Category: Marketing Automation

There are few times more exciting in a company than during a product launch. Anticipation brews and a sense of optimism emerges around the prospect of a growth in market share.
Still, a question always arises when a new product launches: do enough people know about this launch for it to be successful?
There are multiple avenues to communicate through during a product launch — ads, social media, PR, and blog promotion, to name a few. Yet, one of the most underrated and effective communication methods to alert internal and external stakeholders is a product launch email.

Not only do product launch emails make your customers aware of the product launch, but they also communicate vital information about the launch to those inside of your company.
In this post, we’ll walk you through the steps for writing three different types of product launch emails, including offering suggestions for your product launch email subject lines and outlining the ideal product launch email sequence.
Featured Resource: Product Marketing Email Templates [Download Now]

HubSpot’s Free Product Marketing Kit is full of the organizational templates you’ll need to spread the word about your product, including email templates. Why waste time starting from scratch? Click here to download the templates.
Internal Product Launch Email
You’ll want to share an internal product launch email with your entire company on either the day of or prior to your product launch. With this email, you’ll want to turn all of the employees at your company into an enthusiastic, well-informed, word-of-mouth marketing team by providing them with:

An overview of the product
Why employees should be excited about it
“Lazy copy” for email and social media that employees can copy and paste

Here’s an outline of an internal product launch email. You can also download it as a template with more details.
1. Subject line and preview text.
Keep the subject line at or under 12 words. We’ll provide a list of examples below.
2. Greeting and tl;dr.
Just like you, the employees at your company are busy, so capture their attention with a quick hello and a 1-2 sentence overview on the product launch.
3. What is it?
Give your readers the very basic info on your product, like what it’s called, what it does, when it’s available to the public, and how much it costs. You should also include an image so readers have a visual reference.
4. Why it matters.
Why should your employees be excited about this launch? You can go a little more in-depth here, so explain what void this product fills in the market and what opportunity you’re seizing on to expand your market share, delight more users, and expand your customer base.
Some questions you can answer in this section are:

Does this update address a common customer complaint?
Are you bringing your product up to par for the market you’re in?
Do you have statistics or revenue projections to prove the importance?

5. How it works.
In this section, give a brief overview of the steps required to get or use this product/feature. How do your customers sign up? Are there any usage limitations? Anticipate frequently asked questions — particularly from salespeople, marketers, account managers, and support reps — and try to reduce confusion upfront.
6. Who it’s for.
If you haven’t already covered it, say who the intended audience for this product is, or if any users will automatically see this new feature. This section is particularly important for regional or language-specific products.
7. Where to go with questions.
Provide the contact info and name of the person or people who are best equipped to answer any questions about the product, its launch, or its promotion.
8. Lazy copy.
You’ll want to make it as simple as possible for employees to share the product launch over email or social media. Provide sample text and URLs that can be copied and pasted — or better yet, pre-made social links from a site like Share Link Generator.
Here’s an example of lazy copy for every situation.

Twitter: We’ve just launched [Product Name] here @[Company Name]! This new feature will let you [List Main Benefit]. Click here to learn more about it [Insert URL].

LinkedIn: It’s an exciting day here at [Company Name]! Today, we’re announcing our launch of [Product Name] – a new product that [List One or Two Major Benefits or Features].We’re thrilled to finally share this with our customers. Learn more at our website, and reach out to me if you have any questions about the new product! [Insert Product Page URL]
Email:

Product Launch Email Templates
Remember, you can save time by using product launch planning and email templates. You can download free product marketing email templates here in our Product Marketing Go-To-Market Kit. You and your team can work together to make an exciting product launch campaign if you take advantage of these tools.
So when you create or find the template that’s right for you, add in your product’s information and get your network buzzing about it.
Internal Product Launch Email Subject Lines
Need a good email subject line for your internal product launch announcement email? Try one of these on for size.

It’s Time! [Product] is now live. Click to learn more!
We just launched [Product] – And we need your help
[NOW LIVE]: [Product] is available to the public
[Product] launches today. Here’s what you need to know.
The moment you’ve all been waiting for: [Product] is here.
[PLEASE READ]: Everything you need to know about [Product].
[Product] goes live today. Help us spread the word!

Internal Product Launch Update Email
The internal product launch update email is best shared with direct stakeholders in the product launch. For example: product marketers, product managers, designers, social, and PR.
These emails should be sent routinely leading up to the official product launch (every week, every other week, etc.) and provide readers with actionable steps on what has happened since your last email, what needs to be done, and whether or not you’re on track for launch.
Here’s an outline of what your internal product launch update email should look like. You can also download it as a template with more details.
1. Subject line and preview text.
Keep the subject line at or under 12 words. We’ll provide a list of examples below.
2. Days until product launch.
Reiterate the scheduled date of the product launch in addition to how many days remain.
3. Major updates.
List out any major updates that have occurred between the previous email and this one. For example: a bug was fixed, final designs were approved, or you secured placement in a leading circuit on announcement day.
4. Resources.
Link out to shared documents, the campaign planning spreadsheets, or any other resources that your team may need to reference this week.
5. Progress against goals.
Remind your team of the overarching campaign goals in this section and provide a status update (complete, meeting, exceeding, or lagging).
6. Updates by the team.
Run through brief status updates and developments from each team. This is also a great place to share each team’s focus for the upcoming week.
7. Questions or comments.
Encourage recipients to reach out to you directly with any questions.
Internal Product Launch Update Email Subject Line Examples
Choose a subject line for your internal product launch update emails and make it the standard for whenever you send out your updates.

[Date] Bi-weekly [Product Name] Update
[#] Days Until [Product]: This Week’s Update
[Product] Launch Status: Today’s Action Items
New from [Company]: A Solution for [Main Problem]
[Product]: A Solution to Your [Problem]
Available Now: [Product], the Solution to [Problem]
[Product] is Now Available. Here’s How You Can Get it.
Problems With [Problem]? Try [Product] – New from [Company]
At Last – A Solution to Your [Problem]
Meet [Product]: A New Product to Help You [Benefit]

External Product Launch Email
The time has come to share your exciting new product with the world.
If you have an established list of loyal contacts in your CRM, create a list of recipients you think would benefit from the product launch email. While you can send out a mass email to all of your contacts, it makes sense to group your contacts together by their lifecycle stage or their interests so that you’re prioritizing customers who would be most interested or ready for your new product.
Here’s how you might want to format an email to your contacts to encourage them to buy or learn more about your new product.
1. Subject line and preview text.
Keep the subject line at or under 12 words. We’ll provide a list of examples below.
2. Greeting and tl;dr.
Like your fellow employees, your customers are also very busy. Don’t bury the lede — start the email off with the big news! Buzzwords like “new,” “big news,” or “now available” would be good to implement here, alongside a quick overview of what the product is called, what it does, and an image of the product.
3. Overview of the product.
Provide a high-level summary of what the product is, why it was made, and what it does.
4. Key features.
List the key features or benefits of this offer. If you have a product demo video, you may want to link to it here.
5. Call-to-action.
Leave your contacts with an actionable next step. Do you want them to reply to you with questions? Sign up for a demo? Check out the new product page on your website? Whatever your desired next step is, make it abundantly clear with a link or by bolding the action.
External Product Launch Email Subject Lines Examples
Want to grab the attention of your contacts? Try one of these product launch email subject lines:

New from [Company]: A Solution for [Main Problem]
[Product]: A Solution to Your [Problem]
Available Now: [Product], the Solution to [Problem]
[Product] is Now Available. Here’s How You Can Get it.
Problems With [Problem]? Try [Product] – New from [Company]
At Last – A Solution to Your [Problem]
Meet [Product]: A New Product to Help You [Benefit]

Product Launch Email Sequence
To spread the word for your product launch more efficiently, consider enrolling your contacts into an email sequence in your email marketing software. Here are the steps you might want to follow:
Internal Product Launch Email Sequence
1. Introductory email: Alert the employees the product development is in progress and why.2. Pre-launch email: Let employees know when the product is set to be launched and what is expected of them on launch day.3. Launch day email: On the day of the product launch, alert all employees the product is available to the public and provide share links.4. Follow-up email: After some time has passed, send employees an update of your performance against goals, and a reminder of how employees can help the product launch be more successful.
External Product Launch Email Sequence
When you want to build anticipation among your contacts, consider an external product launch email sequence. This can be used to gradually increase your prospects’ interests before and after the product comes out.
Remember: you may only want to enroll people in this sequence that meet certain qualification criteria.
1. Pre-Announcement Email.
This email comes once you feel the product is in a good place and you’re comfortable announcing its release date to the public. It should include a basic description of the product in addition to an expected time frame. We suggest not identifying an official launch date unless you are absolutely confident the date you have chosen is accurate — you never know what could go wrong between now and then, so it’s best to play it safe.
2. Announcement Email.
This email should be the official email announcement of your product. We’ve outlined what should be included in this email in the section above, but remember to keep the content in this email short, informative, and actionable.
3. Follow-Up Email.
This email should be sent to the contacts you feel would be a good fit for your new product but didn’t follow up with your original email. Kindly remind them that you think they would benefit from this new product and you’re excited to hear if they’re interested.
When building excitement for your new product, having this sequence can keep your customers waiting in anticipation of your next best thing. Take a look below at an example of a real, recent product launch.
Email to Customer about New Product Example
Samsung has been exceptionally successful in advertising its new Galaxy Fold cell phones, and its emails have been building suspense for them for over a year.
This email example serves as one of its pre-announcements, allowing excited customers to pre-order the device. Previous emails they’ve sent have included the specifications and features of the Fold, and this email gives a time frame of when customers should expect its arrival.

You can keep it simple as shown above, or get creative in your new product emails — just make sure it’s conveying the information your customers want to know.
Ready, Set, Launch! (Your Next Product)
Build your email marketing campaigns in a way that appeals to your own internal team, and your customers in search of the next best thing. We hope you can implement some tips from this guide into your marketing, and wish you the best of luck in your next product launch.

Leadership looks different for everyone.
Some choose to use a democratic style, where they make final decisions after getting input from team members. Some are individualists, focused on personal development and improvement, while others act as a coach that works to help employees develop their skills and build strong teams.
Although different in practice, most leadership styles have in common that the leader is a force of authority at their business — entirely different from servant leadership, where authority is purposely left by the wayside.
In this post, learn about servant leadership, its main characteristics, and how it can benefit your organization.

What is servant leadership?
Servant leadership is the idea that a leader’s primary goal is to serve their employees and give them the support they need to develop their skills and succeed at their jobs. This differs from traditional leadership in that a leader doesn’t enforce their authority or treat others as subordinates.
Robert K. Greenleaf first coined the term servant leader in his 1970 essay The Servant as Leader. In the essay, he says that the servant leader “Focuses primarily on the growth and well-being of people and the communities to which they belong” and that they “Put the needs of others first and help people develop and perform as highly as possible.”
Essentially, the leader (a boss, CEO, or any type of executive at a business) exists to serve the people that work for the company. In turn, employees supported by a leader with their best interest at heart are more motivated, empowered, high-performing, and able to provide customers with the best possible experience.  
Servant Leadership Characteristics
In his essay, Greenleaf outlines ten fundamental principles of servant leadership, which we’ll discuss below.

1. Listening
Servant leaders must be good listeners. It helps them get to know the people that work for the business and what they’re all about.
With listening, servant leaders will discover insight about employees that will help them best support their needs, whether it’s understanding areas for personal development or simply learning how employees feel at work and if anything needs to be done to improve their experience.
2. Empathy
Servant leaders need to be empathetic as it’s one of the best ways to help employees grow to be the best they can be.
For example, an employee may express a desire to develop a particular skill, and they want to feel as though you’re listening to them and understanding their needs. Empathy helps with this, as you’ll be able to relate to their interest and ask further questions that help you help them move forward.
Empathy is also critical in servant leadership when it comes to correcting behaviors. For example, say that an employee could not meet a goal at the end of the quarter. With traditional leadership, you may tell the employee that they must perform better without giving actionable advice that will help them do so.
Instead, a servant leader would be empathetic towards the situation and want to understand the roadblocks that caused them to struggle. Of course, you’d still like to ensure that it wouldn’t happen again, but you’d work alongside the employee to guarantee they have the tools to perform better and meet their goals next quarter.
3. Healing
Greenleaf says that servant leaders must understand the importance of healing as people aren’t always used to working in situations where their leader doesn’t force their authority and require compliance.
A servant leader needs to understand that they may need to work with employees to become comfortable with the process and create a working environment that builds trust and helps them be comfortable with your leadership style.
4. Self-awareness
Servant leaders must be self-aware because they need to understand their position and perception within their team. For example, if you’re enforcing your authority, you’re not a servant leader, and you’re likely pushing employees away. Therefore, it’s essential to be aware of the space you take up within your team on a day-to-day basis.
Self-awareness also helps servant leaders understand their strengths and weaknesses when assisting employees to be the best they can be. For example, if you receive feedback that you’re not the best at communicating, you should identify your weakness and work to improve, as employees can’t succeed if they don’t understand you.
5. Persuasion
Servant leaders use persuasion instead of power and authority to influence their teams and get everyone on the same page. You should convince others and get buy-in without forcing compliance or telling people that they simply have to do something because you said they have to.
6. Conceptualization
Conceptualization means that servant leaders can develop a direction for their teams that will bring company success.
This key characteristic directly relates to other skills on this list. For example, suppose a servant leader conceptualizes a goal for employees. In that case, they should be able to persuade without forcing compliance and provide employees with everything they need to help actualize the goal and be there for them throughout the process.
7. Foresight
The Oxford Language Dictionary defines foresight as the ability to predict or the action of predicting what will happen or be needed in the future. With servant leadership, this means using historical performance and current objectives to predict future outcomes and what employees will need to help them succeed.
For example, if your teams have historically struggled with a particular task and that task is required to meet an upcoming objective, your foresight should let you know that you’d want to be present to assist when employees are undertaking that task, and maybe provide extra resources to ensure people don’t get stuck.
8. Stewardship
Stewardship is synonymous with accountability in servant leadership. The leader can take responsibility for their actions and understand how their support for their employees contributes to the overall performance of their teams.
9. Commitment to the Growth of People
Servant leaders want employees to be equipped with the tools and resources they need to succeed and feel motivated to help the company succeed. As such, servant leaders must be committed to the growth and development of people.
In practice, this can look like ensuring employees have the proper training for their required duties, planning development opportunities, or even checking in with employees to understand their career goals and figuring out how to help them get there.
10. Building community
Workplace communities foster a sense of trust and togetherness, which helps people feel like they are working together to meet a common goal. As a servant leader, you’d want to ensure that your workplace feels like a community by building relationships with others and encouraging people to build relationships with their coworkers.
As mentioned above, servant leadership is significantly different from traditional leadership styles. The leader is not an authoritative force but more of a collaborator that works alongside employees to help them succeed. It may be helpful to have some examples of what servant leadership can look like in action, so we’ll discuss some below.
Servant Leadership Examples
Leading by Example
A servant leader is willing to do anything that they ask their employees to do.
So, let’s say that employees are rushing to meet quotas for the month. Rather than instructing employees to just work harder, a servant leader will sit down with them and help them get there. Maybe they take on some tasks, motivate employees, and provide actionable advice that helps them meet their targets.
Collaboration
A servant leader sits down with employees and asks them to share feedback about business processes and whether they help them perform their duties. The servant leader actively listens to feedback, learns from what they’ve heard, and works to make necessary changes to help employees seamlessly do their work.
Empathy
A servant leader cares about their employees as people. If someone comes to them and lets them know that they’re going through something, the servant leader doesn’t tell them to check their feelings at the door or inform them that they better not fall short of expectations.
Instead, they work with the employee to develop a plan that will allow them to succeed despite what they’re going through.
Servant Leadership Can Help Companies Succeed
Although different from traditional styles, servant leaders can build motivated and capable teams that succeed in business.
If you’re a leader looking to try their hand at this leadership style, make sure that you understand who your employees are as people, provide them with the tools and support they need to succeed, and act as an ever-present resource, no matter what they need.

You know that your clients are looking for the best results, the fastest turnaround, and the lowest cost possible—an almost impossible combination if you are running a marketing agency. So your goal, as an agency owner, is to optimize processes and offload as much routine as possible. Then, with all of the saved time, you can focus on the core of your business, getting traffic, leads, awareness, and a higher ROI for your clients. No-code can become your magic helper in automating your processes, managing clients’ projects, and maximizing profit by building simple growth projects with no-code tools. Let’s learn how no-code can benefit marketing agencies. Read more: https://welovenocode.com/marketing-guides/tpost/m217feokd1-no-code-for-marketing-agencies-how-to-be
submitted by /u/kodjima33 [link] [comments]

Every summer, I start a vegetable garden. I purchase seeds, plant them in various places in my backyard, tend to them, and with the help of the right weather conditions, help them grow. Why am I talking about gardening on a marketing blog?
Content seeding. But instead of planting zucchini seeds, marketers plant content to grow brand awareness and leads.

Let’s get into the specifics of what content seeding is and how it works.

Content seeding allows brands to highlight their content in places target audiences will see and engage with it. Influencers are a prime choice for content seeding because they usually have large audiences. These audiences have been proven to trust influencers more than their friends.
For instance, lifestyle subscription box FabFitFun has a target audience of women “ages 18-34, who love a good deal [and] want to hear about the latest and greatest trends in beauty, fitness, nutrition, and style.” When they work with influencers on content seeding, they choose platforms their target audience is interested in, like my favorite podcast, True Crime Obsessed (TCO).
When I heard ads for FabFitFun on TCO, I was immediately interested in the brand and what it offers, so I followed the link in the podcast subscription. The added bonus of hearing high praises from hosts I’ve come to connect with and trust solidified my interest and ultimately drove me to subscribe. That’s content seeding in motion.
When I heard ads for FabFitFun on TCO, I was immediately interested in the brand and what it offers, so I followed the link in the podcast subscription. The added bonus of hearing high praises from hosts I’ve come to connect with and trust solidified my interest and ultimately drove me to subscribe. That’s content seeding in motion.
Part of the reason content seeding is so successful is that the content shared by influencers or partners is relevant to the target audience. Market research shows brands, like FabFitFun, where their audience is and gives them clues as to where to seed content.
What is influencer seeding?
Often brands will give out products or services to influencers in the hopes that they will share favorable reviews or promote the product to their audience. This is referred to as influencer seeding. Like content seeding, utilizing influencers that align with the interests of your target audience will yield the best results.
Having industry leaders promote a brand through their social platforms or other networks increases the reach of the business, because they’ve built trust with their own audiences.
This doesn’t mean that you have to find the influencer with the most followers to do the job. Sure, someone with millions of followers will have a wide reach, but there is value in utilizing micro-influencers, too. Micro-influencers – those with roughly 10,000 to 50,000 followers – often serve more niche, but loyal audiences. This can be an advantage when you are looking to segment or narrow your target audience.
Micro-influencers also provide a level of authenticity influencers with higher follower counts lack due to their mass appeal. Social media platforms are inundated with marketing campaigns and ads. Make your product or service stand out by tapping into the networks of smaller influencers and take advantage of word-of-mouth cred.
However, influencers aren’t the only way to facilitate content seeding. You can also contact an agency that specializes in seeding, or reach out to thought leaders for a partnership on a blog post or email newsletter.
Where Content Seeding is Commonly Used
While blogging and editorial outlets previously served as the primary avenues for content seeding, social media platforms have become the dominant method of choice.

TikTok
Twitter
YouTube
Facebook
Instagram
LinkedIn
Podcasts
Pinterest

All of these platforms are useless if you don’t have a plan in place to utilize them. Next, we’ll dig into tips for creating an effective influencer seeding campaign.
Creating an Influencer Seeding Strategy
Creating a plan will help you conserve resources and focus your energy on what’s most important for your brand. Here are some best practices to follow:

Set your end goal: What would you like to accomplish? Are you looking to build brand awareness or boost sales? Once your goals are established, you can assess which platform would make the most sense to use to achieve them.

Research ideal influencers: By now you should have clear personas identifying who your target audience is. With that information in hand, look into the types of people they would follow and their interests. Look at trending hashtags or topics related to your brand, and the influencers who follow them.

Send relevant content, services, and products: You’ll want to make sure what you’re sending the influencer to promote is actually relevant to their brand and audience. For example, if you sell artisan chocolates, you may want to reach out to influencers that have content dedicated to chocolate sweets and desserts, instead of just sending products out to foodies in general. This is where going niche pays off.

Engage and comment: If an influencer posts anything regarding your brand, engage with it. This can include liking the post, commenting, or sharing. Even if the feedback is negative, you can thank them for their honest review and find out how you can make improvements.

Measure the outcome: Examine the reach of influencer posts, traffic statistics, and engagement (shares, comments, brand mentions). For ecommerce, track any promo codes or affiliate links used during the campaign. Looking at these metrics will help you figure out what worked and what didn’t.

If you’re starting to think of ways you can get into content seeding, which platforms to use, and what content to share — don’t worry, we’re going to look at more great examples of content seeding next.
Content Seeding Examples
1. Claire Saffitz x Coveteur

Claire Saffitz, host of series “Gourmet Makes,” has become a food influencer because of how much she connects with fans of the channel. Recently, Saffitz collaborated with magazine Coveteur on her Instagram.
This is a great example of content seeding because Coveteur’s partnership with Saffitz brought recognition to their magazine. Her Q/A with the lifestyle magazine could closely appeal to Saffitz’s fans: people who are interested in cooking and health. The closely running avenues of the publisher’s audiences mean a potential 971,000 new readers from Saffitz’s Instagram.
2. Mandy McEwen x LinkedIn Marketing

Founder of marketing company Mod Girl Marketing, Mandy McEwen, partnered with LinkedIn Marketing’s Thought Leadership campaign. This partnership aligns with McEwen’s following — professionals who are interested in working with thought leaders — and LinkedIn’s audience — professionals looking for workplace connections and advancements.
McEwen also gains new engagement from the partnership, while building her credibility as a marketer. This is a great example of how content seeding can work both ways to build brand awareness.
3. Lin-Manuel Miranda x Reddit

Social platform Reddit had actor Lin-Manuel Miranda (Hamilton, In the Heights) run an Ask Me Anything (AMA) on the site. The thing about AMAs is that you must have an account to participate. Fans had to sign up for an account to ask Miranda a question, then notice social communities for Miranda’s line of work, like Broadway and television.
Having Miranda post this on Twitter to three million followers is great exposure for Reddit. If the platform wanted to grow its theatre-based threads and community, this AMA was a perfect seed to plant.
4. Louis Tomlinson x GQ

Musician Louis Tomlinson collaborated with GQ to go undercover, answering comments from Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram. The Actually Me series not only gets celebrities to answer fun questions, but it’s a great way for them to engage directly with fans.
Tomlinson and GQ each have large audiences, but Tomlinson’s 35 million Twitter followers and 17.9 million Instagram followers would certainly expand GQ’s reach.
GQ partnering with Tomlinson to promote another channel of theirs is a smart way to attract potential subscribers. If fans find that more of their favorite artists have similar videos on GQ’s YouTube channel, they might tune in and share their finds to their own audience.
5. Sara Blakely x Masterclass

Founder and CEO of Spanx, Sara Blakely, worked with MasterClass on an entrepreneurship course. MasterClass is an online education platform offering courses in various industries. Learn tennis from 23-time title holder Serena Williams or get a crash course in fashion from Vogue Editor-In-Chief Anna Wintour.
Blakely’s partnership with MasterClass is an invitation for fans of the entrepreneur to get a look into how she built her empire. If 300,000 of Blakely’s followers are interested in her story, the website could benefit greatly from dropping their branded content on her Instagram.
Make Content Seeding Work for You
My vegetable garden thrives every year because of a combination of work from my end, the right soil, and favorable weather conditions. The same is true for content seeding. A perfect content seeding strategy is built from a combination of brands finding the right partners, a great platform, and a favorable product or service to promote.
You don’t have to invest huge amounts of money into content seeding. Choosing micro-influencers or guest bloggers and podcast interviews are more cost-effective ways of content seeding as well.
This article was originally published November 25, 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Within 1.84 billion daily active users, Facebook is a valuable platform for marketers. In fact, 10 million advertisers already use the platform to meet their marketing goals.
There are various types of ads you can run on the platform to meet different needs, like lead generation ads, videos, or carousel ads. However, regardless of the ad you choose to run, each has one thing in common: they cost money.
In this post, learn about CBO, a specific type of budgeting option on Facebook, the benefits it can bring to your campaign marketing, and how to use it on Facebook ads manager.

The most significant benefit to CBO is that your campaign spending is optimized for top-performing ad sets. You’re not spending equal amounts on poor-performing and high-performing ads but instead spending more money where you’re going to maximize ROI.
In addition, the process is automated — an algorithm learns from your campaign goals and the ads you want to run and distributes money without you needing to do anything. With other processes, like ABO, changes need to be made manually.
Facebook CBO vs. ABO
Ad Set Budget Optimization, or ABO, is when you create a set budget for each ad set, and each receives the same amount of money, regardless of performance. It’s not an automated process, so you need to track performance and make necessary adjustments on your own.
With CBO, you set an overall campaign budget, and an algorithm distributes money to different ad sets based on what it deems will perform best. As a result, different ad sets may receive more money. The image below is a graphic that shows the difference between CBO and ABO on Facebook.

Image Source
For example, if your overall budget is $100 and you have four ad sets, each ad set will receive $25 with ABO. With CBO, a campaign budget of $100 will be distributed based on opportunities for high-performance, so one ad set may receive $25, another $35, another $20, and another $20.
How To Set Up Facebook CBO
Setting up Facebook CBO is a relatively straightforward process, and we’ll outline the steps below.
1. Navigate to Facebook Ads Manager.
2. Click the blue Create New Campaign button.
3. Name your campaign.
4. Select your designed campaign objective from the pop-up menu (as shown in the image below).

5. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and toggle the Campaign Budget Optimization button into the on position, as highlighted in red in the image below.

6. Once toggled into the on position, you’re prompted to specify whether your campaign budget has a daily spend limit or if it’s an overall lifetime budget (as shown in the image below).

7. Select your campaign bid strategy, which is how you want your budget to be spent.

8. Once you’ve entered all of the above information, you’ll be prompted to enter standard information you’d enter when creating a standard Facebook ad (conversion location, campaign schedule, audience information, asset placements, etc.).
Should you choose to use CBO, it’s essential to follow best practices.
Facebook CBO Best Practices
Let’s go over some best practices for using CBO, according to Facebook.
1. Use large audiences.
Larger audience groups make it easier for the algorithm to make accurate, strategic decisions for distributing funds for your campaigns. More audience members equal more metrics, which equals more available data for the algorithm to study and learn from.
2. Don’t use too many ad sets.
Facebook notes that exceeding 70 ad sets limits the number of edits you can make after publishing and also causes the algorithm to take more time to learn from your data and optimize your ad spend for higher performance.
3. Don’t pause and unpause your ad sets.
CBO is an automated system, so your campaign budgets are distributed based on active ads. If you pause certain sets, their data does not get factored into the algorithmic decision process, and it will allocate your budgets elsewhere. If you leave ads paused for too long, it’s possible that spending will be used up, and your paused ads won’t run.
4. Be strategic about ad set spending limits.
CBO is most powerful when the algorithm has free reign to learn from data and metrics. If you set too many limits on ad spending, like daily budgets, the algorithm has less flexibility, and your budgets will be less optimized.
If you prefer to set stricter limits and optimize per ad set, Facebook recommends using ABO.
5. Input all changes in bulk.
Facebook says that it takes significant time for campaign changes to go live when using CBO, so it’s essential to make all adjustments in bulk to minimize downtime.
CBO Helps You Optimize And Save Time
Using Campaign Budget Optimization on Facebook helps save you time through automation and ensures that your spending on the platform is optimized for best results. If you decide it’s right for you, consider the best practices and begin creating your campaign in Ads Manager.

Do you take a good, hard look at your team’s marketing strategy every year?
You should. An annual marketing plan helps you set your marketing on the right course to make your company’s business goals a reality. Think of it as a high-level plan that guides the direction of your team’s campaigns, goals, and growth.
Without one, things can get messy — and it’s nearly impossible to put a number on the budget you’ll need to secure for the projects, hiring, and outsourcing you’ll encounter over the course of a year if you don’t have a plan.
Keep in mind there are variations to the marketing plan you need, depending on your industry and the goals of your marketing team. To make your plan’s creation easier, we’ve put together a list of what to include in your plan and a few different planning templates where you can easily fill in the blanks.

To start, let’s dive into how to create a marketing plan and then take a look at what a high-level marketing plan has inside.
In this article, we’re going to discuss:

What a High-Level Marketing Plan Includes
How to Create a Marketing Plan
Marketing Plan Templates You Can Use
Simplified Marketing Plan Template
Plus — Social Media Plan Templates

Marketing Plan Outline
Marketing plans can get quite granular to reflect the industry you’re in, whether you’re selling to consumers (B2C) or other businesses (B2B), and how big your digital presence is. Nonetheless, here are the elements every effective marketing plan includes:
1. Business Summary
In a marketing plan, your Business Summary is exactly what it sounds like: a summary of the organization. This includes:

The company name
Where it’s headquartered
Its mission statement

2. Business Initiatives
The Business Initiatives element of a marketing plan helps you segment the various goals of your department. Be careful not to include big-picture company initiatives, which you’d normally find in a business plan. This section of your marketing plan should outline the projects that are specific to marketing. You’ll also describe the goals of those projects and how those goals will be measured.
3. Customer Analysis
Here’s where you’ll conduct some basic market research. If your company has already done a thorough market research study, this section of your marketing plan might be easier to put together.
Ultimately, this element of your marketing plan will help you describe the industry you’re selling to and your buyer persona. A buyer persona is a semi-fictional description of your ideal customer, focusing on traits like:

Age
Location
Title
Goals
Personal challenges
Pains
Triggering events

4. Competitor Analysis
Your buyer persona has choices when it comes to solving their problems, choices in both the types of solutions they consider and the providers that can administer those solutions. In your market research, you should consider your competition, what they do well, and where the gaps are that you can potentially fill. This can include:

Positioning
Market share
Offerings
Pricing

5. SWOT Analysis
Your marketing plan’s Business Summary also includes a SWOT analysis, which stands for the business’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Be patient with your business’s SWOT analysis; you’ll write most of it based on your market research from the sections above and your strategy below.
6. Market Strategy
Your Market Strategy uses the information included in the above sections to describe how your company should approach the market. What will your business offer your buyer personas that your competitors aren’t already offering them?
In a full-length marketing plan, this section can contain the “seven Ps of marketing”:

Product
Price
Place
Promotion
People
Process
Physical Evidence

(You’ll learn more about these seven sub-components inside our free marketing plan template, which you can download below.)
7. Budget
Don’t mistake the Budget element of your marketing plan with your product’s price or other company financials. Your budget describes how much money the business has allotted the marketing team to pursue the initiatives and goals outlined in the elements above.
Depending on how many individual expenses you have, you should consider itemizing this budget by what specifically you’ll spend your budget on. Example marketing expenses include:

Outsourcing costs to a marketing agency and/or other providers
Marketing software
Paid promotions
Events (those you’ll host and/or attend)

8. Marketing Channels
Lastly, your marketing plan will include a list of your marketing channels. While your company might promote the product itself using certain ad space, your marketing channels are where you’ll publish the content that educates your buyers, generates leads, and spreads awareness of your brand.
If you publish (or intend to publish) on social media, this is the place to talk about it. Use the Marketing Channels section of your marketing plan to lay out which social networks you want to launch a business page on, what you’ll use this social network for, and how you’ll measure your success on this network. Part of this section’s purpose is to prove to your superiors, both inside and outside the marketing department, that these channels will serve to grow the business.
Businesses with extensive social media presences might even consider elaborating on their social strategy in a separate social media plan template.
9. Financial Projections
Knowing the budget and doing analysis on the marketing channels you want to invest in, you should be able to come up with a plan for how much budget to invest in which tactics based on expected ROI. From there, you’ll be able to come up with financial projections for the year. These won’t be 100% accurate but can help with executive planning.

1. Conduct a situation analysis.
Before you can get started with your marketing plan, you have to know your current situation.
What are your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats? Conducting a basic SWOT analysis is the first step to creating a marketing plan.
Additionally, you should also have an understanding of the current market. How do you compare to your competitors? Doing a competitor analysis should help you with this step.
Think about how other products are better than yours. Plus, consider the gaps in a competitor’s approach. What are they missing? What can you offer that’ll give you a competitive advantage? Think about what sets you apart.
Answering questions like this should help you figure out what your customer wants, which brings us to step number two.
2. Define your target audience.
Once you better understand the market and your company’s situation, make sure you know who your target audience is.
If your company already has buyer personas, this step might just mean you have to refine your current personas.
If you don’t have a buyer persona, you should create one. To do this, you might have to conduct market research.
Your buyer persona should include demographic information such as age, gender, and income. However, it will also include psychographic information such as pain points and goals. What drives your audience? What problems do they have that your product or service can fix?
Once you have this information written out, it’ll help you define your goals, which brings us to step number three.
3. Write SMART goals.
My mother always used to tell me, “You can’t go somewhere unless you have a road map.” Now, for me, someone who’s geographically challenged, that was literal advice.
However, it can also be applied metaphorically to marketing. You can’t improve your ROI unless you know what your goals are.
After you’ve figured out your current situation and know your audience, you can begin to define your SMART goals.
SMART goals are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. This means that all your goals should be specific and include a time frame for which you want to complete them.
For example, your goal could be to increase your Instagram followers by 15% in three months. Depending on your overall marketing goals, this should be relevant and attainable. Additionally, this goal is specific, measurable, and time-bound.
Before you start any tactic, you should write out your goals. Then, you can begin to analyze which tactics will help you achieve that goal. That brings us to step number four.
4. Analyze your tactics.
At this point, you’ve written down your goals based on your target audience and current situation.
Now, you have to figure out what tactics will help you achieve your goals. Plus, what are the right channels and action items to focus on.
For example, if your goal is to increase your Instagram followers by 15% in three months, your tactics might include hosting a giveaway, responding to every comment, and posting three times on Instagram per week.
Once you know your goals, brainstorming several tactics to achieve those goals should be easy.
However, while writing your tactics, you have to keep your budget in mind, which brings us to step number five.
5. Set your budget.
Before you can begin implementing any of the ideas that you’ve come up with in the steps above, you have to know your budget.
For example, your tactics might include social media advertising. However, if you don’t have the budget for that, then you might not be able to achieve your goals.
While you’re writing out your tactics, be sure to note an estimated budget. You can include the time it’ll take to complete each tactic in addition to the assets you might need to purchase, such as ad space.
Now that you know how to create your marketing plan, let’s dive into creating a marketing campaign outline that will help you reach the goals outlined plan.

One Page Marketing Plan Template
As demonstrated above, a marketing plan can be a long document. When you want to share information with stakeholders or simply want an overview of your plan for quick reference, having a shorter version on hand can be helpful. A one page marketing plan can be the solution, and we’ll discuss its elements below. 

Business Summary: Include your company name, list the names of individuals responsible for enacting the different stages of your plan, and a brief mission statement. 
Business Initiatives: A summary of your marketing plan goals and the initiatives to help you achieve them. This can include your marketing strategies. 
Target Market: Outline your target audience(s) that your efforts will reach. 
Budget: An overview of the money you’ll spend to help you meet your marketing goals. 
Marketing Channels: list the channels you’ll use to achieve your marketing goals.

Free Marketing Plan Template [Word]
Now that you know what to include in your marketing plan, it’s time to grab your marketing plan template and see how best to organize the six elements explained above. The following marketing plan template opens directly in Microsoft Word, so you can edit each section as you see fit:

Download your marketing plan template here.
Marketing Campaign Template
Your marketing plan is a high-level view of the different marketing strategies you’ll use to meet your business objectives. A marketing campaign template is a focused plan that will help achieve those marketing goals. 
A marketing campaign template should include the following key components: 

Goals and KPIs: Identify the end goal for each of the individual campaigns you’ll run and the metrics you will use to measure the results of your campaign when it ends. For example, conversion rates, sales, sign-ups, etc. 

Channels: Identify the different channels you’ll use to enact your marketing campaign to reach your audience. Maybe you run a social media campaign on Twitter to raise brand awareness or a direct mail campaign to notify your audience of upcoming sales. 

Budget: Identify the budget you’ll need to run your campaign and how it will be distributed, like the amount you’ll spend on creating content or ad placements in different areas. Having these numbers also helps you later on when you quantify the success of your campaign, like ROI. 

Content: Identify the type of content you’ll create and distribute during your campaigns—for example, blog posts, video ads, email newsletters, etc. 

Teams and DRIs: Identify the teams and people that will be part of enacting your marketing plan from start to finish, like those responsible for creating your marketing assets, budgets, or analyzing metrics once campaigns are complete.

Design: Identify what your marketing campaigns will look like and how you’ll use design elements to attract your audience. It’s important to note that your design should directly relate to the purpose of your campaign.

Digital Marketing Plan Template
A digital marketing plan is similar to a marketing campaign plan, but, as the name suggests, it’s tailored to the campaigns that you run online. Let’s go over the key components of a digital marketing plan template to help you stay on track to meet your goals. 

Objectives: The goals for your digital marketing and what you’re hoping to accomplish, like driving more traffic to your website. Maybe you want to drive more traffic to your website, or 

Budget: Identify how much it will cost to run your digital marketing campaign and how the money will be distributed. For example, ad placement on different social media sites costs money, and so does creating your assets.

Target audience: Which segments of your audience are you hoping to reach with this campaign? It’s essential to identify the audiences you want to reach with your digital marketing, as different channels house different audience segments. 

Channels: Identifies the channels that are central to your digital marketing campaign. 

Timeline: Explains the length of time your digital campaigns will run, from how long it should take to create your assets to the final day of the campaign. 

Many people use social media in their digital campaigns, and below we’ll discuss some ideas you can use for inspiration.

Social Media Marketing Plan Templates
As marketing departments grow, so will their presence on social media. And as their social media presence grows, so will their need to measure, plan, and re-plan what types of content they want to publish across each network.
If you’re looking for a way to deepen your social media marketing strategy — even further than the marketing plan template above — the following collection of social media marketing plan templates is perfect for you:

Download 10 social media reporting templates here.
In the above collection of marketing plan templates, you’ll get to fill in the following contents (and more) to suit your company:

Annual social media budget tracking
Weekly social media themes
Required social media image dimension key
Pie chart on social media traffic sorted by platform
Social media post calendar and publish time

Below, let’s review the social media reporting templates, and what you’ll find in each one.
1. Social Media Questions

This template lists out questions to help you decide which social media management platform you should use.
Once you know what social media tactics you’re going to implement in your marketing plan, it’s time to figure out what channels are right for you. This template will help you do that.
2. Hashtag Holidays

If you’re going to lean in to social media in your marketing plan, you can use hashtag holidays to generate ideas.
These holidays are a great way to fill out your social media publishing schedule. With this template, you’ll get a list of all the hashtag holidays for the year.
3. Facebook Live Schedule

If Facebook live is one of the marketing tactics in your plan, this template will help you design an editorial calendar. With this template, you can organize what Facebook live’s you want to do and when.
4. Instagram Post Log

Are you going to begin using Instagram regularly? Do you want to increase your following? With this template, you can organize your Instagram posts, so everyone on your team knows what posts are going live and when.
Additionally, you can organize your assets and campaigns on this doc.
5. Paid Social Media Template

With this template, you can organize your annual and monthly budget for your paid social media calendar.
6. Social Media Audit

Conducting a social media audit? You can use this template to help you gather the right analytics.
7. Social Media Editorial Calendar

With this template, you can organize your social media editorial calendar. For example, you can include social media posts for each platform, so your team knows what’s going live on any given day.
8. Social Media Image Sizes

With this template, your team can have the latest social media image sizes handy. This template includes image sizes for all major social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
9. Social Media Marketing Proposal

With this template, you can create an entire social media marketing proposal. This will outline the social media goals, scope of the work, and the tactics that you plan to implement.
10. Social Media Reporting Template

With this template, you’ll gain access to a slidedeck that includes templates for social media reporting. If you plan to implement social media in your marketing plan, these reporting templates can help you track your progress.

Simple Marketing Plan Template
Of course, this type of planning takes a lot of time and effort. So if you’re strapped for time before the holidays, give our new Marketing Plan Generator a try. 
This tool simplifies yearly planning by asking prompted questions to help guide your process. You’ll be asked to input information about: 

Try our free Marketing Plan Generator here.

Your annual marketing mission statement, which is what your marketing is focused on for the year. 
The strategy that you’ll take with your marketing throughout the year to accomplish your marketing goals. 
Three main marketing initiatives that you’ll focus on during the year (i.e., brand awareness or building a high-quality pipeline) metrics you’ll use to measure your success.
Your target goals for those marketing initiatives like generating 100 leads per week. 
Marketing initiatives that are not aligned with your current strategy to stay focused on your goals and activities that will help you be successful.

Once you input all information, the tool will spit out a table (as shown in the image below) that you can use to guide your processes.

Pro Tip: If the tool doesn’t work, clear your browser’s cache or access it in incognito mode.
Over To You
The best way to set up your marketing plan for the year is to start with quick wins first, that way you can ramp up fast and set yourself (and your team) up to hit more challenging goals and take on more sophisticated projects by Q4. So, what do you say? Are you ready to give it a spin?
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in December 2016 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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Business growth is synonymous with creativity. One of the hardest parts of going into business is finding creative ways to let the world know that you are in business (and that you offer something they need). Even companies that have been in business for years can struggle to get their name out into the marketplace…
The post The Pros and Cons of Using Affiliate Marketing to Grow your Business appeared first on Benchmark Email.

Hi, I am Rogers, a webmaster, a blog writer and a normal E-commerce businessman. I have been running Amazon and Shopify stores for more than 3 years. During the period of running my own stores, I’ve been super aware of the exhaustion and helplessness of doing e-commerce business sometimes. This is the main reason why I created my ecommerce tool collection website. There are over 300 tools and software I used or knew collected on this site, which help sellers with their product research, supplier finding, data analysis, keywords finding, SEO, Affiliate marketing… I believe these tools, software, and tutorials can improve our efficiency to some extent. I’m still working on some details right now, but it’s basically done. Hope you can enjoy my collection here! Happy Thanksgiving to all of you~ (Here’s the site address) (Btw, If you have any suggestions for the site, please let me know right away:)
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