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Choosing the best organizational structure for your company, division, or team is a lot like picking out a new car.
At the most basic level, you’re always looking for something road-worthy — something that can take you (and your passengers) from point A to point B without a hitch.But beyond that, there are a lot of options to consider. Automatic or manual? Four-wheel drive or two? Built-in GPS? Leather interior? Flux capacitor? (Only if you’re going back in time, of course.)
In the world of organizational structures, the options you have to choose from include things like chain of command (long or short?), span of control (wide or narrow?), and centralization (centralized or decentralized decision-making?), just to name a few.

Organizational Structure
An organizational structure is a visual diagram of a company that describes what employees do, whom they report to, and how decisions are made across the business. Organizational structures can use functions, markets, products, geographies, or processes as their guide, and cater to businesses of specific sizes and industries.

What’s the point of an organizational structure? As a business leader, do you even need one? As I said, org structures help you define at least three key elements of how your business is going to run.
As your company gets bigger, an organizational structure can also be helpful for new employees as they learn who manages what processes at your company.
Then, if you need to pivot or shift your leadership, you can visualize how the work flows would work by adjusting your organizational structure diagrams.
To put it simply, this chart like a map that simply explains how your company works and how its roles are organized. 
Here’s what each of those elements means to an organization:
Chain of Command
Your chain of command is how tasks are delegated and work is approved. An org structure allows you to define how many “rungs of the ladder” a particular department or business line should have. In other words, who tells whom to do what? And how are issues, requests, and proposals communicated up and down that ladder?
Span of Control
Your span of control can represent two things: who falls under a manager’s, well, management … and which tasks fall under a department’s responsibility.
Centralization
Centralization describes where decisions are ultimately made. Once you’ve established your chain of command, you’ll need to consider which people and departments have a say in each decision. A business can lean toward centralized, where final decisions are made by just one or two entities; or decentralized, where final decisions are made within the team or department in charge of carrying out that decision.
You might not need an org structure right away, but the more products you develop and people you hire, the harder it’ll be to lead your company without this crucial diagram.
(To dive deeper into what all of these different organizational structure components are, check out my earlier post, “The 6 Building Blocks of Organizational Structure.”)

In this post, we’ll explore how you can combine those components to form different types of organizational structures. We’ll also highlight the benefits and drawbacks of different structure types so you can evaluate which is the best option for your company, division, or team. Let’s dive in.
Mechanistic vs. Organic Organizational Structures
Organizational structures fall on a spectrum, with “mechanistic” at one end and “organic” at the other.
Take a look at the diagram below. As you’ll probably be able to tell, the mechanistic structure represents the traditional, top-down approach to organizational structure, whereas the organic structure represents a more collaborative, flexible approach.

Here’s a breakdown of both ends of the structural spectrum, their advantages and disadvantages, and which types of businesses are suited for them.
Mechanistic Structure
Mechanistic structures, also called bureaucratic structures, are known for having narrow spans of control, as well as high centralization, specialization, and formalization. They’re also quite rigid in what specific departments are designed and permitted to do for the company.
This organizational structure is much more formal than organic structure, using specific standards and practices to govern every decision the business makes. And while this model does hold staff more accountable for their work, it can become a hindrance to the creativity and agility the organization needs to keep up with random changes in its market.
As daunting and inflexible as mechanistic structure sounds, the chain of command, whether long or short, is always clear under this model. As a company grows, it needs to make sure everyone (and every team) knows what’s expected of them. Teams collaborating with other teams as needed might help get a business off the ground in its early stages, but sustaining that growth — with more people and projects to keep track of — will eventually require some policymaking. In other words, keep mechanistic structure in your back pocket … you never know when you’ll need it.
Organic Structure
Organic structures (also known as “flat” structures) are known for their wide spans of control, decentralization, low specialization, and loose departmentalization. What’s that all mean? This model might have multiple teams answering to one person and taking on projects based on their importance and what the team is capable of — rather than what the team is designed to do.
As you can probably tell, this organizational structure is much less formal than mechanistic, and takes a bit of an ad-hoc approach to business needs. This can sometimes make the chain of command, whether long or short, difficult to decipher. And as a result, leaders might give certain projects the green light more quickly but cause confusion in a project’s division of labor.
Nonetheless, the flexibility that an organic structure allows for can be extremely helpful to a business that’s navigating a fast-moving industry, or simply trying to stabilize itself after a rough quarter. It also empowers employees to try new things and develop as professionals, making the organization’s workforce more powerful in the long run. Bottom line? Startups are often perfect for organic structure, since they’re simply trying to gain brand recognition and get their wheels off the ground.
Now, let’s uncover more specific types of organizational structures, most of which fall on the more traditional, mechanistic side of the spectrum.

Types of Organizational Structure

Functional Organizational Structure
Product-Based Divisional Structure
Market-Based Divisional Structure
Geographical Divisional Structure
Process-Based Structure
Matrix Structure
Circular Structure
Flat Structure
Network Structure

1. Functional Organizational Structure
One of the most common types of organizational structures, the functional structure departmentalizes an organization based on common job functions.
An organization with a functional org structure, for instance, would group all of the marketers together in one department, group all of the salespeople together in a separate department, and group all of the customer service people together in a third department.

The functional structure allows for a high degree of specialization for employees, and is easily scalable should the organization grow. Also this structure is mechanistic in nature — which has the potential to inhibit an employee’s growth — putting staff in skill-based departments can still allow them to delve deep into their field and find out what they’re good at.
Disadvantages
Functional structure also has the potential to create barriers between different functions — and it can be inefficient if the organization has a variety of different products or target markets. The barriers created between departments can also limit peoples’ knowledge of and communication with other departments, especially those that depend on other departments to succeed.
2. Product-Based Divisional Structure
A divisional organizational structure is comprised of multiple, smaller functional structures (i.e. each division within a divisional structure can have its own marketing team, its own sales team, and so on). In this case — a product-based divisional structure — each division within the organization is dedicated to a particular product line.

This type of structure is ideal for organizations with multiple products and can help shorten product development cycles. This allows small businesses to go to market with new offerings fast.
Disadvantages
It can be difficult to scale under a product-based divisional structure, and the organization could end up with duplicate resources as different divisions strive to develop new offerings.
3. Market-Based Divisional Structure
Another variety of the divisional organizational structure is the market-based structure, wherein the divisions of an organization are based around markets, industries, or customer types.

The market-based structure is ideal for an organization that has products or services that are unique to specific market segments, and is particularly effective if that organization has advanced knowledge of those segments. This organizational structure also keeps the business constantly aware of demand changes among its different audience segments.
Disadvantages
Too much autonomy within each market-based team can lead to divisions developing systems that are incompatible with one another. Divisions might also end up inadvertently duplicating activities that other divisions are already handling.
4. Geographical Divisional Structure
The geographical organizational structure establishes its divisions based on — you guessed it — geography. More specifically, the divisions of a geographical structure can include territories, regions, or districts.

This type of structure is best-suited to organizations that need to be near sources of supply and/or customers (e.g. for deliveries or for on-site support). It also brings together many forms of business expertise, allowing each geographical division to make decisions from more diverse points of view.
Disadvantages
The main downside of a geographical org structure: It can be easy for decision- making to become decentralized, as geographic divisions (which can be hundreds, if not thousands of miles away from corporate headquarters) often have a great deal of autonomy. And when you have more than one marketing department — one for each region — you run the risk of creating campaigns that compete with (and weaken) other divisions across your digital channels.
5. Process-Based Structure
Process-based organizational structures are designed around the end-to-end flow of different processes, such as “Research & Development,” “Customer Acquisition,” and “Order Fulfillment.” Unlike a strictly functional structure, a process-based structure considers not only the activities employees perform, but also how those different activities interact with one another.
In order to fully understand the diagram below, you need to look at it from left to right: The customer acquisition process can’t start until you have a fully developed product to sell. By the same token, the order fulfillment process can’t start until customers have been acquired and there are product orders to fill.

Process-based organizational structure is ideal for improving the speed and efficiency of a business, and is best-suited for those in rapidly changing industries, as it is easily adaptable.
Disadvantages
Similar to a few other structures on this list, process-based structure can erect barriers between the different process groups. This leads to problems communicating and handing off work to other teams and employees.
6. Matrix Structure
Unlike the other structures we’ve looked at so far, a matrix organizational structure doesn’t follow the traditional, hierarchical model. Instead, all employees (represented by the green boxes) have dual reporting relationships. Typically, there is a functional reporting line (shown in blue) as well as a product- based reporting line (shown in yellow).
When looking at a matrix structure org chart, solid lines represent strong, direct-reporting relationships, whereas dotted lines indicate that the relationship is secondary, or not as strong. In our example below, it’s clear that functional reporting takes precedence over product-based reporting.

The main appeal of the matrix structure is that it can provide both flexibility and more balanced decision-making (as there are two chains of command instead of just one). Having a single project overseen by more than one business line also creates opportunities for these business lines to share resources and communicate more openly with each other — things they might not otherwise be able to do regularly.
Disadvantages
The primary pitfall of the matrix organizational structure? Complexity. The more layers of approval employees have to go through, the more confused they can be about who they’re supposed to answer to. This confusion can ultimately cause frustration over who has authority over which decisions and products — and who’s responsible for those decisions when things go wrong.
7. Circular Structure
While it might appear drastically different from the other organizational structures highlighted in this section, the circular structure still relies on hierarchy, with higher-level employees occupying the inner rings of the circle and lower-level employees occupying the outer rings.
That being said, the leaders or executives in a circular organization aren’t seen as sitting atop the organization, sending directives down the chain of command. Instead, they’re at the center of the organization, spreading their vision outward.

From an ideological perspective, a circular structure is meant to promote communication and the free flow of information between different parts of the organization. Whereas a traditional structure shows different departments or divisions as occupying individual, semi-autonomous branches, the circular structure depicts all divisions as being part of the same whole.
Disadvantages
From a practical perspective, the circular structure can be confusing, especially for new employees. Unlike with a more traditional, top-down structure, a circular structure can make it difficult for employees to figure out who they report to and how they’re meant to fit into the organization.
8. Flat Structure
While a more traditional organizational structure might look more like a pyramid — with multiple tiers of supervisors, managers and directors between staff and leadership, the flat structure limits the levels of management so all staff are only a few steps away from leadership. It also might not always take the form or a pyramid, or any shape for that matter. As we mentioned earlier, It’s also a form of the “Organic Structure” we noted above.
This structure is probably one of the most detailed, It’s also thought that employees can be more productive in an environment where there’s less hierarchy-related pressures. This structure might also make staff feel like the managers they do have are more like equals or team members rather than intimidating superiors.
Disadvantages
If there’s a time when teams in a flat organization disagree on something, such as a project, it can be hard to get aligned and back on track without executive decisions from a leader or manager. Because of how complicated the structure’s design is, it can be tricky to determine which manager an employee should go to if they need approval or an executive decision for something. So if you do choose to have a flat organization, you should have a clearly marked tier of management or path that employers can refer to when they run into these scenarios.
9. Network Structure
A network structure is often created when one company works with another to share resources — or if your company has multiple locations with different functions and leadership. You might also use this structure to explain your company workflows if much of your staffing or services is outsourced to freelancers or multiple other businesses. 
The structure looks nearly the same as the Divisional Structure, shown above. However, instead of offices, it might list outsourced services or satellite locations outside of the office.
If your company doesn’t do everything under one roof, this is a great way to show employees or stakeholders how outsourcing of off-site processes work. For example, if an employee needs help from a web developer for a blogging project and the company’s web developers are outsourced, the could look at this type of chart and know which office or which person to contact outside of their own work location.
Disadvantages
The shape of the chart can vary based on how many companies or locations you’re working with. If it’s not kept simple and clear, there may be a lot of confusion if multiple offices or freelancers do similar things. If you do outsource or have multiple office locations, make sure your org chart clearly states where each specific role and job function lies so someone can easily understand your basic company processes. 
Navigating Organizational Structures
That concludes our exploration of different types of organizational structures. Keep in mind that what we’ve just looked at are simply archetypes — in real-world applications, organizations often use hybrid structures, which can borrow elements from multiple structure types.
Want to see some real-world examples of marketing team org structures from companies like GitHub and Rue La La? Download the complete resource, An Illustrated Guide to Organizational Structures.
To learn more about working on a marketing team, check out the 6 Building Blocks of Organizational Structure [Diagrams].

This is my first time taking the exam. Comparing Marketo prep notes from previous years, it seemed like that made some minor changes. I went through the study guide on the website, core concepts II as suggested and did some practice tests. I was wondering if others has taken the exam and what did you guys think about the exam? Any study tips or things to look out for? Thank you in advance!
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In an ideal world, you’d know just how your product or business idea would be perceived before it’s released. This knowledge could help you make alterations to what you’re offering for the best possible reception, and better inform your sales projections and marketing strategy.
Sadly, you’ll never know exactly how what you’re selling will be received by your target audience, which is why companies conduct market research.
But, while mass data collection through surveys provides you with necessary quantitative information, it doesn’t offer as much qualitative insight into your target market’s view or opinion of what you’re selling.
This is where a focus group comes in.
So, what is a focus group, and how can it help you navigate your market research? Let’s explore those two questions, next.

What is a focus group?
In the context of market research for businesses, a focus group is a cohort of individuals participating in a guided discussion about a business, brand, product, and/or service.
Typically, a focus group is facilitated by representatives from the business and is composed of individuals in the business’s target market who share their thoughts and opinions on the topic or offering in question.

A focus group is usually moderated by a representative or representatives of the company, who ask 5-10 questions to the participants over the course of 30-60 minutes, with another facilitator keeping notes on the focus group questionnaire.
Follow Along With a Free Focus Group Questionnaire Template

HubSpot’s Market Research Kit includes a questionnaire template to use in your focus groups, as well as four more templates to aid you in your market research efforts. You can download the kit here to help you plan your focus group and market research.
You can also read more about the process of conducting an effective focus group in our blog post, How to Run a Focus Group for Your Business.

Next, let’s explore the pros and cons of a focus group. 
The Pros of a Focus Group
1. You get the story behind the data.
In focus groups, qualitative data takes center stage. Survey data is unbelievably powerful, but it’s hard to understand the rationale for the numbers without context. Focus groups are a way to understand how someone truly feels about your business and provide the why behind the data.
If someone answers a question in a way that interests you, you’ll have the chance to dig deeper. Ask “Why?” See how the other participants feel about the specific answer. Gauge facial expressions and tone of voice to see how people react to what you’re talking about. You’ll end up with the emotional input from your target market that your surveys may not be able to provide.
2. Focus groups are interactive.
Those responding to a survey or a questionnaire can’t pick up your products or use them, but they can in a focus group. If the subject of your focus group is tangible, observe and ask questions about how participants use the product and feel about the packaging and design.
Here, you’ll see your product through the end-users’ eyes, which can help you realize something you hadn’t before.
3. They’re more efficient than interviews.
Interviewing individuals can take much longer than running focus groups with the same amount of people. Say you want to interview 100 people, and each interview or focus group takes one hour. Getting the opinions of those 100 people would take 100 hours if interviewed, but only 20 hours if participants were broken up into groups of five.
This way, you can get qualitative feedback from multiple people in a shorter amount of time — an enormous time saver, especially if most of your participants think alike.
The Cons of a Focus Group
1. They’re not entirely representative.
What you gain from depth of opinion from focus groups, you lose in sample size.
Because focus groups take longer than surveys, you’ll hear from dozens or hundreds of people in more time than it could take you to hear from thousands of people through your own surveys or exploring secondary research, such as previously conducted studies or surveys.
This constricts the amount of people whose input you’ll receive, which means your findings may not represent the opinions of your entire target market.
2. They could encourage groupthink.
Have you ever been in a meeting where one or two people voice an idea you disagree with, but everyone else agrees with the idea before you have the chance to say your piece?
As a result, maybe you decide to go along with the idea … even though you’re not its biggest fan?
That’s called groupthink, and it happens when a group rallies behind a vocalized idea that not everyone believes is correct for the sake of moving on or attempting to avoid a conflict.
Focus groups can quickly turn into one or two participants providing the bulk of the answers while the other four or five silently nod in agreement. The problem is you’re now only getting input from two participants – not the entire focus group, as intended.
You can avoid this by calling on specific group members to answer in-depth, but some may be reluctant due to shyness or disinterest.
3. Your focus group moderators may have confirmation bias.
Focus group moderators are often attached to the project in question, and can come into the session with an idea of where they think it will — or want it to — go.
For example, one moderator may want a product to be priced, packaged, or colored a certain way, and can lead the discussion towards that conclusion. This is known as observer dependency.
For instance, let’s say one moderator wants a product to be colored blue, and poses the open question to the group: “What color should this be?”
After everyone responds — and no one says blue — she might ask, “What about blue, would that work?” Everyone silently nods, and she notes that the group agreed blue would be a good color, despite that being far from the perfect truth.
To overcome this, focus group moderators should be explicitly instructed to put their personal preferences aside and act as an objective group facilitator. You could also work with a market research firm, which typically has less interest in the product or subject than those from the business who are actually creating it.
Focus groups may not be the most efficient source of gathering data, but when used appropriately, they can put a face and an emotion behind the statistics and quantitative data you’ve gathered to better inform your business, marketing, and product development.
Remember, focus groups are most effective when moderators organize their thoughts ahead of time and take notes during the session on a focus group questionnaire — which you can access for free here in our Market Research Kit.

Id like to have controlled the URL Categories which are empty of product, anyone can help me? ​ thanks
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Have you ever accidentally wasted an entire day in Photoshop?
I have. It’s not like you start out aimlessly. You have a simple goal in mind, like cropping a photo, improving the resolution, or changing the size of the canvas. But then, you look at how many options there are — and trying to figure out which buttons to press to execute a single task suddenly turns into an attempt to solve The Riddle of the Sphinx.
Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just press a button, and magically, do what you wanted to do? Well, we’ve got good news for you: It turns out there are a wealth of Photoshop shortcuts that pretty much work just that way.
By pressing a few keys on your computer keyboard at the same time, you can select tools, manipulate images and layers, and even make adjustments to your project’s canvas. But if we’re being honest, if you’re just starting out with the software, there might be far too many Photoshop shortcuts to remember them all. That’s why we created this guide — for you to bookmark and return to next time your design project leaves you stumped.
Note: All of these shortcuts can be accessed on PC and Mac, but sometimes, they’re different on each operating system. We’ve included both types below, and in the cases where they might be different, Mac instructions appear in italicized parentheses. Also, in these formulas, the plus sign (+) is present only to represent the combination of key commands. On occasion, it might be part of the command itself, like when you press the plus sign to zoom into a part of an image, but otherwise, don’t press the plus sign between commands.

65 Photoshop Shortcuts to Save You Time

Getting Set Up
Choosing the Right Tools
Using the Brush Tool
Using the Marquee Tool (for Slicing/Selecting)
Using Different Blending Options
Manipulating Layers & Objects
Saving Your Work for Later

Getting Set Up
You’d think setting up your content in Photoshop would be second nature. But sometimes, the shortcuts to change the background size, or zoom into your project aren’t what you think. Here are some of the most crucial fundamental shortcuts to know:
1) Control + Alt + i (Command + Option + i ) = Change the image size.
2) Control + Alt + c (Command + Option + c ) = Change canvas size.
3) Control + + (Command + + ) = Zoom in.
4) Control + – (Command + – ) = Zoom out.
Control + ‘ (Command + ‘ ) = Show or hide the grid, the automatically-generated horizontal and vertical lines that help align objects to the canvas.

Choosing the Right Tools
These shortcuts will activate different groups of tools, like “Lasso,” “Brush,” or “Spot Healing Brush.” Within these tools, though, there are different functions. Under the “Magic Wand” tool group, for example, you have the option to execute a new selection or add and subtract from a current one.
Each one of these tools has a keyboard shortcut, and we’ve outlined some of them below.
5) v = Pointer, a.k.a. Move Tool  
6) w = Magic Wand
7) m = Rectangular Marquee, a.k.a. the Select Tool
8) l = Lasso
9) i = Eyedropper
10) c = Crop
11) e = Eraser
12) u = Rectangle
13) t = Horizontal Type
14) b = Brush
15) y = History Brush
16) j = Spot Healing Brush
17) g = Gradient
18) a = Path Selection
19) h = Hand
20) r = Rotate View
21) p = Pen
22) s = Clone Stamp
23) o = Dodge
24) z = Zoom Tool
25) d = Default Foreground and Background Colors
26) x = Switch Foreground and Background Colors
27) q = Edit in Quick Mask Mode
28) x = Change Screen Mode

Using the Brush Tool
With the brush settings, you can change the size, shape, and transparency of your brush strokes to achieve a number of different visual effects. To use these keyboard shortcuts, first select the Brush tool by pressing b.
29) , or . = Select previous or next brush style.
30) Shift + , or . = Select first or last brush style used.
31) Caps Lock or Shift + Caps Lock (Caps Lock) = Display precise crosshair for brushes.
32) Shift + Alt + p (Shift + Option + p) = Toggle airbrush option.

Using the Marquee Tool (for Slicing/Selecting)
When used correctly, the marquee tool will let you select individual elements, entire graphics, and determine what is copied, cut, and pasted into your graphics.
To use these keyboard shortcuts, first select the Marquee tool by pressing m.
33) Control (Command) = Toggle between Slice tool and Slice Selection tool.
34) Shift + drag = Draw square slice.
35) Alt + drag (Option + drag) = Draw from center outward.
36) Shift + alt + drag (Shift + option + drag) = Draw square slice from center outward.
37) Spacebar + drag = Reposition the slice while creating the slice.

Using Different Blending Options
Blending options include a number of features to enhance the look of your graphic. You can always choose a blending option by going to the top menu bar, under Layer > Layer Style > Blending Options. Or, you can double-click any layer to bring up the options for that particular layer.
Once you open blending options, you can use keyboard shortcuts to select them without moving your mouse. To use the shortcuts, select the Move tool (“v”), and then select the layer you’d like to use the blending options on. Below are some of the most popular modes.
38) Shift + + or – = Cycle through blending modes.
39) Shift + Alt + n (Shift + Option + n) = Normal mode
40) Shift + Alt + i (Shift + Option + i) = Dissolve
41) Shift + Alt + k (Shift + Option + k) = Darken
42) Shift + Alt + g (Shift + Option + g) = Lighten
43) Shift + Alt + m (Shift + Option + m) = Multiply
44) Shift + Alt + o (Shift + Option + o) = Overlay
45) Shift + Alt + u (Shift + Option + u) = Hue
46) Shift + Alt + t (Shift + Option + t) = Saturation
47) Shift + Alt + y (Shift + Option + y) = Luminosity
For more niche blending shortcuts, check out these tips from Adobe.

Manipulating Layers & Objects
If you want to modify an object or get complex with multiple layers, here are some shortcuts you might like to know:
48) Control + a (Command + a ) = Select all objects
49) Control + d (Command + d ) = Deselect all objects
50) Shift + Control + i (Shift + Command + i ) = Select the inverse of the selected objects
51) Control + Alt + a (Command + Option + a) = Select all layers
52) Control + Shift + E (Command + Shift + e) = Merge all layers
53) Alt + . (Option + .) = Select top layer
54) Alt + , (Option + ,) = Select bottom layer
Note: In shortcuts 55-57, the brackets ([ ]) are the keystrokes in the command, and “OR” refers to the actual word — as in, press one bracket OR the other, not the letters “o” and “r.”
55) Alt + [ OR ] (Option + [ OR ]) = Select next layer down or up
56) Control + [ OR ] (Command + [ OR ]) = Move target layer down or up
57) Control + Shift + [ OR ] (Command + Shift + [ OR ]) = Move layer to the bottom or top
58) Shift + Control + n (Shift + Command + n) = Create a new layer
59) Control + g (Command + g) = Group selected layers
60) Control + Shift + g (Command + Shift + g) = Ungroup selected layers
61) Control + e (Command + e) = Merge and flatten selected layers
62) Control + Shift + Alt + e (Command + Shift + Option + e) = Combine all layers into a new layer on top of the other layers. Note: This step gets you one, combined layer, with all elements of that layer in separate layers below — which is different than a traditional merge-and-flatten layers command.
63) Control + t (Command + t) = Transform your object, which includes resizing and rotating

And Finally — Save Your Work for Later
Congratulations — you’ve finished working on your project, and now, you want to share it with the world. Save time saving your project by using these simple shortcuts:
64) Control + Shift + s (Command + Shift + s) = Save your work as …
65) Control + Shift + Alt + s (Command + Shift + Option + s) = Save for web and devices

 

This post is a part of Made @ HubSpot, an internal thought leadership series through which we extract lessons from experiments conducted by our very own HubSpotters.
As our three-part series comes to an end, there’s one last question (or two) we need to address:
Does the surround sound strategy really work? And what results have we seen since we started using it?
The TL;DR answer is yes. It’s working and we’re sharing our preliminary results in this article.
So if you’re looking to use surround sound in 2021, the two of us (that’s Irina Nica and Alex Birkett) thought we’d end this short series with a handful of resources: the formula HubSpot uses to measure progress, our proprietary surround sound tracker (aka the SERP Tracker), and a sample of results to hopefully inspire your own endeavor.

What is the surround sound strategy?
At HubSpot, “surround sound” is the name Alex Birkett gave to a content marketing approach that aims to make HubSpot products visible every time someone searches for a product-related keyword (e.g. “best help desk software” or “best live chat software”).
The goal is for potential users to see HubSpot mentioned in all or most of the pages that rank in Google top results for those keywords. Check out the first two articles in the series for a deeper-dive into what is the “surround sound” effect and how we scaled the program at HubSpot.
Surround Sound vs. SEO
Here’s where a lot of people get confused: The definition of surround sound says its goal is to improve visibility in search engines, but isn’t that what SEO does, too?
The answer is surround sound includes SEO results, but doesn’t stop there.
Here’s an example: say we want to increase our visibility in search engines for the keyword “free CRM.”
A first step would be to make sure our own domain ranks well for that keyword. That’s the “job” of the SEO function.

But visibility in SERP doesn’t stop there.
When potential customers are looking for a free CRM, they might not stop at the first results. Instead, they click through different suggestions of curated lists that they find in search results.
Our product awareness goal is to make sure HubSpot is visible in as many results as possible, especially on third-party domains. The level of SERP real estate that HubSpot is mentioned in (including owned and third-party domains) is what surround sound measures.

That’s why we say that in order to measure surround sound results, we need to measure our visibility in SERP, for a particular keyword or topic, beyond SEO.
But surround sound isn’t really a “mainstream” product awareness tactic — yet. So there are no methods or tools to measure visibility in SERP, beyond rankings (as far as we looked). That’s why, in order to scale our efforts, we had to build our own systems from scratch.
How HubSpot Measures Surround Sound Results
Let’s talk about scale.
If HubSpot were to have only one high intent keyword in our purview (say, “best marketing automation software”), it wouldn’t be insane to measure our visibility manually.
Once per month, you could simply open Google, search “best marketing automation software,” and count how many of the top 20 pages mention HubSpot.
This clearly becomes a problem when you add more than one keyword, however. Imagine the frustration of doing that for 600+ keywords per month.
In order to make this strategy “scalable” (a phrase I dislike, by the way, because it has been weaponized by curmudgeons who can all too easily shut down interesting ideas by saying ‘this won’t scale’), we needed to do a few things:

Build custom tools and infrastructure to automate aspects of the strategy
Educate others on the surround sound process and playbook
Evangelize and excite others into buying into the idea

The latter was easiest; once you get some results, others can easily grasp the importance of an idea.
I’ll focus here on building custom tools. First, I want to explain the value of investing in custom tools, automation, and infrastructure, because I can already sense the objections:

“We don’t have the technical resources to build our own tools and automations!”
“Won’t building custom tools cost us a lot of money and time?”

To address the first point, there’s always a creative solution. If you don’t have internal resources to code up new tools, you can easily outsource this as long as you have good specifications. Sites like Code Mentor or even Upwork are great for this. Additionally, this is a good excuse for (mythical) non-technical marketers to build some new skills.
Second, building tools to reduce the marginal cost or effort in the long run increases the expected value of the program.
Lots of jargon in that sentence, so let me unpack that with an example from experimentation.
Why invest in tools, automation, and infrastructure?
Imagine the expected value (the “predicted value of a variable, calculated as the sum of all possible values each multiplied by the probability of its occurrence”) of an A/B test is $1,000.
Some proportion of A/B tests will fail, which means you only “lose” during the time of the experiment, some will do nothing, and some will win (and those that win will do so by varying levels). All in, if you averaged out these values, a given A/B test could be predicted at a $1,000 value.
Now imagine every time you wanted to run an A/B test, you needed to get two engineers, one designer, and an analyst not only to set up the test from scratch (you’ve got no testing tool here), but also, you have to do minimum one month of research, wait two weeks for approval after you submit your hypothesis, and then you have to sit through, on average, four meetings with this crew.
What’s the cost of all that? Over $1,000? Congratulations, the expected value of your A/B test is now negative.
But what if, on the other hand, you had a testing tool that made it easy to set up and analyze experiments (with trustworthy data), and also imagine you prioritize to focus on only high impact tests. Now you lower the upfront cost of each additional test you run (the marginal cost), which increases the expected value of each test (just slightly). On a program level, though, now you are rewarded for running more tests, since the expected value is positive, and you’ve got very low marginal costs. You spent a little time investing in tools and automation, and you’ve drastically increased the ROI of your program without even improving your win rate.
This is exactly what we needed to do to make the surround sound strategy economically viable.
The amount of effort to manually audit, measure, and store SERP visibility, as well as the manual cost of outreach and relationship management, would forever outweigh the positive benefits of the placements we could get on a SERP. That is, unless we could lower the costs of data collection and storage as well as outreach and relationship management.
Enter: the SERP Tracker
Now we have a functional tool that does all this for us! We call it the “SERP Tracker.”
Here’s the aesthetically-gorgeous interface:

(For any fellow nerds, it was written in R and it’s hosted and deployed with Shiny. We’re using serpapi.com to get Google’s search results, and we’re also using Bing’s API [free up to a certain number of credits]. I have an older version of the generic script here available for viewing — we’ve since updated it many times, but this version will still be functional.)
I’ll walk you through how it works, but you can also watch this Loom tutorial if you prefer video:

Here’s a quick tutorial on how you can use the tool and what kind of data it can give you.
First, you have to validate by entering a password. Since we use various APIs, we want to limit the usage to converse credits (again, we track some 600+ keywords, so it’s a weighty endeavor)
Then you can enter whatever keyword you’d like (like “best form builder” or “best help desk software”).

Then you can select a region and the number of search results you want to pull (up to 10 pages, or 100 results).
Finally, you need to enter the URL that you want to check the search results against.
In other words, if you want to check for the search keyword “best live chat software,” then you could enter “hubspot.com” or “drift.com” to see how many of the URLs that rank for the search keyword “best live chat software” mention that URL.
I have preset options for HubSpot URLs to check our product page, blog posts, or generic hubspot.com pages:

You can also enter a custom link by clicking “other.”

This allows for, among other things, competitor searches and custom HubSpot URLs (for example, if you just wanted to see who mentions our Forms product page or who mentions Academy pages – it’s also a workaround to check affiliate links, because they’re often structured like “affiliatesite.com/ref/hubspot” so you could just enter “hubspot” in the URL to check for those):
We use SEMRush’s API to pull keyword search volume, but there are times that SEMRush doesn’t have values for search volume. In this case, it just prints an error message:

If all information is entered correctly, click “Submit” and it will start computing. After some processing time, this is the report it will create:

You get a nice visual pie chart, beloved by analysts and data visualizers worldwide, representing how many ranking URLs contain the link (and how many don’t). This shows that, of the top 20 search results for the term “best live chat software,” our URL “hubspot.com” appears on 2 of them.
I also made it pull keyword level data as well (in the above example it shows that “best live chat software” gets 390 searches a month). This helps weigh the relative importance of a given keyword (ie if a keyword gets 10000 searches a month or 100, that matters strategically)
Then below that, you get a full data table that contains the domain and URL of all pages that rank for that keyword, whether or not the link you chose to check against is included (TRUE or FALSE), the keyword you searched (just for reference and if you want to pull the data to Excel), the number of links included, and the full link (so if you checked “hubspot.com” and the ranking page references “blog.hubspot.com/marketing/form-builder-tools,” it will pull that full link URL for you):

Like I mentioned above, you can use this to check other websites’ links as well. This one shows how many of the top 20 ranking pages for “mailchimp alternatives” mention appsumo.com (which makes SendFox, an email marketing tool):

And like I mentioned above, you can choose the region. Currently, I have options for Germany, France, Spain, and Japan, though we can add more regions fairly easily. This is going to be incredible for international expansion (more on that later)

This just changed the database to a different region (ie if you choose German, it will show what ranks in google.de). This report shows how many hubspot.com links appear on pages that rank for “marketing automation software” in Germany:

Next Level: Automating Report for 600+ Keywords with Google Data Studio and Scripts
This data from the SERP Tracker, on its own, is valuable. One can quickly audit the search results pages for product mentions, compare to other websites, and even do a bulk audit.
However, to truly get the wheels turning on the surround sound Strategy, it’s imperative to store and access data across time in order to track results and identify gaps and opportunities.
To do this, we extract data from the SERP Tracker, transform it and blend it, and load it to BigQuery so we can visualize it and create reports using Google Data Studio.
All of this is done automatically with an R script that runs once per month. It pulls all SERP data for our list of keywords, stores the data in Sheets (in the future we’ll write directly to BigQuery). BigQuery is connected to Sheets, so we filter, clean, and blend the data with a quick SQL script. This is then connected to Data Studio, where all filters are applied and we visualize our reports.
Our reports start with the way we map our target-keywords against the features, products and Hubs. This database is the source for the SERP tracker as well and the Google Data Studio reports which we use to track progress and communicate with stakeholders.

First, we use a birds-eye view of all of our product Hubs to understand overall progress and how each Hub stacks against the others. If you’re familiar with HubSpot’s products, it won’t come as a surprise that our Sales and Marketing Hubs lead the way when it comes to surround sound Visibility.

Our reports go one layer deeper and we can see in one chart how different features (e.g. HubSpot Email Marketing vs HubSpot Forms) perform against each other.

For a deeper analysis, we have feature-dedicated dashboards. In the example below, we see how one isolated feature (HubSpot CMS) evolved, as well as how our visibility changed for the most important keywords related to that feature.

1. Surround Sound: The First 6 Months
The main thing that you need to accept before starting a surround sound program is that you can never be fully in control of your visibility.
There are many factors that play a role into how your visibility evolves:

Search engine updates cause the Top 20 results to fluctuate (sometimes quite dramatically)
New content appears in Top 20 for the keywords that you’re focusing, maybe outranking you or results that mention your brand
Competitors and other third-party pages appear in Top 20 results, but don’t mention your brand

Even despite these challenges, the results we’ve seen in the first 6 months of our surround sound program prove you can make a change in your visibility by partnering with other websites.
If you want to learn more about how to execute a surround sound program, check out the previous article in this series.
In the chart below you can see how HubSpot’s visibility in SERP changed since April. The Google May 2020 core update changed the SERP landscape quite dramatically, causing a lot of articles that used to mention HubSpot to disappear from the Top 20. After that, our visibility started climbing gradually, as we built more partnerships (e.g. more websites joined our Affiliate program).

If we only look at all the pages that mention HubSpot, for the 600+ keywords we’re monitoring for surround sound, about 50% of these are now influenced by our surround sound program.

Conclusion: Final Thoughts
There is still a lot of work and opportunities to tap into for our product awareness program. But the most important learning we had so far is that surround sound is a marathon, not a sprint.
It takes time and effort to build genuine partnerships and, as Brian Halligan always “add value > extract value”.
Also, having a strong brand name helps a lot, at least when first reaching out to a potential partner. In fact, it’s fair to say that if HubSpot were a startup, this progress wouldn’t have been possible in just 6 months. It takes time to build a brand and get others to recommend it.
As with everything, there’s no silver-bullet solution. While we share a lot of our process and tools, the way we do surround sound at HubSpot might not work exactly the same for other brands. The main thing we hope you take away from this is: there’s another way of looking at your visibility in SERP that’s not just SEO.
Have you thought about adding surround sound to your content marketing and acquisition strategies in 2021?
Want to learn more about the strategy and execution behind the surround sound strategy? Read part one and two of this series.