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Image is an important aspect of brand awareness, which influences whether your potential customers know, like, and trust you. Where publicity is outside a brand’s control, public relations (PR) is an effective way to contribute to the conversation.

There’s an old saying: “Advertising is what you pay for; publicity is what you pray for.”
Public relations isn’t an easy profession to define. In fact, in 2012, the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) accepted a few thousand submissions before finally agreeing on one:
So how can an organization take its beneficial relationship to the public and turn it into good press? Are you really “praying” for something, like the old saying goes, if you’re using a strategic process to get results?
If public relations is a bridge for that relationship, then public relations professionals are the bridge builders. Let’s talk about them a little more specifically:
What is a public relations professional?
A public relations professional is in charge of creating and executing a PR strategy, helping a business or individual cultivate a positive reputation through various unpaid or earned channels and formats, including press, social media, and in-person engagements. They also help clients defend their reputations during crises that threaten their credibility.
In order to understand this, you must first consider the two sides of PR: the positive storytelling side and the negative damage-controle side.
Positive Public Relations
If an organization is proactive about their image, they will likely be investing in positive public relations where a PR professional helps portray the brand’s reputation, idea, product, position, or accomplishments in a positive light.
So, in a sense, you can think of PR professionals as storytellers. Unlike advertisers, who tell stories through paid methods, PR professionals tell their stories through unpaid or earned media.
These unpaid or earned avenues include:

News and press
Media outreach
Social media
Speaking engagements

Keep in mind that a PR professional isn’t just trying to reach a paying customer … they’re trying to reach everyone.
Example of Positive PR
Let’s say you work for a small interior design company, and your business just won an award: “Best Interior Design Company in Chicago.” A PR specialist might draft a press release and conduct outreach to reporters to write a story about this accomplishment to spread the news to the public.
Along with building a credible reputation for your interior design business, the PR professional is also helping the public receive relevant information about this accolade. If I’m a consumer looking for an interior designer, this announcement could help me, too.
Public relations extends to government, too. PR professionals can execute political campaigns or explain a government’s new policy to the public. In this case, you can see how PR professionals work to maintain a healthy and productive relationship between their client (the government) and the general public, who have a right to hear about new policies.
Damage Control in PR (Negative Public Relations)

PR isn’t just used for positive storytelling. It’s also used to mitigate any damage that could weaken a client’s reputation.
If public discourse around a particular brand has a negative sentiment, perhaps as a result of negative publicity or news, a PR professional’s job is to advise the organization on how to proceed.
After all, if conversations are being had, then an organization should share their side of the story. However, how they respond will have an impact on the public’s perception. If done poorly, it could make the situation worse.
A PR professional will then be tasked with:

Crisis communications
Damage control
Response and/or apology messaging
Reputation restoration strategy

Example of Damage Control in PR
In the early 1980s, numerous bottles of Johnson & Johnson’s Tylenol product were laced with cyanide by an unknown person, killing seven people. This led to widespread panic and could have resulted in the end of Tylenol products.
Johnson & Johnson took aggressive PR measures to mitigate the damage: First, the company pulled all of its Tylenol products off the shelves and issued a national statement warning consumers not to purchase or use Tylenol. Then, Johnson & Johnson created a new tamper-resistant seal and instructed 2,000 sales personnel to deliver presentations to the medical community to reintroduce these new, safer Tylenol bottles.
This effective PR strategy saved Johnson & Johnson’s reputation as well as their product — in fact, Tylenol shares climbed back up to 24 percent just six weeks after the cyanide crisis.
In the case of Johnson & Johnson, a simple advertising campaign wouldn’t have worked. Instead, PR was necessary: PR professionals were able to spread a story that portrayed Johnson & Johnson as a company that puts consumers ahead of profit. Along with mitigating damage to Johnson & Johnson’s reputation, PR was used to save more people from consuming cyanide-laced Tylenol, and then used to inform the public that Tylenol was safe again. A win-win-win.
PR as an Important Marketing Strategy
In these examples, you can see PR professionals are adept at handling a wide variety of both good and bad circumstances and must address these events so the public and client can maintain a beneficial relationship. PR specialists also play a role in advising management on the best policy decisions or actions to take and conducting programs, such as fundraising or networking events, to help the public understand the organization’s goals.
PR isn’t just used to influence a story after it happens — it’s also used to write that story in the first place.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in April 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Here’s the thing about resumes and cover letters: No matter how unique you try to make your own, for the most part, they tend to read dry. And there’s a good reason for it: It’s supposed to be a single, no-frills page that documents your work experience. And while being concise is good, there’s very little opportunity to convey your uniqueness, or for your personality to shine through at all for that matter.
While a resume is a sole, largely unchanging document, a personal website can be customized and updated according to what you’re working on, or what you want to emphasize. It’s both fluid and current.

Did you know 80% of businesses say a personal website is important when evaluating job candidates? Recruiters are looking you up online, and a personal website that tells the story you want to tell can make all the difference between you and a competing candidate.
If you’re thinking about creating a personal website of your very own, check out the examples below that hit the nail on the head. Inspired by a particular type of website? Click one of the following links to jump to that section of this article:

Personal Resume Websites
Personal Portfolios
Personal Blogs
Personal Demo Websites

Best Personal Websites

Gary Sheng
Brandon Johnson
Quinton Harris
Sean Halpin
Tony D’Orio
Verena Michelitsch
Gari Cruze
Melanie Daveid
The Beast Is Back
Daniel Grindrod
The Everywhereist
Side Hustle Nation
fifty coffees
Minimalist Baker
Mr. Money Mustache
Albino Tonnina
Robby Leonardi
Samuel Reed
Devon Stank

Personal Resume Websites
Whether you create a single-page site or a larger portfolio, the web resume serves as a more personalized option for sharing information and demonstrating your technological skills — and it can be used by all types of job seekers.
Even if you have very little work experience, you can leverage a website to build a better picture of your capabilities and yourself as a candidate, while leaning on your traditional resume to provide the basic background information.
1. Gary Sheng

Unlike a standard resume document, Sheng’s website makes it easy for him to include logos and clickable links that allow his software engineering and web development skills to shine.

We love that visitors can choose to scroll down his page to view all of the website’s categories (“About Me,” “My Passion,” etc.), or jump to a specific page using the top navigation.
The “My System” section reads like a company mission statement, and this personal touch helps humanize his work and make him more memorable.
2. Brandon Johnson

Johnson’s incredible resume must be seen to be believed. Beautiful images of planets help to complement his planetary science background, and animations make his resume more of an experience than a document.
In terms of design, the textured, multi-layered background adds greater depth to the two-dimensional page in a way that evokes feelings of space and the planetary systems, which Johnson’s work focuses on.
3. Quinton Harris

Harris’ resume uses photos to tell his personal story — and it reads kind of like a cool, digital scrapbook. It covers all the bases of a resume — and then some — by discussing his educational background, work experience, and skills in a highly visual way.
Not to mention, the copy is fantastic. It’s clear that Harris took the time to carefully choose the right words to describe each step of his personal and professional journey. For example, the section on storytelling reads:

NYC, my new home, is filled with the necessary secrets to not only propel my craft forward, but my identity as an artist. With every lens snapped and every pixel laid, I am becoming me.

Finally, at the final navigational point (note the scrolling circles on the left-hand side of the page), users are redirected to quintonharris.com, where he goes on to tell his story in more detail.
Best Practices for Resume Websites

Code your resume so it can be crawled by search engines.
Offer a button to download your resume in PDF so the hiring manager can add it to your file.
Keep branding consistent between the website and document versions: Use similar fonts, colors, and images so you’re easy to recognize.
Be creative and authentic to yourself. Think about the colors, images, and media you want to be a part of your story that you couldn’t include in a document resume.

Personal Portfolios
Building an online portfolio is a highly useful personal branding and marketing tool if your work experience and skill set call for content creation. In fact, photographers, graphic designers, illustrators, writers, and content marketers can all use web portfolios to show off their skills in a more user-friendly way than a resume or hard copy portfolio.
4. Sean Halpin

Halpin’s portfolio is short, sweet, and to the point, which is authentic to his voice and personal branding outlined on the site. Instead of a lot of copy, Halpin presents large thumbnail cards so that his projects speak for themselves and allow the user to delve deeper if one catches their eye.
5. Tony D’Orio

It’s important to keep the design of your visual portfolio simple to let images capture visitors’ attention, and D’Orio accomplishes this by featuring bold photographs front-and-center on his website. His logo and navigation menu are clear and don’t distract from his work. And he makes it easy for potential customers to download his work free of charge.
Want to give it a try? Click on the hamburger menu in the top left corner, then select + Create a PDF to select as many images as you’d like to download.
Once you open the PDF, you’ll notice that it comes fully equipped with D’Orio’s business card as the cover … just in case you need it.
6. Verena Michelitsch

When you’re a designer, not one pixel on your personal website should go unused. Verena Michelitsch’s portfolio, shown above, is covered end to end in artwork. From her extensive library of work, she chose to exhibit multiple colors, styles, and dimensions so visitors can see just how much range she has as a designer. It’s a perfect example of the classic adage, “show, don’t tell.”
7. Gari Cruze

Cruze is a copywriter. But by turning his website into a portfolio featuring images from different campaigns he’s worked on, he makes visitors want to keep clicking to learn more about him. Also, there’s a great CTA at the top of the page that leads visitors to his latest blog post.
His site’s humorous copy — specifically in the “17 Random Things” and “Oh Yes, They’re Talking” sections — serves to show off his skills, while making himself more memorable as well. These pages also include his contact information on the right-hand side, making it easy to reach out and connect at any point:
8. Melanie Daveid

Daveid’s website is a great example of “less is more.”
This developer’s portfolio features clear, well-branded imagery of campaigns and apps that Daveid worked on, and she shows off her coding skills when you click through to see the specifics of her work.
While it might seem overly minimal to only include three examples of her work, Daveid did her portfolio a service by including her best, most noteworthy campaigns. At the end of the day, it’s better to have fewer examples of excellence in your portfolio than many examples of mediocrity.
9. The Beast Is Back

Christopher Lee’s portfolio is busy and colorful in a way that works. When you read more about Lee on his easily navigable site, you realize that such a fun and vibrant homepage is perfect for an illustrator and toy designer.
Known by his brand name, “The Beast Is Back,” Lee’s web portfolio highlights eye-catching designs with recognizable brands, such as Target and Mario, along with links to purchase his work. This is another gallery-style portfolio with pops of color that make it fun and give it personality, thus making it more memorable.
10. Daniel Grindrod

This freelance videographer is another example of a simple but sleek portfolio, allowing his potential clients to browse deeper into his “Work” and “Stills” sections. The opening video on the homepage — as shown on the still image above — also ensures his site visitors that he’s actively creating beautiful work.
Best Practices for Portfolio Websites

Use mainly visuals. Even if you’re showcasing your written work, using logos or other branding is more eye-catching for your visitors.
Don’t be afraid to be yourself. Your personality, style, and sense of humor could be what sets you apart from other sites!
Organization is key. If your portfolio is full of photos, logos, and other images, make sure it’s easy for visitors to navigate to where they can contact you.
Brand yourself. Choose a logo or icon to make your information easily identifiable.

Personal Blogs
Consistently publishing on a blog is a great way to attract attention on social media and search engines — and drive traffic to your site. Blogging is a smart way to give your work a personality, chronicle your experiences, and stretch your writing muscles. You might write a personal blog if you’re a writer by trade, but virtually anyone can benefit from adding a blog to their site and providing useful content for their audience.
11. The Everywhereist

This blog looks a bit busier, but its consistent branding helps visitors easily navigate the site. The travel blog uses globe iconography to move visitors around the site, making it easy to explore sections beyond the blog.
Owned by writer Geraldine DeRuiter, this blog also features a “Best Of” section that allows new visitors to learn about what the blog covers to get acclimated. The color scheme is warm, neutral, and free of excess clutter that could distract from the content.
12. Side Hustle Nation

Side Hustle Nation is the business blog of Nick Loper, an advisor whose website offers tons of valuable financial advice for individual business owners. His homepage, shown above, sets a lighthearted yet passionate tone for his readers. It suggests you’ll get friendly content all committed to a single goal: financial freedom. The green call to action, “Start Here,” helps first-time visitors know exactly how to navigate his website.
On Nick’s blog page, shown above, you’ll notice two unique types of content: “My Podcast Production Process,” the top post; and “Quarterly Progress Report,” the third post down. The top post shows readers how Nick, himself, creates content that helps his business grow, while the third post down keeps his readers up to date on his blog’s growth over time. These content types give people a peek behind the curtain of your operation, showing them you practice what you preach and that your insight is tried and true.
13. fifty coffees

The website fifty coffees chronicles the author’s series of coffee meetings in search of her next job opportunity, and it does a great job of using photography and visuals to assist in the telling of her lengthy stories.
The best part? Each post ends with numbered takeaways from her meetings for ease of reading comprehension. The high-quality photography used to complement the stories is like icing on the cake.
14. Minimalist Baker

I’m not highlighting Dana’s food blog just because the food looks delicious and I’m hungry. Her blog uses a simple white background to let her food photography pop, unique branding to make her memorable, and mini-bio to personalize her website.
15. Mr. Money Mustache

Mr. Money Mustache might take on an old-school, Gangs of New York-style facade, but his blog design — and the advice the blog offers — couldn’t be more fresh (he also doesn’t really look like that).
This financial blog is a funny, browsable website that offers sound insight into money management for the layperson. While his personal stories help support the legitimacy of his advice, the navigation links surrounding his logo make it easy to jump right into his content without any prior context around his brand.
Best Practices for Blogs

Keep your site simple and clutter-free to avoid additional distractions beyond blog posts.
Publish often. Those who prioritize marketing efforts are 13x more likely to see positive ROI.
Experiment with different blog styles, such as lists, interviews, graphics, and bullets.
Employ visuals to break up text and add context to your discussion.

Personal Demo Websites
Another cool way to promote yourself and your skills is to create a personal website that doubles as a demonstration of your coding, design, illustration, or developer skills. These sites can be interactive and animated in a way that provides information about you and also shows hiring managers why they should work with you. This is a great website option for technical and artistic content creators such as developers, animators, UX designers, website content managers, and illustrators.
16. Albino Tonnina

Tonnina is showcasing advanced and complicated web development skills, but the images and storytelling methods he uses are simple and easy to understand. In the process, you get a demo of the depth of his animation and coding experience.
17. Robby Leonardi

Leonardi’s incredible demo website uses animation and web development skills to turn his portfolio and resume into a video game for site visitors. The whimsical branding and unique way of sharing information ensure that his site is memorable to visitors.
18. Samuel Reed

Reed uses his page as a start-to-finish demo of how to code a website. His website starts as a blank white page and ends as a fully interactive site that visitors can watch him code themselves. The cool factor makes this website memorable, and it makes his skills extremely marketable.
19. Devon Stank

Stank’s demo site does a great job of showing that he has the web design chops and it takes it a step further by telling visitors all about him, his agency, and his passions. It’s the perfect balance of a demo and a mini-resume.
Plus, we love the video he includes as an intro. It’s a consumable narrative that at once captures Stank’s personality and credentials.

Best Practices for Demo Websites

Brand yourself and use consistent logos and colors to identify your name and your skills amongst the bevy of visuals.
Don’t overwhelm your visitors with too many visuals at once — especially if your demo is animated. Be sure to keep imagery easy to understand so visitors aren’t bombarded when they visit your site.

Developing a Personal Website
Regardless of the type of personal website you’re building, there’s plenty of inspiration above on how to convey personality while connecting with your audience. Keep in the above tips in mind, remember to design for your audience’s experience, and most importantly have fun.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in April 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

At Salesforce Pardot, we go out of our way to be a privacy champion, providing you the marketing tools you need to be compliant and putting ethics and trust at the forefront of our values. For example:

Pardot doesn’t build individual profiles across unrelated internet properties.
We avoid “creepy” tracking practices like browser fingerprinting.
We develop resources like our consent framework to help you communicate in ways that respect your audience’s privacy.

We do all of this to provide transparency into how Pardot enables you to personalize your marketing.
Apple is also well-positioned as a privacy advocate, and it’s rolling out new technologies to make email more private.
What is Mail Privacy Protection from Apple?
At its June Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple unveiled Mail Privacy Protection (MPP), which is expected to deploy this fall. Historically, marketing automation software like Pardot uses email content like tracking pixels to determine when someone opens an email. Marketers create automations based on email opens, since they typically signal, among other things, whether or not a customer is interested in your content. Marketers use data around email opens to tailor their campaign approach — engaging interested prospects with more content and dialing back send frequency to disinterested prospects. MPP will remove this capability by causing all email content to automatically load when it’s delivered to the Apple Mail client — making it appear as if the subscriber opened every email. MPP also includes other privacy protections, such as the proxying of content fetches.
The Pardot product and engineering teams are actively working to understand how Apple will implement MPP and how this change will impact our customers. But we know enough to help you understand what to expect and how to adapt.
Preparing Your Pardot Instance
While it’s uncertain how MPP will affect email marketing as a whole, it’s already clear that email opens will become a less reliable engagement signal. We also know that it will impact email features like Einstein’s send time optimization algorithms. Our Einstein team is already adapting to the changes by updating algorithms so that they remain effective. We’re also making sure that Metrics Guard continues to perform correctly.
In other words, we’re not waiting to take action, and you don’t have to, either! Here are several meaningful ways to prepare:

Follow the news around MPP so you can understand, explain, and react to the changes as they’re revealed by Apple.
Review your Pardot automations, dynamic lists, completion actions, and scoring to understand where you’re using email opens to inform campaign decisions. Consider using link clicks, external activity such as webinar registrations, and other engagement signals instead of opens as more accurate indicators of interest.
Explore more direct ways to understand the sentiment of an email message. For example, including a “thumbs up” or a “thumbs down” action within an email is a great way to gauge a prospect’s interest in your campaign. Focus on outcomes over impressions.

Watch for changes in engagement metrics when the new Apple features deploy. Noting the difference between engagement data now and in the future can give you a feel for how the changes affect you based on the way you use Pardot. For example: Monitoring click-through rates before and after the MPP launch can give you an idea of how reliable email opens are as an engagement metric for your audience. Pardot’s Advanced Email Analytics add-on feature can break down engagement by email client, so you can study Apple users separately.

Understanding the Big Picture
As regulations and technology changes continue to raise the bar on privacy, marketing will have to change. All marketing automation software, including Pardot, will be forced to use fewer individualized metrics and shift to using aggregate data, external activity, and more direct consumer interactions. Pardot is ready for this shift.
In the coming months, you’ll start to see new features appearing on our roadmap that position Pardot to lead the way in engaging audiences in a privacy-friendly manner. Stay up to date on release notes for Winter ’22 and subsequent releases. Our teams are planning functionality that will help you pull in activity data from external sources to leverage in automations and in Engagement Studio. All of these changes will help you stay effective in the short term and position you ahead of the changes yet to come.
Learn how the June 2021 Salesforce Marketing Cloud release — which includes two Pardot enhancements — can help you get more from your data.
This blog post is part of our security, privacy, and technology series.

Yes, AI has a lot of potential in numerous sectors but thinking of implementing AI into everything is not justifiable. But if you think AI + marketing is the same case, you’re wrong here. Here’s how AI can help your brand in marketing your products or services:
Analyzes consumer behavior across all platforms
Automates notifications to optimize brand engagement Strategically designs campaigns to increase conversions
Automates time to post for better engagement Helps you evaluate the results across various platforms
That’s why Ojamu empowers brands using AI-driven insights and cutting-edge automated solutions based on blockchain technology. The solution certainly will change the marketing narrative.
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The other day, I roamed the aisles of CVS and picked up the same toothpaste I’ve been buying for years.
I didn’t think twice about it. I made the purchase on auto-pilot. I didn’t consider testing out a different brand or purchasing one from another retailer.
Toothpaste, as it turns out, is known as a “convenience good,” which consumers usually buy without putting too much thought into the brand or effort.

Understanding product classification is key to uncovering the reasons behind your consumers’ general buying behaviors and how you can better market your products as a result.
There are four types of product classification. Let’s dive into each type, so you can determine where your product falls.
Product Classification in Marketing
Knowing the classification of a product is vital when devising a marketing strategy. Why? Well, it lets you know the mindset most consumers have and the behavior they exhibit when interacting with your product.
This knowledge arms you to devise an effective marketing strategy that will meet your consumers where they are. It also helps you decide on a realistic marketing budget.
For instance, say your products fall under the “unsought goods” classification (more on that in this section). This means that you’ll likely need to take a more aggressive marketing approach to reach consumers that may not have considered your product or brand.
Think of charity organizations, life insurance companies, and funeral homes. These are usually not top of mind for consumers. As such, these brands must work a little harder to be visible to consumers and highlight the benefits of their goods or services.
Shopping goods, on the other hand, are highly visible and very competitive. Consumers typically spend time comparing quality, cost, and value before making a purchase. That’s why building brand loyalty is vital for this product classification.
As you can see, there are factors to consider for every classification of product. The more familiar you are with consumer habits and beliefs for that category, the more equipped you will be to market your product.
There are four types of products and each is classified based on consumer habits, price, and product characteristics: convenience goods, shopping goods, specialty products, and unsought goods.
Let’s dive into each one in more detail.
1. Convenience Goods
Like the Crest toothpaste example, convenience goods are products that consumers purchase repeatedly and without much thought.
Once consumers choose their brand of choice, they typically stick to it unless they see a reason to switch, such as an interesting advertisement that compels them to try it or convenient placement at the checkout aisle.
These products include gum, toilet paper, soap, toothpaste, shampoo, milk, and other necessities that people buy regularly.
To market a convenience good, you want to consider that most people will impulse buy these products. Placing your products near the checkout line at a store could be a good idea for these products — which is why you’ll often find candy and gum at the front of a store.
Since most convenience products are priced low, cost and discounting isn’t a major deciding factor when considering a purchase. I won’t switch my toilet paper brand just to save a few cents.
For convenience goods, brand recognition is key. With this in mind, you’ll want to implement widespread campaigns to spread awareness of your company if possible.
For instance, Charmin, the toilet paper brand, is a widely recognized brand in the United States — likely in part due to the company’s consistent and long-term advertising strategy, dating back to the 1960’s with the invention of the character “Mr. Whipple” who appeared on TV, print, and radio ads.
2. Shopping Goods
Shopping goods are commodities consumers typically spend more time researching and comparing before purchase.
They can range from affordable items, like clothes and home decor, to higher-end goods like cars and houses.
These are more one-off purchases with a higher economic impact.
For instance, while you will buy toilet paper over and over again for the rest of your life, you’ll likely only purchase a house a few times at most. And, since it’s an expensive and important purchase, you’ll spend a good amount of time deliberating on it, attending different open houses, and comparing the pros and cons of your final selection.
The same can be said for smaller products. If you have an event coming up and you want to purchase a nice pair of shoes, this doesn’t fall under impulse purchases.
Instead, you’ll want to try it on, consider whether the price is worth it, and even get input from your loved ones.
To market a shopping good, invest in content that persuades your buyer of your product’s value. It’s important your marketing materials demonstrate how your product differs from the competition, and the unique value it provides consumers.
Price also plays a role in this product type, so the promotion of discounts and sales can attract consumers toward your brand.
3. Specialty Goods
A specialty good is the only product of its kind on the market, which means consumers typically don’t feel the need to compare and deliberate as much as they would with shopping products.
A good example of this? iPhones.
I’ve been purchasing new iPhones for years, and I haven’t paused to consider other smartphone models — because of Apple’s strong brand identity and the perception I have of its product quality.
When marketing a specialty good, you don’t necessarily need to spend too much time convincing consumers that your product is different from competitors. They already know already.
Instead, focus on how your products are constantly innovating and improving. This will ensure your customers will remain loyal to your brand.
For instance, if Apple stopped making impressive improvements on their iPhones and promoting new features, I might consider switching brands. But since they’ve continued to impress me over the years, I’ve continued to purchase from them.

4. Unsought Goods
Finally, unsought products — goods that people aren’t typically excited to buy. Good examples of unsought goods include fire extinguishers, batteries, and life insurance.
People will typically buy an unsought good out of a sense of fear or danger. For instance, you wouldn’t go on the market looking for the “new and best” fire extinguisher. You’d only purchase one due to the fear of a potential fire. Alternatively, some unsought goods, like batteries, are bought simply because the old ones expired or ran out.
When marketing an unsought good, focus on reminding consumers of the existence of your product, and convincing consumers that purchasing your product will leave them with a better sense of security.
For instance, Duracell’s Beach x Bear commercial encourages viewers to remember the importance of batteries in life-threatening situations, like impending bear attacks or when using a metal detector.
Product Classification Examples
1. Browndages

Browndages is a convenience goods brand that markets itself by highlighting its key feature: bandages for every skin tone.

Messaging like “The perfect bandage for brown skin,” can be seen on the brand’s website, packaging and social media platforms, making it stand out against competitors like Band-Aid that typically focus its product’s medical benefits.
2. State Farm Insurance

Like many insurance companies, State Farm falls under the “unsought goods” product classification.
As such, brand and product awareness is a priority when it comes to marketing.
In its marketing efforts, State Farm, formerly AllState, positions itself as a reliable and trustworthy partner to rely on when bad things happen in your life.

In this example, the brand spotlights a fear many car owners have — a popular tactic used by unsought goods brands — while mentioning why trusting this brand will make things go smoothly.
3. Energizer

For many consumers, the first thing they think of when they picture batteries is a pink rabbit holding a drumset.
Similar to Charmin, Energizer created a brand mascot that consumers could easily recognize and remember: the Energizer Bunny.
Image Source
As a convenience good, Energizer needed to increase its brand recognition so that it could stand out among competitors in the store.
Now, the brand is widely popular and this is likely due to this marketing tactic.
4. Oui The People

For products under the “shopping goods” classification, it’s imperative that you identify ways to stand out among your competitors.
Why? Because, when shopping for these products, consumers compare everything: features, cost, value. As such, you must offer something that other brands don’t – whether that relates to your product features, brand values, or mission.
For Oui The People, sustainability is at the center of its brand.

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Consumers who care about the environment will gravitate toward the brand because of its use of recyclable material for its products and packaging.
5. Pyer Moss

As mentioned before, when people purchase specialty products, they’re not looking to be convinced of their quality or value. That’s already clear.
What consumers are looking for instead is a brand identity they can relate to, a vision they identify with.
Luxury clothing company Pyer Moss attracts consumers with its refreshing and innovative take on fashion. The brand isn’t afraid to step outside of the norm while still remaining rooted in its heritage.
Now that you know where your product fits, use consumers’ buyer behavior to inspire your next marketing campaign. Now it’s time to figure out how you can meet — and exceed — customers’ expectations of your product.
Editor’s Note: This blog post was originally published in August 2020, but has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Imagine this: You’re a project manager at a boutique marketing firm tasked with training the new PM and getting them up to speed on how to do their job to meet expectations.
To fulfill this request, you probably had to learn a series of actions already set in place. That series of actions is called a standard operating procedure, or SOP for short, and they help to routinize job functions.
As your company requires more standardized processes to run, such as managing your iPaaS integrations or building email campaigns, SOPs become invaluable for keeping everything in-line.
In this guide, we’ll explain the basics of SOPs and how to write them. Then, we’ll recommend our favorite software tools for creating and executing SOPs. Let’s dive in.

SOP Example
A good SOP is clearly worded and easy to read. Well-written SOPs have steps that are short and simple and are usually presented in a clearly labeled document.
Below is an example of a generic SOP for a new vehicle purchase process. As shown, each section is clearly labeled for fast reading and clear comprehension.

Image Source
Let’s discuss the specifics of this example in more detail.
Standard Operating Procedures Format

Title: SOPs should always begin with a title that briefly but fully encapsulates the purpose of the document.

Identification: This information should be placed near the top of the document for ID purposes, including any relevant ID numbers, department names, and necessary signatures.

Purpose: If a reader wants to understand the SOP more deeply before reading on, the “Purpose” section gives a brief summary of what the SOP aims to explain. This section probably won’t need to be longer than a paragraph.

Definitions: If necessary, include definitions of jargon that the reader should know before they begin.

Procedure: The format of the procedure section will vary depending on the complexity of the process. For simpler step-by-step processes, a numbered list will work. You may need to add sub-steps if the user must decide between two or more steps at a given point. If your SOP involves many decisions and forks, a flowchart is likely a more suitable format.

1. Create a list of processes
To begin, come up with an in-depth list of functions employees perform for their jobs that need SOPs. Some departments that could benefit from SOPs include finance, legal, HR, customer service, and IT. Think about those jobs that have a strict protocol; where not missing one step is vital.
For example, a new public relations professional would need to know the processes of writing press releases and securing press for their company. This is a great reason for creating an SOP.
2. Format your process
You can get creative with how you present SOPs. As long as they are easy to understand, there are no bounds to how a workflow can be created. The most widely seen SOP formats include step-by-step documents, workflow diagrams, organizational charts, detailed instructions, and checklists.
What kind of format would the public relations professional best receive their SOP? Most likely a workflow diagram. This would allow them to see why they must complete one step in order to get to the next. From writing the headline at the top to including correct hyperlinks, every step would be clearly notated.
3. Communicate
Make sure the process you write is accurate. Talk to the employees who will be using it every day. Ask for their feedback and advice. If they can provide useful edits or tips that would make the SOP easier to understand, include them.
For example, a reliable source for an SOP on how to write a solid press release would likely be a senior publicist or manager at the company
3. Write
Write the SOP by using the method that works best for your situation. Think about who you’re writing the SOP for and how the information will best be presented. This is also a good time to figure out who will be responsible for updating the SOP as needed.
A public relations professional would most likely benefit from an SOP about how to write press releases that give specific directions about format. For example, “Paragraph one must be 50-60 words introducing the album, the band, and their concept for the record cycle,” and “Paragraph two must be 30-40 words and include short descriptions of 2-3 songs.”
4. Implementation
SOPs should be updated at least once a year after implementation. They should always reflect the needs of the organization at that time. Maintaining them is important so employees always have the most up-to-date information about what’s expected from their day-to-day.
SOPs aren’t the quickest or shortest guides to write. But they can become a time-consuming project. Software can help speed up the writing process, and we’ve rounded up a couple of superstars:
(was a little unsure about the formatting for the list)
1. Trello

Price: Trello offers three pricing plans: Free, Business Class ($10 per user per month and recommended for teams up to 100 people), and Enterprise ($17.50 per user per month).
Trello is a scheduling tool that allows its users to see their collaboration using “cards,” which are like virtual sticky notes for each board. Trello can be used for organization; from editorial calendars to SOPs.

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We like Trello for its ease of having all documents in one place. If you scroll through this Office Management board, you can see a list of responsibilities for certain employees.
2. HubSpot
Price: HubSpot automation tools are included in Professional and Enterprise subscriptions of Marketing Hub, Service Hub, Sales Hub, and Operations Hub.
HubSpot’s CRM includes the workflows tool, which allows users to use marketing automation technology within their business. Workflows turn actions and/or commands into customizable flow charts.

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We like the workflows tool for SOPs because it has the option to write out lists into a visual chart.
3. Evernote

Price: Evernote offers three plans: Free, Personal ($7.99 per month), and Professional ($9.99 per month).
Evernote is a popular note-taking app that lets you do a lot more than take organized notes. It offers numerous organization, collaboration, and administration functions. The app also has a number of templates, including one for SOPs.

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We like Evernote because of its compatibility with different operating systems and organization capability.
4. Pipefy
Price: Pipefy offers four plans: Free, Business ($18 per user per month), Enterprise ($30 per user per month), and Unlimited (custom pricing).
Pipefy offers resources and tools for process management. Choose from an assortment of templates (seriously, there are so many), most of which are offered for free. There are a number of SOP templates that specify your organization’s needs, such as “Team Member Onboarding.”

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We love Pipefy because of its abundance of templates available and easy-to-understand template titles.
5. SweetProcess
Price: SweetProcess is $99 per month for teams of up to 20 people, plus $5 per month for each additional user. On the annual plan, this is reduced to $82.50 per month and $4.17 per month for each additional member.
SOP writing is SweetProcess’ main jam. Their tagline is, “Who said writing SOPs have to be painful?” so you can guarantee an easy-to-follow experience.

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Write SOPs That Rock
SOPs are fundamental to making internal processes run smoothly. They save time, help familiarize new employees with your processes, and keep experienced employees up-to-speed when your processes change. It’s worth putting in the time to make them clear, readable, and actionable.
For more free inspiration, click below to check out HubSpot’s section of easy-to-use templates.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in October 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

In just 5 years, Daily Harvest, which provides healthy, easy-to-prep meals to customers based on algorithmic flavor preferences, disrupted the food industry and earned more than $250 million in revenue.
And, even before the acceleration in home food deliveries in 2020, the health and sustainability-conscious brand had already raked in $43 million in funding from investors who aligned with the company’s vision.
In a recent episode of HubSpot’s podcast, The Shake Up, our hosts Alexis Gay and Brianne Kimmel spoke with Daily Harvest founder and CEO Rachel Drori to learn what inspired her to build the brand, how she navigated investor pitching, how algorithms fuel the business, and how she thinks about the brand’s marketing mix.
Below are just a few highlights from the podcast:

Daily Harvest on Growing Its Brand and Customer Base
Daily Harvest’s Mission to Serve Healthy Food
[00:21:26] Rachel Drori: We’re not a meal kit. We’re more like a [00:21:30] modern CPG than a meal kit. Our food doesn’t rotate. You don’t have to really cook it. It’s already prepped.
[00:21:42] Alexis Gay: Would you say you’re defining a new category?
[00:21:45] Drori: Absolutely. I got into it because I’m absolutely a foodie. …. I wanted food that was convenient because that’s what makes fruits and vegetables hard. … But I also wanted food that was jam-packed with all the stuff that I know is good for me. … Hippocrates said, “Let food be thy medicine,” right? We’ve ended up with a Hippocratic oath for medicine being a medicine. Whereas food is kind of lost its way. So we’re really here to change that.
… The way that Big Food is set up is very systemically broken. … Investors in big food companies, the big CPGs of the world, are really focused on things like margin, accretion, and slow, steady returns dividends. … When you think about how that translates to food … it’s pretty ugly. And the way that they’re structurally set up is not to innovate. A case in point is Kraft in recent years, right? Their big innovation last year was launching pink macaroni and cheese. … They’ve just completely lost touch with the customer and they don’t have the structural agility to be able to move with modern times.
What drives demand for Daily Harvest?
[00:23:57] Gay: What drives the demand for your product? … Is it that younger generations are focusing on healthier food options? Is that the traditional family dinner is not as much part of our culture, is it because of the struggles of the restaurant industry? What do you think?
[00:24:15] Drori: I think there’s a few things. We’re kind of at the crossroads of a bunch of — I hate using this term — megatrends, right? … I think people are just smarter and there’s enough education out there where people are realizing that if I stick to the basics — like things my grandparents ate, things my great grandparents ate — then I’m going to be okay. So our whole food ethos is really based on this idea where we’re not going to tell you what not to eat.
… We are including everybody’s eating habits and everybody’s eating values, but we’re going to provide a base of fruits and vegetables. So our goal is to get everybody to eat more fruits and vegetables. And then, if you want to add a piece of chicken to your harvest bowl … we think that’s great.
Navigating Tricky Investment Pitches
[00:25:42] Gay: In 2017, you had $43 million in investments, which is incredible. But in order to get that type of cash infusion, it starts with a pitch. And I want to hear a little bit about one of those pitch meetings back then in 2017, how were you approaching, crafting the pitch around Daily Harvest?
[00:26:02] Drori: 2017 was the point when we felt like we had reached true product-market fit. So pre-fundraising — previous to that point — I would say it was incredibly difficult. People didn’t understand how the collections that we had laddered up to this bigger picture to this platform. There was a lot of friction in the fundraising process, especially because the people from who I was trying to raise money just didn’t see that there was a problem. They were like, “Well, why, why wouldn’t I just buy a Jamba Juice?” I’m like, “I don’t even know where to begin.”
[00:26:40] Gay: Did you ever feel discouraged
[00:26:41] Drori: After meetings like that? Oh, discouraged wouldn’t even cover it. I think that fundraising is the most demoralizing process.
[00:26:58] Gay: What was the key message you were really trying to land with the people you were seeking investment from.
[00:27:05] Drori: There were two things. The message I was trying to land was just this big picture. That big food is completely broken and that there’s this opportunity and that big food is not meeting customers. … Where I would say it got really tricky wasn’t necessarily with the problem statement. It really was that a lot of people got tripped up on the frozen.
[00:27:32] Gay: Why do you think that is?
[00:27:34] Drori: They still do, but everyone’s like, “Oh, so you’re disrupting frozen food?” and I’m like, “Soup is not a frozen category. Lattes are not a frozen category. Breakfast cereal is not a frozen category. How is that your logic?” Frozen is how we make food incredibly clean, unprocessed, convenient, and sustainable. … You know, we’re really trying to focus on that, that big picture to paint this story that we’re not going after frozen food.
… Eventually, we did it. The other thing that I was really looking for in that round was values alignment from our investors. … I wanted to make sure that we were never going to end up in a position where some of the investment community in big food causes a lot of health challenges. … There was a lot of insuring that our investors were going to have values that aligned as well.
Finding Like-Minded Investors
[00:29:10] Kimmel: How did you actually reverse the pitch and ask those investors questions to give you a real feel if they were going to add value and be a valuable person to help you scale Daily Harvest?
[00:29:25] Drori: One of the tricks, when you’re pitching, is that you’re also always selling. So one of the things that I did was I showed that there was great customer demand for these things — like sustainability is now table stakes. It wasn’t five years ago. Just showing where the customer demand was going and showing that there was also a business revenue opportunity tied to everything that we were hoping to do on the sustainability side … was a really important part of the story. Some of the questions that we asked just to make sure that people were aligned actually weren’t to the investors directly. it was always to other companies that they invested in and not the ones that they introduced us to.
… Those back-channel calls where you ask about a time where there was a really difficult decision that you had to weigh: Margins versus doing what was right for the customer, right? For me, that’s one of the hardest tensions and I was always going to focus on what was best for the customer — and what’s best for the Earth is also best for the customer.
Building Out the Business
[00:32:08] Kimmel: What were the next steps that had to happen to make Daily Harvest truly scalable?
[00:32:19] Drori: A lot of it sat in our supply chain. … We had a lot of amazing farmers that we engaged directly with. We still, to this day, do all of our own sourcing and work directly with everyone. But a lot of that story was very idealistic. …  It was a hard thing to do at that scale.
… Even like our packaging, right? We have these like grand plans to have completely home-compostable packaging. There’s a lot of storytelling there because there’s a scale problem. So you always have this chicken or egg problem when you’re talking about physical goods, where in order to make something cost-effective so that you can think about things like profitability, you have to have the scale to be able to justify those big swings.
Personalizing the Customer Experience
[00:34:15] Gay: A lot of companies that are offering food delivery in some capacity are keeping their offering really simple, focusing on just dinner or just one type of food. But you have over 60 items for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Was that a conscious decision you made to offer so many more?
[00:34:32] Drori: Because we have this direct link with our customers. What we’re able to do is we actually phenotype taste beds and we understand what every single customer wants and needs down to an incredible level of detail that allows us to create food for each individual. We don’t look at customers as averages. We really look at each individual and we create food to meet the needs of those customers.
… We have smoothies for different tastes, preferences, and different tea, eating values, and different profiles. As we expand into this collection depth, we see different groups consuming over different days. So it’s really systematic the way that we think about it. And it’s really served as well to increase share of stomach over time,as we’ve been able to take this data and turn it into meeting the needs of our customers.
[00:35:41] Gay: How did you build that?
[00:35:45] Drori: We have an incredible algorithms team who has really been a key part to our food delivery and then the personalization tied to that development to make sure that we’re matching the right people with the right food. That was creative.
[00:38:00] Kimmel: How do you balance qualitative insights as well? Like, do you have a great team that’s reading customer support tickets? Do you have focus groups? How do you collect a lot of Individual insights from each Daily Harvest user?
[00:38:14] Drori: There are two ways in which we do that. One is we have an incredibly passionate care team. … We’ve really emboldened our care team to be a part of this co-creation journey and adding the context behind what we’re seeing in the data. That’s a huge piece of what we do. Then we have a in-house research team that takes the data that we see and ties it together with the emotional, the psychological, the why behind what we’re seeing. … And it’s an incredibly powerful combination.
Daily Harvest’s Changing Marketing Mix
[00:41:20] Gay: I want to talk a little bit about your marketing mix. … In a world where startups rely so heavily on Facebook, Google, and Amazon for sales, you have invested in TV ads in influencer partnerships. … I would love to know what was your decision-making process in making some of those bets?
[00:42:11] Drori: It was easy to scale on Facebook. Now it’s a whole different ball of wax. The landscape has changed significantly … the landscape is always changing, it’s a complete moving target and something that works today will not work tomorrow. It’s just how you have to live in this world. We went out really aggressively into every channel you can imagine to give us that optionality and that agility where we can change our spend in different channels based on what happens to be working at the time.
… Influencer marketing is part of our mix, TV is a part of our mix, but I think the most important thing is — even if one thing is working really well — that you keep your spend and you keep the other channels engaged enough where if something changes you can always pivot and change that mix.
[00:43:57] Kimmel: How do you think about some of the branded Daily Harvest stuff versus like engaging with influencers and people that are likely to use Daily Harvest anyway, because it falls into like this new category of just easier, healthier.
[00:44:27] Drori: People always say like, “What’s the secret to your really fast growth?” And I actually talk about our supply chain, which is not the answer that people want to hear, but the reason why is … if you’ve ever seen a Rogers bell curve, it’s a normal bell curve, but if you think about the way normal product development works, you have an insight and then can take up to a year to ring something to market.
… Climbing up that curve, by the time you get to the top. That’s usually when big companies are going to market. Right? Our supply chain agility and our data allows us to go to market when an early adopter is interested in something and our early adopters because we listened to them, became these evangelists
… And what’s really powerful is that it spurs this virtuous marketing cycle that rides itself up that curve, as opposed to facing headwinds on the way down, where you have to like hire Justin Timberlake to shake his tushy on television. … Of course, we pay for some influencers, but really, what you’re seeing is us co-creating with our customers and our customers being so glad that we listened to them and gave them what they wanted.
To hear the full conversation or check out other episodes of The Shake Up, click here.

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