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Whether you’re a UX designer, freelance writer, or photographer, an impressive online portfolio is critical for impressing potential clients, and landing future jobs.
But crafting a good digital portfolio can feel like a daunting task, especially when you aren’t even sure which website you should use to create one. Here, we’ve created a list of the nine best portfolio websites for designers, freelancers, and photographers, to ensure you’re able to showcase your best work in any industry.

What is an online portfolio?
An online portfolio is a collection of your work that showcases your skills and abilities. A portfolio should include your past work experiences, qualifications and skills, degrees or certifications you’ve completed, any awards or accolades you’ve earned, as well as some examples of your work. Examples of your work might be photographs, writing samples, case studies, spreadsheets, or lesson plans, depending on your field.
Best Free Portfolio Websites for Freelance Writers
1. Journo Portfolio

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On Journo Portfolio you can create a sleek, modern digital portfolio easily. The site offers nine distinct themes, and adding an article is as easy as pasting a URL and clicking add — the site takes care of incorporating the title, publication, date, content, and image. Features include the ability to integrate with Google Analytics or use Journo’s built-in analytics tools to measure visitors. Additionally, your site is automatically mobile-ready.
You can also blog straight from the platform, which could be useful if you want to showcase freelance work and your current blog in one place. Journo lets you create multiple pages, so you can have a Contact Me or About Me page, as well as your freelance portfolio.
Pros

Live preview editor
Built-in analytics plus Google Analytics integration
Pre-built themes
Subscribe and contact forms
Mobile-friendly

Cons

Free plan limits you to 10 articles max
For unlimited articles, you’ll need to pay $5-$10 per month

2. Muck Rack

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Muck Rack is a free media database that helps connect journalists with PR professionals, so if you use the site, you’ll have good opportunities to network and receive PR pitches. You can even include specific topics you don’t want to cover, which will filter out unfit pitches.
Additionally, for true ease-of-use, Muck Rack creates and maintains your portfolio for you by automatically compiling articles and social media profiles. Once it’s finished, you have the option to customize your bio, or choose to spotlight certain pieces.
Muck Rack also offers a news alerts system, which enables you to track stories or tweets about a company, brand, or specific story angle. With their news alerts system, you can see when other journalists share information or publish stories related to your work, which will help you stay on-top of trends.
Pros

Ideal for journalists
Auto-updates profile
News alerts system for tracking stories and trends
Allows you to easily build media lists

Cons

Some formatting issues when uploading content from Excel
Does not integrate with other reporting and monitoring tools

3. WordPress.com

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WordPress, a major content management platform, lets you create a blog with a separate portfolio page for free. While not specifically geared towards freelance writers, WordPress offers over 100 free themes to craft a unique blog and showcase your work. If you want complete creative control over your portfolio, this is a good option for you.
Additionally, you might choose to use WordPress if you want to showcase your writing along with other skills — if you want a page for writing and a page for your photography, for instance, WordPress offers a variety of themes and is flexible enough to enable you to demonstrate various pieces of creative work.
Pros

Ideal for bloggers
Can create portfolio page separate from blog
100+ free themes available
Comes with SSL certificate and JetPack features for improving website performance

Cons

Free plan shows ads
Limited storage at 3 GB

Best Free Portfolio Websites for Designers
4. Behance

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With millions of UX/UI designers, artists, and photographers on the site, Behance is one of the most widely-used online portfolio websites. It’s also extremely simple and easy to use — you can organize your work based on project, list projects under construction, and ask followers for feedback. Additionally, the site allows you to link your portfolio to your social media accounts.
Behance’s massive digital community makes it a good option to get your name out there, particularly since recruiters and interviewers peruse the site to find talent, as well. However, Behance displays the number of people who have viewed your work and liked it, which can be more advantageous — but riskier — than a more straightforward website portfolio.
Pros

Ideal for creatives who don’t have time to create their own standalone portfolio site
Can get feedback from followers
Includes social proof in terms of views and likes on portfolio site

Cons

Limited design and feature options on free plan
The display of views and likes can be risky if not enough people see or appreciate a project 

5. Adobe Portfolio

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If you already have a Creative Cloud membership, then Adobe Portfolio is an excellent option to create a single-page website, or a full gallery of your work. With Adobe Portfolio you’re able to set up a sleek and customized portfolio in minutes, and each of the platform’s themes are automatically optimized for any device.
Additionally, Adobe Portfolio offers the ability to integrate with Behance and Adobe Lightroom to import your projects for greater visibility. 
Pros

Option to create multi- or single-page website
Offers 18 responsive themes
Integrations with Behance and Adobe Lightroom

Cons

Only free if have Creative Cloud membership

6. Crevado

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One of the easiest free portfolio websites, Crevado lets you use a simple drag-and-drop tool to upload your projects and rearrange on the screen for true ease-of-use. The site is also automatically optimized for any device, so your portfolio can be viewed on a smartphone or tablet as well as a desktop.
Crevado also comes with secure hosting and SSL certification so your portfolio site remains secure. You can customize your design to suit your preferences without writing any code. Best of all, you can sell your work online thanks to the platform’s integrations with PayPal and Fotomoto.  
The only downside is that free users can’t remove the link to Crevado in their website footer. You’ll have to upgrade to a pro account to do so.
Pros

Drag-and-drop interface 
Responsive designs
Secure hosting and SSL certification
PayPal and Fotomoto integrations allow you to sell work

Cons

Free plan shows Crevado link in website footer 

Best Free Portfolio Websites for Photographers
7. Flickr

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Undoubtedly one of the most well-known portfolio sites with billions of photos and millions of members, Flickr is a good site to share your own work, connect with other photographers, and find inspiration for future projects.
However, Flickr’s community-oriented platform can make it difficult to showcase your best work and appear professional — particularly since the site is typically used to share images with friends and family. For this reason, many designers also suggest creating a more polished portfolio website, and then linking to that website from Flickr. 
Pros

Ideal for photographers just starting out
Great to connect with others and find inspiration

Cons

Limited to GIF, PNG, and JPEG photo formats 

Limited to 1,000 photos on free plan
Will likely outgrow the site as you advance

8. Portfoliobox

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Portfoliobox is a website builder specifically designed for photographers, and it’s a good option for crafting a professional-looking responsive gallery of your best work. Additionally, Portfoliobox offers an ecommerce link that allows you to sell your prints or other artwork directly from the site (without paying any commission). With the free plan, you can create a blog to further attract visitors and potential customers to your site.
Best of all, Portfoliobox doesn’t make you use a standard theme — instead, you can integrate any style for any page to cultivate a unique, one-of-a-kind website. With more than one million users, it’s a good option for both professional and novice photographers.
Pros

Ideal for photographers at any skill level
Can sell prints on this site commission-free
Can use different style for every page

Cons

No drag-and-drop functionality
Limited customization options for ecommerce

9. YouPic

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YouPic’s users include famous photographers like Joel Meyerowitz and Julia Fullerton-Batten. Another site specifically designed for photographers, YouPic enables you to craft a free stunning portfolio to showcase your work. It also allows you to buy prints from other photographers or sell your own to make some additional income.
Additionally, the site offers interactive courses to improve your photography skills, as well as a Pinterest-style “Explore” page that lets you check out popular photographs, new artwork, and stories to inspire your own gallery. And, most interesting to note, YouPic allows users the opportunity to copyright their photos on the blockchain, and is the first decentralized photography platform. That means YouPic is one of the few platforms that won’t take any rights or ownership of your work. 
Pros

Can sell prints on this site commission-free
Can copyright photos on blockchain
Doesn’t take any rights or ownership of your work

Cons

Have to upgrade to premium membership for YouPic to promote your work

For further inspiration, check out 21 Memorable Photography Portfolio Websites to Inspire You or The 12 Best Graphic Design Portfolios We’ve Ever Seen, & How to Start Your Own.
Creating Your Online Portfolio
An online portfolio provides evidence of your work and skills, which can set you apart from other candidates or professionals in your field. Using any of the tools above, you can create a free portfolio in no time. What are you waiting for?
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in April 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

In college, I took an advertising class. It taught me what I needed to know about traditional advertising, but the social media portion wasn’t as expansive.
When we covered Facebook Advertising, for example, I found it difficult to follow along with a lack of examples and the lofty overview of content. Because of that, I decided to look online for a deeper take on the subject.

I ended up watching a video that covered a subject I’d struggled with in class — retargeting. The video gave an overview of the concept, then went in-depth about how that looks on Facebook with vibrant examples, really helping a visual learner like me.

 
If you’ve never used retargeting before, don’t worry — in the following post, we’ll go through the basics of how retargeting works, explain how you can use it to support your larger marketing goals, and outline an example of a Facebook Ad retargeting campaign.
How Retargeting Campaigns Work
There are two main types of retargeting: pixel-based and list-based. The way each works is slightly different, and each has different advantages based on your campaign goals.
Pixel-Based Retargeting
Pixel-based retargeting is a way to re-display your material to any anonymous site visitor.
This is probably the most common type of retargeting. When someone comes to your website, an unobtrusive piece of JavaScript (often referred to as a pixel) is placed on their browser — making their browser “cookie-d.” When they leave your site to surf the web, that cookie notifies retargeting platforms to serve specific ads based on the specific pages they visited on your website.
The advantage of pixel-based retargeting is that it is timely (they can be retargeted pretty immediately after leaving your site), specific to a particular page on your site, and behavior-based. Downsides to this method are that there is a lower volume of people in the campaign at any given moment in time since it’s all based on how often people are coming to your website, viewing certain pages, and leaving. It also can be complicated or time-intensive to implement JavaScript on many website pages.
List-Based Retargeting
List-based retargeting works after you already have someone’s contact information in your database.
You can also use lists of your existing contacts for certain types of retargeting ads. To do this, upload a list of the email addresses to a retargeting campaign (usually on a social network like Facebook or Twitter), and the platform will identify users on that network who have those addresses and serve retargeting ads just to them.
Though it’s a little less common than pixel-based retargeting, list-based retargeting allows you to have highly customizable criteria for your ads because it’s based on more than behavior — you’re choosing who goes in which list.
On the flip side, it’s possible that a person in your list gave you one email address and the social network another — and in that case, they won’t see your ads. Also keep in mind that because you are in charge of uploading and maintaining the list, list-based retargeting also is less automatic and timely than pixel-based retargeting.
If you’ve ever heard of the term “retargeting,” it’s likely it was in comparison to remarketing. And while the two are often mistaken for each other, they do have differences. Let’s talk about when you would use either.
Remarketing and retargeting are often confused with each other. Though they share similarities, retargeting allows you to reach new prospects with your ads, while remarketing focuses on re-sparking interest of your company to current or inactive old customers.
A retargeted ad helps those who’ve never heard of your company understand how your product or service fits into their lifestyle or solves a potential problem. Retargeting helps you make the message more personal.
When you analyze sales, you can determine what’s popular among the audiences you’re aiming to reach. For instance, if you find that a certain line of products perform really well among millennials, pull images of them into a carousel ad and use it to retarget customers. The personalization of a separate ad promoting a collection, aimed at a segment of your target market, is one example of how retargeting can be successful.
Take this ad I saw today. Despite never having made a purchase from Nasty Gal, this ad showed up on my News Feed:

This ad introduces Nasty Gal to new leads (like me) by giving an overview of diverse clothes that are popular among target audiences.
It’s likely I saw this ad because I fit into Nasty Gal’s target audience set on Facebook, and because my previous behavior on the social channel involved looking for reviews of similar clothing retailers.
On the other hand, to re-engage a lost or inactive customer, you might decide to use remarketing. This tactic aims to improve customer relationships by utilizing marketing tactics that
Essentially, if you want to give customers an incentive to purchase again from your company, turn to remarketing.
For customers that are already acquainted with your brand and have shown a need for your product, create a personalized message to reignite their interest. For example, if your company offers a membership, remarket to those whose memberships are expiring and are up for renewal. This email I received is an example:

This marketing email not only served as a reminder to renew my subscription but was also Thrive Market’s way of reminding me about the benefits of being a member. In the email, I got to see how much I saved by using the grocery service, where my membership money was being spent, and was offered a special promotion to renew.
Because I was already familiar with the brand, Thrive was able to use the email to add personal touches and provide a snapshot of what I can enjoy (again) as a member.
Like retargeting, this tactic is successful when messages inspire action. The email’s CTAs, like “Browse our options here!” told me that I could peruse my options in one click, so I did. Use remarketing efforts to remind customers of the perks that come with shopping with your brand, like easy shopping access.
Retargeting Ad Goals
Now that we have the background for how retargeting works and the different types of audiences you can segment by, we can focus on goals. The main types of retargeting campaigns you should consider running are those for awareness and those for conversion.
To generate awareness.
Awareness campaigns are useful when you want to re-engage website visitors and tell them about relevant products, features, or announcements. These ads are usually served to pixel-based lists.
The obvious drawback to awareness campaigns is that you’re serving less targeted content to people who haven’t engaged heavily with your brand. They’re not in your contacts database, and often, there are lower expected clickthrough rates than other types of campaigns.
However, since the goal is to make prospects aware of your business, impressions and engagement are acceptable metrics to track. Often awareness campaigns are precursors to a much more effective campaign goal: conversions.
To drive conversions.
Conversion goals are just that — you want to get people to click on your ad and take a next step, such as filling out a landing page form. Conversion campaigns are best used to align a specific list with a clear next step in the flywheel, and can be measured with typical conversion metrics like website clicks, form submission, and cost-per-lead (CPL).
The best thing about a conversion campaign is that you can use it for multiple parts of the flywheel. Pixel-based ads, for instance, generate leads and will direct people to landing pages where they can give over their information.
List-based ads better qualify those leads. Ads will appear to contacts who gave you limited information and lead them to longer forms with additional fields.
To complete the buyer’s journey.
Additionally, retargeting can be used to move qualified leads to complete the buyer’s journey cycle. For example, you might use retargeting to send a list of contacts that have downloaded an ebook an invite to sign up for a free trial of your product. When they see how your tool can help them meet their goals, they may be inspired to become a paying customer.
To increase customer lifetime value (CLTV).
Customer lifetime value is the amount of money you can expect from a single customer throughout their entire relationship with your business. When using retargeting, customers are reminded of your brand and encouraged to continue making purchases. The more purchases they make, the higher their CLTV.
To reduce cart abandonment.
Cart abandonment is when a customer places something in their shopping cart in your online store, but leaves your website instead of checking out and making a payment. Retargeting can help you recover these customers that have abandoned their carts and serve as a reminder that the item they were interested in is still available and ready for purchase.
To introduce new products.
When you know that customers have visited your website, made a purchase, or shown general interest in your business, retargeting helps you share new products with them that align with their interests. When they see your ads, you can lead them directly back to your site to discover your new product and entice them to follow through with a purchase.
Regardless of your goal, it is important to align the positioning, creative, and next step in the conversion process — whether that’s an offer landing page, site page, or request for more information — with your audience list.
List-based retargeting can have low match rates (users synced with accounts on each platform, usually by email address), so make sure you’re fueling your retargeting activities with inbound content.
Retargeting Platform and Tools
Truthfully, you’ve got quite a few options for actually implementing your retargeting. Specific platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn offer native tools, and there are also tons of third-party platforms to do web and social retargeting, and we’ll recommend some below.
SharpSpring Ads
SharpSpring Ads, formerly Perfect Audience, is a retargeting tool that allows you to create dynamic retargeting ads and display them in newsfeeds, websites, and social media platforms for your audience members to see. You can measure the impact of your campaigns to ensure you’re on the right track, and use their powerful analytics to get up-to-date information on click through rate (CTR), revenue, and conversions.
AdRoll
AdRoll uses 10+ years of consumer data and behavior to help you create retargeting ads that are effective, relevant, and shown to your audience on the platforms they frequently use. If you’re a HubSpot user, AdRoll can integrate with Marketing Hub, helping you easily sync your existing contacts and create a list of targetable audience members.
ReTargeter
ReTargeter helps you create campaigns that are customized to your individual business needs and will help you stand out from your competitors. With this high-quality tool, you’ll be able to keep your business top of mind with your audience, wherever they spend time online.
Criterio
Criterio helps you retarget your audience through contextual retargeting, where they use commerce data from your existing customers to understand which channels have been successful in inspiring purchases in the past. Your ads are then placed in these same channels for users to see, as they have shown to be high-impact and effective.
While email targeting can be effective, it’s important to note many of the other platforms that could also be beneficial. Although each platform you use to implement ads will be different, there are some advantages and disadvantages for choosing ones that serve up social media ads or elsewhere on the web.
Social media retargeting often works well since people are more likely to share, reply, and discuss your content on one of these well-known platforms. They can also see the ads are posted from a real account, as opposed to a small web banner ad with little text that could be posted by anyone. That being said, web retargeting works well for impressions since the ads follow your targeted audience throughout the internet, not just on a few specific social media sites.
What ad tracking method should you use to retarget people on social media who have visited your website?
If you choose to use social media as your channel for retargeting those that have visited your website, the best ad tracking method to use is to use tracking pixels.
As mentioned above, tracking pixels are pieces of code that collect information on the pages your users visit on your website. When they leave your site and go to a social media platform, they are retargeted with ads that are relevant to the pages they visit on your website.
Want to see what setting up a remarketing campaign is like? We’ll walk through a step-by-step process for setting up a retargeting campaign on Facebook and measuring its success.
Facebook Retargeting
Facebook retargeting is no different from the other types of retargeting we’ve talked about — It helps you advertise to potential customers and lost leads. Facebook’s technology leverages data from different profiles to help you connect with the right audience. Data, like web behavior, is used to show your ads on the right news feeds.
On Facebook, you have the advantage of its large audience. Coupled with the amount of data Facebook collects about its users, it’s highly likely that the leads you lost are seeing your ad. The website looks at the previous search history of users and pulls ads that are relevant.
For example, every time I online shop for clothes and leave the site without making a purchase, the ads I see on Facebook are from the store I’d visited. If I were to use the search bar on the social media network, I would see similar results.
To run a retargeting campaign on Facebook, you’ll set an ad campaign and choose your audience set — just like a regular campaign. The difference is this: In Ad Manager, you’ll toggle a switch that tells the website that the campaign is a retargeting one. That way, the software will know how to filter the right target market for your ad.
For this example, we’ll pretend we’re setting up a remarketing campaign for HubSpot. To drive qualified leads to a free trial, we’ll set up a mock Facebook retargeting campaign for leads in our database who we know are interested in marketing automation. Here’s how we would set up that campaign.

1. Create a list of existing contacts, or gather groups from pixel on your website.
First, you’d need a list of leads to retarget. In your marketing software of choice, compile a list based on two criteria: lifecycle stage, interests based on the topic of their most recent download. If this list is sufficiently large, you can move on to the next step. If it’s not, you should revisit your segmentation properties and/or type of retargeting.
2. Upload the list to Facebook’s Audience Manager.
Once our list is processed, we can export the .CSV file and import it into Facebook’s Custom Audience manager to match email addresses with Facebook Profiles. (There are third-party platforms that also sync these lists on social media, so feel free to pick which upload/sync option works best for your company.)
Select “Manage Your Ads” on Facebook’s advertising home page, click “Audiences” on the left toolbar. This will allow you to create a customer list by uploading a .CSV or .TXT file and options to sort by user ID, phone numbers, or emails.
Give your list an appropriate name to easily find it later. Additionally, leave at least a few hours for it to populate. if you try to create an ad immediately, the audience may not be fully loaded.
Aside from Facebook retargeting, Audience Manager will allow you to do standard targeting, which allows you to set demographic, geographic, and other audience targets for an ad — even without a retargeting list.
3. Determine your destination URL.
To create a new campaign on Facebook, hit the green “Create Ad” button in the top right of the ad platform home screen. This will prompt you to choose an objective for your campaign. Whatever option you select, include a UTM tracking code — a snippet of text added to the end of your URL — to help you track success and attribute clicks and conversions from your campaigns. For example, we would create a campaign called “Retargeting” and our URL for the free trial would look like:
http://offers.hubspotm/free-trial?utm_campaign=retargeting&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook
Once you create your URL, give your campaign a name. Keep similar names for your campaigns to make it easier to track if you have multiple running.
4. Segment your ads.
Select your custom audience and set the geographic location you want to target. The location is an “AND” setting, meaning if your list contains leads from all over the world and you only select “United States,” some people won’t be shown your ads.
Depending on your buyer personas, you can also segment by interest, behaviors, age, and other demographic settings which can help ads become even more targeted. For conversion campaigns, you’re retargeting to a specific list of contacts already interested in your product, so including other Facebook categories might not make sense.
5. Set your budget.
Before even starting the campaign, have a set budget for paid tactics, broken out by channel. For Facebook campaigns, set a lifetime budget for the length of the campaign, then monitor and adjust accordingly. Most beginners should leave the bidding to “Optimize for Website Click.”
You can also name your ad set at this stage, which is helpful if you’d like to differentiate lists, creative, budget, etc. for different ad sets in the same campaign (i.e. leading to the same page).
6. Creating your ad.
Each ad can have up to six images associated with it, so you can test which ones perform the best.Remember to be clear and concise with your positioning, and include relevant call-to-action buttons such as Shop Now, Learn more, Download, etc. on the bottom right of the ad.
By default, ads are shown on mobile newsfeeds, on the right column on desktops, and in partner mobile apps. Depending on where you’d like your customers to see these campaigns, you may want to turn one or all of those options off to only display in the desktop News Feed.
Some important details on Facebook ads:

Image size is 1080 x 1080 pixels.
Text can be used in headlines, but there are character limits depending on ad type.
Under “Advanced Options” you can write a News Feed link description to better explain your ad and give context to users.

Once you have everything set up, go ahead and click the “Publish” button in the bottom right of the screen.
7. Tracking your progress.
Congratulations, you’ve now created a conversion-based retargeting ad on Facebook! Now you can track website clicks, reach, CTR, CPC, and total spend to match them up to your initial goals.
You can get a glance of how your Facebook retargeting campaigns are doing by going to your Facebook Advertising home page. If you want to dive further into the ad’s metrics, you can go into the ad set where you’ll see information like clicks and spending per day. It is also easy to make edits to your ad from this screen, such as extending the budget, schedule, and creative assets.
If you’re using a CRM, like HubSpot, most offer tools to look at the performance of your destination URL to track views, clicks, and submissions back to specific retargeting campaigns.
Retargeting is a great way to keep your prospects engaged and interact with people who have already shown interest in your company.
While it may sound like a simple enough concept, there are many aspects of a retargeting campaign that must be worked out before you make the ad copy and creative. Be sure to give enough time to make your lists, set goals and types of campaigns, determine the platforms your ads will run on, and tie the whole conversion path together.

If you could do one thing to dramatically improve your marketing ROI today, what would it be? If your answer was “use landing pages to convert new leads” I’d have to agree with you — here’s why.
Nearly 1 in 10 people who make it to a landing page will become potential customers or leads. If you’re new to the world of converting web traffic, that number might not seem impressive, but when you do the math, there’s reason to believe that 1,000 people could become leads on your landing page if 10,000 people visit it.
That’s a lot of leads for most small-to-medium-sized businesses. Let’s look at exactly what a landing page is and how having one (or more) can help you see results like this.

Generating leads for your business is a necessary part of your marketing campaign, and there are several ways to do it: through social media, content marketing, paid ads — the list goes on. With each digital campaign you run — no matter what channel you use — the people you’re targeting won’t convert themselves into potential customers. To do that, you’ll need a quality landing page that’s built specifically to convert those visitors. If you don’t have at least a few landing pages on your website, you’re missing out on opportunities to turn these individuals into paying customers down the line.
Today, we’ll explore the myriad of benefits that come with landing pages and how you might use one to reach your business goals.

Types of Landing Page Offers
Landing pages have a sole purpose: to convert leads for your business. However, you can target those leads using a specific content offer on each landing page.
Here are the types of content offers you can add to a landing page to convert visitors into leads:
1. Ebooks and Whitepapers
If you’ve written a blog post that introduces a topic your audience wants to learn about, you can satisfy their interest in that topic by elaborating on the subject in an ebook or whitepaper. Using a landing page, you can “gate” this resource behind a lead-capture form. Once your visitors complete the form, they’ll be able to access the content.

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2. Email Newsletter Subscription
Let’s say you write a lot of blog content on a similar topic. Sure, you can develop an ebook or whitepaper that elaborates on specific details, but you can also offer your readers an email newsletter they can subscribe to for the latest content on that topic. On various blog posts, use a call-to-action (CTA) to invite readers to subscribe to your blog. This CTA can link to a separate landing page where they can sign up for your email list.

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3. Online Course Enrollment
Whether you’re in the education industry or you offer various skill-based certifications to your audience, online courses should have their own landing pages, too. Using these pages, you can invite new students to sign up for a class you offer. This type of content adds value to the client’s experience — they’ll have more access to you through a private channel like email to discuss the course content and get feedback on their progress.

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4. Event Registration
Similar to online courses, events require you to collect information on your audience so they can receive updates leading up to the occasion. An event, as well as its various sessions and keynotes, can have its own individual landing pages to turn interested prospects into event attendees and leads.
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5. Free Trial
Are you offering a free demo of your product? Your demo offering could use its own landing page. Bring users to a page where they can sign up for a free trial of your software using their name, email address, job title, and any other information you deem necessary to give them the best customer experience.
Don’t forget to follow up with these leads — they’ve already demonstrated an interest in what you sell based on your landing page, so make sure your sales team closes the deal.

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6. Community Membership
If your business thrives on building community among customers — perhaps you should have a website dedicated to dialogue between users. You can do this by creating a landing page that lets website visitors sign up to become a bigger part of your business. There’s no harm in making it invitation-only either — in fact, it’s a great way to try your hand at relationship marketing to close these deals.

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7. App Download
Developing a mobile app for your product doesn’t just improve your customer experience — it also gives your business another avenue to capture leads. A lead-optimized landing page that invites users to download an app is quite common. On the analytics side, you can use both Google Analytics to capture insights about who is visiting the landing page and downloading the app, then use that data to make your landing page even more effective.

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The Benefits of a Landing Page
The benefits of building a landing page for each of your marketing campaigns or content offers are endless. In this section, we dive into detail about seven factors that make this lead generation tool indispensable.
1. Landing pages aim to increase conversions.
Having a targeted page that directly ties back to an offer or next step is critical to providing value upfront. This can also encourage new site visitors to provide their information in exchange for an immediate, tangible reward.
For instance, let’s say you’ve landed on a business’s website and you’re immediately greeted with a pop-up form asking for your name and email. That’s a bit jarring before you even know what the company is about, isn’t it?
Alternatively, imagine you’ve found a business’s free ebook on social media, which outlines ten immediate solutions to your problem. I’m willing to bet you’re more likely to provide your name and email for that valuable content, right?
Many companies send their advertising, email, or social media traffic to their homepage. This is a huge missed opportunity. When you know a stream of targeted traffic will be coming to your website, you can increase the likelihood of converting that traffic into leads by using a targeted landing page.
For instance, those users who convert on your social media ebook landing page are clearly interested in social media. To further nurture those leads, you might follow up with a personalized email, detailing additional content you can provide related to social media.
2. Landing pages can provide additional insights into your target audience.
By creating various landing pages with segmented offers, you can track which topics convert at the highest rate. This can give you valuable insights into your audience’s interests.
You could use the data you collect from your landing pages to create a more targeted, personalized marketing strategy. Plus, landing pages don’t just tell you which content your audience likes best — they also tell you which channels your leads prefer. This can enable your marketing team to refine the strategy further, promoting content and engaging with your audience on the channel(s) they’re already using.
For example, let’s say you notice your landing pages related to ecommerce perform exceptionally well, and most of those users find your landing page from your paid ads on Facebook and LinkedIn. This information can help you target future campaigns primarily towards your social audience. You would also have a basis for incorporating additional ecommerce content into your marketing strategy as a whole.
3. Landing pages can grow your email subscriber list.
In exchange for the content offered on your landing page, you’ll typically ask users to provide their email and name. This can help you quickly grow your email subscriber list, and segment that list to provide more personalized follow-up emails.
People who’ve filled out a form in exchange for content or information on your product or service have shown an interest in what you have to offer. This ensures your subscriber list is filled with potentially high-quality leads.
Consider how you might further nurture them by sending a “Thank you” email after they download your landing page offer, with additional resources related to the content in which they’ve shown interest.
4. Landing pages are testable.
A landing page is a fantastic opportunity to get creative and test out various designs to determine which visuals and copy perform best with your target audience. Additionally, it’s often lower risk to test out a new landing page, rather than making major design changes to your entire blog or website infrastructure.
For instance, AJ Beltis, HubSpot’s Content & Acquisition Manager, told me, “If you’re using a content management system with a built-in A/B testing tool (like HubSpot), you can easily set up and run a test to see which copy, design, imagery, and page elements yield a stronger conversion rate. This means you can quickly uncover new ways to drive more leads and contacts for your business.”
5. Landing pages allow you to measure metrics directly tied to business goals.
If you’ve created a specific landing page to market your new product or service, you can then use that landing page to measure metrics directly tied to your business goals.
For instance, let’s say your marketing team is tasked with increasing sales for your new email tool. To accomplish this, your team creates a campaign with a landing page offering a free demo of your tool.
You might measure conversion metrics on that landing page to determine how well your campaign is performing, or whether you need to make tweaks to communicate the true value of your new product. Additionally, you can measure which sites drive the highest conversions to your landing page, and put more resources into marketing your email tool on those sites — or social media apps — in particular.
6. Landing pages add context to your offer.
AJ Beltis told me one of the biggest benefits of a landing page is the opportunity to add context to your marketing offer. “Marketers feel motivated to bypass the landing page process and skip right to the conversion by encouraging form fills in other methods, such as through a chatbot,” Beltis told me.
Beltis adds, “However, this process eliminates the opportunity to add more context to what it is you’re offering. Imagery and essential information that can only be shared with a landing page provide content to those who need it before they decide to convert.”
7. Landing pages increase brand value and help make a good first impression.
Ultimately, a sleek, well-designed landing page can impress new visitors and turn them into leads by demonstrating the valuable content your company can deliver. A landing page is space you can use to tell your visitors what you’re offering, and how it can positively impact them. Even if a viewer doesn’t immediately convert, a well-designed landing page can increase brand recognition and help nurture leads for future sales.
For instance, take a look at this impressive landing page created by Talisker, a whisky brand. Using Ceros’ landing page product to design an immersive experience, Talisker is demonstrating brand value and, ideally, making a fantastic first impression on new visitors.
This is proof that a landing page doesn’t have to be boring — in fact, it shouldn’t be. Take the time to create an engaging, interactive, interesting landing page that communicates the value of your brand.
Best Practices for Creating a Landing Page
1. Find a landing page builder.
To create a landing page, you’ll want to start by exploring landing page builders — unless, of course, you’re using a content management system that already provides landing page templates, like HubSpot. Look for a landing page builder that is intuitive and simple to use, this way you’ll have a shorter learning curve and will be able to produce landing pages quickly. I recommend drag-and-drop style builders — they’re awesome for speeding up your workflow.
2. Use landing page templates.
Once you’ve determined the right software to build your landing page, get inspired with some landing page templates. You might also use this as an opportunity to take AJ’s advice above and A/B test two different designs to explore which design elements result in the highest conversions.
3. Communicate value.
Additionally, it’s critical any landing page you design effectively communicates the value you’re providing visitors in exchange for contact information. And, of course, you’ll want to include a form that visitors will fill out in exchange for the offer you’re promoting on your landing page.
To learn more about how to create a landing page in detail, take a look at How to Create a Landing Page: The Simple Step-by-Step Guide.
What makes a landing page effective?
Here’s the thing, a good landing page is the equivalent of a baseball mitt — it catches the traffic that your marketing campaign pitches to the audience. This means that the landing page you create should be specific to the type of traffic that it’ll be catching. For example, if your marketing campaign features an ebook, your landing page should also mention the ebook. It’ll be even better if the ebook is the only content offer mentioned on the landing page. This ensures people won’t become confused about what they’re going to receive when they share their contact information.
Because the landing page is targeting only the people who are (presumably) interested in this ebook, and because this ebook has exclusive information that elaborates on a topic your audience cares about, you can convert a higher percentage of your website visitors into leads, whom you can then follow up with using a lead nurture campaign.
Ready to create your first landing page, or improve on a landing page you already have? Here are some of the most important elements you’ll want to implement to ensure your landing page is moving your business closer to its goals:
1. Intuitive Navigation
You’ve brought your targeted traffic to a page where they can take your desired action. Don’t distract them! Limit the number of exits from your landing page so that your visitors are focused on filling out your form. A key part of this is to remove the website navigation elements on landing pages. This helps put the focus back on the content you’re offering.
See how the landing page below does this — aside from the HubSpot logo, there are no navigation buttons to confuse or distract visitors.

2. Sharing Options
Tap into the largest community of your best (and free) marketers: your audience. Add share links to your landing page to encourage your website visitors to share your content with their audiences.
3. Valuable Content Offers
First and foremost, if you have a valuable offer, your visitors will give up their contact information in exchange for your offer. Ask yourself whether your offer is compelling to your audience and make sure your landing page demonstrates that value.
One way to ensure your landing page adds value is to show your audience the content they’re going to receive — directly on the page. See how this can look in the example landing page below.

4. Succinct Copy and Lead Forms
The longer your landing page and form, the more friction you add to the lead-generation process. Keeping your lead form short and straightforward will increase your conversion rate.
Here’s a tip: Put as many contact fields as you can on the same line. Shortening the height of your lead-capture form helps you limit the more trivial fields you might be tempted to include, and prevents your landing page visitors from getting spooked by a form that’s asking too much of them. As shown below, sometimes all you need is a first and last name, followed by an email address.

5. Focused Communication
You might be tempted to create a catch-all landing page that mentions your online course, email newsletter, ebook, and every other content offer you’re promoting. However, this is not ideal.
The people who visit your landing page should be looking for one particular offer and this offer should match the communication they saw right before they clicked your landing page link. Did you share a social media post about your latest free email template? If so, that’s exactly what your landing page should communicate. Use the headline to grab the reader’s attention and let them know “Hey! You’re in the right place to download that free email template.” The imagery of the template and a few bullet points about the benefits of it will help communicate this point, too.
6. Tracking and Analytics
It’s one thing to know how many visits your landing page received. It’s another to know where those visitors came from.
You’ll need to know this information so that you can optimize your marketing campaign to generate more leads. If email marketing is generating more clicks to your landing page than the search engines, then it’s a good idea to focus on email marketing tactics while you optimize your landing page for the search engines.
UTM tracking parameters can help you uncover these insights, too. You can use tools like Google Analytics, Bit.ly, and HubSpot to create and track UTM parameters. Here’s a detailed guide on how to start using this tool.
7. Constant Improvement
As many best practices as you may read about online, your landing page can always use more testing and improvement. Make sure you have a landing page creation tool that allows you to create and test many different landing pages to see what works best for your business. Additionally, if you’re a HubSpot customer, consider some of the landing page tool integrations, such as briX.
Gotta Catch ’em All
You’ve spent weeks, months, or even an entire quarter developing the perfect marketing campaign and content offers to appeal to your buyer personas. Don’t let that hard work go to waste — remember, converting visitors to leads is your main goal. Building quality landing pages for each campaign or offer you create will be an important part of your lead generation strategy. Use the best practices in this article to build the perfect landing pages for your business and capture every lead you can.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in October 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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Email Marketing does not mean hundreds of unread messages. It means real profits. Every $1 marketers spent on EM provided $42 in return (Litmus). New Privacy Protection updates could drastically lower the OR of marketing emails and influence the profit of a company. The eCommerce industry must be aware of the upcoming changes and ready to adjust to a new, inevitable reality.

 

The steps taken by the major browser makers

 

A change is coming and no one can escape it. For Apple, privacy has always been one of the priorities, but their latest update raised a lot of uncertainty in the advertising and marketing world. Three sentences in respect of the iOS 15 aroused the most concerns. Apple claims that their new function:

 

hides your IP address,
hides your location,
hides if you open emails.

 

With their latest update, Apple introduces new features “Privacy Relay” and “Hide My Emails”. IOS users will be offered a “Protect Your Mail Activity” option, which means that now the company will block tracking pixels that are included in most marketing emails as a method of measuring open ratio, and mask IP address and location of a receiver. They have already introduced the capability to block third-party data to their Safari browser. Intelligent Tracking Prevention limits the trackability within the period of 24 hours after the customer’s first interaction with the website.  It is worth mentioning that Apple is not the first and probably not the last to make such changes.

 

Mozilla has been working on eliminating third-party cookies from Firefox for several years. In 2015, they had offered their users basic Tracking Protection, which turned into Enhanced Tracking Protection over the next four years. The function is a default feature that blocks third-party data, giving customers the ability to disable the blocking for a particular website. 

 

Google does not fall behind, however, they took a different approach. In the interest of advertisers and marketers the company is preparing their users for the entire phase-out of third-party data by the end of 2022. That means that Chome, Google’s browser, will completely transition to using only first-party and zero-party data. This move will affect customers significantly, since almost 70% of the global desktop internet users, and 39% of mobile users currently operate on Chrome (Statista).

 

Do you want to learn more about first-party and zero-party data? Check this article!

 

Email Marketing in light of changes

 

What distinguishes a good marketer is not the technology they use, but their ability to adapt to circumstances. In the light of upcoming changes, this ability will be put to the test. Here are some aspects to which marketers will have to adapt to:

 

lower OR, depleted by the majority of iOS users,
unconventional deliverability tracking to make sure that emails are received,
CTR (clickthrough rate) as a new way of measuring engagement,
limited segmentation, since engagement and location of users will not be shown,
statistics such as ‘last open date’ won’t be accurate,
limitations on A/B tests,
deleting inactive subscribers will be more challenging.

 

The reason behind third-party cookies death

 

The entire eCommerce industry is probably wonderingif such a transition is necessary. Whether anyone agrees with the occuring changes, or not, that is apparently what customers want. People appreciate personalization, but they are worried about their privacy. They do not feel comfortable with the way their data is shared and distributed, and they demand a choice. Consequently, we can observe an increase in data privacy laws, to which the limitation of third-party data is a direct response. Some companies offer permission-based options, and others block it entirely. However, the purpose of all these steps is to ultimately eliminate third-party data.

 

What does it mean for eCommerce

 

As we can already assume, the steps made by the major browser makers also mean changes for eCommerce. To adjust to the new reality and be fully prepared for the future, advertisers and marketers need to be aware of:

 

limitations – that concerns mainly businesses that base on Email Marketing, since they might experience harder acquisition of new clients. Difficulties in performing effective A/B tests might be also noticed,

loyal base – as the occuring changes mean a switch from traditional to subscription-based marketing, marketers will be able to mainly reach their already existing loyal base,

CDP database – to target a client directly a CDP (Customer Data Platform) database collects first-party and zero-party data about them, namely the date of the latest interaction, source of lead, engagement with other websites, etc.,

contextual advertising – in the light of recent updates this old and simple strategy might be worth considering again. Contextual advertising analyzes keywords of websites, compares them, and displays ads on those pages that are most similar to each other,

new solutions – the development of new technologies that will satisfy customers but also support marketers has been a work in progress for some time. Google’s The Privacy Sandbox, and LiveRamp’s Authenticated Traffic Solution will collect real-time, consented data without using third-party data,

new goals – since a significant part of customers will now become untraceable it is crucial to adjust open-rate goals. Gathering the current data of OR from iOS users and determining new high, average, and low OR  might turn out to be a priority, 

leaving OR behind – instead of OR it is worth to focus on more accurate metrics, such as click rates, recency of sign up, or email engagement. Also, text messages shouldn’t be disregarded. This method of communication is incredibly engaging. 90% of marketing text messages get read within 3 minutes since they are delivered (Forbes). 

 

A brief summary

 

Nowadays, customers are demanding both personalization and privacy. As a consequence, the world’s largest companies are introducing privacy protection updates, preparing the world for the fact that we will soon completely forget about third-party data. Some have already taken these steps, while others are slowly making advertisers and marketers ready while looking for a solution that will not harm online advertising. It is crucial for the eCommerce industry to get acquainted with the changes and be ready to adjust to an upcoming future of online marketing.