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A couple weeks ago, my brother Max sent me his resume in a text message, and asked me to ‘spruce it up a bit’ for him.
Undoubtedly, I needed to do more than copy-and-paste the text into a Word document. To truly stand out, I knew the resume needed to demonstrate a level of professionalism and effort — something content alone can’t always convey.

Fortunately, with the help of Zety, I was able to input Max’s resume information, choose a template, and have Zety design the piece for me, within a span of 20 minutes:

Looks a little better than a text message, doesn’t it?
Resume builders are incredibly helpful when creating a resume, and can help you showcase your unique personality. Best of all, they look a lot sleeker than whatever you can design in a Google Doc.
To ensure you can create a resume for free, we’ve compiled this list of the best free resume builders we’ve discovered. Keep reading, and then get to work designing your own — trust me, with these tools, it’s almost as easy as sending a text.

Featured Resource: HubSpot Resume Templates

Download these free templates and plug in your experience and information for a custom, well-crafted resume.
1. Resume Genius

Resume Genius is undoubtedly one of the easiest and fastest free resume tools you have at your disposal. With a clean and easy-to-use interface, the tool walks you (speedily) through categories including education, work experience, and references, and offers eight different templates varying from ‘Taj Mahal’ to ‘Classic’. Resume Genius provides you with easy fill-in-the-blank sections, so you can have an impressive, comprehensive resume in no time.
2. My Perfect Resume

My Perfect Resume allows you to either start from scratch and input information into a blank template, or upload a pre-existing resume if you already have one. Additionally, the tool provides you with expert recommendations as you move throughout the process, including suggested phrases you can include for specific roles.
My Perfect Resume also enables you to include optional sections like certifications, accomplishments, and affiliations, which is vital particularly if you’re just starting out, or switching industries. This tool is particularly useful if you’re applying for a creative role and want to add color or a unique design to your resume.
To use My Perfect Resume for free, click “Download” on the left toolbar once you reach the final step of the builder — instead of selecting “Save and next”. Then, choose “Plain Text (.txt)” to download your resume for free.
3. Standard Resume

Standard Resume allows you to import your information straight from LinkedIn, making it an ideal time-savor if your LinkedIn profile is up-to-date. Plus, the white background and minimalist features enable you to focus on what really matters — your content. You can switch back and forth between “Write” and “Design” to see how your resume looks as you go along, and download as a PDF when you’re finished. Best of all, the tool also makes your resume mobile-responsive, so you can view it on your smartphone.
4. Canva

If you’re applying for a creative role or want a resume that truly lets you stand out, you might consider using one of Canva’s hundreds of free, designer-made templates. Canva’s selections are incredibly varied and unique, so you’ll undoubtedly find one you like, and inputting resume sections can be as easy as copy-and-paste. Additionally, the templates are separated into categories, such as ‘Graphic Design’, ‘Corporate’, and ‘Creative’, making it easier to choose based on your preferred industry.
5. Indeed

Creating an Indeed resume is an incredibly quick process, and best of all, the site allows you to automatically share your resume with employers on Indeed as soon as you’re finished. If you’ve already completed a resume, it’s still a good idea to upload to the site for exposure to potential employers. While it admittedly doesn’t offer as many options for creativity as some of the others in this list, Indeed is an impressive option if you want to create a more traditional resume and start sharing it immediately.
6. Zety

Zety is an excellent online resume builder because of the state-of-the-art templates. You can easily start from scratch and input your information. My favorite element of this tool is that the site will walk you through the process. All you need to do is fill out the information and then voila — you have a resume. While this tool is free, you will need to make an online account.
To use Zety for free, click “Download” on the left toolbar once you reach the final step of the builder — instead of selecting “Save and next”. Then, choose “Plain Text (.txt)” to download your resume for free.
7. Resume.com

With Resume.com you can build a beautiful resume in minutes. This tool is a great option if you’re looking for recommendations on what to include in your resume. Additionally, the site has popular templates for various job categories to help you stand out among the competition.
To use this for free, when you’re at the last stage, you’ll see a pop-up that says to create an account — instead, just click “Skip for now.” Then, in the top right-hand corner, you can click the download button.
Building a resume can feel like you’re staring at a blank canvas. But with an online resume builder, you can get recommendations and build a beautiful document that will stand out without needing a graphic design degree.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in March 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world, so keyword-optimizing your videos on the platform is just as important as keyword-optimizing your blog posts for Google.
Even if you’ve just created the next “Charlie bit my finger” video, you must remember that an algorithm dictates which videos YouTube will serve to its audience — and which ones it won’t.
One of the best ways to keyword-optimize your videos for YouTube is leveraging tags. Below, we’ve put together a guide that will explain exactly what YouTube tags are, why they’re important, and some best practices to follow. 

What are tags for YouTube?
YouTube Tags are words and phrases you can include in your YouTube videos’ description. They let your viewers, and YouTube, know what your videos are about and can help them rank higher in the platform’s search results.

Why are YouTube tags important?
YouTube tags function to help YouTube grasp your video’s content and context. This way, YouTube can understand your video’s topic and category, and associate it with similar content, which can amplify your video’s reach. The rise of semantic search has made YouTube tags less important over time, but they’re still a strategic element you can use to your advantage.
Even though YouTube sites the title, thumbnail, and description as being more important for video SEO on their platform, studies do indicate that there’s a slight positive relationship between keyword-optimized tags and ranking (Backlinko). Neglecting to use them isn’t a dealbreaker, but they can definitely help.
They’re even more important in cases where your target keyword is commonly misspelled because you can tag the misspellings without including them in your title and description.
As a secondary benefit, tags even help you organize and find your own content if you do self-reference tagging (e.g. “Ireland trip 2019”).
YouTube Tags Best Practices
To leverage YouTube tags to their fullest potential, check out these tips and tricks.
1. Make your first tag your target keyword and order the rest by importance.
YouTube heavily accounts for your video’s first few tags when ranking content in their search results, especially the first tag. So make sure your first tag is the exact keyword you want to target.
2. Use some broad keywords that describe the overarching topic your video falls under as other tags.
Using broad keywords as other tags helps YouTube understand your video’s context. For example, if you’re creating a video called “How to Hit a Baseball”, you’d want to add “Baseball” as a broad tag to indicate to YouTube that your video’s overarching topic is about baseball.
3. Use some specific keywords that describe the topics you covered in your video as other tags.
Using specific keywords that describe the topics you cover in your video as other tags helps YouTube understand your video’s content. For instance, in the same “How to Hit a Baseball” video, adding “hitting off a tee” or “hitting batting practice” as specific tags would indicate to YouTube the exact topics your video covers.
4. Keep most of your tags between 2-3 words.
While you should certainly include long-tail keywords and a few broad match variations, YouTube seems to prefer 2-4 word phrases (Briggsby).
5. Do not go overboard with tags.
The point of tags is to help the algorithm understand what your video is about so it can surface it to users that are looking for a video like yours. Using too many keywords can cause confusion for what your video is actually about. Research suggests that the optimal number of tags is between 31 and 40 (when used correctly, of course). More than that dilutes their power.

Image Source
6. Get inspiration from videos that are currently ranking.
If you know what you want to rank for, take notes from those who are already ranking on the topic. Their keyword tags might give you a good starting point for research and inspiration.
7. Get inspiration from YouTube auto-suggest.
Auto-suggest is a feature to help users find what they need. YouTube isn’t surfacing these suggestions willy-nilly. Chances are, there’s a reason these keywords are suggested, so don’t be afraid to go straight to the horse’s mouth, so to speak, to draw inspiration.

Best YouTube Tag Generators
To discover the keywords you can tag in your videos and help them rank higher in YouTube’s search results, here are three of the best YouTube Tag Generators to try.
1. Keywordtool.io

After plugging your target keyword into its YouTube search bar, Keywordtool.io will provide you with suggested keywords, their search volume, how they’ve trended over the past 12 months, and questions, prepositions, and hashtags that also include your target keyword.
2. Rapidtags

Entering a seed keyword into Rapidtags and then hitting the button will generate a number of related tags for your YouTube video. Best of all, there’s a copy button for you to easily pull the text without entering it manually.
3. YTube Tool

This tool helps you extract the tags from a competitor’s YouTube video. All you have to do is enter the URL, and the tool will then return your results.
4. Keyword Keg

Using Keyword Keg, you can enter your target keyword into the tool and it’ll serve up its search volume, cost-per-click, competition, on-page difficulty, off-page difficulty, SEO difficulty, CTR scope, keyword power, trends, and suggested keywords. You can also filter your results by country and language.
5. VidIQ

VidIQ will display your target keyword’s related keywords, related score, search volume, search score, competition score, and overall score, which is a combination of a keyword’s related score, search score, and competition score.
With these tools and types for generating optimized YouTube tags for SEO, you’re well on your way to getting your content found on YouTube. Continue optimizing other elements of the video as well and monitoring your channel’s growth.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in July 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

We all know that traffic alone doesn’t pay the bills. Ultimately, our traffic must do its job to convert prospects who have problems that we can solve. One way of getting the right people into the pipeline is by creating compelling content offers that practically beg for the opt-in. There’s just one problem: Making sure we generate enough demand for the offer to be successful.
So if your content is just sitting on your website not getting too many downloads or leads, your promotion might be the problem. That being said, read on to discover the best techniques for marketing your ebook, whitepaper, guide, or other lead-generating resource. 

1. Consider a co-marketing campaign.
Before your create your helpful content offer, consider if there’s any partnerships that you can leverage. Co-marketing provides an opportunity for cross-collaboration on content so that two parties “own” that content and benefit from it. 
Here are some reasons why co-marketing is a good idea:

Sharing resources for the offer’s creation doubles the value of the content and diminishes the cost/effort of its production
Promoting to two networks increases the reach of the campaign exponentially
Both partners have vested interest in the results of the promotion because both reap the benefits (the leads generated from it)

2. Utilize industry influencers for their thought leadership and reach.
Whether you decide to do co-marketing or not, you can’t deny the power of good old-fashioned personalized outreach. Think through your existing partnerships as well as other major players in the industries or social circles you want to reach. 
Consider these thought leaders’ goals: finding relevant articles to share with their fan base, increase their reach, and further establish themselves as an authority. 
You can appeal to these goals by featuring them in your content offer. For example, ask them for a quote that you can incorporate into your content offer or link to another article they wrote. When you finish the piece, send them a complimentary copy. I’d suggest telling them how much you’ve appreciated their expertise and that you were delighted to include them.
Don’t forget to mention that you’ll be promoting the offer to your network. Because they’re featured in the content, this acts as an incentive for them to share your offer to their audience as well. 
The key to this tactic is to make your personalized outreach unique and worth their while. After all, they likely get bombarded with messages asking them to share content.
3. Use email marketing to promote the ebook with your existing audience.
Admittedly, outreach is arduous. Don’t forget about the network you already have. Your email subscribers have already expressed interest in similar content offers, and if this new ebook continues to provide value for problems they need help with, this is another opportunity to continue engaging them. 
As you continue to provide value, you’re establishing more credibility and authority in their eyes. As you stay top of mind in this way, you’ll be first on their list when they are ready to make a purchasing decision.
To achieve maximum success with this tactic, it helps to have a segmented audience so that you’re always providing relevant, timely, and personalized content. 
You don’t want to email a specific ebook to your entire contact database because it probably doesn’t relate to all your contact lists. When you don’t segment emails, your engagement will be lower and your success will be diminished.
Here’s what I mean: 
On one of your opt-in forms, you could have visitors identify what they need help with. For an inbound marketing agency, it might say, “What Does Your Business Want to Improve?” with options to select: 

Grow our web presence
Rank higher on Google
Generate more leads

That way, if an ebook was created around SEO, it could be sent to all the subscribers who have already shown interest in ranking higher on Google. 
4. Promote your ebook on your highest trafficked (but still relevant) blog posts.
In addition to your other methods of promotion, you want to make sure that you’re converting organic traffic as well. But here’s the problem: A user can’t convert on a landing page they never land on. They can never be interested in a content offer they don’t know about. 
Content offers aren’t an “If you build it, they will come” scenario. Instead, see how you can capitalize on the traffic you’re already getting for its promotion.
By putting the CTA (call to action) on new blog posts, all you’re doing is making a gamble. Mainly because you don’t know if that blog post will ever generate traffic. After all, it’s brand new.
However, you can put a CTA on an existing blog post that has proven success, pushing that ebook to a known source of demand. 
Promote your offer on relevant blog posts that already get traffic to put your ebook in front of the audience you have.
5. Create a PPC campaign to advertise your content offer.
If you know your content offer has a clear path to revenue, organic plays alone are not always the best route for promotion, especially if there is clear demand as people search for resources just like yours. 
PPC is a quicker tactic than SEO and is a great way to promote not just your company and its services but also campaigns to offers you create. A successful PPC campaign boosts visibility and downloads to your offer by driving high-intent users to the landing page. 
6. Announce your content offer on social media.
Email is a great tactic for promoting to an existing audience, and so is social media. An additional benefit is that social media promotion can reach beyond that existing audience much more easily.
Be sure to post on your social channels once your offer is live, conveying the value it contains for the reader and including an image to attract their attention. Mix these posts in with your other content so that your readers aren’t put off by too much promotional content.
7. Consider putting advertising budget behind it.
On some social channels (I’m looking at you, Facebook), organic reach isn’t what it used to be. Boosting posts helps to increase reach to both your followers and beyond. Alternatively, you can also create an ad that promotes your ebook and do paid promotion to a targeted audience. 
Just keep in mind that people don’t browse social media with buying intent, so you’ll have to ensure that the offers you promote and the way you promote them piques interest and conveys value. Otherwise, they’ll just see it as an ad and scroll on past.
8. Repurpose your content into different formats.
The first time they see your post, they may not click and convert right away. Like with anything, it can take multiple “impressions” to attract attention and pique interest. At the same time, if you continue posting the same thing over and over, your content gets stale. 
Enter repurposing. 
Your ebook can easily be turned into a slideshare, infographic, quiz, or other format. By having multiple “versions” of your content for promotion, your ebook can go farther while getting more eyeballs on it. 
9. Connect with niche readers on social media.
Look on Twitter and LinkedIn for users that have been sharing similar content to what you have created. Just by searching on Twitter for #inboundmarketing, I can see who is sharing inbound marketing blogs, guides, and resources. Plus, I can see who is getting the biggest reach in terms of likes and retweets.
Reach out to these individuals with a simple message that encapsulates “Hey! I saw you shared [this article] and I thought you might like [this related content offer]”. This way you know that the individual is probably interested in what you’re writing because they’ve been interested in similar content before.
This tactic might not work as well as the influencer tactic in tip #2 since you’re not providing mutual value, but many of these individuals spend a lot of time curating content for their audience, and you might just be helping them out.
10. Submit to a content community or online group.
Chances are, search engines and their social feeds are not the only places your audience hangs out. If your ebook contains specialized or niche information, you might be able to target these niches through content communities and online groups. For example: 

Niche Facebook groups
Niche LinkedIn groups
Reddit
Quora
Slack groups
NextDoor neighborhoods
Industry forums

For example, if you’re a roofer in St. Louis, join your community group on NextDoor.com and offer your content there. When your neighborhood gets hit by a hailstorm, your infographic on “Assessing Storm Damage as a Homeowner” can come in handy to the community’s residents.
Content communities are also a great resource for getting feedback, starting discussion, and sharing your passion for your services with others.
11. Find other linking opportunities.
Using tools like Ahrefs, you can see other websites who have linked to content like yours. Reach out to them with your content offer link and see if they want to include a link to your resource. I find that this is most helpful when you can find a broken link that your new link can replace. Webmasters generally appreciate when someone lets them know of a problem with their website links, and if you can provide a link to replace the broken one, it might get placed.
Alternatively, use a tool like BuzzSumo or Mention.net to find mentions of your company online. You’ll be able to see who has mentioned you or your content offer and determine whether they have linked back to you or not. If they haven’t included your link, reach out to that website and explain it might provide their readers a better experience if they could find the article that is being mentioned.
If you’re looking for more backlink opportunities, I highly recommend Backlinko’s “17 Powerful (Yet Untapped) Backlink Sources” to find other places you could get a link from!
12. Guest blog on popular websites with your ebook as CTA.
You may also have an opportunity to capitalize on a third party website’s organic traffic and promotions through guest blogging. If your buyer persona goes to a popular website that provides solutions to the problems they’re experiencing, your content offer should be there too (as long as it’s similarly relevant and helpful, of course). 
Once you nail down which websites your buyer persona is reading to get information, see if these websites offer the opportunity for industry leaders to guest blog. Some websites will require an application or an article proposal, but once you get accepted blogging for one website, it becomes much easier to get accepted on other websites.
When you write your articles, keep them educational and don’t self-promote. Remember, you’re trying to help the reader solve a problem with your expertise and industry knowledge. A the conclusion of the article, use your ebook as a next step CTA so if a reader finishes the article and wants more information, your content offer is there.
Content that just sits on your website can’t properly do its job and bring in leads. But worry not, by using these promotion tips you’ll see a little bit of extra effort can really take a content offer from zero to hero.
If you’re interested in creating attractive ebooks that capture attention and bring more leads to your business, check out the FREE resource below (see what we did there?).
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in September 2016 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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Are you up to date on onboarding best practices? Getting new customers is one of the best feelings in the world, but if you don’t onboard them properly, you aren’t setting them up for success. This could mean a poor customer experience, as well as customers who leave you as soon as they sign up…
The post How to Onboard Customers Appropriately appeared first on Benchmarkemail.

By nature, all examples of good copywriting are creative in one way or another. Whether through simplicity, complexity, or pure genius, each of these examples shows why copywriting is a craft.

Last year, a buzzword ripped through the content marketing space that most marketers were surprisingly thrilled about and eager to implement. Shockingly, it didn’t start with “virtual” or end with “intelligence”. Instead, it was what attracted most marketers to the industry in the first place — “storytelling”.
Content marketing’s steady adoption of storytelling is an exciting new opportunity for content creators. The human brain is wired to respond to well-crafted narrative — neuroscience proves that storytelling is the best way to capture people’s attention, bake information into their memories, and forge close, personal bonds. Your audience is programmed to crave and seek out great stories — that’ll never change.
However, since we’ve spent the majority of our careers optimizing content for algorithms, it can be challenging to flex a creative muscle that’s slowly withered away from inactivity and, in turn, move people emotionally and sear your brand into their memories.
So, to help you strengthen that creative muscle and write compelling stories again, we’ve created a guide about the fundamentals of brand story structure and provided examples of three small-to-medium sized businesses who have leveraged their brand story to resonate with huge audiences, despite their comparatively small size.

What is a brand story?
A brand story recounts the series of events that sparked your company’s inception and expresses how that narrative still drives your mission today. Just like your favorite books and movies’ characters, if you can craft a compelling brand story, your audience will remember who you are, develop empathy for you, and, ultimately, care about you.

When HubSpot first started, we noticed traditional, interruptive marketing didn’t appeal to consumers anymore. Due to the digital age, people were in complete control of the information they consumed — and they were sick and tired of receiving direct mail, email blasts, and cold calls. People wanted to be helped, so we started creating educational content that aided people in solving their marketing problems.
Today, we’ve built a passionate community of inbound marketers, expanded our inbound marketing approach to the sales and customer service industries, and strengthened the inbound movement more than ever before.
This our brand story — a simple, digestible narrative that explains why HubSpot began, and how this reason still serves as our purpose today.
How to Write a Brand Story
1. Highlight your story’s conflict.
Check out the following story. Does it resonate with you?
A girl wearing a red-hooded cloak is strolling through the woods to give her sick grandma some much-needed food and TLC. She passes by a wolf on the way. They exchange a slightly awkward soft smile-nod combination that random colleagues usually greet each other with as they pass in the hallway. She makes it to her grandma’s house without a scratch. They eat lunch and play a game of Clue together. Grandma wins by deducing that Colonel Mustard killed Mr. Boddy in the Billiard Room with the candlestick — what a shocker! The End.
So … what’d you think? Did this story keep you on the edge of your seat? Or does it feel … off? For some reason, it doesn’t work, right? That’s because there’s no conflict. Despite the intense game of Clue at the end, there’s nothing at stake. There’s no tension. The wolf didn’t try to eat the girl. He didn’t even go to Grandma’s house. He barely acknowledged Little Red Riding Hood.
At their core, stories are about overcoming adversity. So if there’s no conflict presented, there’s no drama or emotional journey that people can relate to. And if your story has no drama or emotional journey, it won’t hold anyone’s attention — let alone resonate with and inspire them.
Unfortunately, in the business world, brands are horrified to reveal any adversity or conflict they’ve faced. They believe that spinning a rosy, blemish-free story about how their company only experiences hockey stick growth will convince people that they’re the industry’s best-in-class solution. Any adversity or conflict during their company’s history will expose their imperfections, deterring potential customers from buying their product.
But, in reality, this is a huge misconception. Nothing’s perfect. Everything, including companies (especially companies), has flaws. Plus, people don’t relate to perfection. They relate to the emotional journey of experiencing adversity, struggling through it, and, ultimately, overcoming it. Because, in a nutshell, that’s the story of life.
Conflict is key to telling compelling stories. So be transparent about the adversity your company has faced, and own it. The more honest you are about your shortcomings, the more people will respect you and relate to your brand.
2. Don’t forget about your story’s status quo and resolution. Conflict isn’t the only thing you should focus on when crafting your brand story. A compelling story has two other fundamental elements — the status quo and resolution.
The status quo is the way things are or the initial nature of your situation. The conflict disrupts this situation and puts something at stake, forcing the protagonist (your brand) to actively find a solution to this problem. The resolution describes how the protagonist solves the problem, giving your audience an emotional payoff.
In sum, your brand’s story structure should look like this — status quo, conflict, and resolution. It’s as simple as that.
If you need an example to crystalize brand story structure in your mind, let’s go over the actual Little Red Riding Hood story, as well as some brands who are nailing their brand stories right now.
Little Red Riding Hood
Status Quo: Little Red Riding Hood walks through the woods, on her way to deliver food to her sick grandma.
Conflict: A Big Bad Wolf approaches her, and asks where she’s going. She naively tells him where her grandmother’s house is, so he suggests she picks some flowers as a present for her. While she’s distracted, he breaks into Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother’s house, eats her, and puts on her clothes to impersonate her.
When Little Red Riding Hood gets to her grandmother’s house, she notices some subtle changes in her grandmother appearance but ultimately ignores them and hops into bed with her. The wolf swallows her whole. He falls asleep from a massive food coma.
Resolution: A hunter hears Little Red Riding Hood’s screams, bursts through grandma’s door, and cuts open the wolf’s stomach, setting Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother free. They then fill the wolf’s body with heavy stones, and when he wakes up and tries to run away, he topples over and dies.
Now — wouldn’t you say that was a little more compelling and entertaining than finding out Colonel Mustard can wield a candlestick as a murder weapon? I would, too.
The thing is, some small brands are leveraging this same exact story structure to generate massive amounts of brand awareness and affinity. Read on to find out exactly how they do it.

Brand Story Examples

Unthinkable Media
Grado Labs
Drift

1. Unthinkable Media

Unthinkable Media is a creative agency that produces original, narrative-driven podcasts for B2B brands. Their mission is to create refreshing, entertaining shows for clients that can actually retain people’s attention, not just acquire it.
Here’s a rundown of their brand story, which is also fleshed out in one of the founder’s blog posts:
Status Quo: As makers and marketers, we want our audience’s attention, and so for years, we focused our efforts on acquiring it.
Conflict: But today, thanks to multiple screens, ubiquitous and instantly accessible content, and endless choice in nearly every competitive niche, the buyer now has total control. They only choose experiences they genuinely enjoy. It is no longer enough for us to simply acquire our audience’s attention.
Resolution: We need to hold it. That is our new mandate as makers and marketers. We need to shift our focus from impressions and traffic to subscribers and community. Everything we are trying to achieve becomes possible and gets easier when our audience spends minutes or even hours with us, not seconds. Don’t just acquire attention. Hold it.
2. Grado Labs

Grado Labs is a third-generation, family-owned headphone and cartridge company. They don’t believe in advertising, have operated in the same building for over a century, and even make their headphones by hand. So why do they choose to operate like this when huge brands like Beats by Dre, Sony, and Bose have celebrity endorsers and mass-produce their headphones? Check out our interpretation of their brand story to find out.
Status Quo: Music is an essential part of the human experience. Without it, life just isn’t as colorful and exciting. And we believe quality headphones amplify the pleasant, emotional experience of listening to music.
Conflict: In a market where every headphone brand has an enormous advertising budget, state-of-the-art facilities, and high-tech machines that can churn out as much product as they want, all of which we don’t have, why do we choose to not conform?
Resolution: Sound comes first. We’re craft-driven creators, meaning we prioritize producing the best product over generating the most hype. And by creating a better pair of headphones at the expense of publicity and growth, we can serve our customers better and foster a fervent passion for our product.
3. Drift

Drift is a conversational marketing platform that helps businesses connect with prospects through genuine, empathetic conversations and interactions. In 2016, they shocked the content marketing world by scrapping arguably the most reliable lead generator from their website — forms.
Even though they were initially anxious about getting rid of a lead generation machine, they knew ungating every piece of content on their website would allow them to align with their mission, put their customers first, and offer as much value as possible, which would produce better long-term results. Here’s our interpretation of their brand story.
Status Quo: The crux of content marketing is treating people like humans. So, we’ve done what most other companies have done: created content that aims to help and educate our customers. And in exchange for adding value to their lives, customers are likely to return the favor with their attention, trust, and action.
Conflict: But as much as we preach about putting the customer first, we don’t practice it. Instead of offering the most value we possibly can, we make people give us their contact information in exchange for the very thing we promise is free. Then, with their contact information, we email and call them until they either unsubscribe or eventually buy. No one actually enjoys filling out forms, becoming a lead, and getting nurtured. Our ulterior motive is crystal clear. So are we actually being customer-centric?
Resolution: Let’s get rid of all our forms. If we really want to practice what we preach — putting our customers first and providing a more human and empathetic marketing experience — we should offer all of our content for free, with no strings attached.
Tell your brand’s real story, not it’s highlight reel.
Whether you’re publishing your brand story on your website or using it to inform your overall mission, make sure it’s fact, not fiction. Spitting out a highlight reel, like almost every other brand does, won’t actually resonate with people. Instead, it’s crucial you tell the honest truth about the adversity your company has faced, and how you’re working to overcome it. Because what people relate to and get inspired by isn’t endless success — it’s the rocky journey of pursuing a goal, getting knocked down, and, ultimately, finding a path toward success.

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