Category: Marketing Automation

Artificial intelligence is continuing to make an impact on the business world. In fact, McKinsey predicts that up to $2.6 trillion in value will be unlocked by AI in marketing and sales alone.
But, if you’re less tech-savvy, you might be intimidated by terms like “artificial intelligence,” “machine learning,” and “algorithms.” You probably also hear about these technologies and think to yourself, “My business definitely can’t afford that.”
This makes sense. As a good marketer, you should be skeptical about high-priced tech. After all, sometimes it’s hard to tell how a tool works and if it’s actually worth your money. Additionally, if you’re less familiar with AI, it might seem like it’s only necessary for industry-leading behemoths.

There are so many misconceptions about AI in marketing that my colleagues and I launched the Marketing AI Institute. At the organization, we aim to make AI approachable and actionable for marketers. To date, we’ve vetted dozens of AI solutions and have monitored more than 1,500 sales and marketing AI companies with combined funding north of $6.2 billion.
As the Institute’s director, I’ve advised small and medium-sized companies on AI implementations. We’ve also piloted several AI tools in our own marketing operations at the Marketing AI Institute – often for no or extremely low cost.
While you might think that AI is totally out of your budget, there’s actually a chance your business is already using a software or app that relies on this technology to do its job.
Let’s get into the three-step process for implementing AI on a budget, as well as examples of affordable tools that can help you.
Table of Contents

How to Implement AI on a Budget [3 Steps]
Affordable Marketing Automation Software
Familiarizing Yourself With AI
How to Implement AI on a Budget [3 Steps]
1. Determine where AI tools could help you eliminate costs.
At some point, you’ll need to spend money to implement AI. But, how you structure an AI pilot project can help you defray some of the costs.
Although AI, when done right, can increase revenue and reduce costs, you’ll still want to start with a cost-reduction pilot before a revenue-increasing experiment.
A cost-reduction pilot aims to improve (or streamline) processes you already have in place. A revenue-generating pilot, on the other hand, might require new processes — which could ultimately cost more time and money.
In order to kickstart your cost-reduction pilot, you need to first identify time-intensive or repetitive tasks that hold you — or your team — back from high-quality projects in your organization. 

Start by making a list of your recurring responsibilities. Track everything you do every week or month, and list the amount of time you spend on each activity. Chances are, there are a ton of tasks that take way too much time each month. It’s likely they’re also pretty data-driven, too.
Next, explore vendors who have created more intelligent ways to do the tasks that are blocking your team.
For example, you might discover that tagging images on your website takes up too much time. AI software can probably free you up from doing that task. Or, you might spend hours each week managing paid advertising. AI can also help there, too.
In fact, there are dozens of ways you can apply AI to immediately free up team time and resources. And, depending on the cost reductions, these pilots may pay for themselves.
2. Research tools that work out of the box.
A handful of small to medium-sized businesses might worry about blowing their budgets when they hear the words, “artificial intelligence” because — at the moment — many AI solutions are built for corporate enterprise.
The truth is, many AI tools need access to quality data at scale to produce results. Enterprises are often the only source of this data. But this doesn’t mean you need to count out AI as a marketer for a smaller business.
In fact, a number of AI tools are affordable, work out of the box, and cut time on basic marketing tasks.
Additionally, you might not know it, but you might already be using popular office tools that are powered by AI.
3. Ask these questions before investing in an AI product.
There are some vendors out there that claim to be AI but aren’t. If you don’t understand what to look for, you could waste time and money on lackluster solutions.
That’s why we encourage every marketer to establish a baseline knowledge of AI. (Our beginner’s guide will cut down your learning curve.)
Aside from familiarizing yourself with the technology, you also need to ask smart questions of AI vendors about the tools they sell.
Start with questions like:

How does ____ use AI today?
What AI capabilities are on the product roadmap?
What type of data do I need for the solution to work?
Is there any type of minimum size dataset I need to use the solution? (i.e. a certain number of emails sent, visitors to the site, etc.)
What kinds of in-house capabilities do I need to use and maintain the solution?: Can anyone use it? Do I need dedicated data scientists, machine learning experts?
My top use cases for AI are A, B, C, etc. Can ___ help?

Curiosity may have killed the cat. But it also saves marketers tons of money when buying new technology. So, don’t be afraid to ask questions and do deep research on each product you’re considering before you invest.
Affordable Marketing Automation Software
Here are a few examples of popular and affordable AI-powered tools:
1. Grammarly
Price: Free; Premium plans to start at $11.66/mo for an annual commitment.
Grammarly is an intuitive copy-editing tool that uses machine learning to recognize and highlight spelling, grammar, and other phrasing errors on different platforms including Google Docs, email, and social media sites.
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For an individual user, Grammarly allows you to track your writing performance and get edit suggestions based on your level of writing experience. The software will also send you emails that show you areas where you are excelling and where you need to improve.
Recently, Grammarly also added a feature where it could recognize and sense the emotional tone of your emails. For example, if you’re writing an email with “Thank you” in it, Grammarly will note that your message sounds “appreciative,” or “optimistic.”

Pro Tip
Grammarly is also available for teams. With the team version, you can unlock customizable editing features that allow the software to make suggestions with your company’s writing styles and branded words in mind.
To learn more about Grammarly and other productivity tools, check out this blog post.
2. Frase.io
Price: Trial available; Plans start at $24.99 per month.
Frase.io is an AI-powered research assistant and question answering bot that uses and analyzes search data on your site. The software can also help you optimize articles and other content for SEO by reading the text, comparing it with similar online content, and offering search and keyword-based suggestions.

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Aside from the SEO features, Frase.io also provides a bot feature. When a visitor is searching your site and would like to find something, they can simply type a question into the message box on your web page and receive an answer from a bot.

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The bot uses machine learning to recognize the phrases given and match the words with content or pages related to those words. For example, if someone says, “I’m looking for a blog post on Instagram Stories,” the bot would reply with a link to one or more blog posts about Instagram Stories.
One company that benefited from this product was Embryo Digital, a small UK-based agency that used Frase.io to conservatively save 180 hours per month on research.
Pro Tip
Battling writer’s block? Frase.io can help with that. It offers a number of tools that create content automatically — such as its Blog Introduction Tool, which automatically generates a 100-word introduction for your blog title.
3. Google Analytics
Price: Free
By now, you’ve probably heard of or already use Google Analytics.
The leading analytics platform’s machine learning capabilities will answer questions about your website data.

Although Google Analytics is the leading analytics tool of marketers and already has many AI tools that work upon launching it, it will take marketers time to set up their GA dashboards so that data is understandable and organized for full teams.
To learn more about this platform and how to get started on it, check out this ultimate guide.
Pro Tip
On top of giving you detailed insights on how your website is doing, GA also integrates with all of Google’s marketing products — including Google Ads, Search Console, and Data Studio.
4. Ahrefs
Price: $99-$999/month depending on your number of users and features.
Ahrefs uses data from Google and other search engines to show you where your web pages rank for certain keywords. It also allows you to query words or phrases to see how common people are looking them up on search engines.
This type of tool can quickly help you identify topics that you might want to blog about or see if your blog post or website is actually showing up on Google searches when people make queries related to your industry.
To give you more of an idea of how the software works, here’s a demo that walks you through how to do keyword research with Ahrefs:

If you’d like to better your keyword research strategies, but can’t afford something as intuitive as Ahrefs, you can also check out these tools which similarly leverage AI algorithms to help marketers identify search opportunities.
Pro Tip
Use Ahrefs’ Content Explorer tool to uncover content that generates a lot of social shares. And, if a specific social media platform is important to you — such as Twitter, for example — you can filter shares on that specific site. In addition, you can analyze any page’s social shares over time.
5. HubSpot
Price: Free CRM; Plans start at $50 per month and vary based on team size and tier subscribed to.

HubSpot incorporates AI in a number of ways. Here are just a few:

SEO: HubSpot’s COS and CMS use algorithms to scour your posts for search optimization suggestions before you post.
Emails and Workflows: When a customer does something such as engage with an email or landing page, this will trigger a canned email to be sent to them with their name and other personalizations in it.
Social Media: HubSpot’s social media platform allows you to autogenerate post caption copy using machine learning. This technology recognizes sentences that you might regularly tweet or meta descriptions in a link you’re sharing, then crafts a caption that you can then edit or tweak.
Deduplication features: If you upload a new list into a HubSpot CRM, or a pre-existing contact subscribes to your marketing newsletter, HubSpot will search the CRM to find matching contacts and prevent any duplicates from being added.

Pro Tip
For maximum engagement, schedule your emails at the most optimal time for your audience. For instance, if your email open rate plummets on the weekends, schedule them for a weekday.
6. Buffer
Price: Plans start at $6/month per channel and vary depending on your team size and number of channels.
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If you’re a social media marketer, AI tools can take your work to the next level in a fraction of the time.
Buffer is a social media management software offering a range of tools to publish, track, and measure your social media content. For instance, you can maximize engagement by scheduling posts at the most optimal time of day, when your audience is most active.
Pro Tip
For many social media marketers, creating a steady stream of amazing content is challenging. With Buffer’s Calendar tool, you can schedule content months ahead, identify any content gaps, and hone in on certain holidays.
7. Mailchimp
Price: $11-$299/month, depending on how many contacts you have.

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Mailchimp is a popular email marketing software that lets you create campaigns and build automated workflows. Depending on your plan, you can also access advanced audience insights and a library of email templates.
Pro Tip

Using Mailchimp’s Customer Journey Builder, you can automate marketing workflows for your contacts. From simple to highly complex, these journey maps can contain multiple starting points, branches, and unique actions — guaranteeing each of your contacts has a personalized experience.
Familiarizing Yourself With AI
Artificial intelligence can sound like an intimidating or expensive technology. But, the truth is, it’s getting more and more prominent in our world and workplaces today.
Ultimately, the best strategy for vetting AI products, tools, and opportunities that may come your way in the future is to research credible sources and ask the right questions about the software you’re considering.
If you’re looking to take the next step with technology implementation, check out HubSpot Academy’s latest course, “Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Marketing.” The course gives an introduction to AI and machine learning while also walking you through how to implement it in your company’s marketing department.
Still in the initial research phase, but want to learn how AI could impact marketing in the next year? Discover four predictions from marketing AI experts in this blog post.

We’ve all been part of the rush to figure out gifts for family and friends as the end of the year approaches. Many companies even recommend starting holiday shopping months in advance to avoid shipping delays or out-of-stock notifications. The holiday season often means a busy time for brands — and that’s what events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday intend to capitalize on.But consumer sentiments are changing. People are questioning and expecting more of the brands they shop from. Brands themselves are also saying no to the flash flood of demand and the rush to supply. In this article, we want to highlight how businesses can use the shopping season as an opportunity to do good instead of encouraging the same old consumer habits while maintaining a strong brand purpose.Highlighting other businesses to supportInstead of sharing discounts, some businesses choose to highlight small businesses to support in a bid to give back to the community and discourage excess consumerism.Ocean Bottle, a reusable bottle brand, highlighted other businesses to support and why on Twitter and Instagram. The reason, they shared, was to “…show how consumers can be a force for good by highlighting a few small brands that could use [your] support that ‘do good’ too.” View this post on Instagram A post shared by Ocean Bottle (@oceanbottle) The businesses Ocean Bottle highlighted also fit with the mission to ‘do good.’ One of them was From Babies with Love, a “purpose-led sustainable gifting brand” that donates 100% of its profits to orphaned and abandoned children worldwide.DAME, a sustainable period products company, took its spotlight a step further, highlighting small businesses in one post and educating consumers in another. View this post on Instagram A post shared by DAME. (@dameforgood) Along with Black Friday encouraging people to buy more than they need, one of the key statistics highlighted by DAME’s educative post was illuminating on the push for more sustainable practices during the shopping season: eighty percent of clothes from Black Friday sales end up in a landfill. View this post on Instagram A post shared by DAME. (@dameforgood) 🖊️There are specific days for highlighting small businesses around the shopping season as well. Check out our article on Small Business Saturday for some more ideas.Donate a percentage of your profits insteadIn recent years, more brands have switched up their Black Friday marketing strategy by supporting social causes instead. Many brands choose to donate the profits from their shopping season sales on Giving Tuesday or independent of any particular event.Misfits Market is a sustainable grocery company that allows customers to shop for groceries in curated boxes that would have been thrown out at big-chain supermarkets. Instead of offering discounts on Black Friday, they partner with Feeding America to donate money and meals through their skipped box donation program. Customers can choose to donate their order instead of just skipping it to earn points. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Misfits Market (@misfitsmarket) Grove Collaborative, a home goods company, also skipped Black Friday altogether for Giving Tuesday, allowing customers to donate or gift a donation to a chosen cause. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Grove Collaborative (@grovecollaborative) Stasher Bags, a reusable bag brand, highlighted the benefits of shopping from a sustainable brand and offered a discount. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Stasher (@stasherbag) In addition, they highlighted that they donate 1 percent of their profits year-round and made an additional pledge of $50,000 to the Surfrider foundation during Black Friday. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Stasher (@stasherbag) Skipping Black Friday entirely to do something different and make a statementSome businesses choose to skip Black Friday entirely, creating their own spin on the event. Rubies in the Rubble, a condiments brand, shared that they would be doing Green Friday  – a day to shop from small, sustainable brands instead of Black Friday. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Rubies in the Rubble (@rubiesintherubble) In another post, Rubies in the Rubble asked their audience to tag small businesses to shop from. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Rubies in the Rubble (@rubiesintherubble) Ombar Chocolate also chose to do Green Friday instead of Black Friday by highlighting other small businesses and donating all the profits from products sold to Fundación Jocotoco, a nature-focused nonprofit organization. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Ombar Chocolate (@ombarchocolate) Paynter, a sustainable fashion brand, chose to donate instead of discounts for Black Friday. Paynter’s animosity towards the season can be linked to its brand ethos to create a better way to consume clothing. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Paynter (@paynterjacket) The brand only releases new products in batches, so its business model doesn’t lend itself to Black Friday as it is currently practiced anyway. But they choose to actively take a stance against Black Friday, going as far as closing shop entirely in October 2020 and instead starting their now popular Paynter at the Pub meetups. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Paynter (@paynterjacket) Like Paynter, This is Unfolded is a sustainable fashion brand trying to encourage low-waste consumption. The brand creates made-to-order clothes, only making an item when an order has been completed. The company created ‘Do Good Friday,’ a way for their customers to shop better and positively impact the world simultaneously. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Sustainable Slow Fashion (@thisisunfolded) The idea is to highlight businesses and practices that don’t encourage waste or purchase regret, as Black Friday does. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Sustainable Slow Fashion (@thisisunfolded) Promoting conscious consumptionOne of the best ways to approach Black Friday from a new perspective is by encouraging conscious consumption – often easier if your brand already adopts sustainable practices. You can keep to the traditional Black Friday style of offering discounts or new products while also encouraging consumers to shop sustainably.This is the approach that Pela, a phone case company, took by doing regular Black Friday promotions through discounts while highlighting how shopping from them benefits the planet. In addition to supporting a small business, shopping at Pela means that customers donate to 1 Percent For The Planet, a nonprofit whose partners contribute 1 percent of their sales to environmental causes. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Pela Case (@pelacase) Wild, a natural deodorant brand, conducted a campaign in tandem with their Black Friday promotion, pledging to plant a tree with every order made. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Wild (@wildrefill) On their blog, Wild shared their motivations for approaching Black Friday in this manner, saying, “As a small company, we cannot stop the waste that all Black Friday sales will cause by not taking part. Instead, we’re using this time as an opportunity to challenge shopping habits for the better and propel sustainable products into the mainstream.” View this post on Instagram A post shared by Wild (@wildrefill) EYO Active, a fitness wear brand, took an interesting approach to Black Friday by raising their prices by 300 percent. View this post on Instagram A post shared by EYO® | Sustainable Activewear (@eyoactive) The founder, Lucie Halley-Trotter, shared in an Instagram post that she started EYO to tackle waste, not create it.The post went on to say, “Every year, the big brands inflate and then slash their prices and pressure people into buying things they don’t need, and a whopping 80 percent of it ends up in landfill. As a business on a mission to empower women and get people to reappraise their relationship with fast fashion, I refuse to play ball. So, instead of cutting my prices for the weekend, I’m tripling them.”Lucie shared that they didn’t make any sales from this tactic – but that was the point. “We used this ‘holiday’ to show the world that we stand strongly behind our core morals,” she said. The campaign was well-received among consumers, as the brand shared in a follow-up post, showing that perhaps consumers are also looking for more sustainable ways to shop. View this post on Instagram A post shared by EYO® | Sustainable Activewear (@eyoactive) Most businesses find a lot of success around the shopping season, so it’s not practical to expect everyone to take a firm stance against Black Friday or Cyber Monday. There are other ways to take advantage of the season without encouraging overconsumption, and these brands have proven it.What are your thoughts on Black Friday? Do you often find that you make more sales and get more customers during this period? We’d love to hear your thoughts over on Twitter @buffer.

In the world of search engine marketing (SEM), a growing number of marketers are turning to PPC campaigns. That’s how Google has significantly grown its advertising revenue every year. In 2021, Google’s advertising revenue accounted for 81% of Alphabet’s overall sales.
Price-per-click or PPC campaigns lead to nearly guaranteed ad placement in the search engine result pages. Well-run PPC campaigns help you generate leads. And if your ads tool is tightly integrated with your CRM, you can use insights from your ads’ data to nurture leads across their buying journey.

In this post, you’ll learn what a successful campaign entails and the best practices for optimizing your PPC campaigns.

So, how can you win a PPC campaign? Start by crafting the right strategy and learning the management missteps you’ll want to avoid.
Remember: Poor PPC campaign management is costly and delivers poor lead generation results.
Here are a few ways marketers go wrong with PPC campaign management:

Building one basic campaign without using Google Ads’ Ad Groups tool.
Coming up with keywords by relying on gut feeling instead of doing research.
Not adding “negative keywords” or monitoring campaigns to avoid wasting budget.
Using unengaging landing pages, or a homepage that generates no leads for the campaign.
Creating campaigns, setting budget caps, and going live without informing internal or external stakeholders.

Building an excellent campaign structure can help you avoid these obstacles. Luckily, you can master this campaign structure with a detailed PPC template.
PPC Campaign Management Template

We’ve created a free PPC campaign management template. This template will help you and your clients to set up a full-funnel campaign structure that follows PPC best practices. Once you do that, you’ll be better positioned to maximize the return on your PPC investment. We broke the template into two sections: Ads Planner and Ads Results.
Ads Planner Template
In this section of the PPC template, you’ll record your ad campaign information. The first 3 columns contain your campaign name, keywords, and negative keywords (keywords you don’t want ads shown for).
Enter your ad variations in the next section. There’s room for multiple headlines, descriptions, and URL paths to help you keep track of your running ads.

Ads Results Template
This part of the PPC template allows you to track relevant campaign metrics. Use it to record your total ad cost and analyze the performance of impressions, conversions, cost-per-click information, and more.

Now that you’re familiar with the template’s components, let’s look at managing your PPC campaign.
How to Manage a PPC Campaign
PPC campaign templates also act as checklists that can help you manage your work.

We’re going to show you how to use the PPC template in this blog post — so download it now and follow along.
Before we get started, here are two tips that’ll make using this template easy:

You’ll want to clear out the example data in the template. That includes placeholder keywords, campaign and AdGroup names, ads, and final URLs.
Be careful not to alter the variables in columns F, J, and N of the ads planner. They contain the number of characters required by Google Ads for headlines, descriptions, URL paths, and Final URLs.

Now, let’s dive into PPC campaign management.
Step 1: Choose your PPC campaign management tools and software.
There are several platforms for managing your PPC campaign. Pro tip: Start with one platform. This tactic works because it keeps your costs low in the initial stages of PPC planning.
Rather than paying for an external campaign management tool, you can natively manage your campaigns in the platform you use for running ads.
However, as you expand your strategy to include more sites, you’ll need a robust PPC campaign management software. This tool allows you to keep track of each platform, budget, and set of creatives in one place.
Here are some of our favorite tools for the job:

Marin Software: Integrates with Google and Facebook — two of the most popular PPC platforms.
WordStream Advisor: Analyzes Google and Facebook ad spend to keep you on budget.
SpyFu: Analyzes your competitor’s campaigns to help you build a well-rounded strategy.

Step 2: Understand PPC campaign structure.
Understanding PPC campaign structure is essential. Usually, some marketers set up an account, create an ad, direct the ad to their home page, pick some keywords, and hit go. This is a wrong PPC approach.
With Google Ads, you can create multiple campaigns. Your campaigns may contain several AdGroups. Each AdGroup may contain a few ads and multiple similar keywords.
Multiple campaigns allow you to set daily budget caps, day-parting, and select geo-targeted regions at the campaign level. If you’re bidding on generic and branded keywords, you’ll want to put these in separate campaigns. The parameters around these two types of keywords will likely be different.
As you’ll see below, your template reflects these best practices, providing cells for several campaigns, AdGroups, and ad variations within those AdGroups.
Download this Template Free
Step 3: Identify your landing pages.
The “final URL” is the web page where your PPC traffic lands.
Don’t drive PPC visitors to your home page or blog, hoping they’ll see and fill out a lead generation form. That’s the role of organic search. Instead, drive your audience to a landing page with a form on it. Also, add a tracking token or UTM parameter to the page so you can identify your lead sources. 
Keep in mind that the final URL within an AdGroup will be the same regardless of the keyword or ad. You can create another AdGroup if you want to drive a keyword to a different landing page. If you want to get even more specific, create another campaign for that keyword.
Step 4: Build your keyword strategy.
Always select relevant keywords that apply to your landing page and offer. Relevant keywords are important because they increase the chance of visitors completing the form on your landing page.
You may want to rank for multiple keywords, but you shouldn’t do this with one landing page. Why? A landing page will have a focused message that addresses only a few keywords. If a keyword is irrelevant to a landing page, you’ll be wasting your ad budget, as visitors who search for and click the keyword won’t convert. In such a case, it’s better to create another offer and landing page that specifically addresses additional keywords.
To understand search volumes and costs around keywords you want, use tools like the Google Ads Keyword Tool, or — if you’re a HubSpot customer — use our keywords tool.
If it’s your first time managing a PPC campaign, check out this article on how to design a keyword strategy. For Google Ads, you’ll want to learn more about keyword quality scores.
Step 5: Create your ads.
This is the fun part.
Google Ads and Microsoft Ads allow you to create over one ad for each Ad Group (hence the “group” terminology).
After creating multiple ads, these platforms display the ad variations to your audience and note the variant with a higher clickthrough rate (CTR). This is called A/B testing. While running A/B tests is optional, taking advantage of it could improve your campaign performance and ROI.
Keep in mind that you have 30 characters for each ad headline, 30 characters for the display URL (the URL that’s displayed in the ad, not to be confused with the final URL), and 90 characters for each line of copy. If you’re using this template, you can easily keep track of these values.

Download this Template Free
When writing your ad, give special attention to your headline. The headline has the greatest influence on an ad’s CTR. Be sure to include a keyword in your headline to draw a user’s attention.
An even better practice is using dynamic keyword insertion. Plus, you’ll want to provide a cohesive experience for searchers — from seeing your ad in the search engine results to completing the form on your landing page. Everything should align with the goal of getting them to click through.
Finally, there’s the tricky matter of the display URL. You’re only allowed 30 characters here, but it’s unlikely that your final URL, the actual URL for your landing page, will be that short, especially after adding UTM parameters.
For this reason, search engines like Google allow you to create a display URL, which may not be an actual URL on your website. However, the domain in your display URL must be the same as the domain in your final URL. This allows users to know they’re in the right place when they click your ad and visit your landing page.
Step 6: Share the completed template with stakeholders.
Your completed template needs to align with stakeholders’ expectations and the elements of a productive PPC campaign.
If you’re a PPC campaign stakeholder, this template will help you with two things. First, the ads planner template gives you a bird’s-eye view of what the person running the ads is doing. Second, the ad results template shows how much you’re spending on PPC. With this, you can reallocate and swiftly modify your budget as you respond to changes in the marketplace.
How to Optimize Your PPC Campaign
PPC campaign management isn’t a one-time thing. You’ll need to adjust your methods continually for optimized results. Keep these factors in mind to maximize the performance of your PPC campaigns.

Location
Ad platforms often use geographic targeting in PPC management. Therefore, you should always analyze the performance of your ads to identify the most profitable locations. Use this data to exclude underperforming locations, and add these locations to your negative keywords list.
For example, if you own a bike shop, targeting urban and densely populated areas may be better than targeting rural areas where most folks need a car to get around.
Performance by Device
Campaigns that are effective for desktop users may not perform so well with mobile users. Consider targeting each group separately, and note any differences in conversion rates.
If a campaign works better on mobile versus desktop, allocate funds towards your mobile efforts while you try a different campaign for desktop users. This way, you ensure you’re spending on campaigns that guarantee the highest ROI.
Removing Keywords
When running campaigns, every keyword you chose won’t prove useful. You’ll need to remove the low performers. These could be keywords that:

Are not converting.
Are converting at a very high cost.
Have a “below average” quality score rating.

Remove these keywords and stick with those that are performing well. This allows you to get maximum value from your ad budget.
Examine Keyword Bids
When bidding for keywords, you’ll want to determine how much you can pay for each conversion and still make a profit. To do this, you’ll need Google Ads tools to optimize your bids, like:

Bid simulator: This allows you to see how higher or lower bids can affect your ad’s performance.
First-page bid estimates: This shows how much you likely need to bid to get your ads on the first page of Google search results.

After determining the maximum you can pay for a keyword, these tools will help you make the most of your budget.
Performance by Day and Time
Campaign performance will fluctuate depending on the time of day or day of the week. So, observe your campaigns. Note when they perform well and vice versa. If they aren’t performing during a specific timeframe, adjust your campaign so that you are only bidding on the most profitable times.
Now, let’s explore the platforms available for running your PPC campaigns.
PPC Campaign Management
Besides figuring out the ads that work best for your business, understanding where your audience spends most of their time online is key. That’s why you need to familiarize yourself with the different platforms available for running your PPC campaigns.
Let’s look at some of the most popular ad platforms, like Google, Microsoft (Bing), Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
Google PPC Campaign Management
Google has been the dominant player in the search engine space for over 20 years, and it still produces some of the most innovative ad experiences in the market. Here’s a look at two of the most popular ways to serve ads on Google.
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Google Search Ads
One of the most popular types of Google Ads is the search ad. These ads appear at the top and bottom of the search results for specific keywords you bid on. The typical goal for running Google search ad campaigns is to drive traffic to a specific webpage — like a landing or product page.
Google Display Ads
If you’ve ever visited a website that advertised on the banner, sidebar, or footer of a web page, you’ve probably seen a Google display ad. These ads are typically visual, featuring colorful graphics, videos, and occasionally audio. Google display ads are helpful for retargeting customers who visited your website without taking your desired action.
Microsoft Ads (Formerly Bing Ads) PPC Campaign Management
Overall, Microsoft Ads works almost like Google Ads. However, there are a few distinctions that’ll help you get the most out of your PPC campaign.
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Microsoft Ads Keyword Planner
The bulk of your PPC efforts will likely live in Google Ads. When you decide to bid on Microsoft Ads, avoid using your Google Ads keywords for your Microsoft Ads. Google and Bing are different search engines, meaning the search volume for your Google keywords may not be the same in Bing.
Bing’s keyword research and suggestion tool provide more accurate search volumes for your keywords. So, while you can use your keyword list from Google, use this tool to verify whether you should bid on the same keywords versus other variants with more traffic.
Lower CPC
One upside of Microsoft Ads is the possibility of having lower CPC, which decreases your ad spend.
A WordStream test of both Google and Microsoft found that the average CPC of running ads on Microsoft was 33% lower. The implication? Bidding on Microsoft Ads is less competitive compared to Google, meaning you may likely spend less when paying for Microsoft Ads keywords. This may be especially true for specific industries, as you’ll see in this table:

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For a deeper dive into Microsoft Ads check out this tutorial.
Facebook PPC Campaign Management
Facebook Ads Manager is a platform that connects 1.6 billion people to businesses on Facebook. It’s a great tool to target specific audiences.
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Some of the most popular ads you can use for Facebook campaigns are:
Story Ads
With more users spending time on social media platforms’ story features, these ads are one way to reach your audience. Like personal stories, you can share story ads as a video with a link. You can also use a series of photos to explain your ad and entice your audience to take a specific action.
Keep in mind: You can only post stories for 24 hours. These ads are best used for promotions like time-limited offers.
Playable Ads
Gamification is an innovative way to catch a lead’s attention. Facebook’s playable ads allow you to create a brief interactive version of a game or app so users can get a feel for your product.
You’ll want to keep the functionality simple so you don’t deter potential customers. And of course, make it fun.

Messenger Ads
If you’ve ever used Facebook’s messenger tool, you’ve probably seen an ad in your conversations. Messenger ads are useful because potential customers can decide to connect with your business directly from their messages.
If you have a customer service team that connects with people via chat, this is a great way to establish an instant connection. You can also send a lead to your site or a specific landing page from the ad.
To get a comprehensive deep dive into building Facebook ad campaigns, check out HubSpot’s Facebook Ads Training Course.
Twitter PPC Campaign Management
Twitter Ads Manager makes it easy to plan your Twitter ad while providing reporting on campaign performance.
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People spend 26% more time viewing Twitter ads compared to other leading platforms. But while you may have an excellent chance of success with Twitter, your ads need to be catchy enough to stop someone mid-scroll. Some ads you can include in your Twitter campaigns are:
Promoted Tweets
Regular and promoted tweets have only one difference. Regular tweets are free while you pay to promote tweets that’ll appear in your ideal audience’s feeds. This allows your business to convert users, or gain new followers. That can help build your brand’s awareness.
Promoted Moments
Twitter moments are several tweets that focus on a specific topic or event. Essentially, you want this collection of tweets to communicate a story to your audience. Moments include categories such as trending, sports, entertainment, and more. These are great for fun or trendy topics.
Promoted Trends
If you love seeing what’s trending on Twitter, you may want to experiment with promoting a trend for your target audience to interact with. This trend will be displayed in the timeline, the explore tab, and the “Trends for You” section.
Once someone clicks the promoted trend, they’ll see various search results for the specific trend and your brand’s promoted Tweet. If your business has identified an engaged Twitter audience, promoted trends may be your goldmine.
Learn more about Twitter Ads Manager for your business, and get to tweeting!
YouTube PPC Campaign Management
YouTube is one part of the Google Display Network with over 2.4 billion monthly users. This high number of users suggests that including YouTube in your ad campaign strategy makes sense. If your business can create ads that’ll interest your audience and keep them from hitting “skip” you’re already winning.
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Let’s look at some of the different YouTube ads.
Skippable In-Stream Ads
These are likely the ads you are most familiar with. These ads have a little button that says “skip.” Clicking the button allows you to start or continue viewing a video on YouTube.
Often, users have to wait five seconds before they can skip. Five seconds isn’t much time to convince someone to stick around, so ensure your ad’s hook can capture your audience’s attention.
However, you shouldn’t worry if users skip your ad within the first five seconds. When a user skips your ad in the first 5 seconds, you won’t have to pay for such views or clicks.
Non-Skippable In-Stream Ads (Including Bumper Ads)
Since many people opt to skip ads on YouTube, advertisers have the option of creating non-skippable ads. If you think your creative is captivating enough to resonate with your target audience, this option may work.
Ensure you measure the results from your non-skippable ads to get the best use of your budget. If the results aren’t in your favor, revert to a skippable ad.
Video Discovery Ads (Formerly Known as In-display Ads)
Discovery ads are what users see in the search results. As the second largest search engine, people watch over 1 billion hours of YouTube videos daily. You’ll want those ads appearing in search results too.
These ads will include a thumbnail and a few lines of text as a description. Since many people prefer visuals over text, this is an opportunity to get your audience to view your video instead of reading a competitor’s text resource.
Start Your PPC Campaign Today
PPC management is all about researching, budgeting, testing, reporting, repeating what works, and ditching what produces no or less ROI. You don’t have to do it alone. With the right tools and instructions outlined in this guide, you’ll be able to implement a PPC campaign that yields results for your business.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in May 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Rebranding a business can be a smart and necessary step to growing a long-lasting business. However, when it comes to your brand or business blog, renaming your blog doesn’t have to be. From the start, you can choose a blog name that stands the test of time, and the various iterations of your brand’s life-cycle.

Outgrowing a brand, or at least a brand name, is common. Marketing platform Mailchimp used their rebranding to help the company transition to a more “grownup” brand that would allow them to serve more small businesses. Many blogs I read, like “Liv’s Healthy Life,” (Now known as just “Liv B,”) quickly rebrand when they realize their old blog name just doesn’t make sense anymore.
Let’s go over some strategies to use when naming a blog, that will give your blogs longstanding relevance.

How to Choose a Blog Name
1. Identify your niche.
What are you doing? What will your blog be about? Will it be an extension of your business or its own project? Identifying what your blog will be about is key to defining a name that’ll expand with you.
The blog name will represent your unique point of view in your industry or niche. It should match the aesthetic of your blog and define the mood you want to give your readers when they visit your blog’s homepage. It should also be descriptive of the type of content you’ll publish.

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For example, I love the blog name “Hot for Food.” The blog is a companion to creator Lauren Toyota’s YouTube channel of the same name. It’s a great example of a name that goes well with its cooking niche.
The name is also broad enough that Toyota can grow her brand outward. If she wanted to release a cookware line down the road, “Hot for Food” would still make sense, and have about a million available puns at the ready. How fun would a saucepan labeled “Hot with Sauce” be?
2. Do your research.
Look at what prominent blogs in your industry are doing. Take note of what you like and don’t like, and use their blogs as a springboard for what readers in your industry like to see. Look for how these blogs are branding, the names of their blogs, and the responses their content receives.
For example, if you’re starting a blog about technology, look at TechCrunch, a massive blog about startups and technology. Their name is short, memorable, and professes their content strategy all in one: to dissect and disseminate the latest tech news for their readers.
It’s also a good idea to think about how your blog will stand out from others. This is also a good time to find out if any of the blog names you were thinking of are already being used.
Start with a simple Google search and then get a bit more technical by checking LLCs in your state. Once you’ve found a name that’s free, make sure that the domain is also available, and consider registering your chosen name to protect it. That way, you can refine how you want your brand to be perceived, and how you want it to grow within the market you choose.
3. Think about your message.
What do you want to communicate? Consider your message now and in the future. When looking over your five-year plan, does your message expand as your company does, and will your blog name still reflect that?
For example, to say media giant Buzzfeed has grown exponentially over the past decade would be an understatement. Buzzfeed’s YouTube channels alone each have billions of views and millions of subscribers. As the company has grown, it diversified and expanded its YouTube content.
Buzzfeed YouTube channels were originally named after colors, for example, Buzzfeed Blue, Buzzfeed Ultraviolet, and Buzzfeed Yellow. Recently, those names have been stripped.

Buzzfeed rebranded their content to grow with their company. Yellow rebranded into Boldly, and later, when Boldly outgrew their name, rebranded into As/Is.
According to founder Jonah Peretti, the rebrand of channel names was to reflect “design and product features that reinforce their unique identities and better serve their many fans.”

4. Use a blog name generator.
When you’re brainstorming name ideas by thinking of your niche and message, write down key words and phrases. Then, you can input those in a blog name generator to help you get started with a few ideas.
For example, you can use Themeisle’s Blog Name Generator, Domain Wheel, Zyro, or Panabee.
These can be used as a starting off point to help you brainstorm even more ideas and get the creative juices flowing.
5. Consider your target audience.
One of the first things you need to think about is “Who is reading my blog?” Will your target audience change over time or do you want people to grow with your brand?
For example, The Children’s Place store is always going to be targeting parents of young kids. While those kids will grow up one day, their target audience will always be parents of young children. On the other hand, with a personal brand like Kaitlyn Bristowe’s, while she started off targeting young women who watched The Bachelor, as she gets older, her demographic could grow with her and change to young moms (if she ever decides to have kids and be a blogger).
Those are just two examples, but it’s important to keep in mind that your target audience might change with you, so you want your name to have a timelessness to it.
6. Keep your brand in mind.
In a similar vein, your blog name should be linked to your brand. Whether you use the same font, colors, or use a play on words, you want people to know that it’s your blog.
Additionally, the overall brand messaging should be consistent across your blog, main homepage, social media, etc.
7. Make sure it’s easy to say and spell.
Don’t let wordiness or design get the best of you when you’re choosing a blog name. Ultimately, you want your name to be catchy, easy to remember, and easy to say and spell. You might be thinking, “Why does that matter?”
Well, let’s imagine that a user comes across your blog on Google. They want to come back to your site, but forget the name because it was too long. Or maybe they try to type in the name but misspell it because your blog name used a pun or play on words. This can lead to confusion and lost readers.
Keep it simple and easy to remember so users can come back again and again.
Blog Name Examples
1. LADbible
LADbible, an entertainment company, originally had a blog of the same name. Over time, their messages expanded and required different funnels for them. LADbible now has multiple blogs in tandem with the original: SPORTbible and Tyla (formerly Pretty52).

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Pro Tip: Flexibility is key, when establishing a brand presence and coming to better understand your audience. Make known, as transparently as is practical, the cause of pivots and overall intention for the changes. Opportunity opens for collective interests and a sensation of shared stakes, when you take your audience on the journey with you.
2. Contently
Similarly, Contently’s blog has a name that’s separate from the company: The Content Strategist. This name suggests that the blog is named after their target audience, a clever way reach the readers they serve.

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Pro Tip: If your company name allows for it, consider derivatives of the name itself – thereby keeping some connection to the company, while maintaining a stand-alone presence.
3. Whole Foods
Rather than name their blog “Whole Foods Blog,” the organic food company went with Whole Story. The name connects to its company but also has its own option for diverse content, telling stories of where their products come from and the customers it satisfies. Whole Foods also kept the keyword in the title, so SEO would be a breeze.

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Pro Tip: When naming your blog, think about what makes it’s brand different from the overarching themes and impact of your company.
4. Target
‘A Bullseye View’ is Target’s all-encompassing blog name. Twisting in the logo was Target’s route, which reflects their branding. With a name like that, the opportunities are endless as to what Target can put on their blog as it grows, something the company keeps in mind with categories such as “Lifestyle,” “Team,” and “Company.”

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Pro Tip: We love this approach. Target does a great job of moving away from their main brand presence while maintaining the theme of their name. Try extending your message, in even humorous ways, by making your blog’s name an enjoyable pun.
5. Pottery Barn
Pottery Barn wants you to know their company, ‘Inside and Out’ with this fun, immersive blog name. The name gives interior decorating buffs a nod, hinting that content will provide deeper information about the people behind the design, as well as the homes Pottery Barn caters to.

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Pro Tip: Making the blog name related to, but not derived from the company/brand name itself allows for the blog to extend the narrative/idea of what the company/brand’s presence and impact are.
6. Plan A Day Out
Plan a Day Out is a local Orange County parenting blog. The reason I love the name of this blog is that it’s super catchy, easy to remember, and communicates its mission. Talk about a blog name that does it all.

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Pro Tip: Acronyms do not work in every scenario. Sometimes they make complicated, non-syllabic phrases that are hard to remember, discern or retain. However, when it aligns, acronyms are a great way to have the entirety of your brand’s name be retained, in a consciously short-handed manner.
7. Backlinko
Backlinko is an excellent blog name by SEO expert Brian Dean. This is a great example of a blog name that is catchy, unique, but also easy to remember. Additionally, the niche and messaging is clearly communicated through its name. Anyone in Brian Dean’s target audience will understand the blog name, since backlinks are a common SEO strategy.

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Pro Tip: It’s possible, and recommended – where applicable, to use the actual mission/purpose/function of your business in it’s name. Try it out – see if it can be done in a seamless and catchy manner!
8. Thrillist
Another great example of a blog name is Thrillist. This blog name is honestly just fun and easy to remember. It doesn’t necessarily correlate to the blog’s message, but that’s okay. Sometimes a fun, catchy blog name will work just as well.

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Pro Tip: Had you ever heard the word “Thrillist”, prior to learning about this blog? Neither had we! And that makes us all remember it! Something to think about…
9. Marketing Brew
Marketing Brew might be my favorite example of a blog name because it comes from the Morning Brew newsletter. Whoever is running Morning Brew came up with a blog name that was perfect for growth. From Morning Brew, you have Marketing Brew, a blog clearly directed toward marketers. Then, you have Emerging Tech Brew, a blog targeting users interested in emerging technology.
The opportunities are endless for the Morning Brew crew. If they want to start a blog about parenting, it could be called Parenting Brew. The overall concept had growth in mind when it was born.

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10. Rob Has a Podcast
I know this is a podcast, but I think the name is a great example of a simple blog name that you won’t forget. This is a personal fan favorite of mine since Rob Has a Podcast is a reality TV podcast from a former reality TV contestant (is my nerd showing?).
This is a great example of just using a simple formula that people will remember. Every blog name doesn’t need to be this creative phrase. Sometimes it can just be your own name.

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Pro Tip: Keep it simple. Many audiences seek out relatability first and foremost. By taking an approach like our friend Rob here, you allow your audience to feel you’re no different than them, and can represent their interests.
Once you’ve finished brainstorming your blog name, it’s time to dive in and learn everything you can about business blogging. In HubSpot Academy’s business blogging course, you’ll learn how to craft a blogging strategy that drives business growth, create quality blog content, and build a guest blogging strategy powered by SEO.
Creating a blog is an important business strategy, and you want to make sure your blog name and content will resonate with your target audience for years.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in April 2014 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Written with contributions from Leslie Ye, Matthew Barby, Anum Hussain, and Cambria Davies
TL;DR: Influential search engines like Google have changed their algorithm to favor topic-based content. As a result, websites are exploring a new way of linking related content under a “topic clusters” model. This report serves as a tactical primer for marketers responsible for SEO strategies.

Table of Contents (8-minute read)

Introduction
Search Engines are Forcing Websites to Adapt
Do Topic Clusters Actually Impact SERPs?
What Does This Mean for my Website?
How Do I Create a Topic Cluster?
Tactical Tips to Get Started With Topic Clusters
Help is On The Way

While you cheerfully (or apathetically) browse the web, many companies are quietly reconfiguring their web pages in the background. Why?
Because the competition to rank in search engine results is intense. As a result, content-focused websites have adopted new best practices. SEO is now shifting to a topic cluster model.
In this model, a single “pillar” page acts as the main hub of content for an overarching topic. Multiple content pages that are related to that topic link back to the pillar page. This linking action signals to search engines that the pillar page is an authority on the topic, and over time, the page may rank higher for the topic it covers.
The topic cluster model, at its core, is a way of organizing a site’s content pages using a cleaner and more deliberate site architecture.
 
 

Source: Matt Barby
Watch the video below to learn more about the topic cluster methodology:
 

Search Engines Are Forcing Websites to Adapt
Marketers and SEO experts are not going through the tedious process of overhauling their site structure just to get ahead of consumer behavior. They’re being forced to because search engines have changed their algorithms in response to consumers’ behavioral changes.
Years ago, people posed fragmented keyword queries to search engines to find answers to their questions. Nowadays, people are asking search engines more complex questions, and they expect an accurate and timely answer.
Searchers who want a specific answer also use many different phrases in their queries. Search engines are now smart enough to recognize the connections across these queries. Algorithms have evolved to the point where they can understand the topical context behind the search intent, tie it back to similar searches they have encountered in the past, and deliver web pages that best answer the query.
The first big shake-up related to this change occurred with Google’s Hummingbird update in 2013. The search algorithm began parsing out phrases rather than focusing solely on keywords. Many SEO professionals see Hummingbird as Google’s official switch from a keyword to a topic focus.
The next major step toward reliance on topics was Google’s RankBrain update. Launched in 2015, RankBrain is Google’s machine learning algorithm designed to understand the context of people’s search queries. It associates past searches with similar themes and pulls multiple keywords and phrases that are associated with the search query to find the best results.

Do Topic Clusters Actually Impact SERPs?
In light of these algorithm changes, former HubSpotters Anum Hussain and Cambria Davies launched topic cluster experiments in 2016. The extensive findings from their initial topic cluster experiments showed that the more interlinking they did, the better the placement in search engine results pages (SERPs). Impressions (or views) also increased with the number of links they created.Source: Anum Hussain and Cambria Davies

What Does This Mean for my Website?
Before the shift to topic clusters, HubSpot’s website structure looked like the image below.

Source: Matt Barby
The master URL hosts the homepage and links to subdomains or subdirectories.
You can see the spread of web pages within HubSpot’s subdomains. As HubSpot produces more content, the blog pages increase and the structure becomes more complex because there’s no uniform linking in place. This setup makes it harder for search engines to crawl through all the pages quickly.
HubSpot, and many similar businesses that invest in content, find themselves with dozens of web pages that cover similar topic areas. All these pages end up competing with each other to get found by search engines, and ultimately, the searcher.
To prevent this, a more orderly, thoughtful arrangement is needed — one that tells search engines what page should be prioritized and displayed for the main topic. All the pages related to that topic can then be organized as one interlinked cluster.
Topic clusters rearrange a website’s structure to look more like the image below. Clusters of content that cover a topic area link to a central pillar page that definitively — yet broadly — outlines the topic.

Source: Matt Barby

How Do I Create a Topic Cluster?
Let’s use the topic of “content marketing” as an example. Audit your existing content pages and group them by topic focus. If needed, create a pillar page on content marketing that captures all the key aspects of the topic in a single page (see the example below).
Example Topic Feature: Content Marketing

Content Marketing Strategy
Brainstorming Techniques
Blogging
Blogging Mistakes
Buyer Personas
Writing Skills
Writing Productivity
Buyer’s Journey
Gated Content
Growing Readership
Content Planning
Content Creation Tools
Blog Post Topics
Grammar Fails
Post Types
Scaling Content Output

Note that pillar pages need to broadly cover the topic you’re focusing on so that you can link all related content pages to it in a sensible way.
The cluster content you create or optimize should go into depth on just one area mentioned on the pillar page. For example, if you have a pillar page on search engine optimization, a cluster content page would detail how to optimize your site architecture for search engines.
Think of your content assets in terms of topics you want your business to compete in, rather than discrete keywords. The keywords can still play into your overall strategy, but topics are now the umbrella under which your keyword strategy operates.

Leslie Ye, who overhauled a large number of HubSpot’s content pages into clusters, sums up the art of choosing topics for clusters:

“When considering whether something should be called a pillar page or not, ask yourself this: Would this page answer every question the reader who searched X keyword had, AND is it broad enough to be an umbrella for 20-30 posts?A good sniff test here is — if you’re trying to get the page you’re working on to rank for a long-tail keyword, it’s not a pillar page. If the page you’re working on explores a very narrow topic in great depth, it’s not a pillar page. If the page you’re working on touches on many aspects of a broad topic, it’s probably a pillar page.”

In the example below, if you wanted to own the term “inbound marketing,” you would research related topics or long-tail keywords, create content on those subtopics, and then link back to an inbound marketing pillar page to create your cluster.

Once you have a designated pillar page, update the links in the related content pages you’ve identified to form a “cluster” around the pillar page. Every post in the cluster set needs to be linked to at least once with the same anchor text (the part that is hyperlinked) so that a search engine knows it’s part of a topic cluster.
Over time, monitor the pillar page’s ranking within search engines. When your ranking stabilizes and you’ve grown your authority on the topic, you can take the chain of clusters further by linking out to a related topic.
A natural follow-up cluster to the “content marketing” topic could be the next step in the content marketing process, such as how to create content that converts.

Tactical Tips to Get Started With Topic Clusters
Choosing a topic to create cluster content around and auditing existing content can be downright painful, especially if your company has an extensive archive. Here are a few suggestions to help you organize and create topic clusters.

Map out five to ten core problems that your buyer persona has. Use surveys, run interviews, and do some secondary research within online communities as needed to gather the data.
Group each of the problems into broad topic areas.
Build out each of the core topics with subtopics using keyword research.
Map out content ideas that align with each of the core topics and corresponding subtopics.
Validate each idea with industry and competitive research.
Create content, measure the impact, and refine.

To keep track of content and links within a topic cluster, your team can set up a sheet like the one below. Depending on the complexity of the topic and the number of pages you’re linking to, some of the categories may not be necessary.

The categories to track include the following.

Page URL
Cluster topic
Subcluster (if applicable)
Keyword to rank for
Is it linked to the pillar page? (Y/N)
Is it relinked (if applicable)? (Y/N)
Any other actions needed
Has the other action been taken yet? (Y/N)
Links out to pages 1, 2, 3, and/or 4
Is it also a sub-pillar page (if applicable)? (Y/N)

Help is On The Way
Many companies are also developing tools to help marketing teams organize content around topics. Point solutions on the market, such as MarketMuse, identify content gaps and can help you organize and optimize content by topic cluster.

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HubSpot also has a content strategy tool that helps you create, execute, and measure content in topics.
Machine learning helps marketers identify the cluster topics (or long-tail keywords) that their target personas typically search for and offers subtopic suggestions. Soon, there will be more tools to help SEO specialists and marketers create topic clusters to maximize their content strategies.
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This report contains links for HubSpot Content, Products, and Services.
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in 2017 but was updated in 2022 for comprehensiveness.

Email marketing is an effective channel to use for communication with groups of all sizes. Emails are easy to write and send and are unintrusive for the recipient. Because of this, sending bulk emails has become a popular way to scale marketing efforts.  But how do you send bulk emails? And how do you know…
The post The Best Way to Send Bulk Emails appeared first on Benchmark Email.

Last Updated on October 19, 2022 by Rakesh GuptaBig Idea or Enduring Question: How can you avoid hard coding of ID in Salesforce Flow?  Objectives: This blog post will help us to understand the following Understand how to use custom Labels to avoid hard code of ID in the Flow
The post Just Say NO to Hard-Coded ID appeared first on Automation Champion.

Last Updated on October 31, 2022 by Rakesh GuptaBig Idea or Enduring Question: How can you avoid hard coding of ID in Salesforce Flow?  Objectives: This blog post will help us to understand the following Understand how to use custom Labels to avoid hard code of ID in the Flow
The post Just Say NO to Hard-Coded ID appeared first on Automation Champion.

FYI For all of you using this subject line, every single time I see this I feel actual rage. RAGE. It may help your open rates but it cannot possibly be a good longterm revenue strategy because people like me, who would normally ignore you or maybe even look at your offer, are going the extra mile to mark you as spam, unsubscribe, and talk sh*t about your brand to other professionals. Just stop. Be respectful FFS. submitted by /u/Chubby_Pessimist [link] [comments]

In early September, our team scheduled and organized our first in person meetup in Lisbon, Portugal. The initial plan was to gather in person and spend a week together, getting to know each other better and invest time into strengthening our team. However, due to a mix of reasons, from family leave to health, only half of our team was able to attend in person. I am the Engineering Manager for the Core Foundations team at Buffer, and we build and maintain the core elements for accessing, scheduling, and publishing to your social channels for our web application. Love being able to schedule Instagram Reels? We built that! Getting on board with our new TikTok channel? That’s also on us. Happy that your account is secure from imposters? We do that! We are a team of eight, including five engineers (Arek, Dace, Heather, José, Mick), Product Manager (Amanda), and our Designer (Sofia), and we are located across Europe and the USA. Over half of our team joined since we had to pause our annual retreats in 2020, which means that most of us had never met in person. While we firmly believe that we can do our jobs well remotely, we understand that there is still so much to be gained from meeting in person and naturally forming stronger bonds. Amanda (our PM) and I were responsible for organizing and facilitating the meetup. Taking into account travel time, we were left with three days of team time. We dedicated one day to sightseeing and two days to have hybrid team sessions which involved everyone’s attendance. I have significant experience designing and facilitating workshops for teams as an Agile coach, which I leaned upon when planning this one. The main difference is that all of my prior workshops have been either fully in person or fully remote. I’ve also worked with globally distributed teams in an organization that had a co-located company HQ office and smaller satellite offices or remote workers. Here I learned about the experiences that people based outside of HQ had in meetings with those co-located — they typically felt excluded. As someone who cares passionately about inclusivity, I took this feedback seriously and did my best to make all environments that I have influence over as inclusive as possible. In the past, I mandated in person workshops and dismissed hybrid options as being too hard. Since that isn’t an option anymore, I have had to learn! Why hybrid meetups?Hybrid (a combination of remote and co-located) workplaces have become the new norm as companies transform from the necessary remote working conditions of the pandemic. With over 85% of employees stating that it is their preferred way of working and no productivity reduction, it seems unlikely that this will change. This flexibility has led to employees working from anywhere, which leads to timezone differences. Additionally, business travel has remained less than in pre-pandemic times, with companies wanting to continue to capitalize on the environmental and financial benefits realized during the pandemic and rise of remote collaboration tools, and people’s personal travel preferences changing. Meetings and workshops are still valuable forums for timely collaboration, and so now we must consider how we can make them effective when we can’t have everyone present in person — we have to think, how do we do this hybrid?What I’ve learned about hybrid facilitation1. Design the agenda and set up for whoever will find collaboration the most difficult.When you have co-located and remote people participating in a meeting or workshop, it is hardest for anyone who is remote. Even our team, who are used to working remotely, naturally defaulted to focusing and talking to the people who were present in the room. Therefore, it’s critical to be intentional about designing workshops to be inclusive and to communicate the importance of that to everyone participating. Some measures that I took were:Highlight the situation and stress the importance of ensuring that our remote team member would feel included and able to be heard.Create a sense of psychological safety by establishing ground rules at the beginning, including: Have a ‘safe word’ to call out if you feel like discussions are going off-track — ours was pineapple. Anyone can take a break without having to ask for permission. Ask everyone to be fully present (no phones or Slack open) or be upfront with other commitments that would require them to be otherwise.As the facilitator, keep track of how often remote joiners are speaking and regularly ask them directly for input – it is also a good idea to make this intention clear from the beginning so that everyone is aware of the situation and also isn’t caught unaware.Using the first day to do activities that helped us get to know each other’s personalities better, as we couldn’t rely on social dinners etc., to do that.Everyone individually joins the Zoom calls rather than having our co-located group join one.Use online tools — more coming on this later!2. Recording sessions/conversations allowed anyone not attending to still contribute asynchronously.We had five people in person in Lisbon, two in New York, and one in Ireland — that meant catering for three people joining remotely, and we were spread across two different timezones with a five-hour difference.We wanted to be respectful of everyone’s working hours i.e., not force everyone in NY to start at 5 am or everyone in Europe to stay until 10 pm. So we broke up the days into two blocks – 10 am-1 pm CEST and 2 pm-6 pm CEST/9 am-1 pm CEST. This fit well around standard meal times and allowed our US teammates to dial in for a full second session. To enable them to participate in content that we discussed in the first session, we recorded them via Zoom and asked them to participate later by watching it and recording their own response, which we could watch later. Because they were in the same timezone, I asked them to do the activities together, which made it a more collaborative half-asynchronous/half-synchronous session. 3. Lean into your online toolsWe use Zoom as our standard video conferencing tool and Loom for short messages. Using a digital whiteboard makes collaboration and note-taking simple — we use Miro to do all of our digital brainstorming, and I absolutely love it for its templates, ease of use, and the broad range of features. While using physical stickies and whiteboards is a lot easier in the moment for those there in person, this was much easier because a) everyone could contribute easily independently (no having to write things down for remote contributors) and b) there was no need to take photos and later digitize them!Pre-preparing everything in the Miro board (plus a few extra options) made it easier for Amanda and me to collaborate, and I felt more confident about how to facilitate everything on the dayOne of the Miro boards we used to determine discussion topics4. Using our own devices set meetings on even groundEveryone used their own laptops and cameras and joined the Zoom call; even those meeting in person made it feel less ‘me and them’ for anyone joining remotely. The way that we did it was to have one person leave their laptop microphone and speakers on while everyone else muted. Session facilitators shared their screen via Zoom for presentations and discussions, and during activities, everyone worked on the Miro board through their own browsers.Although the people in the room tended to still face each other when speaking, one remote teammate (Mick) also mentioned that it made it easier to understand conversations when the audio was unclear!It is easier for people who are present in person to contribute to verbal conversations – directly asking remote joiners for their opinion ensures they get the opportunity. The mics on our laptops are good at picking up sound but not great — next time, I will bring a conference microphone and speaker! Also, our laptop’s mic/speakers/video weren’t in sync, which wasn’t awful but did make conversations feel disjointed sometimes.Over to youHybrid facilitation is harder than in person, or even fully remote, facilitation, but not impossible! With some intention and clear communication with everyone involved, you can still have effective team workshops and meetings. However, it won’t be the same as a fully in person meetup, and it’s not fair for organizers or the team to claim otherwise. There will still be some elements missing for anyone joining remotely for a meetup like ours — we can’t record every interaction, and conversation that happens and so they miss out on those natural conversations. Also, any learnings that you get from seeing people in person and their body language that Zoom calls just don’t provide. The main thing to remember is that there is still value in including everyone, and with some consideration, it can bring a lot of value to your team.We’d love to hear your experience with hybrid meetups! Send us a tweet or join our community.