-read key that they can use to understand the information in the calendar. We’ve color-coded our example here, but you don’t have to go that extra step if you have fewer channels and types of content to differentiate between. As long as your key is clear, just about anyone in your organization can view your social media content calendar and understand exactly what’s happening on all platforms.
URLs and UTM Parameters
We’ve harped on these UTM parameters throughout this post for good reason. They’re critical to tracking the success of your campaign. Without them, you won’t know what’s working and what isn’t.
URLs and UTM parameters are similar, but they’re not one and the same. URLs are the links you’ll want to share from your website (or even another website if you’re curating content) on your social media platforms.
On the other hand, a UTM parameter is an extension of your URL. It’s a string of tracking code that’s appended to the end of the URL and it helps social media marketers track how well their posts are driving traffic to their website. By tracking and analyzing UTM parameters, you’ll be able to see what content is meeting your conversion goals and what content is better for engagement on social media platforms.
Date and Time
If you have stakeholders or other teams that rely on your social media content, you’ll quickly see the benefit of including dates and times in your social media calendar. When teammates can view the calendar and identify exactly when a post was or will be scheduled, they’ll be able to quickly proceed with their workflow which is beneficial for you, too. That means you won’t be interrupted to give status updates about every Tweet on the docket for the day.
Message
Transparency and context are invaluable when it comes to social media content calendars. Giving a brief synopsis of the message or even sharing the caption for a post can go a long way in helping others within and outside your team understand what the intent of the post will be.
Pro tip: If you’re adding a video to your social media content calendar that isn’t finished, consider adding a short Loom video that gives an overview of what the video will be about.
Campaign
When it comes to tracking, it’s too late to start when the campaign is over. Start tracking your social media campaigns in your content calendar. You can make this prescriptive by having a dropdown list of predetermined campaign names, or if your campaigns are few and far between, simply copy and paste the names next to the corresponding content.
Pro tip: Align your campaign name with the campaign section of your UTM parameter for seamless tracking.
Image
Your social media content calendar will become just another spreadsheet without some imagery. Since much of your social media content will probably be visual, add a thumbnail-sized version of the image that will be included in the published post. Coupled with the message, stakeholders who view the calendar images will have a pretty good idea of what will be shared and when. To make editing your images for each platform easier, check out this cheat sheet for ideal image dimensions on each platform.
Don’t Forget to Interact With Your Followers
Whether you use this spreadsheet to plan your content or upload it to a third-party app, you’ll still need to supplement these updates with on-the-fly content. Breaking news hits? Whip up a quick update to share it with your network. Did someone in your network tweet something interesting? Give it a retweet with some commentary. Got a fascinating comment on one of your updates? Respond with a “thank you” for their interaction.
Coming up with and scheduling your social media content in advance is a huge time-saver, but it should go without saying that you still need to monitor and add to your social presence throughout the day.
Finally, we encourage you to experiment with your social media publishing. This template provides publishing dates and times for each social network, but you may find those are way too many updates for you to fill, or perhaps too infrequent for your booming social presence. If this is the case, you should adjust your social media publishing frequency as needed.
Now that you’ve got the ins and outs of a social media content calendar, download the one below for free and start planning your content.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in January 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection feature has put the future of open rates in serious jeopardy. Let’s take a look at what the future of open rates looks like.
Ask any marketer what they measure their email marketing results by, and without fail, one of the first statistics they’ll mention is open rate.
It makes perfect sense that this would be one of the first metrics named, as it’s often the top line on anyone’s email marketing analytics dashboard. As long as marketers have been sending emails to customers and prospects, they’ve been looking at open rates to give an indicator of success.
But with the release of Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection feature, all of that is about to change. For a very in-depth look at MPP and how it works, you’ll want to consult our guide on the topic. But for the sake of this article, you only need to know this key effect:
MPP takes away marketers’ ability to track open rates, meaning the future of open rates, and how we measure success in email, is changing in real-time.
But does this mean that the open rate as a meaningful metric is really dead? Let’s take a look at the future of open rates, and how we can start thinking beyond them from this point forward.
So, are open rates really dead?
Yes, pretty much! Listen, the is ____ dead?! conversation is usually an overblown, knee-jerk reaction to something. People have been trying to say this about email for years. But this time, it’s very true. Email open rates as we know them are a thing of the past.
Here’s a quick rundown on how Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection feature works.
When a user opts-in to Mail Privacy Protection, they’re allowing Apple to pre-fetch (or download), emails and email images to their device. This takes place with or without the user deciding to open and read the email message. Email image pixels, which indicate opens and open rates, are included in this pre-loading. This means an email may be marked as open even though the user did not open or read it.
Anyone using the native Apple Mail application to read their email, be it on an iPhone, an iPad, or a Mac, is able to turn these features on. And while we don’t know what the option rate will be, you can expect it to be high. Initial surveys show that this could end up affecting 30-40% of your total subscriber list, depending on your demographic.
With 30-40% of your open rate data becoming completely unreliable, we think it’s safe to say that, as this feature gets adopted, open rate will become an increasingly unreliable and unimportant metric.
Why you don’t need open rates to be successful
While this may seem sudden and drastic, the truth is, open rates have never been as reliable as you might think. While open rate was designed to reflect human interaction with an email, those numbers have already been skewed in the past by anti-spam filters, autoresponders, and an increasing number of mailbox providers who had already disabled open tracking.
So, though this is the biggest and likely final nail in the coffin, the open rate was never the solid, reliable metric that you might have thought.
Even at its best, open rate as a metric was not a key indicator of success — it was merely a proxy we used along the way. Website visits, purchases, revenue generated; those are the sorts of goals we’re after when crafting an email campaign. And in a post-MPP world, it’s more important than ever to keep their entire customer experience in mind, not just open rates.
Creative ways to track engagement without tracking opens
Yes, open rates offered insight into how engaged your subscribers were, and you might be worried about how to track reader engagement moving forward. Don’t fret, there are plenty of other, more important metrics to track that will give you a better understanding of how and how frequently subscribers are interacting with your emails.
Here are some ideas we have on optimizing your emails for engagement, beyond opens:
Use surveys to get a pulse on your subscribers
Including surveys in your emails moving forward is going to be clever for a couple of reasons. First, surveys are a great way to invite clicks in an email that might not garner many otherwise. Giving readers different ways to click on your emails will help you get a good idea of who’s engaged and who isn’t.
Second, surveys can be a great way to gather first-party data. You can ask your subscribers for their content preferences, or even gather information. Asking for data like their location or what industry they work in with help you segment your audience further, and deliver a more personalized email experience.

Chili Piper executes the survey idea well in a recent newsletter. There’s more content underneath, but leading with a survey in the intro gives readers a clickable element up top. It also gives Chili Piper the chance to learn more about their subscribers in a friendly, voluntary way.
Encourage replies
Replies are also a trackable metric that you can use to monitor email engagement. And what’s cool about this one is that inviting replies is much more personal. It shows that there’s a person behind the creation of that email, not just a company.
With this in mind, you’ll want to make sure you have a system in place for handling replies. Asking for replies in an email going to a huge list all at once could overwhelm whoever is replying to them on your team. But asking for a reply to a welcome email, for example, which goes out automatically at different times, is unlikely to overwhelm your inbox too much.
Look at user activity on your website
As we mentioned earlier, the goal of an email campaign is rarely just to get opens or clicks. Mor often than not, it’s what a user does after clicking through your email that’s important.
If you have access to Google Analytics or other tools on your website, use it to see what activity users ate taking after clicking your email. How many are purchasing a product? How many are scheduling a demo? It’s often the activity after they click an email that matters, and those are the high-value insights you need to include in your reporting.
How we’re adjusting in Campaign Monitor
Since Apple announced Mail Privacy Protection, our product team has been adjusting our analytics dashboard to show you meaningful, accurate metrics moving forward.
To give you the most reliable measure of email engagement, we replaced CTOR with click rate on the Campaign and Overview pages. You can still access CTOR from the Clicked column — check out the example below.

Click-tool-tip

 
We have added handy reminders about these email metrics that you can refer to. Click Learn more to access relevant resources on our Help Center.

email-metrics-reminder

 
And remember, we’re in the early days of this, and we’re still testing and studying the impacts. We will have further updates for you once we have more information.
Wrap up
Yes, it looks like this is the end of open rate as a reliable email marketing metric. In the short term, we’ll need to rethink some of the ways we report success for email campaigns. But this also gives us a chance to reflect on what metrics really matter to our campaigns, and start optimizing for and reporting on those things.
The open rate is dead, but email is anything but.
The post What the Future of Open Rates Looks Like in 2021 and Beyond appeared first on Campaign Monitor.

INBOUND 2021 — hosted with love by HubSpot — is a fully immersive, online experience that gives you access to transformative business trends, proactive conversations, and key actionable takeaways that future you will appreciate.
INBOUND has been hosted by HubSpot for over ten years, and is one of the world’s largest marketing conferences, attracting more than 26,000 attendees from 110 countries.
But this year, INBOUND is especially unique — as it’s built with remote work in-mind, so you can learn from anywhere with audio sessions, meetups, and on-demand content.
Additionally, you’ll hear from Oprah Winfrey, Spike Lee, David Chang, and more.
Here, let’s explore five reasons you’ll want to attend INBOUND 2021, according to HubSpot’s Global Events team.

1. BLACK@INBOUND
Black@INBOUND is a global community that gathers Black professionals across industries to grow and network. HubSpot customer Devyn Bellamy first founded Black@INBOUND at INBOUND to find and connect with other Black professionals.
Since then, Black@INBOUND has grown into a dynamic and interactive meet-up for passionate HubSpot fans and INBOUND enthusiasts.  
Don’t miss the Black@INBOUND events just for you — including our exclusive Meetup with the community at 3:45 PM EST on October 12. Join the virtual cookout and meet all the members of the Community. Then stay tuned for an amazing panel: Mentorship and Advocacy in Black Business Leadership. 

Black@INBOUND is an inclusive community intended for Black business professionals as a space to gather, connect, and share resources.
Black HubSpot users, customers, or fans are welcome to join this space by creating a HubSpot Community profile.
2. The HubSpot Podcast Network
The HubSpot Podcast Network Live will be live at INBOUND 2021! Yes, we want you to step away from your computer screen, give your eyes a rest, head out for a walk and learn from anywhere.
HubSpot’s Podcast Network is the audio destination for business professionals who seek the best education and inspiration to best approach the ever-evolving business landscape.
We will feature exclusive episodes recorded specifically for INBOUND from Entrepreneurs on Fire, My First Million, The Salesman Podcast, and the MarTech Podcast at INBOUND 2021:
Entrepreneurs on Fire
Host John Lee Dumas delivers the inspiration and strategies you need to fire up your entrepreneurial journey and create the life you’ve always dreamed of.
My First Million
Host Sam Parr and Shaan Puri brainstorm new business ideas based on trends and opportunities in the market and share the stories of how companies made their first million.
MarTech Podcast
The MarTech Podcast tells stories of marketers who use technology to generate growth and achieve success. It unearths the successes and pitfalls of industry experts and teaches the tools and tips that they’ve learned along the way.
The Salesman Podcast
The Salesman Podcast is the world’s most downloaded B2B sales podcast. Host Will Barron helps sales professionals find buyers and win business in a modern, effective, and ethical way.

3. HubSpot at INBOUND
Join us at HubSpot’s Product announcement, where you can join Yamini Rangan, Brian Halligan, and Dharmesh Shah as they continue to push the boundaries at HubSpot. Explore some of HubSpot’s new and improved product offerings and how we are focusing on customer success to meet our goals.
This is Yamin Rangan’s first INBOUND as the CEO of HubSpot.
Of her new role, Yamini Rangan said, “It’s the honor of a lifetime to partner with our founders to write HubSpot’s next chapter. My goal is to make our customers, partners, employees, and investors proud — proud to grow their businesses, careers, and futures with HubSpot … I couldn’t be more excited for the future of HubSpot’s journey.”
4. Diverse Spotlight and Breakout Speakers
Oprah Winfrey will be headlining INBOUND 2021.
Oprah Winfrey is a global media leader, philanthropist, producer, and actress. She has created an unparalleled connection with people worldwide, making her one of the most respected and admired figures today.
For 25 years, Winfrey was host and producer of the award-winning talk show, The Oprah Winfrey Show. In her role as Chairman and CEO of OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network, she’s guiding her cable network to success. Winfrey is also the founder of O, The Oprah Magazine, and oversees Harpo Films.
Oprah Winfrey’s exclusive session at INBOUND 2021 is all about the lessons learned on the road to success. See how Oprah — and yourself — can transform failures into lessons.
Spike Lee will guide attendees through an exclusive session that helps you draw ambition out of themselves and others.
Hasan Minhaj takes attendees with him as he explores different ways for you to find your inner voice and follow your passions.
David Chang of Momofuku helps you turn those passions into a business, and he gives you his secret recipe on how he did just that.
Additionally, join lifelong advocate and internationally recognized leader Judith Huemann for an insightful discussion on what ableist privilege looks like and what it means for companies to truly support disabled employees as a prominent community in the DI&B ecosystem.
Experience over 100+ similar sessions at INBOUND 2021 with some of the smartest and innovative thought leaders.
5. The Agenda
INBOUND 2021 offers an immersive and interactive digital experience for all attendees. You will get the chance to create a personalized avatar, join sponsoring partner’s meetups, explore workshops for personal development, and network with a global audience from various backgrounds and industries.
The agenda this year is extraordinary. You can find educational sessions, workshops, Ask Me Anything, debates, and meetup networking sessions. You can customize your agenda by filtering out tracks for Marketing, Sales, Customer Success, HubSpot Academy, and RevOps. There’s something for everyone.
How to attend?
The great thing about INBOUND 2021 this year is that it’s a fully immersive digital experience. You can attend from the comfort of your couch, hop on over to your favorite cafe, listen to sessions while you’re working out. There are endless ways to attend and enjoy INBOUND this year.
You can go ahead and claim your free starter pass, which will allow you to attend our exciting spotlight speaker sessions. You can purchase our Powerhouse pass, which gives you full access to the INBOUND 2021 agenda and platform.

Deciding how you’ll generate revenue is one of the most challenging decisions for a business to make, aside from coming up with what you’ll actually sell.
You want to ensure that you’re accounting for production costs, salaries for workers, what your consumers are willing to pay, and that you generate enough to continue business operations. You also want to make sure that your strategy fits with what you’re trying to sell.
Various revenue models will help you set your business on the right path. In this post, we’ll outline what they are and how to choose the right one for your company.

Revenue models are not to be confused with pricing models, which is when a business considers the products’ value and target audience to establish the best possible price for what they are selling to maximize profits. Once the pricing strategy is set, the revenue model will dictate how customers pay that price when they purchase.
RevOps teams also use pricing models to predict and forecast revenue for future business planning. Knowing where your money is coming from and how you’ll get it makes it easier to predict how often it will come in.
There are various revenue models that businesses use, and we’ll cover some below.
Types of Revenue Models
Recurring Revenue Model
Recurring revenue model, sometimes called the subscription revenue model, generates revenue by charging customers at specific intervals (monthly, quarterly, annually, etc.) for access to a product or service. Businesses using this model are guaranteed to receive payment at each interval so long as customers don’t cancel their plans.
Recurring Revenue Model Example
Businesses that benefit from recurring revenue models are service-based (like providing software), product-based (like subscription boxes), or content-based (like newspapers or streaming services). Businesses you may be familiar with that use this strategy are Spotify, Amazon, and Hello Fresh.
Affiliate Revenue Model
Businesses using affiliate revenue models generate revenue through commission, as they sell items from other retailers on their site or vice versa.
Sellers work with different businesses to advertise and sell their products, tracking transactions with an affiliate link. When someone makes a purchase, the unique link notes the responsible affiliate, and commission is paid.
Affiliate Revenue Model Example
Businesses you may be familiar with that use the affiliate revenue model include Amazon affiliate links and ticket promoting services. Influencers also use this model to advertise products from businesses and entice users to purchase them through custom links.
Advertising Revenue Model
The advertising revenue model involves selling advertising space to other businesses. This space is sought after because the advertiser (who is selling the space) has high traffic and large audiences that the buyer (who is purchasing the space) wants to benefit from to give their business, product, or service visibility.
Advertising Revenue Model Example
Various types of online businesses use this model, like YouTube and Google, and so do traditional outlets like newspapers and magazines.
Sales Revenue Model
The sales revenue model states that you make money by selling goods and services to consumers, online and in person. Therefore, any business that directly sells products and services uses this model.
Sales Revenue Model Example
Clothing stores that only sell their products in a storefront or business-specific retail website use the sales revenue model as they sell directly to consumers with no third-party involvement.
SaaS Revenue Model
The Software as a Service (SaaS) revenue model is similar to the recurring revenue model as users are charged on an interval basis to use software. Businesses using this model focus on customer retention, as revenue is only guaranteed if you keep your customers. The image below is the HubSpot Marketing Hub pricing page that uses the SaaS recurring subscription model pricing.
SaaS Revenue Model Example
Businesses using this revenue model include video conferencing tool Zoom, communication platform Slack, and Adobe Suite.
How to Choose a Revenue Model
Choosing a revenue model is entirely dependent on your specific business needs and your pricing strategy.
There is no one-size-fits-all solution, and some businesses have multiple revenue streams within their revenue model. For example, if you use a recurring revenue model, you still may sell advertising space on your website to other businesses because you have a high-traffic page.
There are some key factors to keep in mind, though:
1. Understand your audience.
When picking a revenue model, the most important thing to remember is the target market and audience your pricing strategy has identified. You want to understand their pain points and what model makes the most sense for charging them.
For example, if you’re a service that sells meal kits, your target audience is likely busy and wants the convenience of food that is set up and easy to make after a long day. Using the recurring revenue model makes sense, as you’ll automatically charge them on an interval basis, and they won’t have to remember to submit payment — speaking directly to their desire for convenience.
2. Understand your product or service.
It’s also essential to have an in-depth understanding of your product or service and how your audience will use it. For example, if you sell shoes, your audience likely won’t need a new pair every month, so it may make sense to go with the Sales Revenue Model. Instead, your customers can come to you directly every time they need a new pair.
Choose the Model That Best Fits Your Needs
Ultimately, choosing a revenue model is centered around understanding what makes the most sense for what you’re selling and what makes the most sense (and will be most convenient) for the audiences you’re targeting.
Take time to develop your pricing strategy, choose a revenue model aligned with it, and begin generating revenue.